“That’s quite a nice addition Eddie put on his house,” Mr. Contreras said, remembering the script we were trying to follow. “I wish I could afford me a swimming pool and a Buick and all. I was at Diamond Head thirty-eight years, not counting the war, but I sure never got me a retirement deal like that.”

There was a murmur of agreement around the tables, but Clarence explained that Eddie had come into some money. No, he hadn’t known Eddie had rich relatives. Must have been some distant cousin back in Germany remembering his poor American relations.

“Used to be the other way around,” one of the other men said bitterly. “Didn’t used to be Americans had to be someone else’s poor cousins.”

The conversation turned to the usual complaints of the helpless, over the niggers and lesbians and Japs and everyone else who was ruining the country. Mr. Contreras had a shot and a beer to be sociable. We left under cover of a flurry of newcomers eager to discuss Eddie’s death. I was just as glad to get out before Conrad Rawlings showed up, anyway. Assuming Mrs. Mohr made him privy to the news that Eddie had been here right before his death.

When we were back outside I stood on the walk, not moving for a minute.

“What is it, doll?”

“What exactly did you say to Eddie when you called?”

The old man turned a dull mahogany. “I said I was sorry. I know it sounds like I sent him out to be shot. You can’t be more worried about it than me, doll, so give me—”

“That’s not what I meant. After you talked to him he felt upset enough to call—apparently—Milt Chamfers, who agreed to meet him, just as a pretext to get him out on the street so someone could shoot at him. What did you say?”

Mr. Contreras scratched his head. “I told him who you was—a detective, I mean. And that that photo of him that Mitch had, the one from the charity, had you all excited. And that we was on our way down to ask him where he got enough money to support a big downtown charity like that, when I knew he was a Knights of Columbus man from the word go. And I just wanted to give him time to think about it first. I just wish—”

I saw a cab coming, a rarity on this stretch of Kedzie, and grabbed Mr. Contreras’s arm to hustle him to the curb.

“Hey, doll, what’re you up to?”

“Get in.… We can talk when we get someplace a little less exposed.”

I asked the cabbie to go along Kedzie until we came to a public phone, and then to wait for me while I made a call. A few blocks down he pulled over to the curb.