“We can't control our share price, Inspector,” Cates replied, clearly upset by the question.

A tense silence settled over the room.

“You'll provide us a list of all your clients,” I said.

“Doable.” The lawyer jotted down a note again.

“And we'll need access to his private computers, e-mail, and correspondence.” I lobbed a grenade at the CLO.

The lawyer's pen never touched the page. “Those files are private, Lieutenant. I think I'd better check our legal footing before I can agree to that.”

“I thought you were the legal footing,” Jacobi said with a grin.

“Your boss has been murdered, Mr. Zinn. I'm afraid they're our matters now. There was a note at the bomb scene,” I said. I pushed across a copy of the photo. “It referred to Morton Lightower as an `enemy of the people.' There's a name at the bottom, August Spies. Mean anything to either of you?”

Zinn blinked. Cates took a deep breath, his eyes suddenly blank.

“I don't need to remind you that this is a murder investi-gation,” I said. “If anyone's holding something back, now would be the time...”

“No one's holding anything back,” Gerry Cates said stiffly.

“You probably want to talk to Helene now.” The CLO straightened his pad, as if the meeting was over.

“What I want is Lightower's office sealed, now. And I want access to all correspondence. Computer files as well. And e-mail.”

“I'm not sure that's doable, Lieutenant.” Chuck Zinn arched back in his chair.

“Let me tell you what's doable, Mr. Zinn.” I fastened on his phony, compliant grin. “What's doable is that we're back here in two hours with a subpoena, and anything deleted from those files in the past twenty-four hours goes under the heading of impeding a murder investigation. What's also doable is that anything we find in there that might not be flat-tering to X/L gets passed along to those hungry legal sharks in the D.A.'s office. Any of that sound doable, Mr. Zinn?”