I moved toward the shady side of the settee.

What Adletsky had gotten from me so far was random information of the sort useful in solving crossword puzzles. Of course, all this was preliminary. He behaved like a technician inspecting the model of an advanced device. What would a doctor have said about so small and old and wrinkled a creature as Adletsky? And so rich. Superrich. Rich beyond the comprehension of most people. My comprehension too. With so much dough, I was thinking, you bypassed democracy. You signaled that you were grateful for the opportunities democratic capitalist America had given you; meantime, in your inmost mind, you have streaked away on your own, you have grasped yourself as a pharaoh, the representative of the sun.

‘I wanted to talk about Frances Jellicoe,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Her dinner party. I’ve always liked Frances. Are you there often?’

‘No. She bought some Chinese pieces from me …’

‘You deal in that stuff.’

‘Antiquities …’

‘Why, sure. You import them in damaged condition from China and you fix ’em up in Guatemala City with cheap labor.’

‘You’ve researched me,’ I said. Not that it mattered; my operation, my racket, was sufficiently legal.

‘No harm in it,’ said Adletsky. ‘I saw you looking on, at Frances.’

‘A bad moment that was,’ I said.

‘Yes, the husband – the ex – is a loser, an obvious no-good. Frances’s mother was what the Tribune in the old days called “a social leader.” The Potter Palmers, the McCormicks, and other micks whose husbands were chairmen of boards and whose daughters had “coming out” parties – Frances was one of those.’

‘Yes, I’ve met ladies who knew her at finishing school. She was a slim gentle creature, once …’

He looked curiously at me when I said ‘gentle creature,’ as if surprised that a man who looked like me should put things in such a way. ‘But you mean now she’s built like a brick shithouse,’ Adletsky said.

‘And then again, her health is very bad – she’s fragile, her life is in danger. She has that terrible cortisone swelling, and it makes her look like Babe Ruth.’

‘Of course; that’s the right description,’ said Adletsky.

‘You don’t need me, Mr Adletsky,’ I said. ‘Not with the intelligence-gathering service that told you everything there is to know about the Guatemala side of my operation.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But you don’t have such a research facility. You have to think, you have to notice and put facts together for yourself. Now that Rourke, the ex-husband, has done himself in the eye. Here is an executive – he made a student from Greenland pregnant, an Eskimo girl. And she sued. Right? That’s an item. It’s been in the papers.’

‘Frances and Rourke were divorced years ago. But he remained on the board of various corporations.’

‘Go on,’ Adletsky said. ‘We both think highly of her. And we can’t hurt Frances by laying out the data.’

‘Her father was an Insull partner,’ I said. ‘And her grandfather a founder of Commonwealth Edison. She got Rourke made a paid corporate officer in half a dozen other companies.’