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calling Albert.
    I paid dearly for parking the Omega at the Hancock Building for fourteen hours. That did nothing to cheer me up, and I earned a whistle and a yell from the traffic cop at Oak Street for swinging around the turning traffic onto the Lake Shore Drive underpass. I sobered up then. My father had drummed into my head at an early age the stupidity of venting anger with a moving car. He was a policeman and had taken guns and cars very seriously—he spent too much time with the wreckage of those who used such lethal weapons in anger.
    I stopped for a breakfast falafel sandwich at a storefront Lebanese restaurant at Halsted and Wrightwood and ate it at the red lights the rest of the way up Halsted. The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world.
    From North Avenue to Fullerton, Halsted is part of the recently renovated North Side, where young professionals pay two hundred fifty thousand or more for chic brick townhouses. Four blocks farther north, at Diversey, the rich have not yet stuck out rehabilitation tentacles. Most of the buildings, like mine, are comfortably run-down. One advantage is the cheap rents; the other is space to park on the street.
    I stopped the Omega in front of my building and went inside to change back into the navy walking suit for my meeting with Hatfield. By then J had delayed calling Albert long enough. I took a cup of coffee into the living room and sat in the overstuffed armchair while I phoned. I studied my toes through my nylons. Maybe I’d paint the nails red. I can’t stand nail polish on my fingers, but it might be sexy on my toes.
    A woman answered Albert’s work number. His secret lover, I thought: Rosa assumes she’s his secretary, but he secretly buys her perfume and zabiglione. I asked for Albert; she said in a nasal, uneducated voice that “Mr. Vignelli” was in conference and would I leave a message.
    “This is V. I. Warshawski,” I said. “He wants to talk to me. Tell him this is the only time I’ll be available today.”
    She put me on hold. I drank coffee and started an article in Fortune on chicanery at CitiCorp. I was delighted. I’ve never forgiven them for taking two years to answer a billing complaint. I was just getting into illegal currency manipulation when Albert came on the line, sounding more petulant than usual.
    “Where have you been?”
    I raised my eyebrows at the mouthpiece. “At an all-night sex and dope orgy. The sex was terrible but the coke was really great. Want to come next time?”
    “I might have known you’d just laugh instead of taking Mama’s problems seriously.”
    “I’m not laughing, Albert. If you read the paper, you know how hard it is to get good coke these days. But tell me, has Rosa’s problem taken a turn for the worse? Just to show you I mean well, I won’t even charge you for my time waiting on hold.”
    I could visualize his fat round face puckered up in a full-scale pout as he breathed heavily into my ear. At last he said angrily, “You went to St. Albert’s Priory yesterday, didn’t you?”
    I assented.
    “What did you find out?”
    “That this is going to be incredibly tough to sort out. Our best hope is that the securities had already been faked before the priory got them. I’m meeting with the FBI this afternoon and I’m going to see if they’re looking into that.”
    “Well, Mama has changed her mind. She doesn’t want you to investigate this after all.”
    sat frozen for a few seconds while anger came to a focus inside my head. “What the hell do you mean, Albert? I’m not a vacuum cleaner that you switch on and off at will. You don’t start me on an investigation, then call up two days later to say you’ve changed your mind.”
    I could hear paper rustling in