I grinned and stood up. “Idealism and na?veté, Bob. And curiosity, of course, about what happens next.”
He leaned against the padded leather of his armchair and crossed his hands behind his head. “You’re a good investigator, everyone agrees with that. But they say you have a funny kink in you that keeps you picking up stray dogs and that stops you from making a success of yourself. Haven’t you ever thought about giving up your solo practice and coming to work for—well, an outfit like mine? You wouldn’t have to worry about overhead. You’d even have a fully funded retirement plan.”
“This isn’t a job offer, by any chance?”
“Something for you to think about. Not an offer. What would you do if outfits like Continental United stopped tossing you their small jobs? We handle their big ones already; they might agree to roll everything into one package with us, after all.”
My constant nightmare, but I made myself laugh, hoping the smile reached my eyes. “I’d cash in my CD’s and go live in Italy for a while.”
“You don’t have enough CD’s to live on.”
“Your people have been thorough, haven’t they? I guess I’d hang out in the alley and share a bone with the rest of the strays. Maybe chew on your old shoes—you know, if you’ve got a Ferragamo loafer missing its little tag and you’re thinking of throwing it out anyway.”
He stared at me without speaking. Before I could poke any deeper, Claudia came in to say that his Tokyo call was waiting for him.
I smiled. “Catch you later, Bob.”
“Yes, Ms. Warshawski. I can guarantee our paths will cross.”
The young woman who’d brought me up was waiting in the hall to escort me back down. To keep me from getting lost? Or to keep me from filching some of Carnifice’s high–tech gadgetry and using it to steal their clients? I asked her, but of course company policy forbade her telling me.
13 Saturday at the Mall
The last dregs of light were staining the western sky pink when I got home. I took the dogs for a walk, then sat chatting in the backyard with Mr. Contreras until the mosquitoes drove us inside. All the time we were discussing whether the Cubs could stay alive in a race for the playoffs, whether Max and Lotty would ever get married, if a lump on Peppy’s chest required a trip to the vet, I kept wondering what the real story of Nicola Aguinaldo’s death was.
Something about it worried Baladine enough to pull me out to Oak Brook and alternately threaten and bribe me. Maybe his only agenda was to flex his muscles in my face, but I thought he was too sophisticated for simple acts of thuggery. Had my last idle remark, about his shoes, really caught him off guard, or was it my imagination?
And who had claimed Nicola Aguinaldo’s body so pat? Was it her mother—or had it been Baladine, trying to prevent Vishnikov from performing an autopsy? That seemed hard to imagine, since the body wasn’t claimed until late Wednesday night, and Vishnikov might well have made his examination as soon as Aguinaldo’s remains arrived.
“Whatcha thinking about, doll? I asked you three times if you wanted any grappa, and you’re staring into space like there was UFO’s flying past the window.”
“That poor young woman in the road,” I said. “What is so important about her? You’d think she was a fugitive Iraqi dissident or something, the way she’s become the focus of so much attention.”
Mr. Contreras was glad to talk it over with me, but after an hour of thrashing out the events of the week I didn’t feel I had any more insight into what was going on. I finally told him I’d have to sleep on it and stumped slowly up to bed. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, but I was too worn out to do anything but sleep.
Saturday I woke so early that I was able to get a proper run in before the heat settled on the city. I even took the dogs swimming and still was out of the shower by eight.
Of the women around the Baladine pool two days ago, the most approachable seemed to be Global magnate Teddy Trant’s wife. Maybe I could catch up with her someplace in the morning.