“In Stickney?” Mr. Contreras repeated. “What would Mitch’ve been doing down in Stickney?”

“I agree. I’m sure I’m wrong. But I thought maybe we should take a look at the guy’s body anyway.”

“Now, you mean?”

“We can wait until morning. If it isn’t Kruger I can’t do anything tonight to find him. And if it is, well, he’ll still be at the morgue in the morning.”

Mr. Contreras rubbed the side of his face. “Well, if you’re up to it, doll, I guess I’d just as soon go now and get it over with.”

I nodded. “I brought my car keys with me just in case. You ready to leave?”

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe I’ll just let the princess out first.”

While I waited for Mr. Contreras to go through the laborious business of securing his front door, I suddenly thought of the phone call that woke me up. If I’d lost someone I was following that’s what I might do: phone her home base to see if she answered. If my companions were back in business, did it matter if they followed me to the morgue? If they belonged to Diamond Head it couldn’t possibly be of interest to them.

“What did they say that made you think it might be Mitch?” Mr. Contreras asked when we were buckled into the Trans Am.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It just sounded possible. I’d been down Friday looking at the Sanitary Canal. Diamond Head fronts it; Mrs. Polter’s boardinghouse isn’t that far away. I could just see it happening somehow, his being drunk and going over the side while trying to make his way around the Diamond Head property.”

“I ain’t saying you’re wrong, but Mitch and me worked there forty years, just about. He knows that place.”

“You’re right. I’m sure you’re right.” I forbore reminding him that it had been over a decade since they’d quit. I couldn’t have found my way around the public defender’s office drunk and in the dark after all these years. Probably not sober, either.

I turned right onto Diversey without signaling and looked in the rearview mirror. A couple of seconds later another set of lights followed me around the corner. It wasn’t a Honda. Maybe someone else going down Racine to Diversey, or maybe they realized I’d spotted the Honda and had changed cars. At Ashland the second car let a few people turn onto the street in front of him, but it was still with me four blocks later when I started south on Damen.