“Okay. Let it go. I can figure it out fast enough when I talk to the carrier. Or some other employees. Let’s go back to Nancy Cleghorn. She saw you and Dresberg together at your office, and you know as well as I do that no insurance commissioner will let you keep your license if you hang around with the mob.”

“Oh, knock it off, Warshawski. I don’t know who this Cleghorn girl is, other than reading in the papers that she got herself killed. I may talk to Dresberg from time to time—he does a lot of business in my ward and I’m the alderman for the whole ward. I can’t afford to be a dainty lady holding her nose when she smells garbage. The insurance commissioner isn’t going to think once about it, let alone twice.”

“So it wouldn’t bother you to let it be known that you and Dresberg met in your office late at night?”

“Prove it.”

I yawned. “How do you think I even heard about it? There was a witness, of course. One who’s still alive.”

Even that didn’t shake him enough for me to be able to pry anything from him. When the conversation ended I not only felt frustrated but too young for the job. Art just had too much more experience than I. I felt like grinding my teeth and saying “Just you wait, Black Jack, I’ll get you in the end.” Instead I told him I’d be in touch.

I walked away from him toward Lake Shore Drive. Sprinting across in front of the traffic, I watched him from the far side. He stood for a long moment looking at nothing, then shook himself and headed back toward his limo.

36

Bad Blood

I retrieved my car and headed back to Lotty’s. All I’d really gotten from seeing Jurshak was information that he’d been working some kind of fraud with the Xerxes insurance. And something major, based on his expression. But I didn’t know what it was. And I needed to find out quickly, before all the people who were mad at me converged once and for all and sent me to my permanent rest. The urgency tightened my stomach and congealed my brain.

Rush-hour traffic was already thickening the main streets downtown. The menace in Humboldt’s voice this morning lingered in my ears. I drove cautiously through the February twilight, trying to make sure no one was tailing me. I drove all the way up to Montrose and exited at the park, doubling around twice before figuring I was in the clear and heading back to Lotty’s.

It didn’t surprise me that I got there before she did—to accommodate working mothers Lotty keeps the clinic open until six most evenings. I went out for some food—the least I could do in thanks for her hospitality was to have dinner ready. I started again on the chicken with garlic and olives I’d been trying to make the night before my attack, hoping that if I kept the front of my mind occupied, the back would begin to sprout ideas. This time I prepared the whole dish without interruption and set it to simmer over a low flame.