“No, I’m not. You’ve hired me to do some independent professional work, but I’m not on your payroll. Which brings us to the original question: what’d you hire me for, anyway?”
“To find my daughter.”
“Then why did you give her a false name? How could I possibly look for her? No. I think you hired me to find the body.”
“Now, look here, Warshawski-”
“You look, McGraw. It’s so obvious you knew the kid was dead. When did you find out? Or did you shoot him yourself?”
His eyes disappeared in his heavy face and he pushed close to me. “Don’t talk smart with me, Warshawski.”
My heart beat faster but I didn’t back away. “When did you find the body?”
He stared at me another minute, then half-smiled. “You’re no softie. I don’t object to a lady with guts… I was worried about Anita. She usually calls me on Monday evening, and when she didn’t, I thought I should go down and check up on her. You know what a dangerous neighborhood that is.”
“You know, Mr. McGraw, it continues to astonish me the number of people who think the University of Chicago is in an unsafe neighborhood. Why parents ever send their children to school there at all amazes me. Now let’s have a little more honesty. You knew Anita had disappeared when you came to see me, or you would never have given me her picture. You are worried about her, and you want her found. Do you think she killed the boy?”
That got an explosive reaction. “No, I don’t, goddamnit. If you must know, she came home from work Tuesday night and found his dead body. She called me in a panic, and then she disappeared.”
“Did she accuse you of killing him?”
“Why should she do that?” He was bellicose but uncomfortable.
“I can think of lots of reasons. You hated young Thayer, thought your daughter was selling out to the bosses. So in a mistaken fit of paternal anxiety, you killed the kid, thinking it would restore your daughter to you. Instead-”
“You’re crazy, Warshawski! No parent is that cuckoo.”
I’ve seen lots of kookier parents but decided not to argue that point. “Well,” I said, “you don’t like that idea, try this one. Peter somehow got wind of some shady, possibly even criminal, activities that you and the Knifegrinders are involved in. He communicated his fears to Anita, but being in love he wouldn’t welch on you to the cops. On the other hand, being young and idealistic, he had to confront you. And he couldn’t be bought. You shot him-or had him shot-and Anita knew it had to be you. So she did a bunk.”
McGraw’s nerves were acting up again, but he blustered and bellowed and called me names. Finally he said, “Why in Sam Hill would I want you to find my daughter if all she’d do is finger me?”
“ I don’t know. Maybe you were playing the odds-figuring you’ve been close and she wouldn’t turn on you. Trouble is, the police are going to be making the connection between you and Anita before too long. They know the kids had some tie-in with the brotherhood because there was some literature around the house created by your printer. They’re not dummies, and everyone knows you’re head of the union and they know there was a McGraw in the apartment.
“When they come around, they’re not going to care about your daughter, or your relationship with her. They’ve got a murder to solve, and they’ll be happy to tag you with it-especially with a guy in Thayer’s position pressuring them. Now if you tell me what you know, I may-no promises, but may-be able to salvage you and your daughter-if you’re not guilty, of course.”
McGraw studied the floor for a while. I realized I’d been clutching the arms of the chair while I was talking and carefully relaxed my muscles. Finally he looked up at me and said, “If I tell you something, will you promise not to take it to the police?”
I shook my head. “can’t promise anything, Mr. McGraw. I’d lose my license if I kept knowledge of a crime to myself.”
“Not that kind of knowledge, damnit! Goddamnit, Warshawski, you keep acting like I committed the goddamn murder or something.” He breathed heavily for a few minutes. Finally he said, “I just want to tell you about-you’re right. I did-I was-I did find the kid’s body.” He choked that out, and the rest came easier. “Annie-Anita-called me Monday night. She wasn’t in the apartment, she wouldn’t say where she was.” He shifted a bit in his chair. “Anita’s a good, levelheaded kid. She never got any special pampering as a child, and she grew up knowing how to be independent. She and I are, well, we’re pretty close, and she’s always been union all the way, but she’s no clinging daddy’s girl. And I never wanted her to be one.
“Tuesday night I hardly recognized her. She was pretty damn near hysterical, yelling a lot of half-assed stuff which didn’t make any sense at all. But she didn’t mention the kid’s murder.”
“What was she yelling?” I asked conversationally.
“Oh, just nonsense, I couldn’t make anything out of it.”
“Same song, second verse,” I remarked.
“What?”
“Same as the first,” I explained. “A little bit louder and a little bit worse.”
“Once and for all, she didn’t accuse me of killing Peter Thayer!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
We weren’t moving too quickly.
“Okay, she didn’t accuse you of murdering Peter. Did she tell you about his being dead?”
He stopped for a minute. If he said yes, the next question was, why had the girl done a bunk if she didn’t think McGraw had committed the murder? “No, like I said, she was just hysterical. She-Well, later, after I saw the body, I figured she was calling because of-of, well, that.” He stopped again, but this time it was to collect some memories. “She hung up and I tried calling back, but there wasn’t any answer, so I went down to see for myself. And I found the boy.”
“How’d you get in?” I asked curiously.
“I have a key. Annie gave it to me when she moved in, But I’d never used it before.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a key. I looked at it and shrugged.
“That was Tuesday night?” He nodded. “And you waited ‘til Wednesday night to come to see me?”
“I waited all day hoping that someone else would find the body. When no report came out-you were right, you know.” He smiled ruefully, and his whole face became more attractive. “I hoped that Tony was still alive. I hadn’t talked to him for years, he’d warned me off good and proper over the Stellinek episode-didn’t know old Tony had it in him-but he was the only guy I could think of who might help me.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops yourself?” I asked. His face closed up again. “I didn’t want to,” he said shortly.
I thought about it. “You probably wanted your own source of information on the case, and you didn’t think your police contacts could help you.” He didn’t disagree.
“Do the Knifegrinders have any pension money tied up with the Fort Dearborn Trust?” I asked.
McGraw turned red again. “Keep your goddamn mitts out of our pension fund, Warshawski. We have enough snoopers smelling around there to guarantee it grade A pure for the next century. I don’t need you, too.”
“Do you have any financial dealings with the Fort Dearborn Trust?”
He was getting so angry I wondered what nerve I’d touched, but he denied it emphatically.
“What about the Ajax Insurance Company?”
“Well, what about them?” he demanded.
“I don’t know, Mr. McGraw-do you buy any insurance from them?”
“I don’t know.” His face was set and he was eyeing me hard and cold, the way he no doubt had eyed young Timmy Wright of Kansas City Local 4318 when Timmy had tried to talk to him about running a clean election down there. (Timmy had shown up in the Missouri River two weeks later.) It was much more menacing than his red-faced bluster. I wondered.
“Well, what about your pensions? Ajax is big in the pension business.”