Chapter 11Foster Avenue Beach, on Chicago’s north side, is a great place to cruise. There’s a park that runs alongside Lake Michigan, just south of the beach. A long, narrow parking lot separates the park from the shoreline. In this parking lot on any given night, one can find numerous cars, regardless of the weather. Some of the cars, like restless animals, move north and south through the parking lot…slowly, slowly. Other cars are parked, their front ends facing outward, toward the roadway.
Most of the cars are occupied by men alone. Men who sit in their cars for hours, watching other men drive slowly by, their heads turned, searching. In the darkness, all one can see is the orange glow of cigarettes, alternately growing brighter, then dimming.
Carlos Garcia, at fifteen, already knew t
