The commissioner needed Mercy to clean up another one of his messes; that much was clear just from looking at him. He was stiff, unsmiling, gray-faced. Tall and wide as a football player, he had to tiptoe through the dim consultation room crammed with bead-covered gourds, rusty old railroad spikes, black dolls in gingham dresses, cast-iron pots filled with butterscotch candies and penny offerings to the gods. He knocked into the life-size statue of Santa Barbara, her golden sword clattering in her plaster fist. Then he knocked into the life-size San Lazaro, the purple velvet cape that was draped over the saint’s leprous chest slipping to reveal a bony shoulder...