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I came in for a bit of his caustic commentary then. “Imagine that. Man spending his hard-earned money to give the boy an education, try to get him started in life. And that fool has the nerve to wipe his feet on it. Yeah, that’s the big problem these days. None of you young folks like to be told what to do. It’s always gotta be your way. You know better. We don’t know a goddamn thing.”

He smoked without talking for a few minutes, then said, “Anyway, you get on over there to see those people. Sim will take you.”

“Who?”

Woody almost always used a—well, it’s more than a little pretentious to call him a chauffeur—a driver, is what I mean. The previous one, whom we called Hero, had been with him for years. He was Woody’s nephew. Hero had had more than his share of problems, among them his lengthy and wasting drug addiction; but in the end he surely lived up to his nickname. He had met that end on the street one night, killed by one of two men who attacked Woody and me. Hero died saving us.

“Cass, this is Sim,” Woody said. “He’s helping me out these days.”

The same kind of help Hero had provided, I presumed: accompanying Woody while he went about his business, known and unknown, all over the city. Or just waiting for him in the Lincoln while Woody lunched with his cronies. And if any kind of muscle was required for the job, it looked as if this guy Sim could handle it. Unlike undernourished Uncle Hero, he was big.

“Hi, Sim,” I said as I got into the backseat.

He was wearing a light-brown suede jacket and a yellow shirt. His dark hands resting on the steering wheel were huge and shapely like a basketball player’s. He turned around, eyed me for a few seconds, like he was memorizing my face or something. “How you doing?”

Woody moved to close the door after me.

“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Last thing in the world I want to see is a mother who just lost her boy. Very little in the world is worse than that.”

He should know. Aunt Ivy had miscarried twice and delivered one stillborn before they gave up trying to have children.

“When you talk to his folks,” Woody said, “you gotta know what you’re doing, gal.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re in a position to talk to the Mobley family like the police won’t. They can’t. For one thing, they wouldn’t know how. For another, they don’t care like you do. But you have to be careful of these people’s feelings. Realize what they going through. If there’s any chance they can shed light on the killing, you gotta get them talking. The boy was theirs. They should be able to tell you who he was. And if you come to find out they didn’t really know him much better than you did, well, so be it. That’s gotta mean something, too. You understand?”

“I think I do. You’re telling me pretty much what Jack Klaus told me. Either I want the truth to come out or I don’t. I have to find a way to stand back from Wilt. Be hard on him and be hard on myself.”

“Now you’re talking.”

Was I? I hoped it wasn’t just talk.

2

Hyde Park is one of a very few communities in the city that people like to describe as “integrated.”

True and not true. Of course, the mighty University of Chicago is the chief explanation for the variety of colors and ethnicities on the streets. Students and faculty come there from all over the world. Mixed couples strolling with their café au lait babies don’t raise many eyebrows. And solid, well-to-do Negroes long ago established a beachhead in the area. Still, blacks not connected to university life, and even some who are, usually get shut out of the more desirable housing. The real estate guy who was so nice when he showed you the sunny two-bedroom place? You’d be ill advised to sit by the phone waiting for him to call you back.

Wilton’s parents were not only longtime Hyde Park residents, they had crossed the neighborhood’s Maginot Line, the little enclave of Madison Park. They lived on a street so hincty that many of the realty ads for homes along its lovely, tree-shaded blocks state boldly: Physicians and professors only. Others need not