My Polish is limited to a few stilted phrases garnered unwillingly as a child from Boom-Boom’s mother. Tonight, I didn’t stop walking but shouted over my shoulder in Polish instead that dinner was ready, it was getting cold, come to the table at once, something I’d heard Aunt Marie say four or five hundred times. The guard shook her head with the kind of annoyed incredulity accorded ignorant immigrants, but she returned to the small TV on the counter in front of her.

I rode up in an elevator with a real member of the cleaning crew. She was collecting dirty laundry and rolled her cart off at the eighth floor. When I reached Miss Claudia’s room, Miss Ella was sitting with her sister on the room’s one chair. Karen was on the lookout for me. She hurried over and greeted me in a low voice, taking my arm and escorting me to Miss Claudia’s bed.

Another woman lay in an adjacent bed, her breath coming in short, puffy bursts, a machine next to her beeping every now and then. I pulled a curtain between the two women to create the illusion of privacy.

My client frowned at me. “Our affairs haven’t been very important to you, have they? You took our money, but you didn’t find Lamont. And it seems you’ve stopped looking for him the last month.”

“I think your sister wants to see me,” I said as gently as I could. “How is she?”

“Maybe a little stronger,” Karen said. “She ate some ice cream, Miss Ella says.”

Miss Claudia was sleeping, too, her breath sounding much the same as her neighbor’s, shallow, ragged. I sat on the bed, ignoring the client’s outraged snort, and massaged Miss Claudia’s left hand, her good hand.

“It’s V. I. Warshawski, Miss Claudia,” I said in a deep, clear voice. “I’m the detective. I’m looking for Lamont. You told Pastor Karen you wanted to see me.”

She stirred but didn’t wake. I repeated the information several times, and, after a bit, her eyes fluttered open.

“ ’ Ti ve,” she asked.

“I found Steve,” I said.

“She’s asking, are you the detective,” Miss Ella corrected me.

“I’m the detective, Miss Claudia. I found Steve Sawyer. He’s very ill. He was in prison for forty years.”

“Sad. Hard. ’Mont?”

I clasped her hand more tightly. “Curtis … You remember Curtis Rivers? Curtis says Lamont is dead. But he doesn’t know where he’s resting. He says Johnny knows.”

Her fingers gave mine a weak response. Miss Ella said, “The Anacondas! I knew it was their doing.”

“I don’t think Johnny killed Lamont, but he knows what happened to him. I’ll try my best to get him to tell me.” I was speaking slowly to Miss Claudia, wondering how much sense she could make of my words.