Fratelli was a high-ranking member of the Pasquale family. “Maybe someone who works for him?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’ll get someone to look into it. Can I do a story on your attack?”

I thought about it. “You know, I haven’t been to the police. I guess I’m too angry with Bobby Mallory.” I sketched my interview with him for Murray. “But maybe it will make my anonymous caller a little more cautious if he sees there’s a big universe out there keeping an eye open for him… The other thing is-I’m kind of embarrassed to ask this, but the truth is, I’m not up to a night alone. Can I crash with you?”

Murray looked at me for a few seconds, then laughed. “You know, Vic, it’s worth the earful I’ll get canceling my date just to hear you plead for help. You’re too fucking tough all the time.”

“Thanks, Murray. Glad to make your day.” I wasn’t liking myself too well when he went off to the telephone. I wondered what column this went under: taking prudent precautions, or being chicken?

We went to dinner at the Officers’ Mess, a romantic Indian restaurant on Halsted, and then dancing at Bluebeard’s. As we were climbing into bed at one, Murray told me he’d sicced a couple of reporters on digging up information about acid throwers.

I got up early Saturday and left Murray still asleep-I needed to change for Agnes’s funeral. All was still quiet at my apartment, and I began to think I was letting fear get far too much the better of me.

Changing into the navy walking suit, this time with a pale gray blouse and navy pumps, I took off to collect Lotty and Phyllis. It was only 10 degrees out, and the sky was overcast again. I was shivering with cold by the time I got back into the car-I needed to replace my mohair shawl.

Lotty was waiting in her doorway dressed in black wool, for once dignified enough to be a doctor. She didn’t say much on the drive down to Chestnut Street. When we got to the condo, she got out to fetch Phyllis, who didn’t look as if she’d slept or eaten in the two days since I’d seen her last. The skin on her pale, fine-boned face was drawn so tightly I thought it might crack, and she had bluish shadows under her eyes. She was wearing a white wool suit with a pale yellow sweater. I had a vague idea that those were mourning colors in the Orient. Phyllis is a very literary person and she would pay tribute to a dead lover with some kind of mourning that only another scholar would understand.

She smiled at me nervously as we headed back north toward Lake Forest. “They don’t know I’m coming, do they?” she asked.

“No.”

Lotty took exception to that. Why was I acting in a secretive way, which could only precipitate a scene when Mrs. Paciorek realized who Phyllis was.

“She’s not going to do that. Graduates of Sacred Heart and St. Mary’s don’t have scenes at their daughters’ funerals. And she won’t take it out on Phyllis-she’ll know I was the real culprit. Besides, if I’d told her ahead of time who I was bringing she might have instructed the bouncer not to seat us.”

“Bouncer?” Phyllis asked.

“I guess they call them ushers in churches.” That made Phyllis laugh and we made the rest of the drive considerably more at ease.

Our Lady of the Rosary was an imposing limestone block on top of a hill overlooking Sheridan Road. I slid the Omega into a parking lot at its foot, finding a niche between an enormous black Cadillac and an outsize Mark IV. I wasn’t sure I’d ever find my car again in this sea of limos.

As we climbed a steep flight of stairs to the church’s main entrance, I wondered how the elderly and infirm made it to mass. Perhaps Lake Forest Catholics were never bed- or wheelchair-ridden, but wafted directly to heaven at the first sign of disability.

Agnes’s brother Phil was one of the ushers. When he saw me his face lit up and he came over to kiss me. “V.1.! I’m so glad you made it. Mother told me you weren’t coming.”

I gave him a quick hug and introduced him to Lotty and Phyllis. He escorted us to seats near the front of the church. Agnes’s coffin rested on a stand in front of the steps leading up to the altar. As people came in they knelt in front of the coffin for a few seconds. To my surprise, Phyllis did so before joining us in the pew. She knelt for a long time and finally crossed herself and rose as the organ began playing a voluntary. I hadn’t realized she was a Catholic.

One of the ushers, a middle-aged man with a red face and white hair, escorted Mrs. Paciorek to her place in the front row. She was wearing black, with a long black mantilla pinned to her head. She looked much as I remembered her: handsome and angry. Her glance at the coffin as she entered her pew seemed to say: “I told you so.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked up to see Ferrant, elegant in a morning coat. I wondered idly if he’d packed morning clothes just on the chance of there being a funeral in Chicago and moved over to make room for him.

The organ played Fauré for perhaps five minutes before the procession entered. It was huge and impressive. First came acolytes, one swinging a censer, one carrying a large crucifix. Then the junior clergy. Then a magnificent figure in cope and miter, carrying a crosier-the cardinal archbishop of Chicago, Jerome Farber. And behind him, the celebrant, also in cope and miter. A bishop, but not one I recognized. Not that I know many bishops by sight-Farber is in the papers fairly regularly.

I realized after the ceremony had begun that one of the junior priests was Augustine Pelly, the Dominican procurator. That was odd-how did he know the Pacioreks?

The requiem mass itself was chanted in Latin, with Farber and the strange bishop doing a very creditable job. I wondered how Agnes would have felt about this beautiful, if archaic, ritual. She was so modern in so many ways. Yet the magnificence might have appealed to her.

I made no attempt to follow the flow of the service through risings and kneelings. Nor did Lotty and Roger. Phyllis, however, participated completely, and when the bell sounded for communion I wasn’t surprised that she edged her way past us and joined the queue at the altar.

As we were leaving the church, Phil Paciorek stopped me. He was about ten years younger than Agnes and me and had had a mild crush on me in the days when I used to frequent the Lake Forest house. “We’re having something to eat at the house. I’d like it if you and your friends came along.”

I looked a question at Lotty, who shrugged as if to say it would be a mistake either way, so I accepted. I wanted to find out what Pelly was doing here.

I hadn’t been to the Paciorek house since my second year in law school. I sort of remembered it as being near the lake, but made several wrong turns before finding Arbor Road. The house looked like a Frank Lloyd Wright building with a genetic malfunction-it had kept reproducing wings and layers in all directions until someone gave it chemotherapy and stopped the process.

We left the car among a long line of others on Arbor Road and went into one of the boxes that seemed to contain the front door. When I used to visit there, Agnes and I had always come in from the side door where the garage and stables were.

We found ourselves in a black-and-white marbled foyer where a maid took Lotty’s coat and directed us to the reception. The bizarre design of the house meant going up and down several short marble staircases that led nowhere, until we had made two right turns, which took us to the conservatory. This room had been inspired by the library at Blenheim Palace. Almost as big, it contained a pipe organ as well as bookstacks and some potted trees. I wasn’t sure why they called it a conservatory instead of a music room or a library.

Phil spotted us at the door and came over to greet us. He was finishing a combined M.D-Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago. “Dad thinks I’m crazy,” he grinned. “I’m going into neurobiology as a researcher, instead of neurosurgery where the money is. I think Cecelia is the only one of his children who has turned out satisfactorily.” Cecelia, the second daughter after Agnes, was standing near the organ with Father Pelly and the strange bishop. At thirty she already looked like Mrs. Paciorek, including an imposing bosom under her expensive black suit.