“You took her word for it without asking anyone else?” Father Lou said. “Your old comrade, who saved you from getting beat up, and you didn’t even question what a television show was going to say about him? Did you see what they did to him tonight, that boy who worked day and night to keep a roof over his sister’s head after her husband was killed?”

“Alex had a photo,” Lacey said, but she looked at her hands.

“That’s true, Ms. Dowell,” I said. “That’s very true.”

Lacey flushed. “She had a photo; I saw the cocaine in a photo.”

“They set him up,” I said. “You live in a world of doctored images; you know how easy it is to make a picture look like the truth. And how did you know the kilo in the bolt of cloth was even in Frenada’s shop? But it’s not the coke per se I care about. What I’m trying to understand is why they needed to shut him up. Was it something to do with the T–shirts? Why did he have a Mad Virgin T–shirt in his office?”

“It can’t be anything about the T–shirts,” she said. “That’s not a story at all. Here’s what happened. Lucy and I didn’t stay close, but we keep—kept in touch. He sent me that story that ran in the Herald–Star about him two years ago, how he was the model of the up–and–coming minority entrepreneur. Then when we decided to shoot Virgin Six here, of course it was a big story. Lucy saw it. He wrote and asked if I would get the studio to give him a contract for some of the Mad Virgin T–shirts, a Chicago commemorative or something. So I told him I’d talk to Teddy Trant, which I did, and Teddy gave me a sarcastic brush off. And I let it drop.”

“You were never a shuffler, Magdalena. You didn’t care about Lucy enough to stand up for him?” The priest looked at her over the rim of his teacup.

“We were in the middle of a difficult contract cycle. I know—I should have thought more of Lucy, but I’m thirty–seven; in another few years unless I’m really lucky I won’t be able to be a star. And anyway, Father Lou, I moved away more than twenty years ago.” She held out her hands, the gesture she often made to her old lover halfway through the Virgin movies.

“But he made some shirts on spec?” I said.

“I guess he must have. Suddenly, the day before I was flying out, Teddy called me and asked for Lucy’s number. He wanted to look at the factory or something.”

“Then at Murray’s party at the Golden Glow two weeks ago, why did you get so angry with Frenada?”