Ossie stared at him. Then he understood. He ran.
He ran back up Consaul Street through the crowd, and across the yard, and into the white house, and got the spiral notebook from under his pillow on the cot, and ran back out with it, and when he got to the Ferkos' booth Zoli was there with his father and Lenny and Spud and Mrs. Bocskay and Lacko in his bloody apron and Father Gyula, still dripping from the dunk tank, with a towel around his shoulders. Teri was there too, white-faced, holding onto the edge of the lángos table.
Ossie opened the notebook on the table, on top of the paper plates, to the map.
He did not know where his voice came from. It came out steady.
"She goes to places she knows," he said. "That's all she does. She doesn't go new places. She goes to her places." He put his finger on the map. "The church. The bakery. Lacko's. Mrs. Sipos's for cards. The Club. The refinery gate, where Uncle Pista worked. The car barn. Here, our house. And the Ferkos' yard, she went there Wednesday." He looked up. "If everybody takes one, we can check all of them in like ten minutes."
There was a short silence. Then Mrs. Bocskay said, "I'll take the house and the Club," and Lacko said, "Shop and bakery," and Father Gyula said, "The church, obviously," and was already moving, dripping, toward the towers of Saint Stephen's. Lenny and Spud took Mrs. Sipos's. Somebody Ossie didn't know, an old man from the card table with a cane, said, "I'll go look at your yard, Sandor," and Sandor Ferko pulled off his apron and said, "I'll take the truck down to the refinery. Teri, come with me. If she's walking on Front Street toward the gate, we'll see her from the road."
Teri looked at Ossie.
"Go, Mom," Ossie said. "Me and Zoli will take the car barn."
She hesitated, one second, two. Then she went.
The car barn was a quarter mile down Front Street, toward the river, past the end of the festival, where the crowds thinned out and the street went back to being a street. The boys ran it. Ossie had never run so fast in his life. Zoli was faster and kept slowing down for him and then forgetting and speeding up again. The sun was hot and low in the west and their shadows ran ahead of them, long and thin, on the cracked sidewalk.