I pulled open my PalmPilot to get the Bayard apartment number when I suddenly realized I hadn’t called Mr. Contreras. When I reached him, my neighbor had already been on the phone to Freeman Carter to warn him that I’d disappeared. The old man’s relief at hearing from me slid rapidly into a prolonged scolding. I cut him short so I could get to Freeman Carter before he spent billable hours trying to find me in a holding cell.
It was seven-thirty; Freeman was at home. “I’m glad you’re still at large, Vic. Your neighbor has been anxious enough to phone me three times. For God’s sake, if you’re not in trouble, remember to check in with him on time-once he starts, he goes on for a year or two before he stops.” “Yeah, sorry: I was in a meeting with Augustus Llewellyn, trying to figure out what all these rich important people did fifty years ago that they don’t want anyone to know about today. While I’ve got you on the phone, did Harriet Whitby talk to you about getting her brother’s tox screen from the county?”
“The tox screen. Right. Callie told me it came in just as we were shutting down for the day. Neither of us have read it, but I’ll have her messenger over a copy first thing in the morning. I’m going to dinner. Good night.”
People kept hanging up on me abruptly, or shoving me out of their homes and offices, as if talking to me wasn’t the pleasure it should be. Even Lotty… and Morrell, who should have been here to hold me close and tell me I was a good detective and a good person, where was he?
As if to underscore that I was a pariah these days, a concierge came over and asked if I was waiting for someone in the hotel; if not, could I go elsewhere to use my phone? Rage rose in me-useless, since I had no choice except to leave. On my way through the revolving door, I caught sight of myself in a lobby mirror: my face was haggard from lack of sleep, my hair wild from running across the Loop this afternoon. No wonder the concierge wanted me to leave. And no wonder Janice Llewellyn’s first instinct had been to send for the guard-I looked more like the people in the shanties underneath the avenue than those passing me on top of it now.
I felt more like them, too, confused, tired, cold. My tired brain went round and round like a hamster on a wheel. At the top, yes, it was clear that Whitby had been killed. At the bottom, no, he’d gone into the pond on his own. How had Whitby… why wouldn’t Benji… why had Llewellyn said… why had Darraugh… Renee Bayard… I was too tired to make decisions, too tired to do anything but doggedly plow in the direction I’d already started.
Under the dim bulb of a streetlight, I picked the Bayards’ apartment number out of my PaImPilot and typed it into my cell phone. Yes, Elsbetta told me, Miss Catherine had come home today, but she was resting now and couldn’t be disturbed. Could I call back later this evening? No, Mrs. Renee had given strict orders.
A request for Mrs. Renee brought the Wabash Cannonball to the phone. She wanted to know if I had located the missing Egyptian boy; if I hadn’t, there wasn’t much point in our talking. And, no, I couldn’t see Catherine. I had caused enough disturbance in her granddaughter’s life; she didn’t want me bothering her again.
“I’m not the one who summoned Sheriff Salvi to Larchmont Hall Friday night,” I said. “I was just a bystander, remember, caught in the crossfire you were generating.”
“You’re hardly a bystander, Ms. Warshawski. I’d call you more of an instigator. Thanks to you, I had an offensive call from Geraldine Graham, and I just got off the phone with Augustus Llewellyn, who says you all but accused him of orchestrating his own journalist’s death.”
Shivering under a streetlamp wasn’t the best way to carry on this conversation. “Did he, now. That’s quite telling, all the old crowd from Flora’s rallying around. What I really wanted to know is why it was such a shameful thing to give money to ComThought’s legal defense fund that neither Llewellyn nor Ms. Graham will discuss it. I gather your husband persuaded them to make their donations. Why should they be afraid to tell me?”
“Taverner and Bushnell’s most despicable legacy was to make people afraid to acknowledge they had ever supported progressive causes. Even successful, rich people, or perhaps most especially successful, rich people. Augustus actually wanted to know what I had told you about ComThought. I had to remind him all that happened while I was still in high school.”
The torn muscle in my shoulder began to ache from cold. “Did you know that Armand Pelletier left an unpublished manuscript in his papers describing where ComThought met, and who took part in the discussions? According to him, Mr. Bayard was prominently involved in those conversations at Flora’s-I thought he might have told you about it, especially since you were helping him when he was facing down Bushnell’s interrogation.”
“Armand was a sad case, a gifted man who frittered away his talents on drink, and on blaming others for his problems. He never forgave Calvin for the poor sales of his book Bleak Land, and he never forgave me for suggesting to Calvin that we not publish it. Armand had served prison time for his beliefs and Calvin felt we owed it to him to help him out. My husband tried to help a number of the ComThought people in ways like that, to show Olin and Walker Bushnell he didn’t care about their vulgar blacklist. That’s quite different from being the driving force behind an avowedly Communist group, which Olin and Congressman Bushnell hoped to pin on Calvin. I wouldn’t pay much attention to Armand’s unpublished manuscripts; he was a bitter man with an ax to grind. All of that past is long dead. I think it’s time for you to leave it to bury itself”
“Is that why Ms. Graham called you? To complain that I was resurrecting the past?”
Renee paused briefly. “I don’t know which of the two of you is more intrusive. She wanted to inquire after Calvin’s health, as if I didn’t know how to care for him. An impertinence I wouldn’t have received if you hadn’t first invaded my privacy in New Solway, and then discussed Mr. Bayard with Geraldine. Unless you have something useful to contribute, Ms. Warshawski, don’t bother my family further. You may not be an instigator, but you’re certainly not a bystander: you generate turmoil.”
When she cut the connection, I had an impulse to run up to Banks Street and hurl a bazooka rocket through her window, something that would make an explosion big enough to match my impotent fury. Instead I stomped over to Michigan and flagged a taxi to my car. Where I found yet another ticket. One more and I’d get booted. I kicked a piece of concrete savagely enough to hurt my toes. Damn it all, anyway.
At home, soaking in a hot bath, I tried to make sense of all the conversations I’d had today. Taverner’s secret was about sex, the complicated relations among Calvin and Geraldine, MacKenzie Graham and Laura Drummond. But it was also about money. There was the money Geraldine had given Calvin’s pet charity, presumably the Committee for Social Thought’s legal fund. And the money Calvin had loaned Llewellyn. Sex and money. They led to murder in the heat of the moment, but the heat from these moments surely had cooled in the last fifty years.
Still, something about that past was upsetting people so much they kept menacing me. Darraugh called it quicksand, Llewellyn a pond filled with some kind of rot. Darraugh himself had threatened me when he realized