Mr. Contreras’s generous mouth set in a hard line. “I told him a hunnert times he can’t go off and leave the door open. This ain’t some high-priced suburb where the people coming in your back door are the same ones you’d invite in through the front if you thought of it.”

He stomped over to bolt the door, then opened it wide. “There you are, Kruger. I went and got my neighbor, see if she could understand what you’re driving at. She’s a detective, like I told you—Vic Warshawski. All you had to do was sit on your butt and eat your eggs and wait for her. That too much to ask?”

Kruger smiled fuzzily. It was obvious that he’d walked down to Frankie’s Shortstop Inn on the corner for a few quick ones. By the smell it was bourbon, but it could’ve been rye.

“Told you to mind your own business, Sal,” Mitch mumbled. It took me a moment to remember that my neighbor’s first name was Salvatore.

“Don’t want any detectives butting their noses into my affairs. No offense to you”—Kruger nodded at me—“but detectives mean cops and cops mean union busting.”

“If it ain’t just like you to get so stewed you can’t think straight.” Mr. Contreras was harassed. “First you clean me out of grappa, and if that wasn’t bad enough you got to get pie-eyed first thing in the morning. She ain’t a cop. You know her—we helped her out a couple years back, took on them thugs outside the doc’s clinic. You remember.”

Kruger smiled happily. “Oh, that was a good one, all right. Last good fight I was in. You need some more help, young lady? That why you’re here?”

I eyed him narrowly: he wasn’t as drunk as he wanted me to think. If he’d cleaned Mr. Contreras out of grappa and was strong enough to go out for a few shots, he had a granite head, anyway.

“Now, look here, Mitch. You went on all last night about how you was going to stick it to the bosses, make them see reason, although what about I can’t quite figure. Seems to me we got some pretty good deals, even if we did have to fight every step of the way to win them.”

He turned to me. “I’m sorry, doll. Sorry to drag you out of bed just to see Kruger act like a prize turkey waiting for them to announce the Thanksgiving executions.”