The man next to him stared at me with frank curiosity: was I a girlfriend so enamored that I would pursue Frenada into his shop? Or was I with INS, about to demand that all hands produce their papers? Frenada touched his arm and said something in Spanish, then pointed at the floor, ankle–deep with scraps of cloth. The man passed a command on to one of the cutters, who stopped his work to start sweeping.
Frenada took me to a cubbyhole at the rear of the floor, which was protected enough from the floor noise to allow conversation. Fabric samples and patterns festooned the top of a metal desk; production schedules were taped to the door and the sides of an old filing cabinet. The only chair had a motor on it. Frenada leaned against the door; I perched gingerly on the edge of the desk.
“Why are you here?” he demanded.
“You mentioned Tuesday night that something odd was happening at your shop.”
“Do you usually sell your services like this, door to door?”
My cheeks and neck grew warm with embarrassment, but I couldn’t help smiling. “Like encyclopedias, you mean? A reporter I know has been asking questions about your business. And I remembered what you said, so I wanted to see Special–T for myself.”
“What reporter? What kind of questions?”
“Wondering what secrets you were hiding here at Special–T.” I watched him steadily, but he looked only puzzled, and somewhat scornful.
Another freight train began to thunder behind the building, drowning Frenada’s reply. While I waited to be able to hear him, I looked around the office. On his desk, underneath one of the fabric swatches, I saw a glimpse of a slogan I knew from Emily Messenger’s wardrobe: The Mad Virgin Bites.
The train passed, and Frenada said, “Secrets? I can’t afford such things. I thought you meant—but it doesn’t matter. My business runs on a shoestring; if something a little strange happens, then I have to accept it as an act of God.”
“Lacey reassured you when you saw her on Thursday?”
“Did she—who told you—”
“No one. It was a deduction. That’s what I do—get facts and make deductions. They teach it in detective school.” I was babbling, because of the Mad Virgin T–shirt.
Frenada looked around his office and caught sight of the shirt. He got to his feet and moved me toward the door.
“My business has nothing to do with Lacey. Nothing at all. So keep your deductions to yourself, Miss Detective. And now, by another gracious act of God, I have a large order to get out, the largest I have ever been blessed with, the uniforms for a soccer league in New Jersey, which is why you find me here so late at night.” He hustled me out through the shop floor to the metal walkway, waiting until I reached the stairwell landing before he turned back inside.
I put the Rustmobile into noisy gear and started for home. My route took me past St. Remigio’s church and school, where Lacey Dowell and Frenada had been students twenty years ago. Lacey had learned acting there, and Frenada had started his business by making the school’s soccer uniforms. I slowed down to read the times for daily mass from the signboard, wondering whether I might go in the morning, meet the priest, learn something about Frenada. But if Frenada had told his confessor why he had a Mad Virgin T–shirt half–buried under his fabric samples, I didn’t think the priest would share it with me.
Was that the secret that Trant wanted me to find? Was Frenada making bootleg Virginwear clothes in his little factory and selling them in the old ’hood? In that case, it was a legitimate inquiry. Although I expected Trant used something like Burmese or Honduran slave labor for his own production, in which case I was just as happy for Frenada to sell pirated shirts employing local workers at living wages.
Sal had called while I was at the factory, wanting to see if I’d like to catch Murray’s second program and get some dinner. I took the L down to the Glow so I could drink: it had been a long day and I didn’t want to drive anymore, anyway. The usual crowd of tired traders was drinking, but they let me switch from the Sox on GN to Global—after all, it was only the third inning and the Sox were already down four runs.
After his debut with Lacey Dowell I wondered what Murray could find to titillate the viewers, but I had to agree with Sal: the second show at least nodded in the direction of respectable journalism. He’d taken a sensational local murder, of a prominent developer, and used it as the springboard for a look at how contracts are awarded in the city and suburbs. Although too much of the footage showed the man at Cancun with three women in string bikinis, Murray did wedge in fifty–seven seconds on how contracts get handed out in Illinois.
“Some of it was respectable, but he was too chicken to mention Poilevy by name,” I grumbled when the show ended.
“You want egg in your beer?” Sal said. “Guy can’t do everything.”
“I wish he’d covered the women’s prison at Coolis. That’d be a great place to showcase a cozy pair of dealmakers. I’m surprised it’s not called Baladine City.”