Steve Dresberg. Also known as the Garbage King. Not because of his character, but because if you wanted to bury, burn, or ship refuse in the Chicago area, you had to cut him in on the action. Some people say that two independent haulers who disappeared after refusing to deal with him are rotting in the CID landfill. Others think the arson in a waste storage shed that caused the evacuation of six square blocks on the South Side last summer could be traced to his door—if you had enough people with paid-up life insurance to do the tracing.

Dresberg was definitely police business, if not FBI. And since the odds were against Caroline’s phoning McGonnigal with an amended statement, that meant I should play Cindy Citizen and tell him myself.

Holding my breath, I slid down so that the water covered my head. Suppose Dresberg wasn’t involved at all, though. If I pointed the cops toward him, it would only divert their attention from more promising lines of inquiry.

I sat up and started rubbing shampoo into my hair. The water around me was turning black; I opened the drain and turned on the hot-water tap. All I had to do was find someone on Jurshak’s staff who would talk to me with the same frankness he’d used with Nancy. Then, when sinister figures began following me, I would take out my trusty Smith & Wesson and blow them away. Preferably, before they could bonk me on the head and dump me in the swamp.

I wrapped myself in a terry-cloth robe and went into the kitchen to forage. The maid hadn’t been shopping for some time and pickings were slim. I took the jar of peanut butter and the bottle of Black Label and went back into the living room with them.

I was on my second whiskey and my fourth spoonful of peanut butter when I heard a tentative knock on the door. I groaned in resignation; it was Mr. Contreras with a laden TV tray. The dog was at his heels.

“Hope you don’t mind me barging up like this, doll, but I could see you was all in and I thought you might like some supper. Did me a little barbecue chicken in the kitchen, and even without the charcoal it tastes pretty good, if I say so. I know you try to eat healthy so I made you a big salad. Now, you want to be alone, you just say the word and Peppy and me’ll head back down. Won’t hurt my feelings any. But you can’t live on that stuff you’re drinking. And peanut butter? Scotch and peanut butter? No way, doll. You’re too busy to buy food, you just let me know. No trouble for me to pick up something extra when I’m buying for myself, you know that.”

I thanked him lamely and invited him in. “Just let me put on some clothes.”

I guess I should have sent him back downstairs—I didn’t want it to become a habit with him, thinking he could come up whenever he felt like it. But the chicken smelled good and the salad looked healthy and the peanut butter was lying kind of heavily on my stomach.