“Yup. Down at Billings … Someone else wanted me out of this case, too, and they took out my brakes and steering while I was at the Port yesterday. If it was yesterday. What day is today?”

Bobby ignored the question. “Come on, Vicki—don’t fool around with me. What happened?”

“That’s why I’m calling you—I hope you can find out. I was coming home around ten-thirty, eleven, when the steering went and then the brakes, and I ended up running into a sedan. I think a Mack truck had hit it and knocked it into my lane.”

“Oh, nuts, Vicki. Why can’t you stay home and raise a family and just stay the heck out of this kind of mess?” Bobby doesn’t believe in using bad language in front of women and children. And even though I refuse to do woman’s work I count as a woman with him.

“I can’t help it, Bobby; trouble follows me.”

There was a snort at the other end.

“I’m lying here with a dislocated shoulder and a concussion,” I said plaintively. “I can’t do anything—get involved in a mess or raise a family—for a while, anyway. But I would like to know what happened to my car. Can you find out who scooped me off the Dan Ryan and see if they examined my car?”

Bobby breathed heavily for a few minutes. “Yeah, I guess I could do that. Billings, you say? What’s the number?”

I looked at the phone and read him the number. I asked him again for the day. It was Friday, 6:00 P.M.

Lotty must have gone back to her clinic on the North side. She’s the person I list to call in case of emergencies and I guess she’s my doctor, too. I wondered if I could persuade her to release me—I needed to get going.

A middle-aged nurse popped her head through the door. “How are we doing?”

“Some of us are doing better than others. Do you know when Dr. Herschel is coming back?”

“Probably around seven.” The nurse came in to feel my pulse. If there isn’t anything else to do, make sure the patient’s heart is still beating. Gray eyes twinkled with meaningless jollity in her red face. “Well, we’re certainly a lot stronger than we were a few hours ago. Is the shoulder giving us any pain?”

I looked at her sourly. “Well, it isn’t giving me any—I don’t know about you.” I didn’t want anyone throwing codeine or Darvon at me. Actually it was throbbing rather badly.