I sipped it as I walked along Belmont. The reflexive swallowing did indeed make me feel more myself. By the time I reached the Bank of Lake View on the corner of Belmont and Sheffield, I felt able at least to undertake a conversation.

In a squat stone building with iron bars on the windows, the bank looked sleepy and remote from the financial gyrations of its big downtown brothers. The barred windows allowed little light to penetrate; the lobby was a dingy, musty place that probably hadn’t been washed since it opened in 1923. The bank took its commitment to the neighborhood seriously, though, investing in the community and serving its residents with care. They’d eschewed the high-stakes projects that had ruined many small institutions in the eighties; as far as I knew they were in good financial shape.

Most bank functions took place in a high-ceilinged room beyond the lobby. The three loan officers sat behind a low wooden rail across the floor from the tellers. I could see Alma Waters, the woman who’d helped me with my co-op mortgage, but I followed protocol and presented my card to the receptionist.

Alma bustled out to meet me. She was a plump woman somewhere between fifty and sixty who wore bright, tight-fitting dresses draped in scarves and gaudy jewelry. Today she sported a combination of red with shocking pink and a series of black and silver bead necklaces. Sailing toward me on spiky black patent-leather pumps, she shook my hand as warmly as though I’d borrowed a million dollars instead of fifty thousand.

“Come on back, Vic. How are you? How’s your apartment? That was a good investment you made. I think I told you at the time you could expect that stretch of Racine to start coming up, and it has. I just renegotiated a mortgage for someone on Barry, and you know, the value of her little two-flat had gone up eightfold. Is that why you’re in today?” She had whisked my folder from a drawer while she spoke.

It was a stretch for me sometimes just to come up with the seven hundred a month on my place on top of my rent downtown. That’s what I needed, all right—to treble my mortgage.

I smiled. “Partly. The part about that piece of Racine coming up. I need some help—help that you may not feel able to give me.”

“Try me, Vic.” She gave a rich laugh, showing a mouthful of bright, even teeth. “You know our motto: ‘Growing with the community we serve.’ ”

“You know I’m a private investigator, Alma.” She should: my uncertain income had made me a tough sell to her managers. “I’m working for an old woman who lives up the street from me, Harriet Frizell. Mrs. Frizell … well, she belongs to old Racine. The part that hasn’t come up yet. And now she’s fallen on hard times.”