Thursday started early, with a call from my answering service. I was luxuriating in a private morning with Morrell-I hadn’t seen Marcena since dropping her off after yesterday’s prayer service. I’d gotten up to turn on Morrell’s fancy espresso machine. I was turning pirouettes in the hall, happy to be able to prance around naked, when I heard my cell phone ringing in my briefcase.

I don’t know why I didn’t just let it go-that Pavlovian response to the bell, I suppose. Christie Weddington, the operator with my answering service who’s known me longest, felt entitled to be severe.

“It’s someone from the Bysen family, Vic: he’s already called three times.”

I stopped dancing. “It’s seven fifty-eight, Christie. Which one of the great men?”

It was William Bysen, whom I thought of as “Mama Bear,” sandwiched between Buffalo Bill and Billy the Kid. I resented the interruption, but I hoped it might mean good news: Ms. Warshawski, your fearless disposition and your brilliant proposal have caused us to shred one of our billions into forty thousand small pieces for the Bertha Palmer school.

Christie gave me William’s office number. His secretary was, of course, already at her post: when the big gun starts firing early, the subalterns are there ready to load.

“Is this Ms. Warshawski? It is? Do you normally make people wait this long before you get back to them?”

That didn’t sound exactly like the harbinger of glad tidings. “Actually, Mr. Bysen, I’m usually too busy to return calls this fast. What’s up?”

“My son didn’t come home last night.”

Heart-stopping-kid was nineteen, after all, but I gave a noncommittal “oh” and waited.

“I want to know where he is.”

“Do you want to hire me to find him? If so, I’ll fax a contract for your signature, after which I’ll need to ask a bunch of questions, which will have to be done over the phone, since I have a full calendar today and tomorrow.”

He sputtered, taken aback, then asked where Billy was.

I was getting cold, standing naked in the living room. I picked the afghan up from Morrell’s couch and draped it over my shoulders. “I don’t know, Mr. Bysen. If that’s all, I’m in the middle of a meeting.”

“Is he with the preacher?”

“Mr. Bysen, if you want me to look for him I’ll fax you a contract and call you later with a list of questions. If you want to know whether he’s with Pastor Andrés, then I suggest you call the pastor.”

He hemmed and hawed, and finally demanded my rates.

“One-twenty-five an hour, with a four-hour minimum, plus expenses.”

“If you want to do business with By-Smart, you’d better rethink that rate structure.”

“Am I talking to a canned recording? The worried father wants me to negotiate my fee?” I burst out laughing, then suddenly thought maybe he was making me a subtle offer. “Are you saying that By-Smart will fund my basketball program if I’ll lower my fee for asking about your kid?”

“It’s possible that if you can locate Billy, we’ll discuss your proposal.”

“Not good enough, Mr. Bysen. Give me your fax number; I’ll send you a copy of the contract; when I get back a signed copy, we’ll talk.”

He wasn’t sure he was ready to go that far. I hung up and went into the kitchen to flip on the espresso machine. My cell phone started ringing as I was going back up the hall: my answering service, with Bysen’s fax number. Hey-ho. I stopped in the small bedroom Morrell uses as a home office and sent through a contract. This time, I turned my phone off before going back to bed.

“Who was that so early? You spent a lot of time with him-should I be worried?” Morrell demanded, pulling me down next to him.

“Yep. I’ve met his papa and his kid already-I’ve never even laid eyes on your family and we’ve been knowing each other for almost three years now.”

He bit my earlobe. “Oh, yes, my kid, a little something I’ve been meaning to tell you about. Anyway, you get to meet my friends. Have you met this guy’s friends?”

“Don’t think he has any, at least, not any as cool as Marcena.”

When I finally got to my office, a little before ten, I had a fax from William waiting for me: he had signed the contract, but had exed out several provisions, including the four-hour minimum, and the paragraph on expenses.

Whistling between my teeth, I sent an e-mail: I regret not being able to do business with you but will be glad to talk to you in the future about your needs for an investigator. Not that I never negotiate my fees-but never with a company that has annual sales of over two hundred billion.

While I was online, I checked By-Smart’s stock. It had dropped ten points by the end of the trading day yesterday and was down another point this morning. The question about whether By-Smart was going to open its doors to unions had made CNN’s breaking news banner on my home page. No wonder they were gnashing their teeth over Billy up in Rolling Meadows.

By eleven, Mama Bear had decided he could meet my terms. He then wanted me to drop everything to dash out to Rolling Meadows. By-Smart was so used to a parade of vendors, offering everything, including their firstborn off-spring, for the chance to do business with the Behemoth, that young Mr. William actually couldn’t grasp that someone might not want to jump through his hoops. In the end, after a time-wasting argument, when I’d hung up once and threatened to twice more, he answered my questions.

They hadn’t seen Billy since he left the meeting yesterday. According to Grobian, Billy had gone to the warehouse, put in eight hours, and then disappeared. He usually returned to the Bysen complex in Barrington Hills by seven at the latest, but last night he hadn’t shown up, hadn’t answered his cell phone, hadn’t called his mother. When they got up at six, they found he’d never returned. That was when Mama Bear had made his first call to me. Thank goodness, I had left my own phone in the living room.

“He’s nineteen, Mr. Bysen. Most kids that age are in college, if they’re not working, and even if they live at home they have their own lives, their own friends. Their own girlfriends.”

“Billy isn’t that kind of boy,” his father said. “He’s part of True Love Waits, and his mother gave him her own Bible and engagement ring to seal his vows. He would never go out with a girl if he didn’t intend to marry her.”

I forbore to mention that teens who take pledges of chastity have the same rate of sexually transmitted diseases as nonpledgers. Instead, I asked if Billy had ever spent a night away from home in the past.

“Of course, when he’s gone to camp or to visit his aunt in California or-”

“No, Mr. Bysen, I mean, like this, without telling you. Or his mother.”

“No, of course not. Billy is very responsible. But we’re concerned that he’s too much under the thumb of that Mexican preacher who came up here yesterday, and since you spend a lot of time down in South Chicago we decided you were the best person to make inquiries for us.”

“‘We,’” I repeated. “Is that you and your wife? You and your brothers? You and your dad?”

“I-you ask too many questions. I want you to get to work finding him.”

“I’ll want to talk to your wife,” I said, “so I need her phone number, home, office, cell, I don’t care which.”

This caused more spluttering: I was working for him, his wife was worried enough.

“You don’t need me, you need a tame cop,” I snapped. “You must have fifty or sixty of ’em scattered around the city and suburbs. I’ll tear up the contract and messenger it out to you.”

He gave me his home phone number and told me to report back by noon.

“I have other clients, Mr. Bysen, who’ve been waiting a lot longer than you have for help. If you think your son’s life is in imminent danger, then you need the FBI or the police. Otherwise, I’ll report when I know something.” I really, really hate working for the powerful: they think they’re the boss of the whole world, as we used to say in South Chicago, and that includes being the boss of you.