“I won’t smell so bad when you’ve deposited money into an account for me here and I can buy soap and shampoo,” I said. “And I’m not going to stay in here until my trial—only until I find out what I want to know.”

That made him explode. “You pay two hundred dollars an hour for my advice, which you proceed to flout, but I’m going to give it to you anyway. Get out of here. If you stay in here on some cockamamie scheme to rout out corruption in Coolis, you will be hurt worse than you have ever been before in your life. And if you then call on me to glue whatever’s left of you back together, I will not be a happy man.”

“Freeman, I won’t claim my brain is in top gear right now. Being locked up is distorting, I agree. But for the last three weeks I’ve been ducking missiles that Carnifice and Global Entertainment have been launching at me. I was sure you’d understand if you watched the video I asked Morrell to send you, the one showing Baladine’s tame cop looking for coke he’d planted in my office. For once in my life I did not go out of my way seeking to make an enemy: they came and found me.”

We were sitting in a special meeting room for attorney visits. It was utterly bare except for two plastic chairs separated by a table that was bolted to the floor. We had to stay in our respective chairs, or the guard watching us through a glass panel would remove me. Supposedly the room was soundproofed, but for all I knew they were taping everything we said.

When I talked to Freeman Monday afternoon, during my fifteen–minute slot for phone calls, I insisted he bring a camera with him to photograph the fading remains of Lemour’s attack on me. He’d harrumphed a bit on the phone but came with a Polaroid. When he saw the marks on my face and arms, his eyes widened with anger and he took a dozen shots. He was already planning the complaint against Lemour, but it made him even less able to understand why I wanted to stay at Coolis.

I pushed my palms together, trying to marshal my words. “It all started when I stopped to help Baladine’s ex–nanny three weeks ago. Until I find out why that matters so much to him and to Teddy Trant, I don’t think there’s going to be much left of me even if I do leave Coolis. The answer is here, at least the answer to what happened to the nanny, to young Nicola Aguinaldo. If I had money in a trust account and some bills for feeding the guards, I should be able to learn what I need to know about her in a couple of weeks. Maybe less.”