Chapter 13: The Back Booth

I answered the first message at four in the morning.

Then the second, and the third.

By six I had typed the same three lines forty-one times.

Thursday. Riordan's diner, South Philly. Back booth, seven p.m. Bring every record you have.

I put on my coat and crossed the street.

Fergus was at the grill with the breakfast tickets lined up over his head.

"You're up early, Doc."

"I need to ask you something."

"Ask."

"Can I borrow the back booth on Thursday? For more than eggs?"

He turned a row of bacon without looking at it.

"It's your booth."

"There might be a lot of people."

"People eat," he said. "I'll make more toast."

On Thursday at six fifty there were nine families on the sidewalk.

By seven thirty there were seventeen.

Ciara took charge before I could.

She sat at the counter with a stack of placemats and a purple marker, and she made a list.

"Name. How old. What makes them sick," she told each parent. "Are you throwing up right now?"

"No," said a startled father.

"Then you're number six. Sit there. Uncle Fergus is bringing grilled cheese."

The first mother was the one who'd written at three a.m.

Her son was six, with arms like pencils and a belly that stuck out under his T-shirt.

His hair was thin and dry.

He sat in the booth and looked at the ketchup bottle and not at me.

"Hi," I said. "I hear milk is your enemy."

He nodded.

"What about chicken?"

He made a face so disgusted that his mother laughed through her tears.

"He won't touch meat," she said. "Never has. Eggs, beans, nothing. He'd live on toast and apples if I let him."

"When he does eat it, what happens?"

"He gets sleepy. Not tired. Strange. Once he threw up and slept for a whole day and the ER said it was a virus."

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