Chapter 4: Like Luggage

I took Ray's hand off my chest and gave it back to him.

"We're going to the Broadway Market," I said.

Ray laughed.

"The Market? It's a parking garage with pierogi."

"It's got a basement and four doors."

Last time the Market held all of the first night, and everybody inside it saw morning.

"My yard's got a fence and eight trucks," Ray said. "Don't be stupid, Danny."

Marta looked at the kids and then at me.

"Which one?" she said.

"The Market."

She picked up the smallest girl and started walking.

Ray watched her go, and then he smiled at me.

"Fine. I'll see you there."

We walked nine kids and Rosie ten blocks through falling glass.

Twice a crawler came off a roof, and twice I put it down with the pry bar.

Each time I hit one, my arms went back to plain arms.

That was the catch with Porter, and every hunter knew it: the strength quit the instant you swung.

By nine o'clock the Market was full.

About two hundred people sat on the concrete between the closed stalls, under the lights that still ran off a generator.

The lady who sold butter lambs at Easter had set up a table of bread and kielbasa from her own cooler.

Marta lined the kids up for it.

Rosie told the man behind her that her dad was the voice in the sky.

"He's a lot shorter in person," she said. "That's a quarter for the autograph."

At nine-thirty Ray's crew came in through the Broadway doors.

There were six of them, every one with a gray mark on his hand, and Ray's right-hand man was in front.