“You’re a fucking ghoul, Ryerson,” I said. “The kind of guy who asks disaster victims how they felt when they saw their husbands or children go up in smoke. I am not going into that plant again, not even if they gave me the Nobel Peace Prize for doing it. The faster I forget the place the happier I’ll be.”

“Well, Saint Victoria, you go feed the hungry and tend to the sick.” He slammed the receiver in my ear.

My head still felt leaden. I went out to the kitchen and made myself a pot of coffee. Lotty had left a note in her thick black script next to the pot—she’d turned off the phone before she left, but both Murray and Mallory had called. I knew about Murray, of course, but Bobby had mercifully not hounded me after the one message. I suspected McGonnigal had intervened and was grateful.

I poked around the refrigerator but couldn’t get interested in any of Lotty’s healthy food. Finally I settled at the kitchen table with the coffee. Using the extension on the counter, I called Frederick Manheim.

“Mr. Manheim. It’s V. I. Warshawski. The detective who came to see you a few weeks ago about Joey Pankowski and Steve Ferraro.”

“I remember you, Ms. Warshawski—I remember everything connected with those men. I was sorry to read about the attack on you last week. That didn’t have anything to do with Xerxes, did it?”

I leaned back in the chair, trying to find a comfortable spot for my sore shoulder muscles. “By a strange set of coincidences, yes. How would you feel about getting a cartload of material implying that Humboldt Chemical knew the toxic effects of Xerxine as early as 1955?”

He was silent for a long moment, then he said cautiously, “This isn’t your idea of a joke is it, Ms. Warshawski? I don’t know you well enough to figure out what you think is funny.”

“I never felt less like laughing. I’m looking at such an incredible display of cynicism that every time I think of it I get consumed by rage. My old neighbor in South Chicago is dying right now. At the age of forty-two she looks like a war-ravaged grandmother.” I checked myself.

“What I really want to know, Mr. Manheim, is whether you’re prepared to organize and manage action on behalf of hundreds of former Xerxes employees. Maybe present ones as well. You should think about it carefully. It would be your entire life for the next decade. You couldn’t handle it alone in your storefront—you’d have to take on researchers and associates and paralegals, and you’d have to fight off the big guns who’d want to cut you out because they smelled the contingency fees.”

“You make it sound real attractive.” He laughed quietly. “I told you about the threat I got when I was preparing to appeal. I don’t think I have much choice. I mean, I don’t see how I could live with myself if I had a chance now to win that case and passed it up just so I wouldn’t have to give up my quiet practice. When can I get your cartload?”