The Ledger — Thursday, 26 July 1990, 8:19 PM

Thu, 26 Jul 1990 20:19:00 +0000

West-Side Haven / Docks / Modius’s Mansion / Hennessey’s Bar Gary, Indiana

The phone rang at sundown and Darius knew it was wrong before he picked it up. Four people had the number. Three of them had no reason to call tonight.

He lifted the receiver and said nothing. Listened to the bar noise and the breathing and waited for whoever it was to show their hand.

“It’s Ray.” The dock foreman’s voice was flat and stripped of its usual nervous music. “I’m at Stockton’s. You need to come down here.”

The Hunger — Wednesday, 25 July 1990, 8:19 PM

Wed, 25 Jul 1990 20:19:00 +0000

Adams Street / The Docks / Modius’s Mansion / Polk & 13th Gary, Indiana

The apartment held the heat like a closed hand. Eighty-five degrees outside and the radiator pipes carried it through the walls, summer turning the building into something Gary’s winter would never manage. Darius opened his eyes at sundown and smelled smoke.

Not the apartment. Not the stove or the wiring or any of the sixteen things wrong with the building that the landlord before him never fixed. This smoke came from the west, three or four blocks south, and it carried the particular sweetness of house insulation melting into cinderblock. A fire truck idled somewhere on Adams. He could hear the diesel and the crackle of hand radios and the low murmur of a crowd with nowhere better to be.

Chapter 8 — The Operational on Chicago Chronicles

The Ledger — Thursday, 26 July 1990, 8:19 PM

The Hunger — Wednesday, 25 July 1990, 8:19 PM