Wildcat by Sara Paretsky

Author:Sara Paretsky
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

V

Boom-Boom had been all over the park, trying to find Uncle Tony. At first, when Uncle Tomasz roared up Route 41 to Seventy-first Street, he was having a great time. He knew his cousin had been watching from the attic. He could picture his mother rushing to the sidewalk, yelling after him, and then trying to get his father to chase after him. In their old Ford—like to see him try to catch the Wildcat.

They stopped at a barbershop at Seventy-first and Euclid, where Uncle Tomasz knew the owner. He made a phone call and fidgeted around, joking with the barbers, but kind of tense underneath. He kept looking out the window. After about fifteen minutes, a man with thinning blond hair came in. He looked around, saw Uncle Tomasz, and jerked his head toward the door.

Boom-Boom was following his uncle to the street, but the man stared at him with the meanest eyes Boom-Boom had ever seen. “You stay in the shop and wait for your uncle there,” he said in a voice so cold Boom-Boom turned around and went back in.

He asked Uncle Tomasz’s friend who the man was, but the barber only shook his head and gave Boom-Boom a dime for the Coke machine. The machine was next to the front door. As Boom-Boom bought his soda, he saw the stranger get behind the steering wheel. Uncle Tomasz was letting this complete stranger drive his car, while he sat stiffly in the passenger seat.

When they took off, Boom-Boom ran after, the Coke bottle still in hand. He almost caught up with the Wildcat at the stoplight on Stony Island, but as soon as the light turned green, the car was gone. A westbound bus lumbered into view and Boom-Boom boarded it by darting in through the back door as passengers were exiting.

When the traffic gummed up near Marquette Park, Boom-Boom jumped off. He jogged along the street and caught a break: he saw the Wildcat make its way around the sawhorses, although he wasn’t close enough to see money change hands. If he’d been looking for her, he would have seen his cousin before she was swept up in the crowds entering the park, but in his imagination, she was still leaning out his attic window.

He hadn’t known how hot and tired he could get, pushing and shoving his way through mobs in the park, looking for the Wildcat. It wasn’t that there were so many cars—almost no one except cops, firefighters, and journalists had been allowed to bring a car in—but the waves of people, yelling, charging in different directions, “Hunting niggers,” as many of them shouted.

In the back of his mind, away from his fatigue and his fear for what the man with the mean face would do to Uncle Tomasz, Boom-Boom thought his cousin and her mother were right: those ugly words were worse than swearing. They turned ordinary faces into something monstrous, not quite human.

At one point he saw people from his own neighborhood.

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