She answered another call. At that point, I decided it would be easier to get her back into her own home than listen to her phone all night long. Mr. Contreras, Mitch, and Peppy announced they’d all like to see where Petra lived, too. I bundled the dogs into the Mustang. The old man was delighted to accept Petra’s invitation to ride with her in her Pathfinder.

Petra’s place was in a loft building at the tony end of Bucktown, about ten blocks from my office. Parking was at a premium, and I had to cover part of a yellow hydrant line and hope for the best.

Petra held a flashlight on her front door for me. As I knelt on the sidewalk, wiggling my picklocks inside the lock, she answered another phone call. “My cousin is, like, this detective, and she’s breaking into my building,” she shouted to anyone on Wolcott Street who might be listening. “No, really, she’s, like, NCIS or Saving Grace or something. She solves murders, she has a gun … everything!”

I took the phone from her and stuffed it into my back pocket. “Petra, darling, not while I’m out here doing something highly illegal. Any cop who’s cruising around can listen in on your frequency. And, anyway, you’re talking loudly enough for everyone on the block to hear you.”

She pouted, an exaggerated, self-spoof of a crybaby, but she held the flashlight steady until the tumblers clicked back. We climbed three flights to her place where I repeated the maneuver. In my hip pocket, her phone rang two more times before I got her front door opened. Her keys were on the floor just inside.

She gave another husky laugh. “Look at that! I dropped them on my way out. I was so late, I guess I grabbed them with my coffee and my phone and didn’t see they weren’t in my hand when I left. Oh, Vic, you are a genius. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What can I do for you? Would you like a free invite to our fundraiser out on Navy Pier? It’s twenty-five hundred a head. Brian’s going to be there. Wouldn’t you love to meet him? The president may stop in, although we’ve been told not to count on it. We’ve rented the whole east end of the pier, it’ll be so cool. And, Uncle Sal, you should come, too.”

I’ve been to too many fundraisers for my heart to skip a beat at the prospect, but the invitation thrilled Mr. Contreras. An inside seat at a high-end event: it would raise his prestige at his weekly trips to the lodge, where his old union buddies meet to shoot pool along with the breeze.

“Do I need a tuxedo or something?” the old man worried as we turned to leave.