“He claimed Trant had stolen one, and Lacey laughed it off. I did, too—why would a Global boss steal a shirt when he could get a dozen of them free anytime he wanted? But the ones Trant could get all had a label reading Made with Pride in the USA, a kind of Arbeit macht frei label we had to sew into the necks of the T–shirts we made. Why they wanted a Mad Virgin T–shirt on Nicola I don’t know—maybe Trant had a crazy idea that they could finger Frenada for the murder if anyone was asking questions. Everything they did had a B–movie feel to it; it was just the thing that a studio executive would come up with. Or maybe it was Alex Fisher’s idea.
“When they thought I was dying they took my damaged shirt off in the cell and put on another one. They made some comment about it at the time. Even though I kept blanking in and out, I was aware of what was going on, although at the time, it didn’t make sense.”
Before my arrest, I had wondered if Frenada had something to do with Nicola Aguinaldo’s death, but during a wakeful night at Coolis I remembered the sequence of conversations we’d had. It was when I asked him how a shirt he made came to be on her body that Frenada suddenly became quiet, then hung up on me. The night that Robbie saw him in Oak Brook, Frenada had gone out to confront Trant and Baladine. The trouble was, I couldn’t prove that Baladine killed Frenada—I could only guess it. I asked Morrell if Vishnikov’s autopsy had turned up anything unusual.
“Oh, that’s right: we’ve had so much else to talk about I forgot about that,” Morrell said. “Frenada definitely died by drowning. Vishnikov says he had a blow on the side of the head that could have come from slipping on the rocks by the harbor—he got it before he died, and that might have been why he went into the water. Other contusions had appeared postmortem.”
I scowled. “He was out at the Baladine estate the night he died. Robbie saw him there and later overheard a most suggestive remark from Trant, something about that taking care of the problem. I think they drowned Frenada in the pool and carted him off to Lake Michigan, but I guess that didn’t show up on autopsy.”
Morrell shook his head. “After you asked me to go back to him, Vishnikov did a really thorough study of every organ in the body, but he says there’s no way to prove whether he drowned in fresh or chlorinated water.”
I started shredding the wilted flower in my buttonhole. “If I can’t pin something substantial on that bastard, I’m not going to be able to work again. I can’t prove he killed Frenada. I can testify to someone somewhere about the shirts, but I can’t prove they’re running a factory out in Coolis either. That is, I can’t prove they’re selling the shirts and jackets and whatnot outside the prison system, not without a huge amount of effort.”
“What would it take to prove it?” Morrell asked.
“Oh, the grubby kind of detective work we used to do in the days before we could check everything out on–line. Watching for service vans like the one that carted me off, follow them, see which ones contain Global products, where they get dropped off. You could probably bribe the drivers and shorten the process, but it would still take weeks. And then there’d be hearings, and somehow during that time I’d have to come up with money to live on, not to mention money to fund the investigation. It would be easier if I could get Baladine to confess.”
Morrell looked at me in astonishment. “You don’t really think you could do that, do you? That kind of guy won’t. His self–image, his need to be the top dog—”
While he was talking I was imagining the way Baladine had come after Frenada and me: trying to plant cocaine in both our shops, arresting me for kidnapping, planting phony data on the Internet about Frenada’s finances. Baladine wasn’t just a high–tech operator; he liked to get his hands dirty. But I began to see a way in which I could use his technology to make the confession happen. Was I going to be foolhardy once again? To be daring without judgment? In a way, I didn’t care. I had been through the fiery furnace; I had been badly burned, but I had survived. No harms that befell me in the future could be as bad as the ones I had already endured.
“I have an idea.” I interrupted Morrell abruptly. “But I’m going to need a little help.”
44 Diving in with the Sharks
The Baladine Invitational swim meet drew a respectable crowd. Morrell dropped me twenty yards from the front gate. It stood open but was protected by uniformed members of Carnifice Security’s private security division. I joined a line that spilled into the road, standing between a couple of small girls arguing over a gym bag and two well–coiffed men discussing baseball. We crawled forward as guards checked tickets with a handheld scanner. They ran the scanner over my media pass and looked into my briefcase but saw only videocassettes and a notebook. Another man handed out maps and programs. He directed me toward the pool, where a special tent had been set up for media, with refreshments.
“And you can use the bathroom off the kitchen, ma’am. The public and swimmers are using the facilities in the cabana.”