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the soaped-on signage, I saw a small collection of boom boxes. I went in and picked out an off brand player for a hundred and twenty dollars.
    Money was tight, and I suppose I shouldn’t have bought the boom box, but listening to the tinny sound of my clock radio just wasn’t going to cut it. As I walked home in the snow, dragging along the bag with my new boom box, I started thinking about what I had to do the next day. In the morning, I figured I should take some notes about what I’d been doing to find Brian Peerson.
    Walt Paddington didn’t seem the kind who’d want a written report, but I should be clear on what I’d done so far when I spoke to him. Aside from that, I had some background checks to finish up.
    When I got back to the apartment, I tuned the boom box to a jazz station and crawled back into bed.

    * * *
It was dark when the phone woke me. George Benson was on the radio, and I’d been dreaming about my ex-lover, Daniel. Not my favorite thing. In the dream, I was yelling at him about something. I couldn’t remember what. He had a pirate’s patch over one eye and didn’t bother to Boystown - 21
    yell back. I cursed my subconscious and padded out into the living room, picked up the phone, and grunted into the heavy, black receiver.
    “Nick? It’s Eugene. You asked me to call if I saw that particular person. Well, he’s here at Big Nell’s.”
    Big Nell’s is a tiny storefront bar a few blocks from my apartment. They manage to pull in a crowd on Sunday afternoons with a combination of cheap drink specials and Al Parker movies playing on portable TVs dangled from every corner of the bar.
    I got there a half hour later, freshly showered and smelling of Polo. Eugene sat at the bar with a couple of very young, very blond men. Twinkies. It took me a minute to be sure, but neither of them was Brian Peerson. I took a stool at the opposite end of the bar and ordered a Miller.
    I scanned the bar until I found him. Brian Peerson stood in a huddle with three boys roughly around his age. He wore a dark pair of Calvin Klein jeans, a tight sweater, and a pair of Frey boots with a high enough heel to throw off his posture in a way that flattered his ass. He’d let his hair grow out a little, and the curls were coming back. It was blonder than it had been in his high school photo. He was going for a sun-kissed look, but that didn’t happen in Chicago. Not in winter. In winter it looked dyed. He was an attractive kid, but already he was working too hard at it.
    His friends seemed to like him, or at least they laughed at his jokes. I wondered a moment what kind of person he was. Then I told myself not to be stupid. All I had to do was wait until he left the bar, follow him home, and get his address. While I waited, I sipped a beer and considered ways to pad my bill so I wouldn’t have to send back the part of my retainer I’d just spent on a pumped-up cassette player.
    Around eight, Brian grabbed a giant, blue down coat that made him look like the Michelin man when he put it on. I was sure he hadn’t noticed me keeping an eye on him. He’d kept his back to me most of the time. Besides, I’d spent the last twenty minutes trying to shake off a drunk guy in his early thirties who was hitting on me pretty hard.
    “You sure you don’t want to see my place? It’s a loft. You know, like they have in New York.
    It’s just fucking great.” Brian had just walked out the door. I got off the stool to follow, and the drunk guy grabbed me.
    “Listen, listen to me, I’ll give you a blowjob you’ll never forget.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
    Before he could think about it, I pulled his hands off me and zipped out the door. Brian was half a block away, heading toward the Addison El stop. Fortunately, the snow had stopped.
    Everything was covered in a good eight to ten inches, giving the world a muffled quality, like the whole city was suddenly wrapped in gauze. Brian was a good five