Otis opened his mouth and screamed as shrilly as Jimmy, was still screaming when Cecil erupted out of the monkey room. Then, not seeming to notice Cecil, he turned and ran out of animal care, down the halls, into the foyer, out the entrance, legs opening and closing in a punishing run down Eleventh Street to his home on the second floor of a shabby three-family house.

Celeste Green was having coffee with her nephew when Otis burst into the kitchen; they leaped to their feet, Wesley’s passionate diatribe about Whitey’s crimes forgotten. Celeste went for the smelling salts while Wesley put Otis on a chair. Back with the bottle, she pushed Wesley roughly out of her way.

“You know your trouble, Wes? You always in the way! You didn’t get in Otis’s way all the time, he wouldn’t call you a good for nothin’ kid! Otis! Otis, honey, wake up!”

Otis’s skin had faded from a warm deep brown to a pasty grey that didn’t improve when the ammoniac vapors were jammed under his nose, but he came around, jerked his head away.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Wesley was asking.

“A piece of woman,” Otis whispered.

“A what?” sharply from Celeste.

“A piece of woman. In the fridge at work with the dead rats. A pussy and a belly.” He began to shake.

Wesley asked the only question that mattered to him. “Was she a white woman or a black woman?”

“Don’t bother him with that, Wes!” Celeste cried.

“Not black,” Otis said, hands going to his chest. “But not white neither. Colored,” he added, slipped forward off the chair and fell to the floor.

“Call an ambulance! Go on, Wes, call an ambulance!”