I guess that was supposed to make me go ooooh or aaaahhh, but instead I just laughed and said, “I had one of those last year.”

His eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“A little tourist trap called Guadalcanal.”

Now the eyebrows lowered and tightened. “I wasn’t aware you’d served. What branch?”

“Marines.”

“I have a brother-in-law in the Marines. Here’s to you, sir.”

He lifted his martini glass and toasted me; I smiled a little and nodded and sipped my rum and Coke.

“I’m afraid I was too old to lend a hand,” Foskett said with what I was supposed to think was regret.

“So was I. But if you get drunk and lie about your age to the recruiting officer, it does wonders. What brings you to Chicago, Mr. Foskett?”

“Walter. You do, Nathan.”

He said this with quiet melodrama-he was obviously a corporate lawyer, as opposed to the trial variety; but he had a little ham in him, just the same.

“I’m in Chicago just for today, Nathan-flew in yesterday evening, flying out again this afternoon. I’m here to see you-on behalf of my principal client.”

More melodrama. I’d asked him to call me Nate, but I guess a Walter prefers a Nathan.

“And who would that principal client be?” I asked, just a little testily. The phone call arranging this a week before had been evasive, but when a Palm Beach attorney wants to buy you lunch, why not?

But now I was starting to get a little worried. A Florida attorney just might have a “principal client” of the mob variety, since that sunny state was home-away-from-home for so many of the boys. I had a partly deserved reputation as an ex-cop with mob connections-though with the death earlier this year of my sometime mentor Frank Nitti, those connections were largely severed-and this could be about that.

And I didn’t want it to be.

“Sir Harry Oakes,” he said with a smug little smile.