“I understand Robert Baladine sent around an e–mail, offering to resign. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but if it weren’t for the fact that Lucian Frenada was—probably—killed in an effort to cover up the Global manufacturing operation, I’d think Baladine should resign not because of Frenada but because of the degradation of prisoners that goes on hourly in a prison that his company built and runs for the state of Illinois.”

I’d lost my dry composure. I sat down, shivering, my teeth chattering. Morrell was at my side to put a jacket around my shoulders. Murray had stepped forward along with the rest of the team in the room, but when he saw Morrell behind me, he turned on his heel and left.

Lotty and Sal and Mr. Contreras applauded vigorously, and Mr. Contreras finally let Peppy come up to me. I sank my hands gratefully into her gold fur and tried to calm down enough to answer other questions.

What the reporters most wanted to know, besides their fascination with sex in the prison, was how Baladine came to be injured.

“He says he needed to break into the church to get his son back. I believe Father Lou has made a sworn deposition that Baladine never approached him about his son. Indeed, Robbie arrived at the church only a few hours ahead of his father, who could have phoned or come to the door the way most people might. But someone watching my home apparently saw him arrive, tailed him here to St. Remigio’s, and then called Baladine for instructions. He chose to approach his son in this highly unusual way, and a police officer is dead as a result.”

One of the Carnifice Security men who’d been in the church last week had decided to do a deal with the State’s Attorney. No one in the State’s Attorney’s office cared much about Lucian Frenada, or Nicola Aguinaldo—or me. But Father Lou was a local legend. For forty years, any policeman who’d ever boxed grew up knowing him. An assault on him in his church was more than blasphemy. So the guy Father Lou had knocked out, after realizing that the cops were more interested in finding out exactly what punch the priest had used on him than in sympathizing with him, turned on his boss and his partner and told the cops the story of his watch on my building, of seeing Robbie arrive on foot, of calling for instructions.

“Isn’t the dead officer the same man who was in your office with the cocaine?”

I smiled. “You’ll have to ask the department about that one. I never actually saw the man who died at St. Remigio’s: everything took place in the dark.”