A buzz went around the table again at that. The man to my own right, lean with a shock of white hair, slapped his palm on the table. “Ben, we’ve got to check on her bona fides. And find out what she really wants.”

I nodded approvingly at him. “Good idea. You can easily find out about me by calling Daraugh Graham at Continental Lakeside. He’s the chairman; I do a lot of work for him.”

Loring and the man who’d just spoken exchanged long glances, then Loring, fractionally, shook his head. “I may do that, Warshawski. If I do, I may get back to you. But you’d still have to sell me on why you’re asking questions.”

“I guess I want to know how deep you are in Diamond Head’s decision-making. Because if you are privy to their inner workings—well, then there are a lot more questions I’d like to ask.”

Loring shook his head. “You’re not selling me. You’re antiselling. And as you were so quick to point out, we’re busy men. We need to get back to acting that way.”

I got to my feet. “Then I’ll just have to keep digging. And I never make advance guarantees on what I do if my shovel hits a rotting compost pile.”

No one said anything to me, but as I left the room a major uproar started. I wanted to lean my ear against the jamb, but Sukey was looking at me from behind her desk. I went over to her.

“Thanks for your help.… You have a beautiful voice, you know. Do you sing?”

“Only in church choirs. With this”—she gestured at her acne scars, flushing miserably—“no one wants to audition me for the stage.”

The intercom on her desk buzzed loudly; Ben Loring needed her in the conference room. I wondered if I could take the chance on her absence to try to look in her file cabinets, but it would be impossible to explain away if she came bouncing out and caught me at it. Besides, it was close to three now. I’d just have time to get downtown to check up on Jason Felitti before the library closed.

After two decades of dickering, Chicago is actually building a new public library. Named for the late, great Harold Washington, the memorial—under construction—has the unfortunate look of a Victorian mausoleum. Until it opens the city keeps what collections it possesses in a series of out-of-the-way locations. They had moved recently from an old barracks just off Michigan Avenue to an even more desolate dump on the west edge of the Loop.