Indemnity Only

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.

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. ”

Mallory looked around in disgust. “You know, if Tony had turned you over his knee more often instead of spoiling you rotten, you’d be a happy housewife now, instead of playing at detective and making it harder for us to get our job done.”

“But I’m a happy detective, Bobby, and I made a lousy housewife.” That was true. My brief foray into marriage eight years ago had ended in an acrimonious divorce after fourteen months: some men can only admire independent women at a distance.

“Being a detective is not a job for a girl like you, Vicki-it’s not fun and games. I’ve told you this a million times. Now you’ve got yourself messed up in a murder. They were going to send Althans out to talk to you, but I pulled my rank to get the assignment. That still means you’ve got to talk. I want to know what you were doing messing around with the Thayer boy.”

“Thayer boy?” I echoed.

“Grow up, Vicki,” Mallory advised. “We got a pretty good description of you from that doped-out specimen on the second floor you talked to on your way into the building. Drucker, who took the squeal, thought it might be your voice when he heard the description… And you left your thumbprint on the kitchen table.”

“I always said crime didn’t pay, Bobby. You guys want some coffee or eggs or anything?”

“We already ate, clown. Working people can’t stay in bed like sleeping beauty.”

It was only 8:10, I noticed, looking at the wooden clock next to the back door. No wonder my head felt so woolly. I methodically sliced cheese, green peppers, and onions, put them on the pumpernickel, and put the open- faced sandwich under the broiler. I kept my back to Bobby and the sergeant while I waited for the cheese to melt, then transferred the whole thing to a plate and poured myself a cup of coffee. From his breathing I could tell Bobby’s temper was mounting. His face was red by the time I put my food on the table and straddled a chair opposite him.

“I know very little about the Thayer boy, Bobby,” I apologized. “I know he used to be a student at the University of Chicago, and that he’s dead now. And I knew he’s dead because I read it in the Sun- Times.”

“Don’t be cute with me, Vicki; you know he’s dead because you found the body.”

I swallowed a mouthful of toasted cheese and green pepper. “Well, I assumed after reading the Sun-Times story that the boy was Thayer, but I certainly didn’t know that when I saw the body. To me, he seemed to be just another corpse. Snuffed out in the springtime of life,” I added piously.

“Spare me his funeral oration and tell me what brought you down there,” Mallory demanded.

“You know me, Bobby-I have an instinct for crime. Where evil flourishes, there I will be, on my self-appointed mission to stamp it out.”

Mallory turned redder. McGonnigal coughed diffidently and changed the subject before his boss hemorrhaged. “Do you have a client of some kind, Miss Warshawski?” he asked.

Of course I’d seen this one coming, but I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. However, she who hesitates is lost in the detective biz, so I opted for partial disclosure.

“I was hired to get Peter Thayer to agree to go to business school.” Mallory choked. “I’m not lying, Bobby,” I said earnestly “I went down there to meet the kid. And the door to his apartment was open, so I-”

“When you got there or after you’d picked the lock?” Mallory interrupted.

“So I went in,” I continued. “Anyway, I guess I failed in my assignment, since I don’t think Peter Thayer will ever go to business school. I’m not sure I still have a client.”

“Who hired you, Vicki?” Mallory was talking more quietly now. “John Thayer?”

“Now why would John Thayer want to hire me, Bobby?”

“You tell me that, Vicki. Maybe he wanted some dirt to use as a lever to pry the kid off those potheads down there.”

I swallowed the rest of my coffee and looked at Mallory squarely. “A guy came to me night before last and told me he was John Thayer. He wanted me to find his son’s girl friend, Anita. Anita Hill.”

“There’s no Anita Hill in that setup,” McGonnigal volunteered. “There’s an Anita McGraw. It looks like he was sharing a room with a girl, but the whole setup is so unisex you can’t tell who was with who.”

“Whom,” I said absently. McGonnigal looked blank. “You can’t tell who was with whom, Sergeant,” I explained. Mallory made explosive noises. “Anyway,” I added hastily, “I was beginning to suspect that the guy had sent me on a wild-goose chase when I found there was no Anita Hill at the university. Later I was sure of it.”

“Why?” Mallory demanded.

“I got a copy of Thayer’s picture from the Fort Dearborn Bank and Trust. He wasn’t my client.”

“Vicki,” Mallory said, “I think you’re a pain in the butt. I think Tony would turn in his grave if he knew what you were doing. But you’re not a fool. Don’t tell me you didn’t ask for any identification.”

“He gave me his card and his home phone and a retainer. I figured I could get back to him.”

“Let me see the card,” Mallory demanded. Suspicious bastard.

“It’s his card,” I said.