I put the Rustmobile into noisy gear and started for home. My route took me past St. Remigio’s church and school, where Lacey Dowell and Frenada had been students twenty years ago. Lacey had learned acting there, and Frenada had started his business by making the school’s soccer uniforms. I slowed down to read the times for daily mass from the signboard, wondering whether I might go in the morning, meet the priest, learn something about Frenada. But if Frenada had told his confessor why he had a Mad Virgin T–shirt half–buried under his fabric samples, I didn’t think the priest would share it with me.

Was that the secret that Trant wanted me to find? Was Frenada making bootleg Virginwear clothes in his little factory and selling them in the old ’hood? In that case, it was a legitimate inquiry. Although I expected Trant used something like Burmese or Honduran slave labor for his own production, in which case I was just as happy for Frenada to sell pirated shirts employing local workers at living wages.

Sal had called while I was at the factory, wanting to see if I’d like to catch Murray’s second program and get some dinner. I took the L down to the Glow so I could drink: it had been a long day and I didn’t want to drive anymore, anyway. The usual crowd of tired traders was drinking, but they let me switch from the Sox on GN to Global—after all, it was only the third inning and the Sox were already down four runs.

After his debut with Lacey Dowell I wondered what Murray could find to titillate the viewers, but I had to agree with Sal: the second show at least nodded in the direction of respectable journalism. He’d taken a sensational local murder, of a prominent developer, and used it as the springboard for a look at how contracts are awarded in the city and suburbs. Although too much of the footage showed the man at Cancun with three women in string bikinis, Murray did wedge in fifty–seven seconds on how contracts get handed out in Illinois.

“Some of it was respectable, but he was too chicken to mention Poilevy by name,” I grumbled when the show ended.

“You want egg in your beer?” Sal said. “Guy can’t do everything.”

“I wish he’d covered the women’s prison at Coolis. That’d be a great place to showcase a cozy pair of dealmakers. I’m surprised it’s not called Baladine City.”

“Vic, this may make sense to you, but it’s Greek to me.”