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cold, and headed out the front door and into the early-morning darkness where his car sat frigid in the street.

One-Fifteen in the Morning
    D ETECTIVE WILLIAM HANRAHAN SAT in a low, straight-backed chair in a line of five such chairs directly outside the intensive-care unit of Edgewater Hospital.
    He sat alone, a four-month old McCall’s magazine in his lap, looking at the pale green wall of the long corridor. He shifted his weight for the fortieth or fiftieth time since he had taken up residence on the chair, which was built, he was sure, for someone like the pretty, finger-thin model who grinned large and white-toothed from the cover of the magazine before him.
    Bill Hanrahan was coming perilously close to his fifty-first year and his two hundred and twentieth pound. He wore a blue flannel shirt, heavy slacks, and a deeply pensive look.
    Hanrahan had dozed, and in his doze he had dreamed, dreamed that he was at Guadio and Stanton’s Bar on Fullerton drinking whiskey after whiskey with a beer to kick it down. In the dream he had felt no joy in the drinking, just the need to keep going, methodically, knowing with each drink that there was no stopping and no going back. It was a nightmare of faces behind the bar and surrounding him, watching intently, seriously.
    Hanrahan had awakened when the magazine fell to the floor and he almost toppled from the little chair.
    He had not had a drink in four months and nine days, but there wasn’t a day that he didn’t want something, anything, and, at the same time, didn’t want it, was repulsed to near nausea at the thought of even a cold beer.
    He had shared his nightmares and fears with no one, not Abe nor Iris, who would have been willing to listen. He and Iris had been talking seriously about marriage for about three weeks and even Iris’s father, a wispy Chinese who spoke little English, seemed to think it not necessarily a terrible idea. Hanrahan, however, was not so sure. It would mean finding Maureen and asking her for a divorce. Though it was Maureen who had left him, she was the good Catholic who went to church and didn’t want to face that particular sin.
    The hospital smell was seeping into Hanrahan’s consciousness. He fought it, but its pull was strong. He had spent two weeks in a hospital not many months ago with a bullet in his head and drugged dreams that went on for days until he was sure that the dreams themselves were death.
    Hanrahan stood, fighting a small, rough ball of panic in his gut, looking for something to distract him. The perfect girl on the cover of the magazine beckoned to him. He picked her up and set her gently on the chair.
    And Lieberman appeared. Hanrahan hadn’t heard the elevator down the corridor rise nor the door open, but there was the thin, pale man striding toward him, coat, hat, and scarf draped over one arm, boots sloshing with each step.
    â€œLooks like she’s going to make it,” said Hanrahan.
    Lieberman stopped and the two men stood awkwardly, a few feet apart.
    â€œThe baby?” asked Lieberman.
    â€œDoc says touch-go, nip-tuck, who knows. How pregnant is she?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Lieberman. “Four, five months, maybe more, maybe less. We don’t see them much and Maish is never straight on things like that. When can we see her?”
    Hanrahan shrugged. “Who knows? Doc says he’ll let us know.”
    â€œDavid.”
    It wasn’t a question, but Hanrahan nodded, knowing what his partner wanted. He turned and started down the corridor, Lieberman sloshing hurriedly to catch up. They went down one flight, turned, and headed toward the emergency room. Abe Lieberman had spent hours in every emergency room of every hospital in Chicago. He had stories to tell, but none like this.
    â€œHere,” said Hanrahan as they came to a dull, ivory-colored swing door. “Behind the curtain on the left. You want me to …”
    Lieberman shook his