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the baby—he was the strongest advocate for an abortion, remember? He didn’t want a child, didn’t want responsibilities. I think he’d be glad to be free of the whole situation.”
    “You would think so, yes, Vic, because you are very rational. But however much people joke about machismo, it is a real thing to some men—he may well feel that a man of honor would act such and such a way, drive himself to a frenzy, and do it.”
    I shook my head. “I can see him having a fantasy about it. But I can’t see him doing it. Still, if you like, I’ll talk to him. Didn’t he hang around with one of the street gangs? Ask Paul—he’ll know.”
    A buzz of talk in the background, then Paul’s voice came on. “The Lions. He wasn’t exactly a heavy member—ran errands on the fringe. You don’t think he’d get them to do a killing for him, do you?”
    “I don’t think anything. I’m talking to the police in the morning—until then I only know what I saw on TV—and that could mean anything.”
    He hung up reluctantly. I frowned at the phone. Not just at the Alvarados but at the idea of getting back into the muck I’d left behind when I quit being a public defender. It was all going to rise up to greet me.

5

Station Break
    I slept restlessly, haunted again by Consuelo’s baby. It had rained heavily. The streets in South Chicago were flooded and I made my way to my parents’ house with difficulty. When I came into the living room, a crib stood in the corner with a baby in it. She lay very still, not moving, staring at me with large black eyes. I realized it was my child but that she had no name, that she would come to life only if I gave her my name.
    I woke at five with a shudder, drenched with sweat. I lay with burning, sleepless eyelids for almost an hour, then staggered out for a run to the lake. I couldn’t make myself move at more than a shuffling jog.
    The sun had been up for perhaps half an hour. Lake and sky were bathed in coppery red, a dull, angry color you might expect at the end of the world, and the air hung heavy. The water was mirror still.
    A fisherman stood about twenty feet up the rocks,paying me no attention. I took off my shoes and socks and jumped in in my shorts and T-shirt. Some action of wind and water in the night had stirred the cold depths of the lake and brought them to the surface. I gasped with shock as the freezing water hit my skin, chilling my blood, and I flailed my way back to shore. The fisherman, no doubt thinking drowning a fitting end for those who disturb the perch, continued to concentrate on his line.
    The cold water left me shivering despite the heavy air, but it also cleared my head. By the time I picked Lotty up at her apartment a mile north of me on Sheffield, I felt reasonably able to confront Chicago’s finest.
    We drove to the Sixth Area Headquarters on Belmont near Western. Lotty looked elegant, if subdued, in a navy silk suit I had never seen before. Her usual dress was a schoolgirl-like uniform of white blouse and dark skirt.
    “I bought it in 1965 for my citizenship hearing. I only wear it when I have to talk to government officials, so it is almost new,” she explained, with the ghost of a smile.
    I had dressed professionally myself, in a wheat-colored suit with a silk shirt about the same color. Despite our elegant getups we had to wait nearly forty-five minutes for our appointment. We sat by the duty desk watching officers bring in their first catches of the day. I read all the WANTED descriptions carefully, then went through the citations of merit.
    Lotty’s temper rose as the minutes ticked on, and her nervousness dissipated. She stalked up to the desk sergeant, informed him people’s lives waited in the balance while she sat here, and came back to the vinyl seats with her mouth set.
    “This is what it’s like at the average gynecologist’s office, in case you’ve never been,” I explained. “Because they treat only women and women’s time has