could get a picture of the man with a minimum of fuss and bother-and with no one knowing I was getting it.
I locked the office and walked across the Loop to Monroe and La Salle. The Fort Dearborn Trust occupied four massive buildings, one on each corner of the intersection. I picked the one with gold lettering over the door, and asked the guard for the PR department.
“Thirty-second floor,” he mumbled. “You got an appointment?” I smiled seraphically and said I did and sailed up thirty-two stories while he went back to chewing his cigar butt.
PR receptionists are always trim, well-lacquered, and dressed in the extreme of fashion. This one’s form-fitting lavender jumpsuit was probably the most outlandish costume in the bank. She gave me a plastic smile and graciously tendered a copy of the most recent annual report. I stuck on my own plastic smile and went back to the elevator, nodded beneficently to the guard, and sauntered out.
My stomach still felt a little jumpy, so I took the report over to Rosie’s Deli to read over ice cream and coffee. John L. Thayer, Executive Vice-President, Trust Division, was pictured prominently on the inside cover with some other big-wigs. He was Jean, tanned, and dressed in banker’s gray, and I did not have to see him under a neon light to know that he bore no resemblance to my last night’s visitor.
I pulled some more on my lip. The police would be interviewing all the neighbors. One clue I had that they didn’t because I had taken it with me, was the boy’s pay stubs. Ajax Insurance had its national headquarters in the Loop, not far from where I was now. It was three in the afternoon, not too late for business calls.
Ajax occupied all sixty floors of a modern glass-and-steel skyscraper. I’d always considered it one of the ugliest buldings downtown from the outside. The lower lobby was drab, and nothing about the interior made me want to reverse my first impression. The guard here was more aggressive than the one at the bank, and refused to let me in without a security pass. I told him I had an appointment with Peter Thayer and asked what floor he was on.
“Not so fast, lady,” he snarled. “We call up, and if the gentleman is here, he’ll authorize you.”
“Authorize me? You mean he’ll authorize my entry. He doesn’t have any authority over my existence.”
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?”
