I let out a compressed breath. “You want to hire me to find out, Mr. Frenada, I’ll be glad to talk it over. Otherwise, since I’m leaving town in the morning, I need to get to bed.”
“That would be funny, wouldn’t it—I call to chew you out and end up hiring you. The trouble is, I am so vulnerable, I and my small company.” His voice trailed away.
I knew that feeling. “Do you feel like telling me the odd thing you mentioned last week, or why you had a Lacey Dowell shirt in your plant?”
“I—they came—I made a couple on spec.” He floundered for words. “It didn’t get me anywhere. Global uses offshore labor, it’s much cheaper than anything I can produce.”
“Why didn’t you want to tell me last night?”
He hesitated. “For personal reasons.”
“To do with Lacey?” When he didn’t say anything I added, “You didn’t make the shirtdress Nicola Aguinaldo was wearing when she died, by any chance?”
He became totally quiet, so much so I could hear the tree toads croaking from the back of the house. Frenada gave me a hurried good night and hung up.
So he did know something about Nicola Aguinaldo’s death. That was a sad and startling thought, but it wasn’t as urgent for me at the moment as my own fury with Murray. Was that what he told Alex Fisher–Fishbein I would do—plant evidence of a cocaine ring at Special–T Uniforms? And then, when I didn’t jump at their offer, he and Alex decided to move matters on by putting a rumor in the paper?
I called Murray. He wasn’t at home—or at least he wasn’t answering, and he wasn’t at the office. I tried his cell phone.
“Vic! How in hell did you get this number? I know damned well I never gave it to you.”
“I’m a detective, Ryerson. Getting a cell phone number is child’s play. It’s the grown–up stuff that has me baffled. What was the point of that charade you and Alex Fishbein acted out in my office last week?”
“It was not a charade. It was a serious offer to give you—”
“Some crumbs from Global’s richly spread table. But when I didn’t snatch the bait you took an easier tack and planted a story in that prize bitch Regine Mauger’s ear. The last time she checked a source was probably 1943, but it doesn’t matter if a column devoted to innuendo gets the facts wrong.”
“How do you know they’re wrong? How do you know he isn’t smuggling coke in through his shirt factory?”
“So you did plant the story with her!” I was so furious I was spitting into the receiver.
“No, I didn’t,” he shouted. “But I read my own damned paper to see what they’re printing. And yes, I usually get the early edition as soon as it’s out. If you’ve made yourself the guy’s champion you are going to have egg all over your smug face. And I for one will not be sorry to help plaster it there. My story will run on Friday, and it will sizzle.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Did going on TV make you feel checking facts was for little people? I looked into Frenada’s finances when you and Sandy Bitchbein came around last week. He’s clean as a whistle.”
“Clean as a whistle? One that’s been in the sewer for a week. I did a priority check on Frenada when I learned Regine was running this little tidbit. Guy’s got money parked all over the globe.”
“Bullshit,” I screamed. “I looked him up on LifeStory on Sunday and he doesn’t have a dime except the pittance that little T–shirt factory makes for him.”
“No.” Murray was suddenly quiet. “You didn’t. You couldn’t have. I just ran a check on him, a priority–one, two thousand bucks to turn it around in ten hours, and it’s not true. He’s got three accounts in Mexico that are worth a million five U.S. dollars each.”
“Murray. I ran the check. I did at the deepest level of numbers. That’s why I turned down Bitchbein’s offer.”
“Her name is Fisher. Why you have a knot in your ass about her—”
“Never mind that. Don’t let her wave so many Golden Globes in front of you that you’re too blinded to see the facts, Murray. And by the way, if you’re planning on leading your story with, “There was egg all over smug V. I. Warshawski’s face,’ don’t, because there won’t be. I’m leaving town in the morning, but as soon as I get back I’ll fax you a copy of that LifeStory report. If I were you, I’d hold off running your sizzle until you’ve seen it.”
I hung up smartly and went back to packing my gun. I’d been feeling irritable about going to rural Georgia, but taking on some punks putting nails under truck tires was beginning to sound downright wholesome compared to what I was looking at here in Chicago.