Before I left I dug out my address book and dialed Freeman Carter’s home number. I was pleased to find him in—he could easily have spent his week off in the country.

“V. I. Warshawski, Freeman. I hope I’m not interrupting your lunch.”

“I’m on my way out the door, Vic. Can it wait?”

“No, it can’t, but I’ll be brief. Until four this morning I had no idea that Dick or his father-in-law was involved with Diamond Head Motors. I think you owe me an apology.”

“Four this morning?” Freeman picked on the least significant part of my remark. “What were you doing at four this morning?”

“Backbreaking labor to find out what you could have told me with no loss of sweat. Did you think I was trying to lasso you into a fight with Dick? It would have been gracious of you to ask first.”

“Backbreaking labor, huh? Well, I never thought it would hurt you to work for a living.”

“But did you think I was trying to rope you into a standoff with Dick?” I persisted.

“The thought did cross my mind,” Freeman said after a pause. “And it hasn’t quite left it. It’s an incredible coincidence, your being interested in Diamond Head.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Crawford, Mead must be involved with a lot of mid-sized firms around Chicago. Those are the ones I typically work with too. We simply have … overlapping spheres of interest, that’s it.” The phrase, pulled from an old course on political history, pleased me more than it did Freeman, who didn’t say anything.

After a long silence I plowed ahead. “You know, I’ve been thinking. About you and Crawford, Mead, I mean. I can’t help wondering if they started working on mergers and acquisitions during the Drexel glory days. I remembered at the concert you said the firm was doing business you didn’t like—I don’t think you would have stayed on board if it was something downright immoral, like fronting for money launderers. But mergers—a lot of firms have found the tail starts wagging the dog when they take that on, so it did seem like that was what you might have had in mind. Since Peter Felitti is Dick’s father-in-law, maybe you thought there was a conflict of interest handling that particular transaction.”

Freeman gave a sharp bark that might have been laughter. “I should know better by now than to say anything in front of you that I don’t want used in court against me later. You come up with this theory on your own? Or you been talking to people?”