And when I was worn out some other person would stagger to the bathroom on badly swollen feet to try to clear her head under a cold-water tap. She would make my phone calls, run my errands, suffer hideous hardships for me. If I had time, I would thank her graciously.

In the absence of this selfless Bunter, I called my answering service myself Mr. Contreras had phoned once. Murray Ryerson had left seven messages, each progressively more emphatic. I didn’t want to talk to him. Not ever. But since I’d have to eventually, I might as well get it over with. I found him steaming at the city desk.

“I’ve had it with you, Warshawski. You cannot get help from the press without delivering your side of the bargain. This fight in South Chicago is old news. The electronic guys already have it. I helped you out on the understanding you’d give me an exclusive.”

“Stick it in your ear,” I said nastily. “You did sweet nothing for me on this case. You took my leads and gave me back zero. I beat you to the finish line and now you’re pissed. The only reason I’m calling at all is to keep the communications lines open for the future, because believe me, I’m not too interested in talking to you in the present.”

Murray started to roar back, but his newspaper instincts won out. He put on the brakes and began asking questions. I thought about describing my midnight boat ride up the misty, acrid Calumet, or the utter fatigue of soul I felt after talking to Curtis Chigwell. But I didn’t want to justify myself to Murray Ryerson. Instead I gave him everything I’d told the police, along with a vivid description of the fight around the solvent vats. He wanted me to join a photographer down at the Xerxes plant to show where I’d stood and got indignant at my refusal.

“You’re a fucking ghoul, Ryerson,” I said. “The kind of guy who asks disaster victims how they felt when they saw their husbands or children go up in smoke. I am not going into that plant again, not even if they gave me the Nobel Peace Prize for doing it. The faster I forget the place the happier I’ll be.”

“Well, Saint Victoria, you go feed the hungry and tend to the sick.” He slammed the receiver in my ear.

My head still felt leaden. I went out to the kitchen and made myself a pot of coffee. Lotty had left a note in her thick black script next to the pot-she’d turned off the phone before she left, but both Murray and Mallory had called. I knew about Murray, of course, but Bobby had mercifully not hounded me after the one message. I suspected McGonnigal had intervened and was grateful.

I poked around the refrigerator but couldn’t get interested in any of Lotty’s healthy food. Finally I settled at the kitchen table with the coffee. Using the extension on the counter, I called Frederick Manheim.

“Mr. Manheim. It’s V. I. Warshawski. The detective who came to see you a few weeks ago about Joey Pankowski and Steve Ferraro.”

“I remember you, Ms. Warshawski-I remember everything connected with those men. I was sorry to read about the attack on you last week. That didn’t have anything to do with Xerxes, did it?”

I leaned back in the chair, trying to find a comfortable spot for my sore shoulder muscles. “By a strange set of coincidences, yes. How would you feel about getting a cartload of material implying that Humboldt Chemical knew the toxic effects of Xerxine as early as 1955?”

He was silent for a long moment, then he said cautiously, “This isn’t your idea of a joke is it, Ms. Warshawski? I don’t know you well enough to figure out what you think is funny.”

“I never felt less like laughing. I’m looking at such an incredible display of cynicism that every time I think of it I get consumed by rage. My old neighbor in South Chicago is dying right now. At the age of forty-two she looks like a war-ravaged grandmother.” I checked myself

“What I really want to know, Mr. Manheim, is whether you’re prepared to organize and manage action on behalf of hundreds of former Xerxes employees. Maybe present ones as well. You should think about it carefully. It would be your entire life for the next decade. You couldn’t handle it alone in your storefront-you’d have to take on researchers and associates and paralegals, and you’d have to fight off the big guns who’d want to cut you out because they smelled the contingency fees.”

“You make it sound real attractive.” He laughed quietly. “I told you about the threat I got when I was preparing to appeal. I don’t think I have much choice. I mean, I don’t see how I could live with myself if I had a chance now to win that case and passed it up just so I wouldn’t have to give up my quiet practice. When can I get your cartload?”

“Tonight, if you can drive up to the North Side. Seven-thirty okay?” I gave him Lotty’s address.

When he’d hung up I phoned Max at the hospital. After a few minutes on my late-night adventure-which had made the morning papers in skeleton form-he agreed to get the Chigwell documents copied. When I said I’d come by at the end of the day for the originals, he protested graciously: it would be his pleasure to bring them to Lotty’s for me.

After that I really couldn’t delay a heart-to-heart with Bobby. I tracked him down by phone at the Central District and agreed to meet him there in an hour. That gave me time for a soak in Lotty’s tub to limber up my sore shoulders and a call to Mr. Contreras assuring him I was alive, moderately well, and would return home in the morning. He started a long, anxious dump about how he’d felt when he saw the news this morning; I cut him off gently.

“I’ve got a date with the police. I’ll be pretty well tied up today, but we’ll have a late breakfast tomorrow and catch up.”

“Sounds good, doll. French toast or pancakes?”

“French toast.” I couldn’t help laughing. It got me down to police headquarters in a light enough mood to deal with Bobby.

His pride was badly wounded by my nailing the Emperor of Trash. Dresberg had been dancing rings around Chicago’s finest for years. For any private investigator to have caught him dead to rights would have hurt Mallory. But that it had to be me so upset him that he kept me downtown for four hours.

He interrogated me himself, while Officer Neely took notes, then sent in relays of people from the Organized Crime Division, followed by the Special Functions Unit, finishing with an escorted interview with a couple of feds. By then my fatigue had come back full force. I kept dropping off between questions and it was getting hard for me to remember what I was revealing and what I’d decided belonged to me alone. The third time the feds had to poke me awake they decided they’d had enough of a good time and urged Bobby to send me home.

“Yeah, I guess we’ve got everything we’re going to get.” He waited until his office was empty, then said edgily, “What’d you do to McGonnigal last night, Vicki? He made it real clear he wasn’t going to be present while I talked to you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “He turn into a boar or something?”

Bobby frowned at me. “If you’re trying to level any charges against John McGonnigal, who is one of the finest-”

“Circe,” I cut in hastily. “That’s what she did to Odysseus’s crew. I assumed you were thinking of that. Or something like it.”

Bobby narrowed his eyes but all he said was, “Go on home, Vicki. I don’t have the energy for your sense of humor right now.”

I was at the door when he lighted his last squib. “How well do you know Ron Kappelman?” His voice had a studied casualness that warned me to be careful.

I turned to look at him, my hand still on the doorknob. “I’ve talked to him three or four times. We’re not lovers, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Bobby’s gray eyes measured me steadily. “You know Jurshak did a few favors for him when he signed on as SCRAP’S counsel?”

I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. “Like what?”