"Thirty, thirty-five years ago. How do you know it's the same man?"

  "He gives me a smile the first time he sees me here. This silly grin like he knew something I didn't know. That grin should've given me the clue right there but, after all, thirty-five years had passed and he was the last person I expected to see in a health club on his own."

  "Why's that?"

  "He wasn't all there. I don't know if he was seriously retarded or anything like that. I mean he wasn't in the right grade for his age, but he went to school. For a while at least. Then I suppose his mother took him out. The kids used to make fun of him."

  She laughs at some memory.

  "Even when he was a grown man, he'd do crazy things. One summer he walked around with this clown's face he'd put on himself with his mother's lipstick and rouge. He used to like to dress up like the pictures of Al Capone. Wore a white topcoat in the summer. His mother spoiled him. Gave him practically anything he wanted. I guess she felt guilty having a child like that. I can understand that."

  "So can I."

  "Well, she must've done something right, otherwise he wouldn't be taking care of himself like he must've been doing. Maybe she passed away. I should've asked."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Well, I've got to tell you the truth. He always gave me the creeps. That grin of his and the eyes. He'd look at you with those eyes like a little kid's and then all of a sudden—something bad would come into them. Listen to me, will you, going on like some superstitious guinea from the old country. But I seem to remember there was some talk."

  "What kind of talk?"

  "About him exposing himself on the street. The girls in my family were warned to stay away from him. I don't remember exactly why, but I think it might've been that he'd tried something with some children."

  "When did you remember him?"

  "He came up behind me one evening and says, 'Hello, Aurelia,' which very few people ever call me, and right away I remembered. 'Hello, Theobald,' I say. That didn't please him very much. I ruined his little game.

  He wanted to drive me crazy wondering where he knew me from."

  "Theobald?"

  "Sure. That's where he got that Teddy. Not from Theodore, from Theobald. Theobald Tramontina."

  "How come you never told anybody around here about this after he dropped dead?"

  "Nobody asked me," she says, giving me a look like what am I, not very bright?

  "I'm sorry, Aurelia, you wouldn't have any way of knowing that we didn't have a name or address on the man. The authorities still got him on ice downtown. They ain't even been able to notify his next of kin."

  She's frowning.

  "He might not have been living in the old neighborhood anymore. They might not find anybody there who knew him. We're talking thirty years since I left the neighborhood. I'm sure a lot of people moved away from St. Francis de Sales parish. Even if his mother or anybody else from the Tramontina family are around, they might not talk to the police. The Tramontina family was always very good at keeping their mouths shut."

  TWENTY-ONE

  When I get back to the flat, Alfie, who used to be my dog and palled around with me a lot but who's Mary's dog ever since she started staying home most of the time, is laying down in the entry hall. He gives me the old one-eye which says there's something going on which he ain't entirely happy about. I hear voices from the parlor and when I walk on through I find Mary standing there in front of a chart or something she's got pinned up on one of them portable clothes lines we used to dry the washing when it rained five or six days in a row. I'm talking about before we got a laundry room with a washer and dryer put down in the basement for the rest of the owner/tenants of the building and ourselves.

  Eight young girls, Afro-Americans and Hispanics, are sitting around in a semicircle listening to every word she says.

  I take a step into the room and get a look at the chart which is of a naked pregnant woman with a cutaway view of how the baby's situated inside her womb and I quick take a step right back out of there.

  Mary sees me and gives me a big smile and says, "Hello, James. If you'd like to come in and meet the ladies and listen to the end of the lecture on prenatal care, you're very welcome."

  The young women take a look at me—one's Mrs. Quintana's granddaughter, Rosa; another one's the girl who was with Millie Jefferson; and another one's Benedetto's maid—and give me some grins and giggles. I've never been able to understand why women, young and old, think it's funny when a man don't choose to sit around listening to a lot of talk about morning sickness and how to use a breast pump and things like that. It's like they think men are afraid to even hear about having babies, which is not altogether true, though I admit it ain't as entertaining as talking about the chances of one of our ball teams copping a pennant.

  So anyway I say, "Thank you very much and hello to all you pretty ladies, but if it's all the same to you, I think I'll go take my dog for a walk."

  There's another burst of giggles as I back on out to the kitchen.

  I get Alfie's leash and we leave the flat.

  Walking down the street it's like old times, just Alfie and me looking over the neighborhood seeing how everybody's getting along.

  Joe Pakula's standing in the doorway of the store which is in the corner of the building and he says, "Long time no see, Jimmy. I suppose your new job's keeping you busy."

  "Well, no busier than I been before I had the job," I say. "Though it's true it takes me away from home more than I used to be."

  "We miss you, Jimmy. The old women in the neighborhood ask about you. They ask about how come you don't wash your car every Saturday like you used to."

  "Well, I should do that, but I don't seem to be able to find the time," I say. "By the way, is there anything I can do for you?"

  "I had a favor to ask. Not for me. For my cousin who just came up from South America. Well, for me, too, I suppose. Anyway, Mrs. Flannery's taking care of it. In fact my cousin's up in your flat right now."

  "I saw eight girls—women—listening to my wife give them a little talk about having babies and how to take care of themselves."

  "So, my cousin's one of them. It's very nice of Mrs. Flannery to open up a free family planning counseling office in your flat."

  "Is that what she's doing?"

  "Didn't she tell you?"

  "Not yet, but I'm sure she'll get around to it."

  Alfie and me go on with our walk, stopping here and there when we meet somebody we know, which ain't too often. I start thinking again about how fast things seem to be changing since I was a kid and how I'm not sure I like it very much. But like it or not, you got to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. That's the only way a person can get around the block or wherever any of us are trying to go.

  "What do you think about this situation with Theobald Tramontina, also known as Mr. Porky or Mr. Pig?" I say out loud.

  Alfie looks up and gives me his attention.

  "What are we dealing with here? Mrs. Falzone says he could've been a little funny in the head, but what's somebody like that doing going to health clubs at night all by hisself? Which is not to say that some of these people who ain't what you'd call very bright can't do plenty of things. Going to a health club ain't the hardest thing in the world after all. On the other hand, maybe we just got a guy what likes to go around looking at ladies what are naked or half-dressed. I mean, there's the magazines. And he had something going with Marilyn LaFrance. I don't know what, but something. Maybe he wasn't just a clown missing a couple of marbles. Mrs. Falzone said there was talk about him exposing himself, fooling with children. So what the hell was he doing wandering around by hisself? You got any ideas?"

  Alfie snuffles and shakes his head.

  "True. We know a lot more than we knew last week but it still ain't much. It's still a puzzle what he was doing in the Twenty-seventh with no identification and no address. I mean it looks like he was hiding out. What we're not really completely sure about is how he died and if he was really the man Mrs. Falzone says he is." By this time we're around the block. It's been a long day and I'm feeling tired. I trudge up the stairs hoping the young mothers-to-be will all be gone and nobody's come visiting in the meantime.

  I don't hear any voices coming from the parlor but I peek in anyway. It's empty and so's the kitchen.

  I look into the bedroom and Mary's laying on the bed. She's been letting her hair grow and now she's undone it and it's laying spread out on the pillow while she leans on one elbow reading a book. She looks at me and rolls over on her back, putting the book aside and making a place for me.

  I take off my shoes and lay down next to her.

  "You do any good for yourself today?" she asks.

  "Well, I think I got a line on that man who died at the health club. But, I'll tell you, right now I feel like Scarlet O'Hara from that picture—"

  "Gone With the Wind."

  "—we rented from the video store the other night. I don't want to think about it tonight. I'll think about it tomorrow."

  "Not a bad idea," she says, and then she kisses me.

  "I got a question," I say.

  "You know a newspaper reporter by the name of B. Behan?" she asks right back.

  "Yes, Billy Behan. I know him. He's a man who laughs only when somebody breaks a leg."

  "He's been nosing around the clinic, asking questions, harassing patients."

  "You warn him off?"

  "The director tried to ask him in a nice way not to frighten our pregnant women, but he just raved on about freedom of the press and the sacred right of the public to know how their public institutions were serving them."

  "I could have a talk with him," I say.

  "I doubt that'd do any good. In fact it could do a lot of harm. He doesn't seem to like you. He told me so. I've got to admit it came as some surprise."

  "How's that?"

  "Well, even people who are against you on certain issues, still like you personally. I don't know many who don't. In any case he made it clear that if I complained to you and you complained to him, the only thing that would come of it is that he'd work that much harder to dig up some dirt on the clinic."

  "He said that? He threatened that?"

  "Now, don't get your Irish up," she says, like she expects me to go out there and punch him in the nose which maybe I've been known to do, but only when somebody's pushed me to the wall and there's no way out. "He's the type who'll get tired and give it up if nobody takes his challenge and fights him."

  "So is that why all these young mothers about-to-be are in my parlor—which is the question which I was about to ask?"

  "Which I figured," Mary says. "He spotted some literature about birth control I'd given to one of my mothers. I stopped him from questioning her and the women sitting with her in the waiting room. He went away but I know he'll be back and I don't want him bothering any of them, so for the time being at least, I'm going to have them meet here once a week."

  "In our flat?" I ask, sounding a little testy. "I don't mean that to sound selfish but I'd just as soon my home didn't have people going in and out like it was the waiting room down at the Greyhound station. Also, do you think it's a very good idea for women that far along to go tramping up and down six flights of stairs?"

  "I'm looking into other arrangements," she says, and kisses me again, which she knows is always an easy way to shut me up.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The week goes by with this and that. I got some meter inspections down to Calumet Harbor, which ain't so far away from St. Francis de Sales, so I go down there to One Hundred Second and Avenue J, in the southeast corner of the city—which is called the East Side but which is also called South Chicago—on my lunch break. St. Francis de Sales is the East Side's oldest Catholic parish.

  In the Tenth Ward, in what they call South Chicago, you got Our Lady of Guadalupe which the Mexicans built.

  You've got Calumet Park, made out of the slag of steel mills.

  You've got a neighborhood called Pill Hill which was once the neighborhood of a lot of doctors. Now it's one of the nicest black areas in Chicago. It's also got Helen Maybell's Soul Queen Restaurant which has got a sign on the wall what says, You may eat all you want, but you must pay for all you take.

  There's Jeffrey Manor and Merrionette Manor, Slag Valley and Hegewisch, Island Homes—which is a trailer park—and East Side, a neighborhood between the Calumet River and the Indiana state line.

  Mexicans, Croats, Serbs, Poles and Italians jealously defend their turf around the Tenth.

  A black man moved into an Italian neighborhood back in 1984 and they burned his garage down. So it's a place what still makes its own trouble.

  By the time I get there, I feel like I ain't even in Chicago anymore.

  The old St. Francis de Sales burned down back in the twenties and the new one is part of the school.

  I just drive by and give it the once over, then I go back to the meters and catch a little lunch along the way.

  On Sunday, which is the day when Mary and me usually sleep in, I get up early. Mary wakes up long enough to ask me where I'm going and I tell her I'm going to church and she says, "That's nice," and goes back to sleep.

  I'm just in time for the eight o'clock Mass at St. Francis de Sales. The minute I walk into the vestibule before I even get into the nave—memories come flooding back of when I was a kid and my mother—God rest her soul—used to slick me up and take me to church.

  I remember when I made my First Holy Communion. I remember the white satin bow tie and white suit I had to wear which gave me the miseries.

  The smell of incense is like the smell of my mother's perfume and the light coming through the stained glass windows reminds me of the twilight coming into the flat when I was small and she'd read to me from a story book while rocking me on her lap.

  The nave is maybe a tenth full of people, mostly middle-aged working men and women all dressed up in their Sunday best and some youngsters who're probably there to see if they can meet somebody of the opposite sex.

  But I'm not looking for middle-age and I ain't looking for young. I'm looking for old and there they are, the ones who came over in the twenties and thirties when they was maybe twelve, fourteen. They got work on the streets as pick and shovel laborers. They put in the time in the slaughterhouses and the steel mills and the coke yards. The girls cleaned other people's houses and worked in the five and dimes and in the factories.

  They raised their families, minded their own business if they could, and grew old.

  There's a whole pew filled with them, old men and women dressed in black, with white hair and hands like old wrinkled leather, the women saying their beads, the old men staring straight ahead with watery eyes.

  I'm hoping that one of them can tell me what I want to know.

  When the service is over, I'm one of the first out the door. A couple of people give me a look as I stand at the curb waiting for the old folks to make their way out of church, not only because I'm a stranger but—with my kisser and red hair—an Irish stranger.

  An old priest comes down an alley from the rectory and takes up a place near the door, shoulder to shoulder with the younger priest who'd celebrated the Mass, and I can see that he's the old pastor of St. Francis de Sales parish and he wants to keep on shaking the hands of the faithful as long as he's got the strength.

  So right there I change my plans. Instead of going up to one of these old ladies or gentlemen—who got the habit of keeping their traps shut, otherwise they wouldn't've lived so long—I'll talk to the Father.

  After the congregation empties the church, I go up to him and says, "I beg your pardon, Father, but I wonder if I could have a word with you?"

  "Wit' me?" he says, surprised that anybody would still want a word with him. "You shoo you don' wanna counsel wit' Father Harry, here?" He's got this old world accent which makes his thin voice sound like water running over velvet. It's got a kind of huskiness and I figure he smokes more than he should. Probably them skinny black cigars dipped in wine.

  Father Harry's giving me the old one-eye.

  "No, it's you I'd like to counsel with," I say to the old priest. "My name's James Flannery and I'm the ward leader up to the Twenty-seventh."

  "You're a long way from home," Father Harry says.

  "In a neighborhood I ain't all that familiar with," I say.

  "That's why I'd like a word with the pastor."

  "Do you feel up to an interview, Father Rocco?" the younger priest asks.

  "I don' think this is an interview," Father Rocco says. "I think it's more like a couple of questions. Am I right?"

  "That's all I'll probably have to ask. I'll be out of your hair in five minutes, maybe less."

  "Will I come with you, Father?" the younger priest asks.

  "No, no. You go on about your business. I know you've got a lot of paperwork to catch up on."

  Father Harry gives me a look like he's telling me he's putting his most precious treasure into my hands and hurries away, his vestments making him look like a ship taking off to sea.

  "The boy worries abou' me," Father Rocco says. "He makes me take twenny naps a day. So much rest is going to kill me. My arteries will sludge up. Am I right?"

  "I think you could use some exercise."

  "Everybody could use some exercise. So let's take a walk over to the rectory. We'll have a little glass of wine. A little biscotti. A little something."

  We start to walk.

  "You've been here a long time, have you, Father?" I ask.

  "I came righ' after the old church burned down back in '25. Can you imagine that? I was a young priest. I rebuilt the church wit' wha' we had." He stops in his tracks. I get the idea he can't walk and do too much figuring at the same time. "Sixty-five years ago. Would you believe it? I'll be eighty-seven next month."

  We start walking again.

  "You're in pretty good shape for a man your age," I say.

  "Well, the body's one thing and the soul's another. What I got to worry about is what shape my soul's going to be in when I . . ."

 

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