“And what about Baladine?” Beth Blacksin from Channel 8 asked. “I hear he’s undergoing shots for rabies because your dog bit him? Is he suing you?”

“You have it backward,” I said. “I’m giving my dog Mitch a series of rabies shots in case Baladine infected him. No, seriously, he shot the dog and thought he’d killed him, because the dog tried to stop him from chaining Father Lou to my old friend and neighbor Salvatore Contreras. When Baladine was strangling me, Mitch somehow made a supercanine effort, dragged himself up on his weak legs, and dug his teeth into Baladine’s ass. If Baladine chooses to sue me, my lawyer is looking forward to cross–examining him, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

Regine Mauger, the Herald–Star’s gossip columnist, got up to demand what right I had to vilify the Trant family. Abigail Trant was a lovely woman who was doing an enormous amount of good for needy Chicagoans, and Regine thought I should be ashamed for attacking her husband in this way.

I didn’t tell her I had called Abigail Trant myself the day after the fight in the church. After her efforts to help me, she deserved advance notice of what I was going to say about her husband. She asked only if I was sure. And I said, not about everything but about Trant’s being with Baladine and Frenada the night Frenada died. And about the production of Global spin–offs at Coolis.

She didn’t say anything else, but two days later she came to see me—again without warning, leaving the Gelaendewagen double–parked on Racine. She was as exquisite as ever, but the skin on her face was taut with tension.

“Rhiannon and I fell in love with France when we were there this summer. I’m taking her back to Toulouse. I’ve found a wonderful school she can attend there. I don’t know what Teddy will do, because I don’t know what Global will do when they hear your report.”

She hesitated, then added, “I don’t want you to think I blame you in any way for—for—the collapse of my marriage. I think the time will come when I will be grateful that my eyes were opened, but right now I can’t feel much but pain. There’s something else you deserve to know. Teddy came home the night of Global’s television debut with the emblem missing from one of his Ferragamo loafers. Maybe it’s weak of me, but the day you asked about the emblem I went home and threw out the shoes.”

She left abruptly on that line. I didn’t think Regine Mauger needed to report any of that in her coy little phrases.