Many of the two dozen I’d taken in the back room were blurred because of my nervous flying around the space, but there was one clear shot of Lacey’s face on a T–shirt, with a man in an IDOC uniform standing behind it. I had two shots of women operating the stamping machines. And somehow, at the end, I’d photographed Hartigan standing over me with the stun gun pointed down at me. I didn’t remember taking it; perhaps his shooting or kicking me had inadvertently clicked the shutter. He was foreshortened by my lying on the floor, with his head, bloated and shining in sadistic pleasure, looming larger than his body. The gun appeared in one corner.

Looking at the picture made me start to sweat. I had to take a walk around the Berman gardens before I could sit down again with Morrell. I felt embarrassed by my weakness.

“What do these pictures show, Vic? Besides the idea of a certain amount of sadism in the prison, I mean.”

I’d had a lot of time to think during my recuperation, and I spelled it out slowly, putting the events in order as much for myself as for Morrell. “A prison is a great place to run a factory. Labor is cheap and it’s captive: you never have the danger that a union will form or that anyone will protest work conditions. Even if you’re paying the workers more than you would in Southeast Asia, you still save money because you don’t have any capital costs. The state provides the physical plant. The state buys the machinery. Shipping to the world’s biggest market is cheaper than from Thailand or Burma, especially if you’re close to the main shipping routes out of Chicago. So Coolis started producing shirts and jackets for Global Entertainment.”

He frowned. “It sounds disgusting but not a reason to try to kill you for finding it out.”

“Illinois law. You can only make things in prison for sale in the prison system. Baladine and Teddy Trant at Global are good friends. When Baladine started running Carnifice Security and got the bid to build and run Coolis, the two of them probably saw what great potential there was in the captive workforce. The two men are very tight with the Speaker of the Illinois House. Poilevy ran a special legislative session exclusively on crime a couple of years ago. I think he probably promised Baladine that for enough money sprinkled around the right way he could overturn the law, but labor balked. Usually they do pretty much what the Speaker says, but they wouldn’t budge on this one, because they’d face a rebellion from the rank and file if they undercut real jobs in the state.”

Morrell fiddled with the photographs. “I still don’t get it. Did Baladine have his nanny arrested simply to send another body to the prison factory?”