Indemnity Only Read online

  The guard stomped over to his booth and called up. The news that Mr. Thayer wasn’t in today didn’t surprise me. I demanded to talk to someone in his office. I was tired of being feminine and conciliatory, and made myself menacing enough that I was allowed to speak to a secretary.

  “This is V. I. Warshawski,” I said crisply. “Mr. Thayer is expecting me.”

  The soft female voice at the other end apologized, but “Mr. Thayer hasn’t been in all week. We’ve even tried calling him at home, but no one answers.”

  “Then I think I’d better talk to someone else in your office.” I kept my voice hard. She wanted to know what my business was.

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “Something rotten’s going on which young Thayer wanted to talk to me about. If he’s not in, I’ll talk to someone else who knows his job.” It sounded pretty thin to me, but she put me on hold and went off to consult someone. Five minutes later, the guard still glaring at me and fingering his gun, the soft-voiced female came back on the line, rather breathless. Mr. Masters, the Claim Department vice-president, would talk to me.

  The guard hated letting me go up-he even called back up to Ms. Softy, in hopes I was lying. But I finally made it to the fortieth floor. Once off the elevator, my feet sank deep into green pile. I made my way through it to a reception area at the south end of the hall. A bored receptionist left her novel and shunted me to the soft-voiced young woman, seated at a teak desk with a typewriter to one side. She in turn ushered me in to see Masters.

  Masters had an office big enough for the Bears to work out in, with a magnificent view of the lake. His face had the well-filled, faintly pink look a certain type of successful businessman takes on after forty-five, and he beamed at me above a well-cut gray summer suit. “Hold my calls, Ellen,” he said to the secretary as she walked out.

  I gave him my card as we exchanged firm handshakes.

  “Now what was it you wanted, Miss-ah-?” He smiled patronizingly.

  “Warshawski. I want to see Peter Thayer, Mr. Masters. But as he’s apparently not in and you’ve agreed to see me, I’d like to know why the boy felt he needed a private detective.”

  “I really couldn’t tell you that, Miss-ah-do you mind if I call you-” He looked at the card. “What does the V stand for?”

  “My first name, Mr. Masters. Maybe you can tell me what Mr. Thayer does here.”

  “He’s my assistant,” Masters obliged genially. “Jack Thayer is a good friend of mine, and when his boy-who’s a student at the University of Chicago-needed summer work, I was glad to help out.” He adjusted his features to look sorrowful. “Certainly if the boy is in the kind of trouble that it takes a detective to solve, I think I should know about it.”

  “What kinds of things does Mr. Thayer do as your assistant? Settle claims?”

  “Oh, no,” he beamed. “That’s all done at our field locations. No, we handle the business side of the business-budgets, that kind of thing. The boy adds up figures for me. And he does good staff work-reviews reports, et cetera. He’s a good boy-I hope he’s not in trouble with those hippies he runs around with down there.” He lowered his voice. “Between you and me. Jack says they’ve given him a bad idea of the business world. The big point about this summer job was to give him a better picture of the business world from the inside.”

  “And has it?” I asked.

  “I’m hopeful, Miss-ah-I’m hopeful.” He rubbed his hands together. “I certainly wish I could help you… If you could give me a clue about what was bothering the boy?”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t say… Just called me and asked if I could stop by this afternoon. There wouldn’t be anything going on here that he’d feel would require a detective, would there?”

  “Well, a department head often doesn’t know what’s going on in his own department.” Masters frowned importantly. “You’re too remote-people don’t confide in you.” He smiled again. “But I’d be very surprised.”

  “Why did you want to see me?” I asked.

  “Oh, I promised Jack Thayer I’d keep an eye on his boy, you know. And when a private detective comes around, it sounds kind of serious. Still, I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Miss-ah-although maybe we could hire you to find out where Peter’s gone.” He chuckled at his joke. “He hasn’t been in all week, you know, and we can’t reach him at home. I haven’t told Jack yet-he’s disappointed enough in the boy as it is.”

  He ushered me down the hall and back to the elevator. I rode down to the thirty-second floor, got off, and rode back up. I strolled back down the hall.

  “I’d like to see where young Thayer sits,” I told Ellen. She looked at Masters’s door for guidance, but it was shut.

  “I don’t think-”

  “Probably not,” I interrupted. “But I’m going to look around his desk anyway. I can always get someone else to tell me where it is.”

  She looked unhappy, but took me over to a partitioned cubicle. “You know, I’m going to be in trouble if Mr. Masters comes out and finds you here,” she said.

  “I don’t see why,” I told her. “It’s not your fault. I’ll tell him you did your best to force me off the floor.”

  Peter Thayer’s desk was unlocked. Ellen stood watching me for a few minutes as I pulled open the drawers and sorted through the papers. “You can search me on my way out to see if I’ve taken anything,” I told her without looking up. She sniffed, but walked back to her own desk.

  These papers were as innocuous as those in the boy’s apartment. Numerous ledger sheets with various aspects of the department’s budget added up, a sheaf of computer printouts that dealt with Workers Compensation case estimates, correspondence to Ajax claim handlers-“Dear Mr. So-and-So, please verify the case estimates for the following claimants.” Nothing you’d murder a boy for.

  I was scratching my head over these slim pickings, wondering what to do next, when I realized someone was watching me. I looked up. It wasn’t the secretary.

  “You’re certainly a lot more decorative than young Thayer,” my observer remarked. “You taking his place?”

  The speaker was in his shirt-sleeves, a man in his thirties who didn’t have to be told how good-looking he was. I appreciated his narrow waist and the way his Brooks Brothers trousers fit.

  “Does anyone around here know Peter Thayer at all well?” I asked.

  “Yardley’s secretary is making herself sick over him, but I don’t know whether she knows him. He moved closer. “Why the interest? Are you with the IRS? Has the kid omitted taxes on some of the vast family holdings deeded to him? Or absconded the Claim Department funds and made them over to the revolutionary committee?”

  “You’re in the right occupational ball park,” I conceded, “and he has, apparently, disappeared. I’ve never talked to him,” I added carefully. “Do you know him?”

  “Better than most people around here.” He grinned cheerfully and seemed likable despite his arrogance. “He supposedly did legwork for Yardley-Yardley Masters-you were just seen talking to him. I’m Yardley’s budget manager.”

  “How about a drink?” I suggested.

  He looked at his watch and grinned again.

  “You’ve got a date, little lady.”

  His name was Ralph Devereux. He was a suburbanite who had only recently moved to the city, following a divorce that left his wife in possession of their Downers Grove house, he informed me in the elevator. The only Loop bar he knew was Billy’s, where the Claim Department hung out. I suggested the Golden Glow a little farther west, to avoid the people he knew. As we walked down Adams Street, I bought a Sun-Times.

  The Golden Glow is an oddity in the South Loop. A tiny saloon dating back to the last century, it still has a mahogany horseshoe-shaped bar where serious drinkers sit. Eight or nine little tables and booths are crammed in along the walls, and a couple of real Tiffany lamps, installed when the place was built, provide a homey glow. Sal, the bartender, is a magnificent black woman, close to six feet tall. I’ve w
atched her break up a fight with just a word and a glance-no one messes with Sal. This afternoon she wore a silver pantsuit. Stunning.

  She greeted me with a nod and brought a shot of Black Label to the booth. Ralph ordered a gin-and-tonic. Four o’clock is a little early, even for the Golden Glow’s serious-drinking clientele, and the place was mostly deserted.

  Devereux placed a five-dollar bill on the table for Sal. “Now tell me why a gorgeous lady like yourself is interested in a young kid like Peter Thayer.”

  I gave him back his money. “Sal runs a tab for me,” I explained. I thumbed through the paper. The story hadn’t come in soon enough for the front page, but they’d given it two quarter columns on page seven. RADICAL BANKING HEIR SHOT, the headline read. Thayer’s father was briefly mentioned in the last paragraph; his four roommates and their radical activities were given the most play. The Ajax Insurance Company was not mentioned at all.

  I folded the paper back and showed the column to Devereux. He glanced at it briefly, then did a double take and snatched the paper from me. I watched him read the story. It was short and he must have gone through it several times. Then he looked up at me, bewildered.

  “Peter Thayer? Dead? What is this?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to find out.”

  “You knew when you bought the paper?”

  I nodded. He glanced back down at the story, then at me. His mobile face looked angry.

  “How did you know?”

  “I found the body.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me over at Ajax instead of putting me through this charade?” he demanded.

  “Well, anyone could have killed him. You, Yardley Masters, his girl friend… I wanted to get your reaction to the news.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s V. I. Warshawski. I’m a private detective and I’m looking into Peter Thayer’s death.” I handed him a business card.

  “You? You’re no more a detective than I am a ballet dancer,” he exclaimed.

  “I’d like to see you in tights and a tutu,” I commented, pulling out the plastic-encased photostat of my private investigator’s license. He studied it, then shrugged without speaking. I put it back in my wallet.

  “Just to clear up the point, Mr. Devereux, did you kill Peter Thayer?”

  “No, I goddamn did not kill him.” His jaw worked angrily. He kept starting to talk, then stopping, unable to put his feelings into words.

  I nodded at Sal and she brought us a couple more drinks. The bar was beginning to fill up with precommute drinkers. Devereux drank his second gin and relaxed somewhat. “I’d like to have seen Yardley’s face when you asked him if he killed Peter,” he commented dryly.

  “I didn’t ask him. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to talk to me, though. Was he really very protective of Thayer? That’s what he intimated.”

  “No.” He considered the question. “He didn’t pay much attention to him. But there was the family connection… If Peter was in trouble, Yardley’d feel he owed it to John Thayer to look after him… Dead… he was a hell of a nice boy, his radical ideas notwithstanding. Jesus, this is going to cut up Yardley. His old man, too. Thayer didn’t like the kid living where he did-and now, shot by some junkie…”

  “How do you know his father didn’t like it?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t any secret. Shortly after Pete started with us, Jack Thayer came storming in showing his muscle and bellowing around like a vice-president in heat-how the kid was betraying the family with his labor-union talk, and why couldn’t he live in a decent place-I guess they’d bought a condo for him down there, if you can believe that. I must say, the boy took it very well-didn’t blow up back or anything.”

  “Did he work with any-well, highly confidential-papers at Ajax?”

  Devereux was surprised. “You’re not trying to link his death with Ajax, are you? I thought it was pretty clear that he was shot by one of those drug addicts who are always killing people in Hyde Park.”

  “You make Hyde Park sound like the site of the Tong Wars, Mr. Devereux. Of the thirty-two murders in the twenty-first police district last year, only six were in Hyde Park-one every two months. I don’t think Peter Thayer is just the neighborhood’s July-August statistic.”

  “Well, what makes you think it’s connected with Ajax, then?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m just trying to eliminate possibilities… Have you ever seen a dead body-or at least a body that got that way because of a bullet?” He shook his head and moved defensively in his chair. “Well, I have. And you can often tell from the way the body lies whether the victim was trying to fight off the attacker. Well, this boy was sitting at his kitchen table in a white shirt-probably ready to come down here Monday morning-and someone put a little hole smack in the middle of his head. Now a professional might have done that, but even so, he’d have to bring along someone whom the boy knew to get his confidence. It could’ve been you, or Masters, or his father, or his girl friend… I’m just trying to find out why it couldn’t be you.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t do anything to prove it. Except that I don’t know how to handle a gun-but I’m not sure I could prove that to you.”

  I laughed. “You probably could… What about Masters?”

  “Yardley? Come on! The guy’s one of the most respected people you could hope to find at Ajax.”

  “That doesn’t preclude his being a murderer. Why don’t you let me know more about what Peter did there.”

  He protested some more, but he finally agreed to tell me about his work and what Peter Thayer had done for him. It just didn’t seem to add up to murder. Masters was responsible for the financial side of the claim operation, reserving and so on, and Peter had added up numbers for him, checking office copies of issued drafts against known reserves for various claims, adding up overhead items in the field offices to see where they were going over budget, and all the dull day-to-day activities that businesses need in order to keep on going. And yet… and yet… Masters had agreed to see me, an unknown person, and a detective besides, on the spur of the moment. If he hadn’t known Peter was in trouble-or even, maybe, known he was dead-I just couldn’t believe his obligation to John Thayer would make him do that.

  I contemplated Devereux. Was he just another pretty face, or did he know anything? His anger had seemed to me the result of genuine shock and bewilderment at finding out the boy was dead. But anger was a good cover for other emotions, too… For the time being I decided to classify him as an innocent bystander.

  Devereux’s native Irish cockiness was starting to return-he began teasing me about my job. I felt I’d gotten all I could from him until I knew enough to ask better questions, so I let the matter drop and moved on to lighter subjects.

  I signed the bar tab for Sal-she sends me a bill once a month-and went on to the Officers’ Mess with Devereux for a protracted meal. It’s Indian, and to my mind one of the most romantic restaurants in Chicago. They make a very nice Pimm’s Cup, too. Coming on top of the Scotch, it left me with a muzzy impression of dancing at a succession of North Side discos. I might have had a few more drinks. It was after one when I returned, alone, to my apartment. I was glad just to fling my clothes onto a chair and fall into bed.

  3

  That Professional Touch

  Peter Thayer was protesting capitalist oppression by running wildly up and down the halls at Ajax, while Anita McGraw stood to one side carrying a picket sign and smiling. Ralph Devereux came out of his office and shot Thayer. The shot reverberated in the halls. It kept ringing and ringing and I tried seizing the gun from Devereux and throwing it away, but the sound continued and I jerked awake. The doorbell was shrilling furiously. I slid out of bed and pulled on jeans and a shirt as a loud knock sounded. The fuzziness in my mouth and eyes told me I’d had one or two Scotches too many too late in the evening before. I stumbled to the front room and looked through the peephole as heavy fists hammered the door again.

&nbs
p; Two men were outside, both beefy, with jacket sleeves too short and hair crew-cut. I didn’t know the younger one on the right, but the older one on the left was Bobby Mallory, Homicide lieutenant from the twenty-first district. I fumbled the lock open and tried to smile sunnily.

  “Morning, Bobby. What a nice surprise.”

  “Good morning, Vicki. Sorry to drag you out of bed,” Mallory said with heavy humor.

  “Not at all, Bobby-I’m always glad to see you.” Bobby Mallory had been my dad’s closest friend on the force. They’d started on the same beat together back in the thirties, and Bobby hadn’t forgotten Tony even after promotions had moved him out of my dad’s work life. I usually have Thanksgiving dinner with him and Eileen, his warmly maternal wife. And his six children and four grandchildren.

  Most of the time Bobby tries to pretend I’m not working, or at least not working as an investigator. Now he was looking past me, not at me. “This is Sergeant John McGonnigal,” he said heartily, waving his arm loosely in McGonnigal’s direction. “We’d like to come in and ask you a few questions.”

  “Certainly,” I said politely, wishing my hair weren’t sticking out in different directions all over my head. “Nice to meet you, Sergeant. I’m V. I. Warshawski.”

  McGonnigal and I shook hands and I stood back to let them into the small entryway. The hallway behind us leads straight back to the bathroom, with the bedroom and living rooms opening off to the right, and the dining room and kitchen to the left. This way in the mornings I can stumble straight from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen.

  I took Bobby and McGonnigal to the kitchen and put on some coffee. I casually whisked some crumbs off the kitchen table and rummaged in the refrigerator for pumpernickel and cheddar cheese. Behind me, Bobby said, “You ever clean up this dump?”

  Eileen is a fanatical housekeeper. If she didn’t love to watch people eat, you’d never see a dirty dish in their house. “I’ve been working,” I said with what dignity I could muster, “and I can’t afford a housekeeper. ”