Before Robbie hung up I asked, as casually as I could, how he’d gotten my unlisted home number: it wasn’t on the business card I left him last week.

“It was in BB’s briefcase,” Robbie muttered. “Don’t tell me I’m a criminal to go snooping in his case, it’s the only way I know when he’s planning something awful, like that camp for fat kids he sent me to last summer. I checked it out, and he had this whole file on you, your home number and everything.”

My blood ran cold. I knew Baladine had done research on me—he’d made that clear enough on Friday—but it seemed worse, somehow, his carrying the information around with him.

“Doesn’t he keep his case locked?”

“Oh, that. Anyone with half a brain knows all you have to do is plug in his ship’s ID, the biggest number in his life.”

I laughed and told him he was plenty smart enough to keep up with his dad if he could remember not to let BB get under his skin. In case I ever needed to burgle Baladine’s briefcase myself, I got Robbie to give me his father’s ship number. On that note he seemed to feel calm enough to hang up.

I finally went to sleep, but in my dreams Baladine was lugging Nicola Aguinaldo’s body through Frenada’s factory, while Lacey Dowell leaned heavy breasts forward, clutching her crucifix and whispering, “Her hands are dirty. Don’t tell her anything, or the vampire will get you.”

In the morning I had a call from the operations manager at Continental United, asking me to come in to discuss my report. He thanked me for writing so clearly that everyone could understand it: too many firms cloak the obvious in meaningless jargon, he said. Maybe it was my ability to write a clear English sentence that kept Continental coming to me, rather than my superior analytic skills.

They didn’t want to fire the dispatcher without concrete evidence, the operations manager added, or without knowing whether the plant manager was in on the scam.

“If you want to spend the money you’ll have to have someone on the spot doing surveillance,” I said. “It’ll take two people. One to handle the truck, one to operate a camera. And it has to be people who aren’t at the plant, because you don’t know how many employees on the ground are involved, or at least aware.”