He was clearly friends with Edmund Trant, the head of Global Entertainment's media division, or at least the two wives were friends. Along with the wife of the Illinois House Speaker. That was cozy for a couple of important businessmen, to know their wives schmoozed with the wife of the state's key power broker.

I wondered what Murray knew about relations between Edmund Trant and Robert Baladine. Or Trant and Speaker Poilevy, for that matter. I bundled Peppy into the backseat of the Buick and went home.

11.

Clean-On the Outside I caught Murray at home. "Murray, hi, V. I. here. Quite a job you did Tuesday night-I saw even The New York Times condescended to notice Chicago and give you a couple of lines."

"Thanks, Vic." His tone was cautious.

"Even I got a little mention," I persisted. "Was it you who talked to Regine Mauger about me? Crumbs from the Global table would sure be tasty. Maybe it would only take one Global crumb to replace my car."

"Christ, Vic! Give me a break. Do you think I suggested something like that to Regine? Someone gets under her skin and she goes after them like a horsefly. I don't know what you did to annoy her-maybe you called up and persecuted her in her own home. She huffed up to me at the Glow, demanding to know who you were and who got you an invitation."

"I wonder who told her about that eonsold fling you and I had." I sounded earnest and puzzled; when he stammered over a response, I added, "Sorry, I didn't call to tease you. I'm glad you got a good response to your gig. I really called because of something odd I stumbled on-just about literally-on my way home from the party."

I gave him a brief summary of my accident. "I haven't seen a mention in the papers, even though she broke out of Coolis on Sunday. But I learned something curious today. She was an illegal Filipina immigrant. Who used to be Robert Baladine's nanny-his kids' nanny, anyway-before she went to jail. Don't you think that's worth a line or two of type, Baladine being head of Carnifice Security and all?"

"Illegal immigrants who escape from prison and die aren't the kind of story I cover, Vic. I can mention it to the City Desk, but if it happened Sunday-well, today's Thursday, after all."

I ignored the coldness in his voice. "You know Eleanor Baladine is a mad swimmer? She missed a chance to swim in the Olympics and is determined her children will do it for her. I went out there this afternoon and watched her lashing kids around the pool. Besides her own they included Edmund Trant's daughter and JeanClaude Poilevy's sons. By the way, if you heard the names Utah and Madison, would you imagine you were being given street directions or hearing about two little girls?"

"If you're trying to imply that Edmund Trant and JeanClaude Poilevy got together with Robert Baladine to kill Baladine's exnanny, you're so far over the edge that no one can pull you back, Warshawski. I have to run-I'm going to be late for dinner."

"Sandy Fishbein or Alexandra Fisher or whoever it is can wait five minutes without hurting your television prospects. The Rogers Park police lost the incident report and now they're saying I was driving drunk and refused a blood test. They want me to take a fall on a hitandrun in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Don't you think that's queer?"

He was silent for a long moment. "It's unusual. But it doesn't make me think Baladine is in a conspiracy with Trant and Poilevy to get you."

I fidgeted with the phone cord. "I don't think anyone's out to get me-I mean, not because I'm me. But I do think someone with a heavy hand is leaning on Rogers Park and the State's Attorney to make a tidy end to the case. Because I happened along and called an ambulance I was nominated for the tidy ending-they couldn't know housekeeping has always been my weakest point. Poilevy could be leaning on the State's Attorney as a favor to Baladine, you know, to keep anyone from asking questions about his relations with his kids' exnanny. Stranger things have happened in this town. They might have rushed in to charge me, except I'm a detective, my pa.s.senger was an excop, and I sent my car to a private lab for forensic work. Along with the clothes Aguinaldo was wearing when she died."

"Vic, it's not that I don't love you, but I'm late, and I don't have a clue why you're telling me all this."

I suppressed a sigh of impatience. "What do you know about Trant and Poilevy's working together, or Poilevy and Baladine, that would tell me whether it's Poilevy pulling this particular lever?"

"Nothing. And I'm not stirring up water around Edmund Trant. For any consideration you can think of. Not even the chance to watch Eleanor Baladine chase him around the pool with a whip."

"Because you know he's Mr. Clean? Or because you're squeamish about taking on your greatgrandboss?"

"My greatgrand-oh." When he spoke again, it was without the irritation he'd shown before. "Look, Vic. Maybe I'm being chicken. Okay, I am chicken. But you know how hard I tried to peddle my a.s.s after Global bought the Star. In nine months I got three offers, and they weren't for serious journalism: hardly anyone's doing that now. I'm fortysix. If I start birdd.o.g.g.i.ng Trant or his friends I could find myself on the street-with no one wanting to hire a guy who guns for his own boss. So you think I'm a sellout for going on the tube. You want to lord it over me, oh queen of the incorruptibles, be my guest, but-there's plenty to investigate in this town without my taking on Trant."

"I don't want to lord it over you. But-here's one thing I've been worrying about. What if Baladine was sleeping with the help and set her up-initially, I mean. Maybe he gave her the necklace, then pretended she stole it."

The more I said, the stupider it sounded, so the faster I talked. "Then she runs away, she needs money, she calls the one person with money she knows-Baladine-"

"Do you have one shred of evidence for this?"

Embarra.s.sment made me hug my knees to my chest, but I bluffed past it. "Well, the three women in Oak Brook sure knew something about Aguinaldo-they knew she'd been a.s.saulted before I mentioned it, and you guys hadn't printed a line of type about her. Not only that, her body disappeared from the morgue before Vishnikov could do the autopsy."

"Vic, this isn't like you. You haven't done your homework," Murray said dryly.

"Carnifice runs Coolis for the State of Illinois. So Baladine knew Aguinaldo had escaped, because he heads the company that runs the prison. And he probably got an ID on her from the morgue same as you, only faster. So it's not surprising the ladies already knew. Sorry, Vic. This is a nonstarter. Although I could talk to Trant-I hear the Hollywood operation can use a boost, and that story has Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore written all over it. Unless someone's paying you a big fee for fishing in this pond, I'd pull my line in."

He hung up before I could respond. My cheeks were stained crimson. Anger or embarra.s.sment? Or both. Running opposite the howdarehe track in my mind was his uncomfortable final remark. Why the h.e.l.l was I taking time to ask questions when I had no fee, no client, and a wrecked car to add to my overhead?

I'm only a few years younger than Murray. I couldn't blame him for not wanting to take on his boss-especially on the insubstantial grounds I'd suggested. It's true Murray has a condo in Lincoln Park and a new Mercedes convertible, compared to my Spartan four rooms and beatup Buick, but you feel fifty coming toward you and start getting nervous about how you're going to afford old age. At least, I do at times.

Murray's scoffing nettled me, but it embarra.s.sed me, too. In the morning I went soberly about the business I was being paid to conduct, taking time only to call Cheviot Labs for a report on the Trans Am. They were giving my car a clean bill of health. I was nervous enough about the pressure from the State's Attorney to ask them to messenger over a copy of the report before they gave the car to the cops, and I found an empty folder for the paramedics' report Max had faxed to me. It was labeled Alumni Fund, from when I'd agreed to help raise money for my law school cla.s.s. I'd done it mostly to help build connections among firms that might need a professional investigator, although when I automated, I'd discovered that most of the information was out of date. I'd type a proper label later, but for now I would attend to my own business. I would not pursue any other ideas, including a thought I'd had about going down to the Ferragamo boutique to see if they knew what garment that little logo had come from.

I printed the LifeStory report on the job candidate I was investigating for Darraugh Graham. I called banks and previous employers and put together a nice little dossier. I went back to my maps of rural Georgia.

At two a messenger arrived from Cheviot with their forensic report on my car. A man named Rieff had signed it. After a thorough inspection of the Trans Am's front end, he said he found no traces of organic matter in the paint, wheels, or grille except for insect carca.s.ses. Rieff was willing to stand up in court and p.r.o.nounce the Trans Am clean outside, if not in. For this work the lab asked the modest fee of $1,878.

I wrote out a check, then faxed the report to my lawyer's office with a crisp note telling him to get the State's Attorney off my back. Freeman called a little later to tell me that privately the state was persuaded by the Cheviot report, but they weren't going to admit that publicly because, as Freeman said, "You were such a pain in the a.s.s about turning the Trans Am over to begin with.

The cops are going to make you pay by holding on to your car."

Rogers Park still hadn't found the incident report, but Freeman thought he'd persuaded them to back away from hara.s.sing me about Nicola Aguinaldo's death.

Mary Louise had helped, by having Finchley call over to the station and letting them know I essentially had a police witness on my team.

"Thanks, Freeman. Out of curiosity, are the cops doing anything else to find who killed Nicola Aguinaldo, now that they've decided I'm not an easy arrest? And are they doing anything to find her body? No one at her old address knows where her mother is living these days."

"Vic, that's none of your business. I told the State's Attorney that we had no compelling interest in her death and that if they let you alone you'd leave her alone. I don't know what got that bee buzzing in their brains to begin with, but I don't think you have anything else to worry about on this. So leave Aguinaldo's death to the cops. You know the story on hitandruns as well as I do: with seven hundred murders a year in this town, manslaughter has to take a backseat. You don't need to stand there like Aimee Semple McPherson haranguing sinners if they don't put roundtheclock teams on finding who hit her."

He paused, as if inviting my response; when I didn't say anything he added, "I'm going to Montana for the weekend to do some flyfishing with a client, so try not to get arrested until Tuesday, okay?"

"I guess that's funny, so I'll laugh, but next time you make a promise in my name to the SA, talk to me first." I hung up with a snap.

So all that excitement with Detective Lemour and my car had been a tempest in a teapot? But someone had killed Nicola Aguinaldo. And those women in Oak Brook knew she was dead before I told them. Okay, Murray was right: one of them was married to the head of the company that ran Coolis for the state, and the woman had been his kids' nanny. So probably he had been notified ahead of the rest of the world. But in the absence of an autopsy, and with no news reports on Aguinaldo, how had those women known she'd been a.s.saulted?

"Don't touch it, Vic. Leave it alone or it will come back and bite you," I admonished myself.

I went back to the Georgia problem with a dogged intensity. I was deep in a reverse directory on the computer, looking for people who lived near the garage that was outfitting Continental United's trucks with new tires, when the phone rang.

It was a woman, with a low smooth voice like cream. "I'm calling from Mr.

Baladine for I. V. Warshawski."

So Aguinaldo's death was going to bite me without my touching it. My stomach tightened. I shouldn't have discounted the mad swimmer's threat to tell on me to her powerful husband.

"I. V. Warshawski was Isaac Bashevis Singer's pen name when he wrote for the Daily Forward in the thirties. I'm V. I., the detective. Which of us do you want?" Even at fortyplus, nervousness still makes me mouth off.

The cream didn't lose any of its smoothness. "Is this Ms. Warshawski? Mr.

Baladine wants to see you this afternoon. Do you know where our offices are?"

That sounded like a command; if nervousness makes me flippant, commands make me ornery. "I know where your offices are, but I don't have time to drive to Oak Brook this afternoon."

"Can you hold, please."

I put the speakerphone on so I could hear her when she returned and obstinately went back to my reverse directory. Dance music wafted to me from Carnifice's onhold program, followed by a description of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "When you're not home, is your children's nanny Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? Carnifice Security's Home Security Division can show you how to monitor your nanny on the job. We can trace her references before you hire her, too. Call us for an estimate." They added an 800 number.

The dance music returned, followed almost immediately by the cream. "Mr.

Baladine can see you at five today."

"I could be free at my office at five if he wants to sit on the Eisenhower all afternoon. Unfortunately I don't have time to do that. How about tomorrow?"

"Mr. Baladine has to be in Washington tomorrow. Can you tell me a time that you could get to Oak Brook today?"

I didn't want to make that long drive just to be chewed out, but I'd love to meet the guy, as long as I didn't have to face rushhour traffic to do so. "How about seven?"

She put me on hold again, this time only long enough for the start of a spiel on Carnifice's bodyguarding service. If I could make sixthirty, Mr. Baladine would appreciate it.

I said I'd do my best to earn the big man's appreciation and turned thoughtfully back to my computer. Before going on with this dull problem in Georgia, I logged on to LifeStory and asked what they had on file about Robert Baladine. Yes, I told the machine, I was willing to pay a premium for short turnaround.

12.

The Lion's Den Carnifice headquarters were what you wanted in your security provider if you were a rich parent or wealthy multinational: enormous Persian carpets floating on polished parquet, desks and cabinets that a lot of rain forest had been hacked down to provide, doors opened by magnetic card or guard only, a beautiful young woman who took you from the guard in the lobby to your destination. It was quite a contrast to Warshawski Investigations, where the lone PI or her parttime a.s.sistant brought you into a converted warehouse.

My young escort smiled politely when I commented on the ambience, but when I asked how long she'd been at Carnifice, she said that company policy forbade her answering any questions.

"Not even to tell me the time or the weather?"

She only smiled again and opened Baladine's door for me. She mentioned my name, perfectly p.r.o.nounced, to the woman who sat enthroned in the antechamber, then left, although not, to my disappointment, walking backward.

"Ah, Ms. Warshawski. I'll let Mr. Baladine know you're here." The woman's skin and hair matched her smooth rich voice; the biascut dress she wore would have paid the Trans Am's repair bill and left something over for gas.

The great man kept me waiting twelve minutes-exactly the amount of time that I was late. A perfect system of punishments, no doubt learned in running private prisons around the country. I wandered around the room while I waited, looking at photographs of a lean, tanned man with various sheiks and presidents, and at the exhibits of memorabilia, ranging from a Presidential Medal of Freedom to a mockup of the women's correctional facility at Coolis. I was particularly interested in that, since it made escape seem impossible. The back ab.u.t.ted the Smallpox Creek, but there were no windows or gates on that side. Three layers of razorwire fencing looped around the front.

"Are you interested in prison security, Ms. Warshawski?"

The lean, tanned man of the photos was standing behind me. I turned and shook his proffered hand. He was fifteen years older than his wife, as I'd learned from my afternoon's research, but looked well able to keep up with her in the pool, or any other arena.

"Only at Coolis, Mr. Baladine-I wondered how a small person like Nicola Aguinaldo could circ.u.mnavigate all those fences and guard boxes and so on."

"Ah, yes, poor Nicola. I understand she faked an illness and was taken to the Coolis Hospital, where it was easier to escape. An unhappy life and, I gather, an unhappy death." He put a hand on my shoulder and shepherded me toward his own office. "Claudia, can you bring us something to drink? I understand you like Black Label, Ms. Warshawski."

"Not when I'm negotiating the Eisenhower. Mineral water will be fine, thanks."

Since I'd investigated him I shouldn't have been surprised that he'd done the same to me.

His private office was filled with more photographs and trophies-and exotic hardwoods and carpets and art. A diploma issued by the Naval Academy held a prominent place near his desk, next to a photograph of a much younger Baladine on board a destroyer, shaking hands with Nixon's Secretary of Defense.

"Yes, I was in Vietnam in the sixties. And then had my own ship for a few years."

"That was before you joined Rapelec's defense division, wasn't it?"

I said it without looking at him: I didn't want to overplay my hand by scanning his face for any surprise at my research into his life-which had not garnered his drinking preferences. Still, I'd learned that at Rapelec he had moved rapidly from a job in systems procurement to managing their submarine division, and then to heading the manufacture of all rapiddeployment weapons, before the end of the Cold War shrank the importance of the unit. Carnifice brought him in as CEO five years ago. Their private prison business was one of the divisions that had grown the most rapidly under his command.

Claudia brought a bottle of Malvern water and poured for both of us, with a murmured reminder that his conference call with Tokyo would be coming through in half an hour.

"Thanks, Claudia." He waited for the door to shut. "A picture like that probably doesn't inspire you in the same way as it does me, since I gather you and I were on opposite sides in Vietnam."

Okay, he had a staff of three thousand plus to go looking at everything from my drinking habits to my college protest activities, but it still made me uncomfortable. I knew I would have to work hard to keep my temper-since his research had probably also told him that was a vulnerable spot on my heel.

"I was on the side of Washington and Jefferson," I said, "perhaps the side of navete and idealism. And you?"

"Certainly I've never been naive. Either about America's external enemies or her internal." He gestured me to a seat next to a coffee table made out of some kind of gold burl.

"And so it was a natural progression for you. To move from killing Zimbabweans to incarcerating Americans. Although exactly why Zimbabwe was an American enemy I'm not sure."

At that his face did twist in brief surprise: Rapelec's arming of the South African secret forces' raids into Zimbabwe during the eighties had been the most deeply buried item I'd found in my afternoon's research. I didn't think it had anything to do with Nicola Aguinaldo's death, but it did shed some insight into Baladine's character.

"Unfortunately, in matters of national security it's not possible to be idealistic. I always think that's a luxury for people who aren't willing to dirty their hands. But perhaps we should move to matters of more immediate importance. My wife was most upset by your questioning her yesterday under pretense of being a detective."

I shook my head. "No pretense. I am a detective. I'm licensed by the state of Illinois and everything."

He smiled condescendingly. "You know you're splitting hairs: she never would have admitted you, let alone spoken to you, if she hadn't believed you were with the Chicago police."

I smiled back. "You should be pleased with me, Baladine-it shows I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty."

He frowned briefly. "I'd prefer you demonstrated that someplace other than with my family. Particularly with my son, who has an unfortunate streak of navete of his own and is an easy prey for anyone willing to take advantage of his vulnerability."

"Yes. I suppose one always thinks one's own family ought to be offlimits, no matter how much one claims to inhabit the world of real politik. It's what makes it so confusing, don't you think? Everyone has a family, even Gadhafi, that they think should be offlimits. Everyone has a point of view, and who is to judge which point of view is more reliable or more worthy of protection?"

"And what point of view were you trying to protect by hara.s.sing my wife?"

He kept his tone light, but he was upset that I'd oneupped him in a philosophy discussion-he controlled his hands, but he couldn't control a pulse in his temple. I made sure that the breath of relief I exhaled went out very softly indeed.

"My own, Mr. Baladine. With all the money you spent finding out about my whisky preferences, I'm sure you must have put a dollar or two into learning about the State's Attorney's attempt to arrest me for a hitandrun involving your former nanny. Or was he doing that at your and JeanClaude Poilevy's request?"

He laughed with a practiced humor that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm honored you have that much respect for my power, but I don't think Nicola's death was anything but an unfortunate accident. She ran away from jail; she got hit by a car. I can't even say I'm sorry: she was a liar and she was a thief. My strongest feeling is annoyance, because my hyperemotional son is having another tiresome episode over her death."

"Poor Robbie," I said. "Not the son for a manly man. Maybe he was swapped at birth with an artist's child."

Irony was wasted on him; he made a face. "I sometimes think so. His kid sister is twice the man that he is. But you didn't bother my wife to find out whether J.C. and I were framing you, because you didn't know we were friends until you ran into Jennifer out there."