The First Baptist Gospel Congregation on west Washington had polished dark wood walls, red velvet cushions, fraying and smooth along the edges, and a grand brass pipe organ with forty-eight tall pipes soaring from behind the keyboard like steely tulip bulbs. Radiator jets whistled and hissed steam. People clapped gloved hands and clasped coats across their shoulders. Frost glazed the windows, but people still fanned themselves with flimsy beige programs and raised the lower edges of stained glass window panels to admit winter air. The choir rocked and clapped; the congregation stamped and swayed. Miraculously, some children still snoozed, or blinked woozily on shoulders.

Sunny, Rula, and Rita were taken to seats in the sixth row by a smiling usher who kissed his daughters’ hands and glanced a white-gloved hand off of Sunny's forearm.

“My man. Good to see you, Mr. Acting.”

The pastor, in a pink and black robe that rippled like a flag as he rocked his arms, raised his hands above his head as if to ask for quiet; for a moment, the choir held back while the organ warbled and the pastor gave a steady shout into the microphone.

“There are those among you who are homeless, hurting, haunted,” he announced. “They neeeeed a blessing!” and the pastor stepped back into a roar of raw voices, slick foreheads, and sliding feet.

“I heard an old story,” they sang, “how a savior came from glory, how he gave his life, to help someone like me.”

“Praise the Lord!” the pastor shouted out, above and beyond the microphone, and when the song died down he put his arms over the huge dark wood podium as if collapsing in God's embrace.

“Let everyone and everything that has breath,” he said wearily, “praise the Lord in heaven while they have it. What are you going to use that breath for anyway?” he asked worshippers with new strength. “Cheering on Satan?”

“No sir!” they barked back.

“Arguing with your mother-in-law?”

“No sir!”

“Rapping, hip-hopping, and singing about hos, pigs, and bitches?”

“No, sir, Pastor Evans,” parishioners declared even more emphatically.

“Shouting at your kids?”

“No sir!”

“Well, maybe a little,” replied the pastor across a ripple of chuckles. “If they're playing with fire. Or playing around with drugs. But why use the breath that God gave you for those things that are small, silly, negative, depressing, discouraging, Dee-praved, tmnn-necessary immm-material, unnn-wholesome, and generally negativity-producing no-count nonnn-sense, when you can prrraise God Almighty in His Heaven!”

Sunny got to his feet and brought his daughters up with him. They grabbed outstretched hands all around, setting off a clanking of bracelets and a rustling of heavy sleeves, and smiled over at Sgt. Galla-her, who stood to the side of their row, elbows folded and eyes playing over the mass of upraised hands and fists.

“Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”

People sat down hard, as if after an uphill trudge. Applause flickered and faded. It was soon hushed enough to hear a few sneezes, an isolated cough, and a couple of babies’ cries.

“We have guests here, of course. We will ask them all to introduce themselves after the offering—make sure they'll stay.” There was a quiet tinkling of laughter. “But there are also a few people who may want you to see they're here right now,” the pastor resumed. “State Senator Melvin Simpkins,” he announced. “County Board Commissioner Nikki Sherman. And down there, with his beautiful daughters— and lovely police guard—Alderman and Vice Mayor Sundaran Roopini, who has always been a good friend, and especially in these recent, tragic days. Gentlemen and ladies, please!” bid the pastor, and Sunny stood with an arm around each of his daughters. He could see Rula's face redden. He could feel Rita stiffen against his arm. Sunny smiled and sat down swiftly. When he looked toward the end of the row, he could see Sgt. Gallaher flustered and blushing.

“D y'all see the police guard?” he asked. “Tall lady in blue. When did that happen in the Chicago Police Department?” There were soft snickers and calls of, “She's pretty, pastor.”

But when the pastor could see Sgt. Gallaher's smile curdle, he called out gently, “It is good to have you here. We'll pray that our Lord keeps you safe. Thank you for serving the city of Chicago.”

The pastor shuffled papers on the lectern; he did not want to proceed until all was in order.

“We have another guest here this morning,” he announced. “I ask you to receive him with courtesy. He has asked to worship with us today. Of course I said yes. The House of God is open to all. But I know you would also be disappointed if you didn't hear him speak, as well as say amen. Some of you have probably seen him on the TV this morning. Better than Oprah, wasn't it? Oprah, who is such a dear friend.”

Rula wrenched her mouth against Sunny's ear.

“You don't suppose—” she said.

“Of course not,” he assured her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the pastor began …

“Who else?” hissed Rita.

At first, there were more gasps than applause as the intonation of Linas Slavinskas's name. But suddenly it was indisputably Linas striding with a full plume of steam across the stage: sandy hair swept back, blunt lizard chin, and his sharp pink tongue licking, a deep blue blazer set off by a white collar and high-pitched magenta tie. Hot white camera lights painted the podium as he arrived.

“Thank you, Pastor Alfred,” Linas said soberly, and paused for mothers to shush children and adults to mutter behind their hands.

“We've known each other a long time, pastor. And liked each other about half of it.”

The pastor, sitting in a portentous wooden throne nearby that was engraved with scripture and cherubim, laughed and called out toward Linas.

“A little more than that my friend.”

Linas bowed toward the pastor, and turned back to the congregation with a challenging eye.

“I—loved—the mayor,” he said, rolling out each word. “I disagreed with him. I argued with him. We called each other names. I won't bore you with examples. Let's just say, that when it came to name calling, I always finished second.”

Shy, tentative laughter swirled over the ranks of seats.

“The mayor was a man of his word,” said Linas. “And a man of words, wasn't he?”

Voices rose around Sunny and his daughters.

“That's true, Mr. Slavinskas.”

Linas nodded in thanks, and went on.

“We knew how to fight,” he explained. “We knew how to jab each other. That's what old couples do, don't they?”

The floor of the church began to flower with pink, white, and yellow-brimmed hats, swaying with laughter and blunt, short shouts.

“That's right, that's right.”

“When the mayor and I quarreled, we didn't need translators,” said Linas, “We understood each other perfectly. The mayor said to me once—,” and here, Linas risked his own gravelly impersonation— “‘Linas, at least you and your folks didn't fly out of here when my folks started spreading our wings. Cleveland, Dee-troit, Dee Cee, folks just up and left. The same folks who now pay dearly for their kids to go to schools with a carefully selected representative sample of Nee-groes, Hispanics, and Asiatics turned down the honor when diversity moved next door. Look at those cities now—block after block like empty ashtrays. Least your folks stayed.’”

Linas dropped his right hand against the podium, as if laying down a large rock.

“And we did,” he said quietly. “Maybe not always next door. But across the street and down the block. Look, I know I've been called ‘honky.’ My grandparents were hunkies. If you worked in the stock-yards or steel mills, you were a hunkie—hunched over for life. That's how the word began. You worked with your back, and your work could break your back. Dirty, smelly, bloody jobs, pouring white-hot steel in the mills, or getting soaked in blood when you hacked cattle. And for too long, a lot of black men couldn't work there. What miserable jobs to fight over. But hell—forgive me, pastor. No: hell is the right word. Hell! Those jobs were everything to us.”

Cries and shouts moved over the room. Sunny felt his phone shudder in his pocket, and kept his eyes on the church's podium. Linas had removed a crisp linen square from his pocket and blotted it thoughtfully against his forehead.

“All those jobs have gone to Kansas and Nebraska now. God bless them—and good riddance. Those jobs were good enough for our fathers and grandfathers. But we have the largest financial market in the world here in Chicago. Our sons and daughters can have better jobs, with higher pay. They get to work indoors and wear suits. Our grandfathers worked in blood and sweat, but our children can wear cufflinks in air-conditioned offices and lift billions of dollars with just their fingers. Isn't that what life is all about?”

Rewarding Linas with laughs was one thing; applause was a greater gift entirely. But handclaps began to break out across the rows now as he went on, chopping out phrase by phrase with his right hand, and stepping back slightly from the rostrum to raise his voice.

“In your ward and mine, we rear our own children. Have you seen the nannies and the aww-pears wheeling around little apple-cheeked children in Lincoln Park? Or down Michigan Avenue, looking in the big store windows? But in our neighborhoods, we don't subcontract the most important job in life to hourly employees, God bless them, from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti. Hourly employees that the folks along Astor, Bellevue, and east Lake Shore Drive pay below minimum wage, off the books, and under the table.”

Rita leaned over to hold her fingers over Sunny's arm and whisper.

“Didn't the Slavinskases have that Danish girl who helped with the kids?”

“Larissa,” he remembered. Colossal blue eyes, corn-yellow hair, and slender limbs in close-fitting jeans and sweaters.

“But Rosie was always at home,” said Sunny. “I think Larissa was more help to the alderman.”

“When we need help, we ask grandma,” Linas continued. “We ask a neighbor. The older ones raise the younger ones. Sometimes, we need a day-care center. Thank God they have them in churches like this. As Pastor Alfred knows, over the years I've given a few small contributions—nothing grand, just enough to help out.”

The pastor, legs crossed and smiling, waved and called out from his carved chair below a large embroidered gold cross.

“You have, my friend, you have.”

Linas rested his hands on the podium and leaned back toward the choir.

“You know, Pastor, I was paying attention to the words,” he said. “The singing is beautiful. But the words make it so, because they're the words of God.”

Shouts of, “That's true, Mr. Slavinskas,” sprouted around Sunny and his daughters.

“‘He sought me, and bought me, with his redeeming blood,’” Linas quoted. He narrowed his eyes in recollection; an expression Sunny had seen only when Linas had recalled the taste of some exceptional wine.

“Well your people and mine know what it's like to get blood on our hands. In the stockyards and hospital rooms. In the army. This week, there were people in my neighborhood—including our family—who shed tears right along with you. I thank you for letting me and my lovely wife”—Rosie rose a few inches from her seat, and raised a slender blond hand, waving trim pink nails—“join you for worship this morning. May our grief help us realize how many hopes and dreams we share for this city.”

Linas ducked his head humbly as he stepped from the podium. He gently held the heel of his hand against the corner of an eye to blot a tear. The brims of huge yellow, pink, lavender, white, and cornflower blue hats swayed like petals in the rows of seats.

It wasn't until Linas had taken a couple of slow, grave steps down the winding stairs leading down to the floor that Sunny could catch his eye with one of his own and, in blinking back tears, flash an unmistakable wink across several rows of heads bent in prayer and reverence. The phone in Sunny's pocket jiggled over his heart. He nodded to Sgt. Gallaher, who led him through the aisle, and out into a small, dim alcove stacked with dog-eared children's Bible storybooks in which it did not seem impious to speak of politics.

“Shameless. Shameful. Shameless,” she said.

“Lots of applause, Vera,” Sunny told her. “But when it's over, just a bunch of red hands to show for it. Something else is going on.”

After hearing only silence from the other end, Sunny went a sentence ahead.

“He's not running tomorrow.”

When Vera replied, Sunny noticed just a trace of wobbliness.

“Surely that's what all of this has been about,” she said.

“He must have counted and figured that he'd come up short,” said Sunny. A shiny-headed deacon on patrol for straggling children heard Sunny's rushed, strangled voice and peered into the alcove; some soul must be hurting. Sgt. Gallaher waved the man away. “This way, Linas bows out in a blaze of glory,” said Sunny. “And starts next year's campaign.”

“That's diabolical,” Vera said after a pause. “He told you he had to run because if I got in he'd have no chance next year. Or for ten years.”

“I feel stupid, Vera.” Sunny scolded himself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“Not your mistake,” Vera said crisply. “Every politician has to keep books for herself.”

“He got us to start playing our hand, Vera. Put down our cards with Rod, Evelyn, Miles, Luis, Ivan. He knew all along that he couldn't beat you on the floor. But …” Sunny let his voice trail off, so that Vera could complete his thought.

“But he figures now that I'll come up short, too.”

Sunny admired the way in which Vera did not resort to we when it came to bad fortune. He heard the organ rumbling and voices wailing before she spoke again. Let Him in your heart today, Throwing every window open, O receive Him while you may. By the time she spoke, Vera's sentences hissed down quickly, like short, hot fuses.

“I thought Linas was going to lead the crowd in ‘Kumbaya.’ I wonder how long Walter Green has been in his pants. Who do you figure he figures? Arty?”

“No,” Sunny quickly replied.

“Daryl?”

“Nooo.”

“Rod?”

Sunny paused to run this new name through his mind; it swiftly returned, unmarked.

“I doubt it. The only chit he earns from that would be Rod's. Which is as valuable as old francs. No, it's something—someone—we're missing. Someone Linas can trust to get out of the way—or not be too hard to move out of the way—next year. In the meantime,” said Sunny, “I have an idea.…”

Wooden doors sprang open. Organ blasts pealed. Voices roared. Joshua prayed for to stop the sun. The sun did stop till the battle was won. Hallelujah! Snowshoes squished over soft red carpet. Sunny looked for the two, bare dark heads of his daughters in the surge of violet, coral, and daffodil brims flapping out of the service and past his alcove.