“Okay. Let it go. I can figure it out fast enough when I talk to the carrier. Or some other employees. Let’s go back to Nancy Cleghorn. She saw you and Dresberg together at your office, and you know as well as I do that no insurance commissioner will let you keep your license if you hang around with the mob.”

“Oh, knock it off, Warshawski. I don’t know who this Cleghorn girl is, other than reading in the papers that she got herself killed. I may talk to Dresberg from time to time -he does a lot of business in my ward and I’m the alderman for the whole ward. I can’t afford to be a dainty lady holding her nose when she smells garbage. The insurance commissioner isn’t going to think once about it, let alone twice.”

“So it wouldn’t bother you to let it be known that you and Dresberg met in your office late at night?”

“Prove it.”

I yawned. “How do you think I even heard about it? There was a witness, of course. One who’s still alive.”

Even that didn’t shake him enough for me to be able to pry anything from him. When the conversation ended I not only felt frustrated but too young for the job. Art just had too much more experience than I. I felt like grinding my teeth and saying “Just you wait, Black Jack, I’ll get you in the end.” Instead I told him I’d be in touch.

I walked away from him toward Lake Shore Drive. Sprinting across in front of the traffic, I watched him from the far side. He stood for a long moment looking at nothing, then shook himself and headed back toward his limo.

I retrieved my car and headed back to Lotty’s. All I’d really gotten from seeing Jurshak was information that he’d been working some kind of fraud with the Xerxes insurance. And something major, based on his expression. But I didn’t know what it was. And I needed to find out quickly, before all the people who were mad at me converged once and for all and sent me to my permanent rest. The urgency tightened my stomach and congealed my brain.

Rush-hour traffic was already thickening the main streets downtown. The menace in Humboldt’s voice this morning lingered in my ears. I drove cautiously through the February twilight, trying to make sure no one was tailing me. I drove all the way up to Montrose and exited at the park, doubling around twice before figuring I was in the clear and heading back to Lotty’s.

It didn’t surprise me that I got there before she did-to accommodate working mothers Lotty keeps the clinic open until six most evenings. I went out for some food-the least I could do in thanks for her hospitality was to have dinner ready. I started again on the chicken with garlic and olives I’d been trying to make the night before my attack, hoping that if I kept the front of my mind occupied, the back would begin to sprout ideas. This time I prepared the whole dish without interruption and set it to simmer over a low flame.

By then it was close to seven-thirty and Lotty still hadn’t returned. I began to get worried, wondering whether I should check the clinic or with Max. A late emergency might have detained her, either at the clinic or hospital. But she’d also be an easy target for anyone bent on getting revenge on me.

At eight-thirty, when I’d tried both clinic and hospital without results, I headed out to search for her. Her car pulled up in front of the building just as I was locking the lobby door.

“Lotty! I was getting worried,” I cried, dashing over to meet her.

She followed me back into the building, her pace lagging, most unlike her usual brisk trot. “Were you, my dear?” she asked tiredly. “I should have remembered how nervous you’ve been the last few days. It’s not like you to be in such a fret over a few hours.”

She was right. Another sign that I had moved beyond any semblance of rationality in dealing with the issues at hand. She moved slowly into her apartment, taking off her coat with careful movements and stowing it methodically inside a carved walnut wardrobe standing in the hallway. I led her to an armchair in her sitting room. She let me pour her a small brandy-the only alcohol she drinks, and then only when under severe strain.

“Thank you, my dear. That’s most helpful.” She slipped her shoes off; I found her slippers laid neatly next to her bed and brought them out for her.

“I spent the last two hours with Dr. Christophersen. She’s the nephrologist I mentioned showing your chemical company notebooks to.”

She finished the brandy but shook her head when I offered her the bottle. “I suspected something when I looked at the records, but I wanted a specialist to do a thorough interpretation.” She opened her briefcase and pulled out a few pages of photocopies. “I left the notebooks locked in Max’s safe at Beth Israel. They are too-too frightening to be floating around the city streets where anyone could lay hands on them. This is a summary of Ann’s-Dr. Christophersen’s-notes. She says she can do a thorough analysis if it’s needed.”

I took the pages from her and looked at Dr. Christophersen’s square, tiny writing. She was citing the blood work reported in the pages of Chigwell’s notebooks, using Louisa Djiak’s and Steve Ferraro’s records as an example. The blood chemistry details made no sense to me, but the summary at the bottom of the page was in plain English and appallingly clear:

These records show blood history for Ms. Louisa Djiak (white unmarried female, one parturition) from 1963 to 1982, the last year for which data were taken; and for Mr. Steve Ferraro (white unmarried male) from 1957 to 1982. Records also exist for approximately five hundred other employees at Humboldt Chemical’s Xerxes plant covering the period 1955 to 1982. These records show changes in the values of creatine, blood urea nitrogen, bilirubin, hematocrit, and hemoglobin, and white blood count consistent with the development of renal, liver, and bone marrow dysfunction. Conversation with Dr. Daniel Peters, Ms. Djiak’s attending physician, confirm that the patient first came to him in 1984, only at her daughter’s insistence. At that time he diagnosed chronic renal failure, which has now progressed to an acute stage. Other complications kept Ms. Djiak from being a good candidate for transplant.

The blood work indicates that noticeable renal damage occurred as early as 1967 (CR = 1.9; BUN = 28) and severe damage by 1969 (CR = 2.4; BUN = 30). The patient herself began experiencing typical diffuse symptoms -itching, fatigue, headaches-around 1979 but thought perhaps she was experiencing “change of life” and did not deem it necessary to consult a physician.

The report went on to give a similar summary of Steve Ferraro, ending with his death from aplastic anemia in 1983. The rest of the precise script detailed the toxic properties of Xerxine, and showed that the changes in blood chemistry were consistent with exposure to Xerxine. I read the document through twice before putting it down to stare, appalled, at Lotty.

“Dr. Christophersen did a lot of work, calling Louisa’s and Steve Ferraro’s doctors and doing all that checking,” was the only comment I could get out at first.

“She was horrified-most horrified-at what she was seeing, I gave her the names of two patients I knew could be checked on and she did the follow-up this afternoon. At least in the case of your friend and Mr. Ferraro, it seems abundantly clear that they had no idea what was happening to them,”

I nodded. “It makes a hideous kind of sense. Louisa starts having vague symptoms that she thinks are menopause-at thirty-four?-but then she never had any sex education to speak of, maybe it’s not so incredible. Anyway, she wouldn’t blab it around the plant. A lot of them come from the kind of background she did-where anything having to do with private body functions was shameful and never to be discussed.”