Except for the blueberry muffin Ron Kappelman had given me, I hadn’t really eaten today. I went down to the corner of Ewing, where a neighborhood bar advertised submarines and Italian beef, and had a meatball sub with a draft. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but it seemed more suited to the neighborhood than diet soda.

When I got back to the ward office the visitors had pretty well cleared out except for the checker players in the corner. Baldy shook his head at me to indicate—I think—that young Art hadn’t been in. I felt proud of myself—I was beginning to seem like a regular.

I pulled a little spiral notebook from my bag. To entertain myself while I waited I tried calculating the expenses I’d incurred since starting to look for Caroline Djiak’s old man. I’ve always been a little jealous of Kinsey Milhone’s immaculate record-keeping; I didn’t even have receipts for meals or gas. Certainly not for cleaning up the Magli pumps, which was going to run close to thirty dollars.

I’d gotten up to two hundred and fifty when young Art came in with his usual diffident step. There was something in his face, a naked desire for acceptance from the tired old pols in the room, that made me flinch. They looked at him unblinkingly, waiting for him to speak. And finally he obliged.

“Any—anything for me from my dad?” He licked his lips reflexively.

Baldy shook his head and returned to his paper. “Lady wants to talk to you,” he said from the depths of the Sun-Times.

Art hadn’t seen me until then—he’d been too intent on the disappointment he felt bound to suffer from the men. He looked around the room then and located me. He didn’t recognize me at first: his perfect forehead furrowed in a momentary question. It wasn’t until he’d come over to shake my hand that he remembered where he’d seen me, and then he didn’t think he could flee without achieving total humiliation.

“Where can we go to talk?” I asked briskly, taking his hand in a firm grasp in case he decided to chance the indignity.

He smiled unhappily. “Upstairs, I guess. I—I have an office. A small office.”

I followed him up the linoleum-covered stairs to a suite with his father’s name on it. A middle-aged woman, her brown hair neatly coiffed above a well-cut dress, was sitting in the outer office. Her desk was a little jungle of potted plants twined around family photographs. Behind her were doors to the inner offices, one with Art, Sr.’s, name repeated on it, the other blank.

“Your dad isn’t here, Art,” she said in a motherly way. “He’s been at a Council meeting all day. I really don’t expect him until Wednesday.”

He flushed miserably. “Thanks, Mrs. May. I just need to use my office for a few minutes.”

“Of course, Art. You don’t need my permission to do that.” She continued to stare at me, hoping to force me to introduce myself. It seemed to me it would be a small but important victory for Art if she didn’t know whom he was seeing. I smiled at her without speaking, but I’d underestimated her tenacity.