“That’s good. I’m glad.” I was a good listener because I needed her to tell me things, a thought which embarrassed me enough that I added, “You can always give me a call, you know, and talk to me again.”

She walked heavily up the steps, her shoulders stooped. No one would look at you with love, or even lust, if you were so bowed over, but she didn’t need me to tell her that.

I turned around and headed back to the expressway. By now, it was the height of the afternoon rush, and the Ryan was about as express as a turtle with corns. I was stalled on the overpass above the Sanitary Canal when my cellphone rang. I figured the risks of talking while driving didn’t extend to talking while parking, but I did almost hit the car in front of me when the woman at the other end said she was Judge Coleman’s secretary and could I hold for him.

“Judge! Thanks for returning my call. I’d like to stop by to ask you about one of your old clients.”

“We can do this by phone. I told you the other night to leave Johnny Merton alone.”

I ground my teeth. “Not the Hammer. One of your first clients, Judge, when you were a new-minted PD. Remember the Steve Sawyer trial?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Harmony Newsome’s murder. Do you remember her?”

He turned so quiet that I thought at first the connection had gone. Someone behind me honked. A gap of four feet had opened in front of me. I scooted forward, glancing at the oily surface of the canal. The day was hot and humid, and the water looked as though every person murdered in Cook County in the last century had rotted in it.

The judge suddenly spoke again. “Why this interest in ancient history, Warshawski?”

I thought my answer over carefully. If I’d been able to meet with Coleman in person, transcript in hand, I would have tried to ask about all the gaps in the record—why he didn’t try to find out the name of the snitch, why he let the obvious collusion between the cops and the state’s attorney go by unchallenged—but, on the phone, I didn’t have any way of pressuring him.

“Steve Sawyer’s name keeps coming up in a missing-persons search I’m doing, but he’s disappeared as well. In fact, there’s no record of him at all after his trial. I’m hoping you have your old notes. I’m trying to find which prison he was sent to.”

“That trial was forty years ago, Warshawski. I remember it, my first high-profile case.” He laughed thinly across the airwaves. “I learned a lot from that trial, but I couldn’t possibly keep track of all the lowlifes who went through Twenty-sixth and California during my time there.”