“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?”
“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 Sun-Times.
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 are you?”
“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…”