None of them could add to that, although they murmured agreement—Mitch was generous when he had money. After a week had passed they couldn’t remember where he’d been heading when he left, or if he’d said anything else about what was going to make him rich. I stayed long enough to see the Tigers go down in order in the sixth before driving northeast to the Loop.

Ever since phoning Dick on Friday night I’d been wondering what I could do about Todd Pichea. After all, I’d told Dick I was on Pichea’s case. I could hardly admit it was just bluster. Besides, I really did want to do something about the little flea. But between agitation and humiliation I hadn’t been able to think of anything until I saw Jake Sokolowski dozing under the Herald-Star.

The South Loop hasn’t yet attracted the kind of chichi shops that stay open on Sunday afternoons. I didn’t have any trouble parking in front of the Pulteney building. We don’t have a doorman or a security guard to keep it open all weekend. The crusty super, Tom Czarnik, locks the front door at noon on Saturday and reopens it at seven on Monday morning. Occasionally he even arranges for someone to run a mop around the lobby floor. I hunted among my keys for the wide brass one that worked the front door dead bolt and wrestled with the stiff lock. Every time I make a Sunday visit I vow to bring a can of graphite with me to loosen the lock, but I do it so seldom that I forget between trips.

Czarnik had shut down the elevator power and locked the fire door at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t do this because he’s safety conscious, but from a bitter enmity against all the tenants. I’d long since managed to make keys for both the elevator and the stairwell, but I took the stairs; the elevator’s too chancy and I didn’t want to spend the next seventeen hours stuck in it.

Up in my office I tried Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star. He wasn’t at work or at home. I left messages at both places and pulled the cover from my mother’s old Olivetti, the obsolete machine I use for bills and correspondence. It was one of my few tangible legacies from her; its presence comforted me through my six years at the University of Chicago. Even now I can’t bear to turn it in for a computer, let alone an electric typewriter. Besides, using it keeps my gun wrist strong.

I thought carefully before I started to type.