“You mean it is your lucky day,” I corrected. “For one thing, you wouldn’t have an ID without me. For another, you’ll be glad to have my help. I can work full-time on this, and you have dozens of other cases on your plate.… That is, was he killed? Or did he hit his head on something and fall in?”

Finchley pulled a scribbled note from his jacket pocket. “He had a pretty hefty blow to the back of the head, Vishnikov says. If he fell and hurt himself, he fell backward. And since he was dead before he went into the water, it would have had to’ve happened on the way in. It’s possible some lowlife found him dead and rolled him in—lots of drugs get done along the water there. The punks wouldn’t want to be burdened with calling the cops on a dead body. It wouldn’t surprise me if it happened that way.”

I agreed. “Or Mitch was lurching around down there and interrupted a buy and some guy knocked him cold for his pains. And then panicked when he realized he was dead. I can see that.”

“But why was he at the canal?” Finchley asked. “It’s all industry down there—not the kind of place you go for a midnight stroll, no matter how drunk you are.”

I looked over at Mr. Contreras. He didn’t seem to be listening to our conversation.

“He used to work for Diamond Head Motors, down at Thirty-first and Damen. He might have been over there to see about work—he was pretty hard up by all reports.”

Finchley jotted Diamond Head on the crumpled paper on his knee. “And what are you doing down here, Warshawski? You know that’s the first question the lieutenant’s going to ask me.”

The lieutenant being Bobby Mallory, less hostile to me than he used to be, but still not a big fan of my life’s work. “Just pure dumb luck, detective. Mr. Contreras and I are neighbors. He hired me to find his friend. This is not my favorite way of meeting my professional obligations.… How long does Vishnikov think he was in the water?”

“About a week. When did either of you see him last?”

I shook my neighbor’s arm gently and repeated the question to him. That jerked him back to the present, and he gave a stumbling account of his final weekend with Mitch, filled with self-reproach for kicking his friend out. Finchley asked him a few gentle questions and let us go.

“Just don’t go charging around the South Side on this without talking to me first, okay, Vic?”