“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
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 watched 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
“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
