Two-thirty in the morning; most places had closed, but the handful of bars still open had crowds of kids spilling into the streets, music blaring onto the sidewalks, roars of laughter, cars honking up and down Massachusetts. I found a parking space on a street of rickety bungalows and crooked brick sidewalks.

I thought living near Wrigley Field was a misery on game nights, but for the poor people near the bars it looked as though every night downtown might be game night.

The Lion’s Pride was in the cellar of a building on the corner. When I got there, a young woman was being sick over the railing; two youths with her were laughing, one of them pulling on her cami straps.

I put an arm around the woman but looked at the young men. “You boys need to go home. Kindergarten starts early tomorrow, and you don’t look adult enough for anything else.”

One of the guys started to call me names, but when I demanded their IDs, they backed away—I might be a university cop. The woman stared at me with glassy, unseeing eyes. I didn’t know what to do with her, so I kept an arm around her as I muscled my way down the stairs to the entrance.

As soon as I got there, I realized what a hopeless job it would be to find one person in this mob scene. I backed out again, set the young woman on the stairs, and called the number that had rung mine.

It rang about ten times before anyone answered: it was a bartender at the Lion’s Pride. Great. My anonymous caller had used the bar’s phone.

The young woman had passed out. I propped her against the edge of an iron staircase leading to the upper floors of the building. She had a purse dangling from her shoulder. I took it with me, just to keep it from being stolen while I went inside.

“I hope you’re going to be okay out here, honey. I don’t know how long this will take.”

The elbows I’d developed growing up on Chicago’s South Side got me past the thicket at the entrance and up to the bar, but the noise was so ferocious it was harder to take than the crowd. A balding man with a sizable paunch was filling beer steins without looking at them, putting them on the end where waitstaff picked them up and distributed them through the mob.

I waved, trying to get his attention, shouted, and finally worked my way around to his side of the bar.

“Five Moscow Mules!” one of the waitstaff screamed.

The balding man nodded, filled three more steins, and turned to plunk five copper mugs on the bar. I put my arm over them.

“Before you serve another underage drinker, I need to know who was using your phone half an hour ago.”