Blacklist Read online

  Calvin had taken over the company in 1936, a boy wonder, twentythree years old. He’d published their first nonreligious novel in 1938, Tale of Two Countries by Armand Pelletier, who’d died in poverty in 1978, after years of blacklisting kept him out of print. That wasn’t in the Nexis report-it was just one of those things I remembered.

  I counted on my fingers: Calvin Bayard must be around ninety now. If Catherine Bayard was part of that family, she would likely be a granddaughter.

  I turned to Nexis’s personal search section. Calvin and Renee Genier Bayard had five addresses, including one on Coverdale Lane in New Solway. Of course. I’d read about Mrs. Edwards Bayard in the article about the gala opening of Larchmont Hall: she’d been the one with a mind above clothes. So last night Catherine had slipped through the woods between 17 Coverdale Lane and Larchmont Hall, and had k.iown exactly how to find her way back in the dark.

  I copied down the address, and another one on Banks Street along Chicago’s Gold Coast. The family also maintained residences in London, New York and Hong Kong. I wrote those down, too, although if Catherine had fled that far, I couldn’t afford to go after her. The record included everyone who made their home at 17 Coverdale Lane. There seemed to be a staff of seven in residence. I added their names to my list and looked more closely at the Bayard family.

  Renee was twenty-some years younger than Calvin. They’d married in 1957, right after his triumphal downing of Bushnell. They had one son, a man with three last names: Edwards Genier Bayard, born in fifty-eight, living in Washington.

  I rubbed my sore eyes. Why was Edwards in D.C. while his daughter Catherine was here? And if Catherine had a mother, why wasn’t she in the file? The screen offered no answers. I returned to the company reports.

  Bayard Publishing was still closely held. It didn’t approach the size of AOL Time Warner or Random House in the book world, but it wasn’t that far behind them either. Besides the publishing house that made up its core business, it held a thirty percent share in an online company, an audio label called “New Lion,” a bunch of magazines and a part interest in Drummond Paper.

  I leaned forward, as if I could dive into the files in front of me. Drummond Paper had been started by Geraldine Graham’s grandfather. I guess it wasn’t surprising that the Bayards owned part of it-the neighbors up and down Coverdale Lane probably did little deals together all the time. While Mrs. Edwards Bayard attended the opening of Larchmont in her mauve bombazine, her husband probably discussed business with Mr. Matthew Graham in his “masculine sanctum,” as the 1903 society writer put it. It only made me uneasy because I kept finding places where the people from New Solway connected: Who knew whom? Who did what to or with whom?

  I was closing the screen when I noticed Margent and Margent.Onlinethe magazine paying Morrell to hunt around Afghanistan for stories. I had a moment’s fantasy of calling Calvin Bayard: look after Morrell-in fact, bring Morrell home, and I won’t rat out your granddaughter. I shut my swollen eyes, the conversation and its aftermaths rolling through my imagination. Morrell home, in my arms-then never speaking to me again after he found out what I’d done.

  I sat up and left Nexis to check my messages, including my log from the answering service. Among the litter of e-mails was one from Morrell. I put it aside to open last-dessert for doing my chores.

  My phone message log took up two computer screens. I closed my eyes again, ready to turn my back on the whole caboodle, but, if I did that, the total would only be worse in the morning.

  I squinted at the screen. Geraldine Graham had left two more messages this afternoon. She could wait until morning. Murray again. He could also wait. Inquiries from three clients whose projects were close to finished. I called them all, and actually found one live person on the end of the line. I explained where I was on his problem and that he’d have a report in two days. One of the things Mary Louise started me doing was to keep a time sheet for each client, including due dates. I entered this one in big red letters so I wouldn’t forget.

  Stephanie Protheroe from the DuPage County sheriff’s office had phoned at four-thirty. When I reached her, she said she thought I’d like to know that they’d identified the man I’d found.

  “His name was Marcus Whitby. He was a reporter for some magazine.” I could hear her rustling through pieces of paper. “Here it is: T-square. Someone at the magazine called in an ID when they saw his face on the wire.” “T-square,” I echoed. “What was he doing out in Larchmont?”

  “They either don’t know or won’t say. Lieutenant Schorr tried to talk to Whitby’s boss, but didn’t get anywhere. You know the magazine?”

  “It’s a kind of Vanity Fair for the African-American market-covers a mix of high-profile figures in black entertainment, politics and sports. They usually have a political section, too.” Tessa, my lease partner, has a subscription; they’d profiled her last year in “Forty Under Forty: Brothers and Sisters to Watch.”

  “Did he live out there?” I asked.

  “Uh, his address is somewhere in Chicago.” She fumbled with her notes again. “A street called Giles. Also, we got an autopsy result. He hadn’t been dead long when you found him, maybe an hour or two. And he died from drowning. They’re saying he got himself drunk and went to a place to die where he thought he could be private.”

  “They’re saying? That means they found blood alcohol levels of some alarming height?”

  “I haven’t seen the detailed report, so I can’t tell you that. All I know is, Sheriff Salvi talked to the press this afternoon. I guess it will be on the news tonight. His secretary says he told reporters that Marcus Whitby came all the way out to DuPage County to commit suicide. I thought you’d like to know”

  “Did they do a complete autopsy? Are they giving this a lick and a promise because he was a black man in white superpower country?” Hoarseness made it impossible for me to sound as forceful as I wished.

  “I can only tell you what I’m told. I’m not very high up the chain of command here, but the summary makes it sound like they did check his

  blood alcohol level. And we’d have found him through AFIS, anyway-it turns out he had a sheet. The sheriff slid that into his remarks.”

  I frowned, trying to put a record together with the quiet-looking man I’d pulled from the pond. Although I guess we all look quiet in death; I probably will myself.

  I tried to invest some enthusiasm in my thanks before hanging upProtheroe hadn’t had to call me, after all.

  What had Whitby been doing at the Larchmont estate to begin with? Did the sheriff, or even the New Solway police, care about that question? If the magazine wasn’t saying, did that mean they didn’t know, or that they wouldn’t tell? Maybe Marcus Whitby was thinking of buying Larchmont. Or writing a story about it for T-Square magazine. Or perhaps some wealthy black entrepreneurs had moved onto Coverdale Lane, and Whitby was doing a piece on what it was like to own the house that your mother could only enter as a housekeeper.

  Catherine Bayard could shed light on all these speculations. I needed to talk to her as soon as possible. I wanted to do it right now, this minute, but it was an interview I’d need my best wits to handle; the only thing I was smart enough to know right now was that I couldn’t corner a slippery teenager in my present condition.

  Instead, I returned to Nexis and looked up Marcus Whitby. He ownedhad owned-a house at Thirty-sixth and Giles, where he was the property’s sole occupant. No spouse, no lover, no tenant to share the mortgage.

  I looked up the address on my city map. Bronzeville. The part of Chicago where blacks had been confined when they first started migrating to the city in large numbers after the First World War. After decades of deterioration, the block where Whitby had bought was making a comeback. Black professionals were buying what are some of the most beautiful homes in Chicago and restoring the stained glass and ornate woodwork, returning them to the glory they had when Ida B. Wells lived there. Whitby had borrowed a hundred thousand from the Ft. Dearborn Tr
ust to move into twenty-seven hundred square feet. Of course if he was thinking of buying Larchmont, he’d need about eighty times that.

  I logged off and stared at the disarray that had built up on my desk and worktable in the short time since Mary Louise had quit. I hadn’t needed

  Christie Weddington from my answering service to remind me that Mary Louise’s resignation had left me with a pressing problem. Mary Louise had brought organizational gifts to my operation, along with eight years’ experience-and contacts-from the Chicago police force. She’d only been working for me while she went to law school; now she’d taken a full-time job with a big downtown firm. I’d interviewed a number of people but hadn’t found anyone yet who had both the street smarts and the organizational skills to take her place.

  It hadn’t been a problem the last few weeks, because I’d been so lethargic I wasn’t generating a lot of business. On a day like today, when I was under the weather and clients were getting cranky, I realized I’d better put serious time into finding someone new. Papers on Mary Louise’s old desk, on mine, filing so far in arrears I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to start on it.

  At least I’d better not just toss papers about this situation onto Mary Louise’s work space-that’s what I’d been doing with my other open investigations. I dug a hanging folder out of the supply closet and set it up the way she would have, labeled “Larchmont,” subfolders for Darraugh and his mama, for Marcus Whitby, for Catherine Bayard. Stapled to the front, a time sheet. As long as Darraugh was paying me, I’d keep working.

  CHAPTER 7

  No Rest for the Sick

  Before shutting down my system for the day, I opened my message from Morrell. It wasn’t as much of a treat as I’d hoped.

  Darling, I’m sorry it’s been so long, but my phone isn’t working. I’m borrowing a hookup through Giulio Carrera at Humane Medicine, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to you again. I love you, I miss you, I wish you were here with me-it would be a help to have someone on my wavelength. I’m doing a tricky investigation, won’t say more on an open line, but it’s not physically dangerous, scout’s honor. Giulio and I don’t go anywhere alone-we’ve made friends with some local toughs who seem to know their way around both literally and metaphorically, so don’t worry, darling, although it may be a week before I can get back to you.

  His e-mail left me feeling hollow and lonely-irrationally, I suppose he wasn’t any further away now than he’d been ten minutes ago. But a week before he could write again… somehow the hopeful anxiety of thinking each day might be the one with the message that he was coming home was better than knowing there would be no message at all.

  “Okay, Penelope, time to start weaving that tapestry,” I muttered-and realized that underneath my loneliness, I felt a spurt of anger-toward

  Morrell, and also myself. I was acting like the woman of tradition, home alone and anxious, while my hero lover wandered the globe seeking adventure. “That is not the story of my life,” I croaked loudly. “I do not sit around waiting, for you or any person, Morrell.”

  I called up my phone log again, determined to work my way through the whole backlog before I left my office. I returned a dozen calls from reporters who had learned I’d found Whitby’s body, and even got back to Murray.

  By then my cold and my sore legs made me long for bed, but in the end I decided to make one last call. A maid answered Geraldine Graham’s phone. “Madam” was resting. I was Ms. Warshawski? “Madam” wanted to speak to me.

  When Geraldine Graham’s high flutey voice came on, I croaked out my name.

  “Are you ill, young woman? Is that your excuse for not returning my phone calls sooner?”

  “I return calls as I have time, Ms. Graham. I did speak to Darraugh this afternoon, since he’s my client. Did he tell you what happened at Larchmont last night?”

  “Young woman, I know what happened, since I had a visit from an extremely impertinent policeman this morning. He called himself Schorr; I should think it would be `Boor. I was seriously annoyed that you had not seen fit to advise me of what happened in my pool last evening.”

  “The Larchmont pool, ma’am. By the time I finished with the police myself and reached home, it was four in the morning. I doubt whether even someone of your restless sleep habits would have welcomed a call then-even if I’d had the stamina to make it. Which I didn’t.”

  When that answer seemed to stop her, I asked what Schorr had wanted. I kept my eyes shut, massaging my sinuses.

  “That a Negro man had drowned there. He wondered if it was someone who used to work on the estate, but we have had no Negro employees during the last twenty years. And I don’t believe I ever saw one working there after I sold Larchmont. Mexicans, yes, but no Negroes. This Boor, or Schorr, showed me a photograph, but the man’s own mother wouldn’t have known him from it. Who was he?”

  “A journalist named Marcus Whitby. I don’t suppose he wanted to interview you?”

  “About what, young woman? Journalists lost interest in me after my marriage. I haven’t talked to one since then, not even during a time when I might have had something newsworthy to tell them. Was this man using the Larchmont attics for some purpose?”

  “It’s possible.” I wondered what newsworthy events she’d concealed. “It’s hard to know how he would have bypassed the security system.” “What’s that? You have to speak up, young woman: you are not speaking clearly. My hearing is not sufficiently acute to understand mumbling.” I made a face at the phone. “This is as good as I can do tonight, Ms. Graham. We’ll talk later in the week when I feel better.”

  She tried to bully me into coming out to New Solway to see her in person, but I deflected that as well. And what should she do if she still saw the lights in the attic?

  “Call the cops, ma’am. Or that nice young lawyer who handles your affairs.” I squinted, conjuring up his face, his name. “Larry Yosano.” “What? Who? I know no such person. Julius Arnoff handles my affairs, as he has done for decades.”

  Lebold, Arnoff, that was the firm on Larry Yosano’s card. Naturally Geraldine Graham only dealt with principals. I said “Yes, ma’am” and took my aching head home. Mr. Contreras came out into the hall, scolding almost before he had his front door open: how come I went out in this weather as sick as I was, and without letting him know; he hoped I hadn’t turned my cold into pneumonia.

  Ordinarily his monitoring of my comings and goings sets up my hackles, but tonight I was weary down to my bones. His concern was a comfort, giving back an illusion of childhood with a mother whose scolding conceals affection and the promise of protection. I agreed to stay put for the rest of the night, agreed to wrap myself in a blanket-an afghan-on the couch while he brought supper up to my place.

  We ate spaghetti and meatballs with the dogs at our feet and watched the nine o’clock news on Channel 13 to see how the DuPage sheriff would spin the Whitby story. We had to sit through a report on terrorism first, this

  time on some Egyptian immigrant who’d disappeared before the FBI could question him about his links to AlQaeda.

  A reporter I didn’t recognize explained that the man was a seventeenyear-old dishwasher whose visa had expired.

  “Benjamin Sadawi came to Chicago from Cairo two years ago to learn English and to try to find a better job than he could at home. He lived with his uncle’s family in Uptown, but, when his uncle died, his aunt moved back to Egypt with her children. Sadawi decided to stay here alone. The FBI says the job was a cover, that Sadawi was really here as a terrorist. Our Middle East correspondent spoke with his mother through an interpreter.”

  “My son is a good boy.” A tired-looking woman sat cross-legged on a floor with a dozen people crowding around her. “Since my husband is dead, Benji works hard for me, for his sisters, washing dishes, sending money home to us. When would he have time for meeting terrorists? We only want to have him back safe with us. We worry all the time, but we cannot even come to America to look for him, we h
ave only the money that he sends us to live on.”

  The anchor switched to an assistant U.S. attorney, who explained that every terrorist had a plausible cover story, and most of them had doting mothers. The anchor thanked him, then said, “Just ahead, a grisly death in one of Chicago’s most exclusive suburbs.”

  I muted the set as a group of frantic beer drinkers began jumping and dancing across the screen.

  Mr. Contreras grunted. “Kid is probably hand in glove with those AlQaeda thugs. That’s why his ma won’t come here in person to look for him: she knows as soon as Immigration looks at her passport the cat’ll be out of the bag.”

  “You don’t think she’s just worried about her son? Morrell did a story last month about reaction in Pakistan to a guy who died out in Coolis prison. He’d been held for eleven weeks without anyone in our government telling his family where he was.”

  “All I’m saying, doll..:’ Mr. Contreras began. We’d had the same disagreement a few dozen times, ever since the FBI and INS started rounding up Middle Easterners on suspicion of terrorism back in September.

  “I know, I know,” I said hastily. “Let’s hope he’s not a terrorist and that he hasn’t been kidnapped. Kids do funny things.”

  I turned the sound back on as a picture of Larchmont Hall filled the screen. Marcus Whitby’s death was a made-for-TV story: the wealth and power of New Solway, the deserted mansion, the sinister weed-choked pond. The network had dug up file footage of a charity garden party at Larchmont some twenty years ago. We got to see the meadows when horses had roamed in them, and the formal gardens were in full flower. Well cared for, it had been a beautiful place. Channel 13 contrasted that with a view of the ornamental pool, shot at twilight, with a close-up on the dead carp.

  “And here is where Chicago private investigator V I. Warshawski found Whitby. Channel 13 has been unable to find out what brought Warshawski to Marcus Whitby’s side; all we know is that she arrived too late to save him.”