Lotty insisted on taking me home with her. I wanted to make phone calls, see if Lacey Dowell knew where Lucian Frenada was: I hadn’t been able to raise him at his home or shop when I tried before coming to Lotty’s clinic. I wanted to talk to Murray about how he’d gotten word that Frenada was running cocaine. I even had a manic idea about calling Baladine and accusing him of engineering the dope stashes.

Lotty refused to listen to my impassioned plea for a phone—she pushed me to her guest room and pulled the jack out of the wall. I fumed for around thirty seconds, but the next thing I knew it was ten o’clock Monday morning and I was more hungry than angry.

Lotty had left a note for me: the doorman knew I was staying and had orders to let me back into the building if I went out for a walk. I should take it easy for a few days. The building had a sauna and a gym on the third floor—the spare key to her front door tucked into the envelope would open the gym. Help yourself to fruit and bread. And Victoria, for my sake if not yours, don’t leap again without looking very carefully.

After an orange and a piece of toast I went down to the gym. It was really only a small workout room, with weights and an exercise bike, but I was able to work off some of my stiffness. A half hour in the sauna sent me back to bed. When I got up again, around one, I made a hot meal out of eggs and fresh tomatoes. The calls I’d wanted to make yesterday didn’t feel so urgent today, but I took the phone out onto Lotty’s balcony and started with Mary Louise.

When I finished describing Saturday’s debacle at my office, she said, “So you really did find drugs there. And if Lemour planted them, then you can’t call the cops.”

“I do have a videotape of Lemour in the act, which I guess I could take to the State’s Attorney. Trouble is, I don’t know anyone there personally these days, and anyway, I’m afraid Lemour might be able to make even that evidence disappear. If I thought Murray would or could do anything, I’d give it to him, but these days I’m not sure I can count on him. How about showing it to Terry Finchley?”

She hesitated. “I’ve got these children I’m responsible for. I can’t put my life on the line for some case you’re inventing.”