Back in the muggy sunshine, exhaustion overwhelmed me. It was only twelve-thirty, but a fight with Dick and hard work at two banks made me want to go back to bed. I still needed to canvass some of my neighbors and try to talk to Murray Ryerson this afternoon before Mr. Contreras and I went off to meet Eddie Mohr. And I wanted to get hold of Max Loewenthal. My body couldn’t be allowed the luxury of wearing out so early.
I hiked back to State Street and started down the stairs to the el. The thought of the long trek home from Sheffield seemed too much. I turned around and waved down a cab. The driver, who swayed and pounded the steering wheel in tune to the beat booming from his stereo, had a serene disregard for any other traffic. On the short stretch from LaSalle to Fullerton he managed to get up to seventy. His anger at my request to slow down was so menacing that I slid out when he stopped at the light on Diversey, tossing the amount on the meter onto the seat next to him. His screaming, mixed with the booming of his radio, followed me as I crossed the street to board the Diversey bus.
The ponderous journey west let me slump comatose in a corner. The chance to pull back from the world around me, even for a quarter of an hour, was unexpectedly refreshing. When I climbed off at Racine I wasn’t ready to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but I thought I might be able to manage an afternoon of work.
Back at my place I expected Mr. Contreras to come out, either to talk to me about the work in my apartment or remonstrate some more against going to see the old local president this evening. It seemed like a lucky break when he stayed inside his own apartment, but it did make me wonder if he was too upset to want to talk to me. When I saw he wasn’t out back fiddling with his garden, I even got a little worried. He’d been looking after himself for a lot of years, though. I had to assume he could do it for one more afternoon.
The workmen for my apartment had come and gone. They’d put electronic fingerprints on all the doors and windows. A note by my front entrance explained how to activate the system. Mr. Contreras had paid the bills for me. That was another thousand dollars I’d have to scramble together in a hurry. I hadn’t realized they had to be paid on the spot.
Following the instructions in the manual they’d left, I programmed the little control box next to my front door. If anyone tried to climb in on me now, Chicago’s finest should be with me in minutes.
My morning frenzy had left me sweaty and wrinkled, even a little smelly. I took an extra half hour to lie in a cool bath before changing into my jeans.
It was getting on for two now. Murray Ryerson should be back from his usual prolonged lunch with obscure sources. Fixing myself a sandwich with some of last night’s leftover chicken, I went into the living room and dialed his number at the Star. He answered the phone himself.
“Hi, Murray. It’s Vic.”
“Whoo, Vic, what a thrill. Let me get my asbestos gloves in case the phone gets too hot to handle.”
“Good thinking, Ryerson. The more sarcastic you get, the easier it will be to have this conversation.”
“Oh, She-who-must-be-obeyed, to what do I owe the honor of your call? Or is it privilege? After you shouted vile words at me and slammed the phone in my ear last night?”
I ate some of my sandwich while I tried to figure out how to get us away from hostilities and to the point.
“You still there? Is this a new form of torture? You call up and then abandon the phone while I sit shouting into it like a fool?”
I washed down the sandwich with a mouthful of coffee. “I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation before I picked up the phone. But someone said something so weird to me this morning that I thought we ought to try to overcome our mutual repugnance and talk.”
“Weird, huh? It wasn’t a personal comment, like on your disposition or something?”
I grinned to myself suddenly as I remembered Conrad Rawlings’s remarks on my orneriness. “Nah. Guys who aren’t strong enough to take me don’t worry me too much. This little comment had to do with the freedom of the press.”
“We all know the truth about that, Warshawski—that the press is free to anyone rich enough to own one.”
“So you don’t want to hear about it?”
“Did I say that? I’m just warning you not to expect me to go off” on a crusade because of something that’s bugging you.“
“This is where I came in,” I complained. “You won’t listen to my stories, then you get offended when I won’t tell them to you on command.”
“Okay, okay,” he said hastily. “Tell me about the threat to my livelihood. If I listen intently and make appropriately outraged remarks, will you tell me about going into the San the other night?”