In response to Prez and the University of Illinois, which has a campus nearby, a lot of tidy little town houses have sprung up immediately around the hospitals. Even so, I was reluctant to leave the Trans Am on the street. As I pulled it into one of the private hospital’s lots I wished I’d stuck to a car more in keeping with both my income and the kind of neighborhoods I visit. If I’d bought a used Chevy I could have afforded new Nikes.

I’d arranged to meet Steve inside County’s main entrance on Harrison. It was a strange lobby, with a statue of a naked woman and two children in one corner, and a large square of blue light tubes overhead. I wondered if it was a bug zapper or just ultraviolet tubes to kill wandering germs. If that was the case they were fighting a losing battle with the grime on the floors and walls.

People straggled down the hall eating potato chips and drinking coffee. The waiting area, whose chairs filled several alcoves, was practically empty. On weekdays every seat is taken as people wait their turn in the outpatient clinics. On Saturday morning only a couple of drunks were stretched out on the chairs, sleeping off their Friday nights. The hospital is a monster, built like a large E with seven stories. Homeless people, kicked out of O’Hare Airport, slide in through the side entrances and curl up in the endless corridors to get through the night.

While I waited for Steve a couple of large policemen brought a man down the hall in handcuffs and leg shackles. He was slender and tremulous, a leaf blowing between two branches, and his face was covered with a surgical mask. The mask was as incongruous as the shackles on his thin legs. Perhaps he was HIV-positive and had spat on the officers? Tuberculosis was on the rise at County too.

Steve came down the corridor at a run a little after ten, when I’d studied the inlaid pattern in the floor long enough to memorize it. He was in jeans and sneakers; with his lanky blond hair falling in his eyes he looked like a commercial for the great outdoors. I couldn’t believe he’d stayed with the county all these years without frying his brains, but he told me once that working here made him feel real.

He put an arm around me and pecked my cheek. “Sorry to be late, Vic. Just thought I’d check on whether we knew anything about your lady. We have a six-month backlog right now, so I wasn’t expecting anything, but it turns out there was some kind of emergency hearing on Thursday.”

I grimaced. “Yeah, that’s why I’m here. I have a damned yuppie neighbor who somehow got himself appointed the lady’s guardian, and in an amazing hurry.”