“Goddamnit, Warshawski, get out of the office. You were hired to find Anita, not to ask a lot of questions about something that isn’t any of your goddamned business. Now get out and don’t come back.”
“You want me to find Anita?” I asked.
McGraw suddenly deflated and put his head in his hands. “Oh, jeez, I don’t know what to do.”
I looked at him sympathetically. “Someone got you in the squeeze?”
He just shook his head but wouldn’t answer. We sat it out in silence for a while. Then he looked at me, and he looked gray. “Warshawski, I don’t know where Annie is. And I don’t want to know. But I want you to find her. And when you do, just let me know if she’s all right. Here’s another five hundred dollars to keep you on for a whole week. Come to me when it runs out.” It wasn’t a formal apology, but I accepted it and left.
I stopped at Barb’s Bar-B-Q for some lunch and called my answering service. There was a message from Ralph Devereux at Ajax; would I meet him at the Cartwheel at 7:30 tonight. I called him and asked if he had discovered anything about Peter Thayer’s work.
“Look,” he said, “will you tell me your first name? How the hell can I keep on addressing someone as ‘V.I.’?”
“The British do it all the time. What have you found out?”
“Nothing. I’m not looking-there’s nothing to find. That kid wasn’t working on sensitive stuff. And you know why-V.I.? Because insurance companies don’t run to sensitive stuff. Our product, how we manufacture it, and what we charge for it are only regulated by about sixty-seven state and federal agencies.”
“Ralph, my first name is Victoria; my friends call me Vic. Never Vicki. I know insurance isn’t your high-sensitivity business-but it offers lots of luscious opportunities for embezzlement.”
A pregnant silence. “No,” he finally said, “at least-not here. We don’t have any check-signing or authorizing responsibility.”
I thought that one over. “Do you know if Ajax handles any of the Knifegrinders’ pension money?”
“The Knifegrinders?” he echoed. “What earthly connection does that set of hoodlums have with Peter Thayer?”
“I don’t know. But do you have any of their pension money?”
“I doubt it. This is an insurance company, not a mob hangout.”
“Well, could you find out for me? And could you find out if they buy any insurance from you?”
“We sell all kinds of insurance, Vic-but not much that a union would buy.”
“Why not?”
“Look,” he said, “it’s a long story. Meet me at the Cartwheel at seven thirty and I’ll give you chapter and verse on it.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “But look into it for me, anyway. Please?”
“What’s the I stand for?”
“None of your goddamn business.” I hung up. I stood for Iphigenia. My Italian mother had been devoted to Victor Emmanuel. This passion and her love of opera had led her to burden me with an insane name.
I drank a Fresca and ordered a chef’s salad. I wanted ribs and fries, but the memory of Mildred’s sagging arms stopped me. The salad didn’t do much for me. I sternly put french fries out of my mind and pondered events.
Anita McGraw had called up and-at a minimum-told her father about the murder. My bet was she’d accused him of being involved. Ergo, Peter had found out something disreputable about the Knifegrinders and had told her. He probably found it out at Ajax, but possibly from the bank. I loved the idea of pensions. The Loyal Alliance Pension Fund got lots of publicity for their handling, or mishandling, of Knife-grinder pension money, but twenty million or so could easily have been laid off on a big bank or insurance company. And pension money gave one so much scope for fraudulent activity.
Why had McGraw gone down to the apartment? Well, in the first place, he knew whatever discreditable secret Thayer had uncovered. He was afraid that Anita was probably in on it-young lovers don’t keep much to themselves. And if she called up because she’d found her boyfriend with a hole in his head, McGraw probably figured she’d be next, daughter or no daughter. So he went racing down to Hyde Park, terrified he’d find her dead body too. Instead she’d vanished. So far, so good.
Now if I could find Anita, I’d know the secret. Or if I found the secret, I could publicize it, which would take the heat off the girl and maybe persuade her to return. It sounded good.
What about Thayer, though? Why had McGraw used his card, and why had this upset him so much? Just the principle of the thing? I ought to talk to him alone.
I paid my bill and headed back to Hyde Park. The college Political Science Department was on the fourth floor of one of the older campus buildings. On a hot summer afternoon the hallways were empty. Through the windows along the stairwell I could see knots of students lying on the grass, some reading, some sleeping. A few energetic boys were playing Frisbee. An Irish setter loped around, trying to catch the disk.
A student was tending the desk in the department office. He looked about seventeen, his long blond hair hanging over his forehead, but no beard-he didn’t appear ready to grow one yet. He was wearing a T-shirt with a hole under the left arm and was sitting hunched over a book. He looked up reluctantly when I said hello but kept the book open on his lap.
I smiled pleasantly and told him I was looking for Anita McGraw. He gave me a hostile look and turned back to his book without speaking.
“Come on. What’s wrong with asking for her? She’s a student in the department, right?” He refused to look up. I felt my temper rising, but I wondered if Mallory had been here before me. “Have the police been around asking for her?”
“You ought to know,” he muttered, not looking up.
“You think just because I’m not wearing sloppy blue jeans I’m with the police?” I asked. “How about digging out a departmental course list for me?”
He didn’t move. I stepped around to his side of the desk and pulled open a drawer.
“Okay, okay,” he said huffily. He put the book spine up on the desktop. Capitalism and Freedom, by Marcuse. I might have guessed. He rummaged through the drawer and pulled out a nine-page list, typed and mimeographed, labeled “College Time Schedule: Summer 1979.”
I flipped through it to the Political Science section. Their summer schedule filled a page. Class titles included such things as “The Concept of Citizenship in Aristotle and Plato”; “Idealism from Descartes Through Berkeley”; and “Superpower Politics and the Idea of Weltverschwinden.“ Fascinating. Finally I found one that sounded more promising: “The Capitalist Standoff: Big Labor Versus Big Business.” Someone who taught a course like that would surely attract a young labor organizer like Anita McGraw. And might even know who some of her friends were. The instructor’s name was Harold Weinstein.
I asked the youth where Weinstein’s office was. He hunched further into Marcuse and pretended not to hear. I came around the desk again and sat on it facing him, and grabbed his shirt collar and jerked his face up so that I could see his eyes. “I know you think you’re doing the revolution a great service by not revealing Anita’s whereabouts to the pigs,” I said pleasantly. “Perhaps when her body is found in a car trunk you will invite me to the party where you celebrate upholding your code of honor in the face of unendurable oppression.” I shook him a bit. “Now tell me where to find Harold Weinstein’s office.”
“You don’t have to tell her anything, Howard,” someone said behind me. “And you,” he said to me, “Don’t be surprised when students equate police with fascism-I saw you roughing up that boy.”
The speaker was thin with hot brown eyes and a mop of unruly hair. He was wearing a blue work shirt tucked neatly into a pair of khaki jeans.
“Mr. Weinstein?” I said affably, letting go of Howard’s shirt. He stared at me with his hands on his hips, brooding. It looked pretty noble. “I’m not with the police-I’m a private detective. And when I ask anyone a civil question, I like to get a civil answer, not an arrogant shrug of the shoulders.