“Tonight, if you can drive up to the North Side. Seven-thirty okay?” I gave him Lotty’s address.

When he’d hung up I phoned Max at the hospital. After a few minutes on my late-night adventure—which had made the morning papers in skeleton form—he agreed to get the Chigwell documents copied. When I said I’d come by at the end of the day for the originals, he protested graciously: it would be his pleasure to bring them to Lotty’s for me.

After that I really couldn’t delay a heart-to-heart with Bobby. I tracked him down by phone at the Central District and agreed to meet him there in an hour. That gave me time for a soak in Lotty’s tub to limber up my sore shoulders and a call to Mr. Contreras assuring him I was alive, moderately well, and would return home in the morning. He started a long, anxious dump about how he’d felt when he saw the news this morning; I cut him off gently.

“I’ve got a date with the police. I’ll be pretty well tied up today, but we’ll have a late breakfast tomorrow and catch up.”

“Sounds good, doll. French toast or pancakes?”

“French toast.” I couldn’t help laughing. It got me down to police headquarters in a light enough mood to deal with Bobby.

His pride was badly wounded by my nailing the Emperor of Trash. Dresberg had been dancing rings around Chicago’s finest for years. For any private investigator to have caught him dead to rights would have hurt Mallory. But that it had to be me so upset him that he kept me downtown for four hours.

He interrogated me himself, while Officer Neely took notes, then sent in relays of people from the Organized Crime Division, followed by the Special Functions Unit, finishing with an escorted interview with a couple of feds. By then my fatigue had come back full force. I kept dropping off between questions and it was getting hard for me to remember what I was revealing and what I’d decided belonged to me alone. The third time the feds had to poke me awake they decided they’d had enough of a good time and urged Bobby to send me home.

“Yeah, I guess we’ve got everything we’re going to get.” He waited until his office was empty, then said edgily, “What’d you do to McGonnigal last night, Vicki? He made it real clear he wasn’t going to be present while I talked to you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “He turn into a boar or something?”

Bobby frowned at me. “If you’re trying to level any charges against John McGonnigal, who is one of the finest—”

“Circe,” I cut in hastily. “That’s what she did to Odysseus’s crew. I assumed you were thinking of that. Or something like it.”

Bobby narrowed his eyes but all he said was, “Go on home, Vicki. I don’t have the energy for your sense of humor right now.”