“Lou, this is the third time in the past two weeks you’ve hocked me about the buildings. Everything here is fine.” I was still smarting from Blackhead’s final remark, and this telephone call just added to my defensiveness. I suppose it showed. Lou’s wheeze worked overtime to keep his exasperation under control.

“You tell me everything is fine but you don’t send the details. Boychick, we invested a lot of money in the renovation. I don’t think it’s asking too much to see some pictures.”

I looked at the joint in my fingers. I’d torn the paper, and most of the dope had spilled onto the desk. I felt a wave of guilt thin my irritation. We hadn’t invested money, he had.

“I know Charles does the managing,” Lou continued, “but you’re my partner. If I can’t get the straight dope from you, I’m out in the cold.”

Dope he could get. “Listen, I send you all the important information.” “But the pictures. I can’t visualize things from here.”

The suffocation was starting. Since Lou’s wife, Martha, had died, calls from Chicago had come with increased frequency, jammed with increased demands. The unsent snapshots were just the latest.

Resignation replaced my guilt. “As soon as I get the camera from the shop I’ll take the pictures.”

“You can’t borrow a camera?”

“Jesus, Lou, don’t you have anything better to do than worry about this?”

“What’s to do? I have time to attend to our business now, that’s all.” His voice suddenly guarded.

“What about friends?” The image of the crowded temple during Martha’s funeral crossed my mind. I’d known about Lou’s political importance before his retirement, but I had been staggered at the turnout. Half of Chicago had been there.

“Friends,” he snorted. “How many times a week can you talk about ‘the good old days’?” “Lou, you’re backing yourself into a corner.” And into me.

“You’re warning me about corners? Mr. Cus DiMato himself? Instead of my corners, worry about your own. If you just took care of what I ask, we wouldn’t have a problem. The way you do things makes me feel like you don’t care about the buildings.”

His combativeness was back, and I started to reroll the dope on my desk. “Look, I’ll send the pictures as soon as I can.” I felt ashamed of the sharpness in my voice. I didn’t want to drive him away, but the more he demanded the less I could deliver. I could only hope the long-standing warmth between us would, whatever his demands, whatever my reactions, remain intact.

And it took remembering those feelings to stay quiet when he said, “Maybe it would be better if I paid a little visit, Boychick. Something tells me I’d see the buildings quicker that way.”

I tried not to react to the fingers reaching around my throat. I didn’t think his “maybe” meant maybe. “That would be nice, Lou, it’s been a while.”

“Well, I’ll think about it,” he said, sounding as though I’d done the inviting. “Check with the camera store anyway. They might give you a loaner.”

“Sure.” Maybe they could throw in a thousand free miles.

I was relieved to be off the phone. A familiar sensation but, until the last few months, not one I’d associated with Lou. I rubbed my eyes and tried to push my reaction away. When Chana and our daughter, Rebecca, died in the accident, Lou and Martha stood strong as I slowly pulled together the shattered fragments of my life.

I took a long drag of the grass. It couldn’t have been easy for them. Chana had been their only child. Now Martha was dead, and I sat in my office, fighting with the guy when he needed me the most. I bit the end of the joint where a seed blocked the smoke’s passage and inhaled. As much as I wanted to help, my relational ties were no match for my emotional claustrophobia.

I put my bare feet up on the desk and looked at the forest-green walls and cream woodwork. After the accident Lou had bought this six-flat to give me something to do. When I’d gotten involved in the detective business, he’d bought the six-flat next door and made us partners in both. Lou had even hired Richard, an architect and Charles’ live-in lover, to renovate and attach the buildings.

It was through Richard’s insistence and craftsmanship that I had an office at all. He stole some cellar and designed a new kitchen at the end of my interior hall. Then he transformed the old kitchen into an office. Somehow, he’d managed to keep the Forties feel of my place intact. Something I appreciated, psychologically unprepared as I was to leapfrog decades.

Unfortunately, the renovation mostly meant a longer walk from the bedroom to refrigerator. Who needs an office when you’re malling for work?

The joint had gone out. I relit it and a cigarette. I had never imagined myself a landlord and Lou’s reminder served to unleash more memories from the past. Hell, one of my shining moments had come when a group of neighborhood people organized a rent strike and takeover from a usurious landlord: I still remembered the looks on their faces when I got the damn boiler to work.

We’d won the battle, though the war had been lost long before I’d set foot in The End. In a neighborhood ravaged by neglect and poverty, a call for a minyan would have gathered newspaper-shoe’d bag ladies, crazies, grifters, and professional do-gooders. A neighborhood where what little money there was flowed in only one direction—out. But The End was the neighborhood where I had fought for Truth, Justice, and what I believed was the American way. A community where I could escape from my own desperate youth. Or so I had imagined.

It had been a long time since I’d thought about The End. Not simply because it was a forgotten part of my city, or because I was no longer involved in social service. Not even because I’d lost most of my faith in T, J, and A. I didn’t want to think about The End because it was where I had begun my disastrous marriage with my first wife, Megan. Things ended up so sour between us that it had lemoned damn near any place we’d ever gone. There were restaurants, movie houses, whole sections of town I still avoided. It didn’t seem to make any difference that I’d once thought of The End as home.

But Blackhead’s remark, and the reminder of my new-found status, threatened my ability to Sherman the past. Or even hopscotch the present. Truth was, I was a naked landlord, sitting in my junk shop-furnished, art deco office, guilty and unhappy about my present life.

I suddenly couldn’t stand to stay in the office. Grabbing my stash I flopped onto the living room couch. I flipped on the tube, and waited for the one-two punch of dope and television to work its magic. I kept watching and smoking, but couldn’t get rid of the hazy memories swirling inside my head. I hadn’t thought of The End or its lost people in so long that I had trouble matching names with faces. At least I hoped it was the passage of time. I didn’t want to believe it was the dope.