When I finally woke up, a little after nine, my clogged sinuses were putting painful pressure on my sore eye—not to mention my broken nose. I wanted to take enough sleeping pills to put me under until at least my cold had passed, if not until every member of the Guzzo family died, but I forced myself to my feet.
My face in the bathroom mirror would have done Picasso proud: the left side held a creative mix of yellows, purples and greens. Just as well the Smith & Wesson had driven Jake away last night: Romeo would have vanished without a single metaphor if Juliet had appeared on her balcony looking like this.
While my espresso machine heated up, I huddled over a ginger steam pot. After fifteen minutes of that, and a few shots of caffeine, I didn’t look any more beautiful, but my left eye was working; I would make it through the day.
I went down to the ground floor where Mr. Contreras was feeding Bernie his staple comfort breakfast of French toast. She agreed to a walk over to the lake with me and the dogs. She chatted about Northwestern’s hockey camp, wondering if it had been a mistake to commit to their program without seeing Syracuse and Ithaca.
My gun was in my tuck holster inside my jeans waistband. As we walked along Belmont, I wondered how much of the rest of the city was armed. I didn’t blame Jake for hating guns; they make you twitchy, make you see the world around you as dangerous, as if you wanted an excuse to pull your weapon and fire.
Every half block or so, I’d pull Bernie and the dogs into an alley or doorway to see whether the same people were around us, and if they, too, were halting. Bernie made a few scornful remarks about imaginary Uzbeks, but when we returned home, she assured me she would spend the day pulling her things together for her return to Canada.
“Is this one of your things?” I held out the coaster from Weeghman’s Whales.
“Oh!” She turned red and stuffed it into her backpack. “I went there with friends the other night. I am eighteen, you know, or at least, I will be in five weeks!”
“Darling, the legal drinking age may be eighteen in Quebec, but here in Illinois it’s twenty-one. Don’t tempt the fates again, okay?”
She accepted the reprimand without argument, to my surprise, just gave me a puckish smile and announced she was going to use my bathroom before she went back to Mr. Contreras. “Your tub is so big, I love lying in it.”
I hoped she couldn’t get in trouble in a midday bath, because I needed to go to my office. Although it was Saturday, I was too far behind in my work to stay home with her.
I resolutely put the Guzzo-Bagby-Scanlon world out of my mind while I caught up on client business. Murray called as I was crossing Milwaukee for a coffee. He was exuberant, taking the e-mail I’d sent him yesterday about Hurlihey’s involvement in Virejas Tower as a sign that we were once again best friends forever.
“What do you have on Spike that you’re keeping to yourself, Warshawski? You know this environmental exception only looks serious if you live in Vermont or Oregon.”
“Nothing, Murray, just fishing in very murky waters.”
“Come on, Warshawski, something’s going on: I read the police reports, and I know you tangled with Insane Dragons the other night. I know Spike comes from the same slagheap you do, so if you’ve been digging up skeletons in the land of your youth, tell me now, while I still feel I owe you one. If you sit on the story too long, I’m going to be peevish and make you look bad on air.”
“Spike didn’t come from my slagheap—he was across the Calumet on the East Side, back when that was the tony part of Steel City,” I objected.
I put him on hold while I ordered a cortado. My frustrations with Murray, for letting himself look ridiculous on cable TV, or for trying to pretend he wasn’t fifty by dating women half his age, were outweighed by our long years of working together.
He was still on the line when I came back. “There’s no novel, Murray, at least not yet, but there are a whole lot of unconnected chapters.”
I gave him a thumbnail. The number of names and relationships were so complicated Murray decided he needed to see my reports firsthand. As a further sign of renewed friendship, we agreed to meet at the Golden Glow around seven.