When I woke up finally around five I remembered Mr. Contreras. Lotty bundled me into some blankets on the daybed in her living room and insisted I eat some soup before she told me her end of the adventure.
The shot and our scuffle had brought Vinnie and Rick York to the hall. They’d been busy in the back bedroom or they might have arrived soon enough to help out—or maybe to get shot themselves. Anyway, Mr. Contreras had taken the bullet in his shoulder and was able to give Rick Lotty’s number.
“He’s all right,” Lotty assured me. “It would take more than a broken shoulder to stop him—as soon as we got someone to patch him together he had to be sedated to keep from racing off to hunt for you.”
“How did you find me?” I asked from my nest on the daybed.
“I called Lieutenant Mallory. Your tiresome neighbor knew who had shot him—-I gather he monitors all your male visitors?” She flashed a wicked grin. “A full-time job for him, my dean Anyway, the lieutenant was not at all disposed to intervene, but he could scarcely ignore the evidence of a man who’d been shot. He finally agreed to call me when they’d located you. I was afraid he wasn’t going to push hard enough—you had me very frightened, my dear.”
She compressed her lips and turned her head away to regain her composure.
“I was damned scared myself,” I said frankly. “I just didn’t understand how desperate those boys were getting.”
“At any rate, I had done a difficult delivery for the chief assistant federal prosecutor, or whatever her title was, so I rang her up and told her what I knew. I think she organized some resources to look for you, but by then you’d surfaced at police headquarters. What a loathsome place. I tried hard to get in to fetch you, my dear, but they were quite—quite physical in keeping me out.”
I got out of my nest to hug her. Lotty has an antigen against police stations—they played too terrifying a role in her early childhood—so it made her effort doubly precious to me.
I asked her about Elena. My aunt had been treated for exhaustion and had her broken finger set, but the hospital released her around noon. After telling me about Elena, Lotty tried to get me to think of other things, like the possibility of a vacation. She pulled out a giant folder of travel brochures—trips to Caribbean islands, to the Costa Brava—various warm and friendly climates that would make me forget the Chicago winter closing in on us.
On Friday, Lotty finally let the rest of the world loose on me. She laid down the law with all her imperial force: Anyone who wanted to see me had to do so on Sheffield Avenue. Unfortunately there were any number of people eager enough to talk to me to meet that condition.
First in line was Alison Winstein, the deputy prosecutor whose life Lotty had saved last year. She took me through what I knew and what I surmised. Like all prosecutors, she didn’t feel like giving much back but she did let me know that they had obtained warrants for Alma and Farmworks. They had wanted to subpoena the county contract files but Boots was a pretty wily fighter—neither he nor Ralph would turn over records without a pretty good battle.
After Ms. Winstein left I went through the account of my escapade in the papers. Murray had put together a pretty strong story without talking to me—he’d gotten an exclusive with Mr. Contreras and managed to track Elena down before the hospital released her. I grinned to myself over the interview with my neighbor. Of all the men I know, Murray is the one Mr. Contreras likes least—thinks of him as a snothead and a hot dog. Murray earned his byline on that one.
When I’d finished with the papers I called Robin Bessinger at Ajax. He’d seen the stories and was in a chastened frame of mind. “I’m sorry we questioned your judgment, Vic. You were the pro on this one. I—could we have dinner again?”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’ll have to think about that. But you could do one thing for me—cut a check for Saul Seligman. I’ll take it over to him in the morning.”
“We’d kind of like to subrogate against MacDonald and Meagher,” Robin said.
“Be my guest. But don’t keep the old guy hanging. He’s had a rough three weeks, with his favorite old building going and his chief lieutenant getting murdered. I know you can grease those bureaucratic wheels. Drop it off for me on your way home and I’ll take it to him tomorrow.”
Robin agreed, somewhat unwillingly. It was perhaps the hope of dinner—et cetera—with me that made him agree at all. I was going to have to build up my strength and get over a lot of wounds before I was in the humor for much et cetera.