The coffee helped, but not enough to get my muzzy brain fully functioning. I uncoiled myself from the armchair and took some of the publicity letters out of the books. Scrabbling in the drawers of a little desk, I found an old pencil stub. It would have to do. I couldn’t see well enough to write, and the pencil stub was too blunt for cursive, so I used block letters.

1. FEDS WATCHING FRANKIE: WHY?

2. LAMONT GADSDEN = SNITCH: TRUE?

3. WHAT IN BOTTLES—PRO OR STREET-GRADE ACCELERANT?

Who would tell me any of these things? There was something else, too, another important question, nagging the back of my mind. I took off my boots, tucked my legs under me, and let my mind drift. I dozed and woke and dozed, but it was Lotty’s anger that kept coming to the surface. It couldn’t be about Lotty. It must be the law enforcement people she sent about their business yesterday. They had asked something odd.

I stuffed the paper into my jacket pocket and bent to pull my boots on. When I stood, I had to clutch the chair to keep from falling over. It was infuriating to be so weak. I needed to be out on the streets, talking to people, not so shaky that a walk down a hospital corridor did me in. I made my unsteady way back to my room.

I had just sunk down on my egg-carton mattress when a nurse looked in. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over the hospital for you! Didn’t you hear us page you?”

“Sorry. I was testing my legs and got so tired I fell asleep in a chair. I didn’t hear anything.”

She took my temperature and felt my pulse and disappeared to spread the good news that I was back. As soon as she was gone, the bathroom door opened, and Murray came out.

“Well, well, Warshawski. They were telling the truth. You’re not dead yet.”

“Ryerson, get the fuck out of my hospital room.” I was startled into fury.

“Oh, those sweet words.” He grinned and peered at me. “You know, you do look pretty strange, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I do mind. I survived a fire. It was extremely unpleasant. Now leave.”

“After you talk to me, my fire-eating private eye.”

“I’ll talk to you if you do something for me.”

He bowed low over his tape recorder. “As you command, O Queen, so shall it be done.”

“I need some clothes. I can’t wear these. And my wallet and credit cards and whatnot are all at the sister’s apartment.”

Murray sat up. “I’m not going to your place. You know the old guy hates me. He’d sic that hellhound of yours on me, and I’d be fish food before I could explain why I was rummaging in your closet.”