Lotty’s street is even more decrepit than the stretch of Halsted I inhabit. Bottles mingled with crumpled paper cups in the gutter. A ’72 Impala drooped on the near front side where someone had removed the wheel. An overweight woman bustled along with five small children, each staggering under a heavy bag of groceries. She yelled at them in shrill Spanish. I don’t speak it, but it’s close enough to Italian for me to know it was good-natured chivvying, not angry bullying.

Someone had left a beer can on Lotty’s front steps. I picked it up and carried it in with me. Lotty creates a small island of sanity and sanitation on the street and I wanted to help maintain that.

I smelled pot-au-feu as I opened the door; I suddenly felt good about being here to eat a hearty meal rather than at a seven-course affair in Lake Bluff. Lotty was sitting in the spotless kitchen reading when I came in. She put a marker in her book, took off her black-rimmed glasses, and placed both on a corner of the butcher block.

“It smells great. Anything for me to do? … Lotty, did you ever own seventy matching forks and spoons?”

Her dark eyes gleamed with amusement. “No, my dear, but my grandmother did. At least that many. I had to polish them every Friday afternoon when I was eight. Where have you been that they have seventy matching forks and spoons?”

I told her about my afternoon’s inquiries while she finished the stew and served it. We ate it with thick-crusted Viennese bread. “The trouble is, I’m going in too many different directions. I need to find out about Bledsoe. I need to find out about my car. I need to find out about Phillips’s money. I need to know who broke into Boom Boom’s apartment and killed Henry Kelvin. What were they looking for, anyway? I’d been through all his papers and he didn’t have anything that looked like a hot secret to me.” I pushed an onion around my plate, brooding. “And of course, top of the list, who pushed Boom Boom into Lake Michigan?”

“Well, what tasks can you turn over to someone else—the police, or perhaps Pierre Bouchard? He wants to help.”

“Yeah, the police. According to the Kelvin family, they’re doing sweet nothing about locating his murderers. I can see Sergeant McGonnigal’s point, of course: they haven’t got a clue qua clue. Trouble is, they refuse to connect Kelvin with Boom Boom. If they did that, they might be able to muscle in and get some real information out of the Port. But they think Boom Boom died accidentally. Same thing with my crash. They want that to be vandals.” I fiddled with my spoon. It was stainless steel and matched my knife and fork. Lotty had style.