“Mitch will miss me, he will cry,” she wailed, so tired herself that nothing made sense to her.

“Tell you what, baby: we’ll get Mitch to give Ninshubur one of his dog tags. That way Ninshubur will remember Mitch when he can’t see him.” I went into my storage closet, where I found one of the small collars we’d used when Mitch had been a puppy. Calia stopped crying long enough to help buckle it in place around Ninshubur. I attached a set of Peppy’s old tags, which looked absurdly big on the small blue neck but brought Calia enormous satisfaction.

I stuffed her day pack and Ninshubur into my own briefcase and scooped her up to carry her to my car. “I’m not a baby, I don’t get carried,” she sobbed, clinging to me. In the car she fell asleep almost at once.

My plan had been to leave my car with the Pleiades Hotel valet for fifteen minutes while I took Calia in to find Max, but when I pulled off Lake Shore Drive at Wacker, I saw this wasn’t going to be possible. A major crowd was blocking the entrance to the Pleiades driveway. I craned my head, trying to see. A demonstration, apparently, with pickets and bullhorns. Television crews added to the chaos. Cops were furiously whistling cars away, but the traffic was so snarled I had to sit for some minutes in mounting frustration, wondering where I would find Max and what to do with Calia, heavily asleep behind me.

I pulled my cell phone out of my briefcase, but the battery was dead. And I couldn’t find the in-car charger. Of course not: I’d left it in Morrell’s car when he and I went to the country for a day last week. I pounded the steering wheel in useless frustration.

As I sat fuming, I watched the picketers, who belonged to conflicting causes. One group, all white, was carrying signs demanding passage of the Illinois Holocaust Asset Recovery Act. “No deals with thieves,” they were chanting, and “Banks, insurers, where is our money?”