Strangers

the country. What's the matter? Can I be of assistance?"
        "Cronin," Tolk said shakily. "Something… something's happened, and I don't understand, it's strange, Jesus, it's the strangest craziest thing, but I knew right away it was somehow related to Brendan."
        "I'm sure I can help. Where are you, Winton?"
        "On duty, end of the shift, graveyard shift, Uptown. There's been a knifing, a shooting. Horrible. And then… Listen, I want Cronin to come up here, he's got to explain this, he's got to, right away."
        Father Wycazik elicited an address from Tolk, left the rectory at a run, and drove too fast. Less than half an hour later, he arrived in a block of identical, shabby, six-story, brick tenements in the Uptown district. He was unable to park in front of the address he had been given and settled for a spot near the corner, for the prime space was occupied by police vehicles - marked and unmarked cars, an SID wagon - whose radios filled the cold air with a metallic chorus of dispatchers' codes and jargon. Two officers were watching over the vehicles to prevent vandalism. In answer to Stefan's question, they told him the action was on the third floor, in 3-B, the Mendozas' apartment.
        The glass in the front door was cracked across one corner, and the temporary repair with electrician's tape looked as if it had become a permanent solution. The door opened on a grim foyer. Some floor tiles were missing and others were hidden by grime. The paint was peeling.
        As he climbed the stairs, Stefan encountered two beautiful children playing "dead doll" with a battered Raggedy Ann and an old shoebox.
        When he walked through the open door and into the Mendozas' third-floor apartment, Father Wycazik saw a beige sofa liberally stained with still-wet blood, so much that in some places the cushions were almost black. Hundreds of drops had sprayed across the pale-yellow wall behind the sofa, a pattern that evidently had resulted when someone in front of the wall had been hit by large-caliber slugs that passed through him. Four bullet holes marred the plaster. Blood was spattered over a lampshade, coffee table, bookshelf, and part of the carpet.
        The gore was even more disgusting than it might ordinarily have been because the apartment was otherwise extremely well-kept, which made the areas of bloody chaos more shocking by comparison. The Mendozas could afford to live only in a slum tenement, but like some other poor people, they refused to surrender to - or become part of - the Uptown squalor. The filth of the streets, the grime of public hallways and staircases, stopped at their door, as if their apartment was a fortress against dirt, a shrine to cleanliness and order. Everything gleamed.
        Removing his fedora, Stefan took only two steps into the living room - which flowed without interruption into a small dining area., which itself was separated from a half-size kitchen by a serving counter. The place was crowded with detectives, uniformed officers, lab technicians - maybe a dozen men altogether. Most of them were not acting like cops. Their demeanor puzzled Stefan. Apparently, the lab men had completed their work and the others had nothing to do, yet no one was leaving. They were standing in groups of two or three, talking in the subdued manner of people at a funeral parlor - or in church.
        Only one detective was working. He was sitting at the dinette table with a Madonna-faced Latino woman of about forty, asking questions of her (Father Wycazik heard him call her Mrs. Mendoza), and recording her answers on legal-looking forms. She was trying to cooperate but was distracted as she glanced repeatedly at a man her own age, probably her husband, who was pacing back and forth with a child in his arms. The child was a cute boy of about six. Mr. Mendoza held the child in one burly arm, talking constantly to him, patting him, ruffling his thick hair. Obviously, this man had almost lost his son in whatever violence had occurred here, and he needed to touch and hold the child to convince himself that the worst had not actually happened.
        One of the patrolmen noticed Stefan and said, "Father Wycazik?"
        The officer's voice was soft, but at the mention of Stefan's name, the entire group fell silent. Stefan could not remember ever seeing expressions quite like those that came over the faces of the people in the Mendozas' small apartment: as if he were