“Could we go pick up my car? It’s down on Stony a half mile or so.”

He pulled out his walkie-talkie and summoned a uniformed officer-my pal Mary Louise Neely. She saluted him smartly, but I could see she was eyeing me curiously. So maybe she was human after all.

“Neely, I want you to drive Ms. Warshawski and me down the road to pick up her car. Then go to the address she gives you on Houston.” He sketched the situation with Caroline and Louisa.

Officer Neely nodded enthusiastically-it’s a break to be signaled out for a special assignment from among so many. Even though it was just chauffeuring duty, it gave her a chance to make an impression on a senior man. She trailed behind us as McGonnigal went to tell Bobby what we were doing.

Bobby agreed reluctantly-he wasn’t going to contradict his sergeant in front of me or a uniformed officer. “But you’re talking to me tomorrow, Vicki, whether you like it or not. You hear?”

“Yeah, Bobby. I hear. Just wait until the afternoon-I’ll be a lot more cooperative if I get some sleep.”

“Yeah, princess. You private operators work when you feel like it and leave the garbage for the cops to sweep up. You’ll talk to me when I’m ready for you.”

The light was dancing in my eyes again. I had moved beyond fatigue to a state where I’d start hallucinating if I wasn’t careful. I followed McGonnigal and Neely into the night without trying to respond.

When Officer Neely had dropped us at my car, I dug the keys from my jeans pocket and handed them wordlessly to McGonnigal. He turned the car in the rutted yard while I leaned back in the passenger seat, releasing it so it was almost horizontal.

I was sure I’d fall asleep as soon as I lay back, but images from the night kept exploding in my head. Not the silent trip up the Calumet-that had already faded to the surreal world of half-remembered dreams. Louisa lying on the cart at the end of the plant, Dresberg’s cold indifference, waiting for the police in Chigwell’s office. I hadn’t been afraid at the time, but the recurring pictures gave me the shakes now. I tried clenching my arms against the sides of the seat to control the shaking.

“It’s aftershock.” McGonnigal’s voice came clinically in the dark. “Don’t be ashamed of it.”

I pulled the seat back to its upright position. “It’s the ugliness,” I said. “The horrible reasons Jurshak had for doing it, and the fact that Dresberg isn’t a man anymore, he’s an unfeeling death machine. If they’d just been a couple of punks jumping me in an alley, I wouldn’t feel this way.”

McGonnigal reached out an arm and groped for my left hand. He squeezed it reassuringly but didn’t speak. After a minute his fingers stiffened; he withdrew them and concentrated on turning onto the Calumet Expressway.

“A good investigator would take advantage of your fatigue and get you to explain what Jurshak’s horrible reasons were.”

I braced myself in the dark, trying to prepare my wits. Never speak without thinking. A cardinal rule to my clients in my public defender days. First the cops wear you out, then they show you some sympathy, then they get you to spill your guts.

McGonnigal tried taking the Chevy up to eighty, but slowed to seventy when it started vibrating. Police privilege.

“I expect you have some cover story ready,” he went on, “and it’d really be police brutality to force you to keep it up when you’re this tired.”

After that the temptation to tell him everything I knew became nearly irresistible. I forced myself to watch what aspect of landscape one could see from the expressway canyons, to push away the picture of Louisa’s disoriented gaze confusing me with Gabriella.

McGonnigal didn’t speak again until we were passing the Loop exits and then it was only to ask for Lotty’s address.

“Would you like to come back to Jefferson Park with me instead?” he asked unexpectedly. “Have a brandy, unwind?”

“Spill all my secrets in bed after the second drink? No-don’t get upset, that was supposed to be a joke. You just couldn’t tell in the dark.” It sounded appealing, but Lotty would be anxiously awaiting me-I couldn’t leave her hanging. I tried explaining this to McGonnigal.

“She’s the one person I never lie to. She’s-not my conscience-the person who helps me see who I really am, I guess.”

He didn’t answer until he’d pulled off the Kennedy at Irving Park. “Yeah, I understand. My grandfather was like that. I was trying to picture myself in your situation with him waiting up for me; I’d have to go back too.”

They didn’t teach that in any seminar in Springfield. I asked about his grandfather. He’d died five years ago.

“The week before my promotion came through. I was so mad I almost resigned-why couldn’t they have given it to me when he was still alive to see it? But then I could hear him saying, ‘What do you think, Johnnie-God runs the universe with you in mind?’” He laughed a little to himself “You know, Warshawski, I’ve never told that to another soul?”

He pulled up in front of Lotty’s place.

“How’re you going to get home?” I asked.

“Umm, I’ll summon a squad car. They’ll be glad to have an excuse to leave the mayhem in Uptown for a chance to drive me.”

He held the keys out to me. Under the sodium light I could see his eyebrows lift in inquiry. I leaned across the seat divider and put my arms around him and kissed him. He smelled of leather and sweat, human smells that made me wriggle closer to him. We sat like that for several minutes, but the ashtray in the divider was digging into my side.

I pulled away. “Thanks for the ride, Sergeant.”

“A pleasure, Warshawski. We serve and protect, you know.”

I invited him to come up and call a squad car from Lotty’s but he said he’d do it from the street, that he needed the night air. He watched while I undid the lobby locks, then sketched a wave and walked off.

Lotty was in her sitting room, still in the dark skirt and sweater she’d put on for the hospital seven hours earlier. She was flicking the pages of The Guardian, making only a pretext of interest in Scottish economic woes. She put the paper down as soon as she saw me.

It felt like home to nestle in her arms; I was glad I’d decided to come back here instead of going off with McGonnigal. While she bathed my face and fed me hot milk, I told her the night’s tale, the strange ride up the river, my fears, Ms. Chigwell’s indomitable courage. She frowned deeply over Chigwell’s betrayal of his medical vows. Lotty knows there are unethical doctors but she never likes to hear about them.

“The worst part in a way was when Louisa woke up and thought I was Gabriella,” I said as Lotty led me into the spare room. “I don’t want to be back there, you know, back in South Chicago cleaning up behind the Djiaks the way my mother did.”

Lotty slid my clothes off with practiced medical fingers. “A little late to be worrying about that, my dear-it’s all you’ve been doing this last month.”

I made a face-maybe I would have been better off with the sergeant after all.

Lotty pulled the covers over me. I was asleep before she’d turned out the light, falling deep into dreams of mad boat journeys, of scaling cliffs while being attacked by eagles, of Lotty waiting at the top for me saying, “A little late to be worrying, isn’t it, Vic?”

When I woke at one the next afternoon I was unrefreshed. I lay for a bit in a drowsy lethargy, stiff both mentally and physically. I wanted to lie there indefinitely, to drift to sleep until Lotty came home and took care of me. The last few weeks had taken from me any ability to find pleasure in what I did for a living. Or indeed any reason for continuing it.

If I had been able to follow my mother’s dreams, I’d be my generation’s Geraldine Farrar, sharing intimate moments across a concert stage with James Levine. I tried imagining what it would be like, to be talented and pampered and wealthy. If someone like Gustav Humboldt came after me, I’d have my press agent whip up a few paragraphs for the Times and call the police superintendent-who would be my lover-to knock him down a few pegs.