The narrator tells the boy that he and his family are leaving the city because they don't know how to live anywhere else. He tells him that he used to be responsible for finding kids like him and bringing them into the city, but he was fired when his flywire got caught in the wall. Now he's just a "civil walkin' a kid" to his mom's work. The narrator says that the girls at the brothel always use their "real names" and that the manager is a "cleaning lady" . He also says that his mom has not been in the brothel for a week and that her flywire hasn't responded to his calls. He says that he doesn't want the boy to go back to his family because he hates him. He's not holding him hostage, he says, and he has a hunch that some bad people are looking to kill them.