Zimbabwe? I wondered if he and Baladine had met there. Although Baladine probably hadn’t actually gone to southern Africa. He would have directed operations from the Rapelec tower on east Illinois Street, or perhaps met their South African customers in London.

The Herald–Star had interviewed Morrell when the Chile book came out. From that I learned he was about fifty, that he’d been born in Cuba but grew up in Chicago, had studied journalism at Northwestern, and still followed the Cubs despite living away from home most of his adult life. And that he only went by his last name; the reporter hadn’t been able to dig his first name out of him. Although they had his initials—C.L.—he wouldn’t divulge the name.

I wondered idly what his parents had called him. Maybe he’d been given some name commemorating a great battle or economic triumph that was so embarrassing he dropped it. Was he Cuban, or had his parents been there with a multinational or the army when he was born? Maybe they’d named him for some Cuban epic, like the Ten Years War, and he’d shed it as soon as he could. I was tempted to hunt through old immigration or court records to come up with it, but I knew that impulse was only frustration at not being able to get a sense of direction.

To change sources of frustration, I turned to the LifeStory report I’d requested on Frenada. I’d invested in a priority turnaround—not the fastest, which sets you back a few grand, but overnight, which was expensive enough. I saved the report to a floppy and printed it out.

Frenada’s personal finances were simple enough for a child of eight to decipher. He had an interest–bearing checking account, where his expenses more or less equaled the thirty–five hundred dollars he took home from his business each month. The business, Special–T Uniforms, was nine years old. It had grown from annual receivables of six thousand to over four hundred thousand.

Frenada was writing regular tuition checks to St. Remigio’s Catholic school for two children—not his own as far as I knew. At least there was no record of a marriage, or any indication of a child–support agreement. He averaged seven hundred dollars a month each on his American Express and MasterCard, for the ordinary business of living. He held a certificate of deposit for twenty thousand dollars. He was paying a mortgage on a $150,000 two–flat in the Irving Park neighborhood, and he had a life–insurance policy worth a hundred thousand dollars, with three children named Caliente listed as the beneficiaries. Besides that munificence, he drove a four–year–old Taurus that he’d just about paid for.