though Flora’s was an exciting place-meatpackers and novelists rubbing shoulders with dancers and journalists, a miniature Greenwich Village on the near West Side. Calvin Bayard dropped in from time to time, so you got to know him. And ultimately he guaranteed the loans that allowed you to abandon that hand press over there and move to real machines. What did you have to do in return, Mr. Llewellyn?”
“I fail to see how that concerns you, young woman.”
“Did he ask you to make a contribution to ComThought’s legal defense fund? And if so, why should that be a secret?”
“Again, this is no concern of yours. You come in here with tales of Armand Pelletier and Miss Ballantine, but you were hired, I believe, to find Marcus Whitby’s killer, and, if I’m not mistaken, Mr. Whitby died last week, not in 1957.”
I smiled evilly. “He died because of what he’d learned about 1957, about the relations among you and Calvin Bayard and Armand Pelletier. I’m tracking those down.”
His pressed his lips together in a tight angry line, but said, “Armand Pelletier made Calvin’s fortune. Not that book alone, that famous Tale of Two Countries, but he got Calvin the entree to the kind of authors Bayard Publishing needed if Calvin was going to turn a stodgy family firm into a success. If Pelletier was enthusiastic about something, Calvin was bound to be there, too. I never knew if Calvin was protecting his investment in Pelletier, or if he really was the eager puppy dog he acted around Pelletier. After all, Armand had been shot in Spain-that counted for a lot in the crowd they hung out with. I was a young and earnest journalist, Pelletier thought he could patronize me, Calvin tagged along. I paid back those loans. If you’ve dug enough dirt to find that Calvin secured them, you know that I repaid them.”
“Yes, sir. But Mr. Bayard exacted a quid pro quo, which startled even some of the starchy old ladies in New Solway, who didn’t share his enthusiasm for your enterprise.”
“And if he did, you think I should tell you?” His voice was level, but a pulse throbbed in his temple.
“I’ll find it out,” I said. “Geraldine Graham-do you remember her from those days at Flora’s?-may make up her mind to speak. Or I’ll find out from Renee Bayard. Or-someone else. People like to talk, and when they get old, they get to be like Olin Taverner-they don’t want their secrets to die with them.”
A corner of his mouth lifted into a sneer. “Oh, I remember Geraldine Graham. She was like so many rich white girls of the forties. And the fifties. And the current age. Hot bored things who look for the secret thrill the black man can provide. In her case, it was the Red man, the Communist man, but the spice of feeling the sweat of black workers gave it an added zest for her. If she decides to talk to you about those days -I will be very surprised.”
“Every generation likes to think it was the first to discover sex; Ms. Graham might enjoy reminding the rest of us that.she got there ahead of us. If Pelletier can be believed, she was sleeping first with him, then with Calvin Bayard; meanwhile, you brought Kylie Ballantine to Flora’s bar, where she met Pelletier and Bayard and all those other people.” I was embroidering recklessly, both on Pelletier’s manuscript and on the hints I’d picked up from Geraldine Graham. “So when they decided to hold a fund-raiser for ComThought’s legal defense fund, you all went up to Eagle River together.”
He said coldly, “It’s not unusual for a journalist to write up a political fund-raiser, especially when it’s an unusual political group.”
“Pelletier wrote that you were a fellow traveler back in the forties. I’m sure that interested Bushnell’s committee no end.”
“Pelletier wrote a lot of crap in his later years. He was a drunk and bitter man. I didn’t worry about it then and I won’t lose sleep over it now.” “You wouldn’t mind if the Republican National Committee found out you’d been Communist, or at least a Communist sympathizer?”
He gave a derisive snort. “My fellow Republicans include many repentant former leftists. As a black man, I already command unusual attention in the party. If I confessed to Communism, it would only add to my luster.”
“So it didn’t bother you that Marc Whitby learned you’d been at the ComThought fund-raiser. Would you mind the world knowing it was you who sent Olin Taverner a photograph from that same event that cost Kylie Ballantine her job?”
“That’s a damned lie!” In fury, his voice rose to a shout. “Whether Armand wrote that or not, I’ll see anyone who spreads that rumor destroyed in the courts and damned in hell.”
“Or pushed into Larchmont’s pond to drown?”
He stood. “If that means what I think it does, my lawyers will talk to you about a slander suit, young woman.”
“Slander is slippery in court,” I said. “Mart’s notes would be part of my defense. Which means the accusations would come into the public domain.”
I was hoping he’d say, “What notes, I destroyed all his notes,” but instead he said Marc couldn’t have any notes about him sending Kylie’s picture to Olin, because he hadn’t done so.
“Taverner wrote a letter to Kylie Ballantine; she discussed it in a letter of her own to Pelletier.” I took the photocopy from my bag and showed it to him. “See where she says Taverner told her not to blame him and Bushnell, but to talk to `those of her own blood’? If he didn’t mean you, who did he mean? The hotel workers?”
An ugly smile creased Llewellyn’s face. “Even if I knew, you’re not the person I’d tell. You will do well to inform the Whitby family that the tragedy of their son’s death is one of those many murders of young black men that will never be resolved. Let them go home to Atlanta. Let them grieve decently and move forward with their lives. Get your stick out of that old pond you’re stirring. The stench from the rot on the bottom could rise up and choke you.”
The interview was clearly over.
CHAPTER 46
Llewellyn’s children were waiting outside their father’s office. When I emerged, the sons hustled me into an elevator which they’d kept waiting, then muscled me outside with more force than the situation really warranted. They watched until I turned the corner onto Franklin.
The sky was dark; the area restaurants and nightspots were just starting to fill up. I passed knots of eagerly chattering thirty-somethings on their way to jazz bars and dinner. Was there a Geraldine among them, escaping from an impotent husband and an overbearing mother into the city’s nightlife? Or an Armand Pelletier, brilliant, impetuous, trying to organize them all to act?
I walked slowly, hunched over, my hands in my pockets. Llewellyn was yet another player from that old New Solway team with old secrets to keep. He said he didn’t care if people thought he’d been a Communist, but that could be a sophisticated bluff it’s always the best strategy to scoff at threats, not to cower before them. What made him furious was the suggestion that he’d cost Kylie her career. If Marc thought he’d found evidence proving Llewellyn had betrayed her to Olin Taverner, maybe Llewellyn would have silenced his star reporter.
Those muscular sons of his were-strong enough to carry someone from
his car to a pond and hold him under until he drowned to death. And they would pretty much do whatever their daddy wanted.
The Merchandise Mart loomed in front of me, its mass ominous in the dark. I skirted it to Wells Street. When I reached the river, I didn’t cross over, but walked east alongside it, picking my way through construction rubble, passing homeless men in makeshift shelters who froze at my passing. Rats skittered across my path.
The walkway narrowed and the concrete bank on my left grew steeper. Struts for the bridges loomed over me. Between the fathomless black of the water and the iron towering above me, I felt small and fragile. A chill wind cut down the river from the lake. I pulled my torn jacket tightly across my chest and plodded ahead.
I needed Benjamin Sadawi to reveal what he’d seen from the attic last Sunday night. He was afraid to tell me or Father Lou, but there was one person he would talk to: Catherine Bayard. It might be hard to persuade her to dig the information out of him, but I couldn’t see any other road to pursue. She was supposed to come home from the
