If Posner had his Maccabees, Durham had his own militant followers. He’d set up Empower Youth Energy teams, first in his own ward and then around town, as a way of getting young men off the streets and into job-training programs. But some of the EYE teams, as they were called, had a shadier side. There were whispers on the street of extortion and beatings for store owners who didn’t contribute to the alderman’s political campaigns. And Durham himself always had his own group of EYE-team bodyguards, who surrounded him in their signature navy blazers whenever he appeared in public. If the Maccabees and the EYE team were going head to head, I was glad I was a private detective trying to make my way through traffic, not one of the policemen hoping to keep them apart.

The traffic finally inched me past the hotel entrance. I turned east onto Randolph Street, where it perches over Grant Park. All the meters there were taken, but I figured the cops were too busy at the Pleiades to spare time for ticketing.

I locked my briefcase in the trunk and pulled Calia from the backseat. She woke briefly, then slumped against my shoulder. She wasn’t going to manage the walk to the hotel. I gritted my teeth. Making the best load I could of her forty-pound deadweight, I staggered down the stairs leading to the lower level of Columbus Drive, where the hotel’s service entrance lay. It was already almost five: I hoped I’d find Max without too much trouble.

As I’d hoped, no one was blocking the lower entrance. I walked past the attendants with Calia and rode the elevator up to the lobby level. The crowd here was as thick as the mob outside, if quieter. Hotel guests and Birnbaum conference participants were wedged around the doors, anxiously wondering what was going on and what to do about it.

I was despairing of finding Max in this mob when I spotted a face I knew: Al Judson, the Pleiades security chief, was near the revolving doors, talking on a two-way radio.