On my way back to my car I stopped at the faucet on the outside of his house and ran water over my running shoes: I didn’t want to trail cockroach eggs into my own car or home.

When I got back to my office, I opened a case file for the Mesaline twins. There wasn’t much to enter, but I’d learned three things this morning: Sebastian Mesaline wasn’t a hardworking employee. He was a Cubs fan. I’d also learned Nabiyev’s name, and that he had a job at Sturlese Cement. Four things.

I spread out the wadded-up papers I’d taken from Sebastian’s gym bag at the Virejas site. Aliana, the young engineer who’d opened the locker for me, was right: Sebastian was careful with money. The receipts were for sandwiches, pizza slices, candy bars, all from grocery stores or drugstores, where prepared food is cheaper. He’d bought a CTA pass, a monthly gym pass. I entered the name of the gym into his file—it might be worth checking to see if he’d left anything behind in a locker there.

And then there was the paper that didn’t relate to any purchases, the paper with “11 P.M., 131” scrawled on the back. The front was a receipt for toothpaste; he’d bought it April 6, two days before he was last seen. He’d written down where he was supposed to meet someone, that was my best guess.

A room number in a hotel, maybe. Or a location in the Virejas building that didn’t mean anything to Aliana. Sebastian had come in early his last day, he’d been doing something at the computers—he could have been checking the specs for where to find 131. A junction box, an equipment unloading site. They’d poured the tenth floor the day Sebastian disappeared, the project manager had told me. Maybe Sebastian really was buried there.

I’d told Uncle Jerry’s landlord to call the Fourth District if Nabiyev came around. I should call them myself to tell them I’d seen him with Uncle Jerry outside Wrigley Field. I didn’t know his first name, I realized.

He didn’t exist in any of my databases, which was usually true of high-profile celebrities, but true, too, of people trying to avoid any profile at all. Such as hitmen.

The chatty hoist operator had made it clear that everyone at the Virejas site knew I was a detective. It doesn’t take a detective to find me: Viola Mesaline had tracked me down at home two days ago, and my office is advertised online. I didn’t like a putative hitman knowing more about me than I did about him.

I took a burn phone out of my electronics drawer and dialed Sturlese Cement. Spoke from the back of my mouth, where the tone gets garbled and rougher, and said I was looking for Nebisch.

“For who?” the receptionist asked.

“Guy didn’t tell me his first name. Nebisch, he called himself. Supposed to meet me at the Virejas job site.”

“Nabiyev, do you mean? It’s Boris. I’ll page him for you. What’s your name?”

“Fugher,” I said, hanging up. I taped Nabiyev’s name to the back of the phone so I’d remember to use a different one if I tried to call Sturlese Cement again.

Cement, like trucking, is a good Mob front. You moved all over the metro area, and if you were in fact a hitman, you had a ready-made place to bury the body. On NCIS or White Collar, I’d forcefully persuade a reluctant judge to issue a search warrant and then persuade my equally reluctant boss to give me access to a portable X-ray machine, and then I’d find Sebastian’s body and make an arrest—after a near-death escape from Nabiyev, whom I’d overpower despite his bigger size and more massive gun power. I wished I were a TV detective.

This being real life, I tore off a big sheet of newsprint and started writing down the names of people I’d been talking to this past week. I made up two columns, one for people connected to the Guzzo inquiry, the other to the Mesaline investigation.

Judge Grigsby. Rafe Zukos, the rabbi’s son. Joel and Ira and Eunice Previn. Mandel & McClelland, now gone, but they’d handled Stella Guzzo’s defense. Rory Scanlon, who was going to get young Frankie into an elite baseball program. Trucker Vince Bagby, his daughter Delphina. Betty and Stella and Frank Guzzo.

I made a separate list for the Mesaline twins. Uncle Jerry, Boris Nabiyev, Father Cardenal.

I pinned the newsprint to the wall next to my desk. It was interesting that both sets of people had a link to St. Eloy’s. Perhaps Father Cardenal was masterminding a crime ring to raise money for building repairs.

Assumption: whoever killed Jerry Fugher (Boris Nabiyev?) had broken into Sebastian and Viola’s apartment. Unless, of course, it was Sebastian who had killed Jerry. I knew I was only buying trouble with the cops down the road by not going to Conrad now.

I slapped the desktop in frustration. I had to find a way to work more effectively. It was as if I were trying to move through tar pits, my feet leaden, my brain petrified. I went across the street to my expensive coffee bar—maybe a cortado would unglue my brain.

While I drank it, I called Viola. “I went to your uncle’s apartment. Someone had tossed it, probably the same people who ransacked your place yesterday. What could they have been looking for?”

“I don’t know, how could I know? Did someone follow you there? How do you know they aren’t listening in on your calls?”

“Right,” I said. “Moving on, your brother had written ‘eleven P.M., one thirty-one’ on a scrap of paper that he left in his gym bag at work. Any thoughts on where one thirty-one is? The other engineers didn’t think it referred to anything at the job site.”

Viola couldn’t help with that, either. We hung up in mutual frustration.

As I was putting my papers and iPad back into my briefcase, I glanced out the window: Bernie Fouchard was across the street, ringing the bell to my building. Tessa was working today; before I could get outside, Bernie had gone inside.

I crossed Milwaukee Avenue at a trot and found Bernie in Tessa’s studio, demanding to know where I was.

“Bernie! Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

She flung up her hands. “I quit that job. They wanted me there at six in the morning to start heating up boilers, which is an insane hour to be out of bed.”

Tessa was wiping her face and arms with a heavy towel: sculpting is physically taxing work. “Can you two take the conversation across the hall? I need to get into the shower.”

I stopped to look at the work in progress. Granite this time, not steel. Shoulders emerging from an unformed base. “Rising or sinking?” I asked Tessa.

“Depends on your perspective,” Tessa said. “The client is a firm that works on climate change strategies—they wanted something that could be either hope or despair.”

It reminded me uncomfortably of my tar pits. I took Bernie across the hall to my office.

“I suppose quitting looks better on your résumé than getting fired. What will you do now? Go back to Quebec?”

“The coach for the peewee hockey team where I volunteer, she works for a program that does sports with girls in schools. She thinks maybe I can get a job with them, at least until my summer training camp starts in July.”

“That would be great, if your parents agree—I thought you were only coming for a few weeks to check out the city.”

Bernie gave an impish grin. “Oh, Northwestern’s camp is near the city; I’m sure I’ll sign with them—I love the coach there, I love being where Uncle Boom-Boom and my papa played, so maybe I’ll only go back to Quebec for my high school graduation.”

“If your parents agree, and if we can find a place for you to stay on the Northwestern campus,” I said firmly. “You can’t live with me long-term.”

Bernie caught sight of the newsprint full of names I’d created earlier. “These are all the people you are working on now?” She frowned. “I see this ostie de folle, this Madame Guzzo, is on your wall, but who are these others, these Nabiyevs and Mesalines? What do they have to do with Uncle Boom-Boom?”