I needed to talk to Mr. Contreras, but first I wanted to bathe. Just a short bath and a short nap and I’d get back to my appointed rounds, I promised the conscience gods. The whisky I drank while I soaked was a mistake: it was after nine-thirty when the phone woke me again.

I stuck out an arm for it, but when I picked up the receiver the line went dead. I rolled over again on my side, but without fatigue and Johnnie Walker to numb me I remembered Mitch Kruger and the unknown body pulled out of the Sanitary Canal. I sat up in bed and began massaging my neck, stiffened from the anger I’d carried around most of the day.

I moved sluggishly to the kitchen and made coffee. Drinking it in quick, burning gulps I whipped together a frittata out of onions and chopped spinach. I ate it while I dressed, in cotton slacks and a cotton shirt since the evening was still muggy, and left the plate by the front door on my way downstairs. Mr. Contreras was still up; I could hear the faint blare of the TV from the other side of the door when I rang the bell.

“Oh, it’s you, doll.” He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt over old work pants. “Let me just put something on. If I’d known you was coming I never would have got undressed.”

I wanted to tell him I could stand the sight of his armpits, but knew he wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to me without a shirt on. I waited in the doorway until he had covered himself.

“You got some word on Mitch, doll?”

“Can I come in? I don’t. At least, I hope I don’t. I got sidetracked today.” I told him about my abortive efforts to go on the offensive with Todd Pichea.

Mr. Contreras spent several minutes on a highly colored description of both Todd and my ex-husband, ending with a predictable chant that he didn’t know what I’d ever seen in Dick. “And it don’t surprise me to hear Ryerson wouldn’t help you. Guy’s only interested in himself, if I’ve told you that once I’ve told you a hunnert times. I can see why you haven’t had time to worry about Mitch, and anyway, you was down there yesterday, down at his old place. I guess I was jumping off the deep end, worrying about him. He’ll just turn up again one of these days, like the bad penny he is.”

“This is the hard part,” I said awkwardly. “When I was listening to the radio on the way home, they had a report about pulling a man out of the canal. That was over in Stickney, so I don’t see how it could be your friend. But I couldn’t help wondering.”