The woman I talked to had the number of the people living in my parents’ old house, a couple named Santiago. Caroline had given their home phone number to everyone she worked with in case of some emergency. When I called Mrs. Santiago she obligingly told me that Louisa had been taken away in an ambulance around eight-thirty. I thanked her mechanically and hung up.

It had been almost half an hour since I’d gotten the call. It was time to move. I wanted company for the trip but it would be wanton to bring Mr. Contreras along—for him and Louisa both. I thought of friends, of police, of Murray, but of no one whom I could ask to go with me into such extreme danger.

I looked carefully around the hallway when I left Lotty’s. Someone had known to phone me here—they might take the easy route and just shoot me as I walked down the stairs. I kept my back pressed against the stairwell wall, crouching low. Instead of going out the front door, I went on down to the basement. Carefully picked my way across the dark floor, fumbling cautiously with Lotty’s keys for the one that undid the double lock on the basement door. Made my way down the alley to Irving Park Road.

A bus pulled up just as I got to the main road. I dug in my pocket to find a token under the spare clip and finally pried one out without having to flash my ammunition to the world at large. I rode the eight blocks down Irving Park standing, seeing nothing either of passengers or the night. At Ashland I hopped down and found my car.

The bus’s grinding diesel had somehow provided the background I needed to relax my mind completely, for ideas to flow. If an ambulance had come for Louisa, if she was completely sedated, they must have found a doctor. And there could be only one guess as to what doctor would be involved in such an infamous scheme. So there was one person who shared my involvement whom it would not be criminal to ask to share my risk. For the second time today I headed out the Eisenhower to Hinsdale.

38

Toxic Shock

Veils of fog rose from the drainage ditches lining the tollway, covering the road in patches so that other cars appeared only as shrouded pricks of red. I kept the speedometer pointed at eighty, even when the thick mist drowned the road in front of us. The Chevy vibrated noisily, prohibiting conversation. Every now and then I rolled the window down and put up a hand to feel the ropes. They’d loosened a bit but the dinghy stayed on top.

We exited at 127th Street for the trek eastward. We were about eight miles west of the Xerxes plant, but no expressway connects the east and west sides of Chicago this far south.

It was getting close to midnight. Fear and impatience gripped me so strongly, I could scarcely breathe. All my will went into the car, maneuvering around other vehicles, squeaking through lights as they turned, keeping a weather eye cocked for passing patrol cars as I managed to do fifty in the thirty-five-mile zones. Fourteen minutes after leaving the tollway we were turning north on the little track that Stony Island becomes that far south.