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arrive? The dim faces moved back into the shadow and vanished.
    Sighing, Davy crouched down without moving any closer to the box. "Where're your parents, guys?"
    There was no response.
    He pulled a small flashlight from his inside jacket pocket and twisted it on, pointing it down. The two children flinched in the faint light. They were cleaner than he expected and the sleeping bag they were sharing looked fairly new. The face in front was pure Mayan, bright dark eyes and shocks of midnight hair. The second face was paler, with straw-colored hair, but the features were identical. Girls, he guessed.
    "¿Donde está su madre?" he tried.
    Reluctantly, the eldest, perhaps eight—he couldn't really tell—said, "Está trabajando. Una portera."
    A janitor. Nightshift work that didn't require good English.
    "¿Y su padre?"
    She just shook her head.
    "¿De dónde es usted?" Where are you from?
    "Chiapas."
    Displaced. He thought about what their trip must've been like. They probably traveled on third class buses up the length of Mexico, then in some horribly crowded van from someplace like Laredo after crossing the border illegally.
    The little girl, perhaps five or six, suddenly spoke, "Papa fue desaparecido."
    Disappeared. The matter-of-fact way she said it made Davy want to cry.
    "¿Cuándo vuelve su madre?"
    "Por la mañana."
    He dug his emergency cash out of an inner pocket—five hundred dollars in twenties, another thousand in hundred dollar bills, all wrapped with a rubber band.
    "Oculte esto." He mimed hiding it beneath his jacket. "Dé esto a su madre. Para la cubierta." Give it to your mother. For housing.
    The girls looked blank. He said, "Para su propia casa." For your own house. He tossed the cash lightly into the box, onto the foot of the sleeping bag.
    The kids stared at it, like it might bite them.
    "¡Oculte esto!" he repeated. That amount of money could easily get them killed in their situation.
    The older girl finally took it and shoved it beneath the sleeping bag.
    He turned off the flashlight and stood up. As he turned to walk away he added, "Buena suerte." They'd need luck, even with the money.
    He heard movement in the box but didn't look back.
    When Davy finished threading his way through the entrance foyer and into the side room, he found Brian Cox sitting near a front window with a newspaper open, but not lifted quite high enough to block his view of the restaurant. Davy could tell Cox had spotted him first, probably while he was still on the street.
    Cox was wearing his hair longer these days, looking somewhat professorial, and the football lineman physique of a decade past had turned into middle-aged heaviness draped in tweeds. Davy dropped into the seat opposite him with a sigh.
    "Something the matter?" Cox folded the paper and put it down on the table.
    "Yeah. I just had a delightful conversation with two little girls from Chiapas."
    "You jum—came here from Mexico?"
    "No. These two little girls are living in a refrigerator carton two blocks from here. Their mother works the graveyard shift as a janitor, leaving them alone most of the night. Their father was disappeared back in Chiapas."
    Cox looked at him, surprised. "How do you find these people?"
    "They're all over the place, Brian. You just have to open your eyes."
    "You want me to call Child Protective Services?"
    "Hell, no. So they get taken away from their mother? How is that going to help? I left them some money. Enough to get off the street, I hope."
    Cox grunted and looked thoughtful. "You can't save them all, Davy."
    "I know that!" Davy snapped. "It's just—" A waitress with dirty blond hair escaping her barrettes, a bare midriff with a pierced navel, and a large patch of thigh showing through a ragged hole in her jeans stopped at the table. Davy exhaled. "Tea, please. Something herbal." He glanced at the list. "Lemongrass-chamomile."
    Cox pointed at his coffee. "A slice of the apple pie and a refill."
    She smiled mechanically and left.
    Davy