“And what’s your interest in the young woman?”

“I found her lying in the road Tuesday night. She died a few hours later in the operating room at Beth Israel, of advanced peritonitis caused by a severe blow to the abdomen. I’d like to know how she got from Coolis to Balmoral and who inflicted that desperate injury on her.”

“Are you usually this quixotic, Ms. Warshawski? Spending your life investigating deaths of poor immigrant prison escapees?”

His mocking tone nettled me, as perhaps he intended. “Invariably. It makes a nice change from wrestling alligators, to meet people as uniformly civil and helpful as you.”

“Whoof.” He sucked in a breath. “I apologize: I earned that. I’m not often in Chicago. Who could I talk to who knows your work?”

That was fair. Why should he give confidential information to a stranger? I gave him Lotty’s name and asked him for a reference in return. He knew Vishnikov from forensic work the pathologist had done in South America for the Berman Institute.

The older couple behind me paid their bill. They strolled across the street to the car, their arms around each other. I felt more forlorn than ever.

“If you know Vishnikov, maybe you can remind him about Nicola Aguinaldo’s body. It’s disappeared from the morgue. Tomorrow I hope to find out what it would cost to do an analysis of Aguinaldo’s clothes, if the private lab that looked at them still has them, but it would be so much easier if I knew where her body was. If her mother has it, how did she learn her daughter was dead? She left the old apartment the morning of the day I found Nicola. Some official–looking men came around and scared the neighborhood, as I’m sure you must know.”

I paused and finally Morrell gave a grudging half nod.

“So who were the men?” I continued. “State marshals sent by the prison to look for Nicola? INS agents, as the neighbors suspected? Private agents of a large security firm? At any rate, since Señora Mercedes vanished, the men haven’t been back. So they were looking either for Señora Mercedes or her daughter. If one of your contacts in that neighborhood would tell you the mother’s whereabouts, maybe you’d be the man to talk her into getting the autopsy done.”

Morrell didn’t say anything. I became aware of the waiter and bus crew hovering around our table. It was eleven o’clock; the only other people still at a table were a young couple buried in each other’s necks. I fished a ten out of my wallet. The waiter swooped on it while the crew quickly cleared the table.