What strikes you first about Bill Tomes is the look of the man. He is 55 and overweight. He wears glasses with clear plastic frames. His sandy hair is graying, and it’s thinning at the temples and the crown. This spring he was sporting a Band Aid on his brow, covering the spot where a skin cancer had been removed. “Too much sunshine, too little moonshine,” Tomes told anyone who asked.
No, Tomes–or “Brother Bill,” as he is invariably called–is a youth worker employed by Catholic Charities. He is assigned to work among street-gang members in housing projects and poor neighborhoods, and where you’d expect the young toughs of the city to treat him with derision, what he receives, instead, is reverence.
One boy grunted.
The Buick wound through Lincoln Park, nearing the zoo. When Tomes asked if anyone had summer plans, there was silence. “I was in the zoo for a while,” Tomes said, “but I was eating too many bananas, so they threw me out.” The boy in front chortled, and Tomes pulled into a parking space. “Is this all right, to go in and see the seals?” he wondered. “Maybe you can feed me to the seals.”
Tomes detoured to a car wash on the edge of Humboldt Park. The car wash was recently opened by two brothers, Ralph and Juan “Papito” Rios, who named the place in memory of their slain brother, Edgar. Edgar died last December 28. Police said he was sitting in a car at midnight with three other men and one of them began firing. Nicola Incandela, a cook, was charged with triple homicide. Police told reporters a drug deal apparently had gone sour.
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The story reminded Floyd of something. “One day my auntie was going to visit us from Saint Louis,” he said. “She was telling a friend about coming, and she was shot in the head. She was my favorite auntie.”
