It was hard to imagine how they could menace a woman in Louisa’s condition. Maybe blasting the private affairs she so ardently desired to keep secret out into the open—perhaps her most important concern in the last months of her life. Although Louisa hadn’t seem worried when I saw her on Tuesday.…

“Come on, Vic. Give.” Murray’s voice had an edge that brought me back to the room.

“Murray, it wasn’t two days ago you were looking haughtily down that elephant-child snout of yours telling me you didn’t need anything from me and wouldn’t do anything for me. So give me a reason why I should suddenly help you out.”

Murray waved his hand around the hospital room. “This, baby doll. Someone wants you dead awful bad. The more people who know what you know, the less likely they’ll be to try to take you out a second time.”

I smiled sweetly—at least that was the goal. “I talked to the police.”

“And told them everything you know.”

“That would take more time than Lieutenant Mallory has. I told him who I spoke with the day before the—the assault. That included you—you weren’t very pleasant, and he wanted to know about anyone who seemed hostile.”

Murray’s eyes narrowed above his red beard. “I came here prepared to be sympathetic, maybe even to rub ointment into the sore spots. You have a way of destroying people’s tender feelings, kiddo.”

I made a sour face. “Funny—Bobby Mallory said much the same thing.”

“Any reasonable man would.… Okay. Let’s have the assault story. All I have is the sketch the hospital reported to the cops. You made all four TV news spots last night, if that makes you feel more important.”

It didn’t. It made me feel more exposed. Whoever had tried to dump me into the South Chicago swamp had plenty of access to the news that I’d managed to crawl away. There wasn’t any point to asking Murray to keep a lid on it: I gave him as much as I could bear to reveal about the experience.

“I take it back, V.I.,” he said when I finished. “That’s a harrowing story even with most of the details missing. You’re entitled to thrash your tail awhile.”

Even so, he tried wheedling more information from me, stopping only when the lunches were brought in, chicken and overcooked peas, followed nervously by the woman recovering from plastic surgery. I was chewed out rather sternly by the floor head for having visitors who frightened my roommate out of her own bed. Since Murray takes up about as much space as a full-grown grizzly, she devoted enough of her remarks to him that he fled in some embarrassment.

After lunch a petite Asian underling came to inform me that Dr. Herschel had ordered deep heat for me down in physical therapy. She found a hospital robe for me. Even though I was twice her size, she helped me solicitously into a wheelchair and pushed me down to the PT unit, deep in the bowels of the hospital. I spent a pleasant hour getting wet packs, deep heat, and a massage, finishing with ten minutes in the whirlpool.