Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “Your father hired me last week to find you, and I found Peter Thayer’s body instead. Over the weekend, he told me to stop looking. I have my own guesses as to what all that was about. That’s how I got involved. I agree that you’re in a pretty tough spot. And if I blow it, neither of us will be in very good shape. You can’t hide here forever, though, and I think that I’m tough enough, quick enough, and smart enough to get things settled so that you can come out of hiding. I can’t cure the pain, and there’s more to come, but I can get you back to Chicago-or wherever else you want so that you can live openly and with dignity.”

She thought about that, nodding her head. People were walking up and down the sidewalk; I felt as if we were in a fishbowl. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk-somewhere with a little more room? ”

“There’s a park.”

“That’d be fine.” It was back along route 60 toward Milwaukee. I parked the Datsun out of sight of the road and we walked down to sit on the bank of a little stream that ran through the park, dividing it from the back wall of the Chrysler plant on the other side. The day was hot, but here in the country the air was clear and sweet.

“You said something about living with dignity,” she said, looking at the water, her mouth twisted in a harsh smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that again. I know what happened to Peter, you see. In a way, I guess you could say I killed him.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked gently.

“You say you found his body. Well, so did I. I came home at four and found him. I knew then what had happened. I lost my head and ran. I didn’t know where to go-I didn’t come here until the next day. I spent the night at Mary’s house, and then I came up here. I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t waiting for me, but I knew if I went back they’d get me.” She was starting to sob, great dry sobs that heaved her shoulders and chest. “Dignity!” she said in a hoarse voice. “Oh, Chirst! I’d settle for a night’s sleep.” I didn’t say anything, but sat watching her. After a few minutes she calmed down a bit. “How much do you know?” she asked.

“I don’t know much for certain-that I can prove, I mean. But I’ve got some guesses. What I know for certain is that your father and Yardley Masters have a deal going. I don’t know what it is, but I found a claim draft from Ajax in your apartment. I presume that Peter brought it home, so one of my guesses is that the deal has to do with claim drafts. I know that your father knows Earl Smeissen, and I know that someone wanted something very badly that they thought was in your apartment and then thought that I had taken it and put in mine. They wanted it badly enough to ransack both places. My guess is that they were looking for the claim draft, and that it was Smeissen, or one of his people, who did the ransacking.”

“Is Smeissen a killer?” she asked in her harsh, strained voice.

“Well, he’s doing pretty well these days: he doesn’t kill, himself, but he’s got muscle to do it for him.”

“So my father had him kill Peter, didn’t he?” She stared at me challengingly, her eyes hard and dry, her mouth twisted. This was the nightmare she’d been lying down with every night. No wonder she wasn’t sleeping.

“I don’t know. This is one of my guesses. Your father loves you, you know, and he’s going nuts right now. He would never knowingly have put your life in danger. And he would never knowingly have let Peter be shot. I think what happened was that Peter confronted Masters, and Masters panicked and called your dad.” I stopped. “This isn’t pretty and it’s hard to say to you. But your dad knows the kind of people who will put someone away for a price. He’s made it to the top of a rough union in a rough industry, and he’s had to know those kinds of people.”

She nodded wearily, not looking at me. “I know. I never wanted to know it in the past, but I know it now. So my-my father, gave him this Smeissen’s name. Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Yes, I’m sure Masters didn’t tell him who it was who’d crossed his path-just that someone had tumbled to the secret, and had to be eliminated. It’s the only thing that explains your father’s behavior.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, not very interested.

“ Your father came to me last Wednesday, gave me a fake name and a phony story, but he wanted me to find you. He knew about Peter’s death at that point, and he was upset because you’d run away. You called and accused him of killing Peter, didn’t you?”

She nodded again. “It was too stupid for words. I was off my head, with anger, and fear, and-and grief. Not just for Peter, you know, but for my father, and the union, and everything I’d grown up thinking was fine and-and worth fighting for.”

“Yes, that was tough.” She didn’t say anything else, so I went on. “Your father didn’t know at first what had happened. It was only a few days later that he connected Peter with Masters. Then he knew that Masters had had Peter killed. Then he knew that you were in trouble, too. And that’s when he fired me. He didn’t want me to find you because he didn’t want anyone else to find you, either.”

She looked at me again. “I hear you,” she said in that same weary voice. “I hear you, but it doesn’t make it any better. My father is the kind of man who gets people killed, and he got Peter killed.”

We sat looking at the stream for a few minutes without talking. Then she said, “I grew up on the union. My mother died when I was three. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and my dad and I-we were very close. He was a hero, I knew he was in a lot of fights, but he was a hero. I grew up knowing he had to fight because of the bosses, and that if he could lick them, America would be a better place for working men and women everywhere.” She smiled mirthlessly again. “It sounds like a child’s history book, doesn’t it? It was child’s history. As my dad moved up in the union, we had more money. The University of Chicago-that was something I’d always wanted. Seven thousand dollars a year? No problem. He bought it for me. My own car, you name it. Part of me knew that a working-class hero didn’t have that kind of money, but I pushed it aside. ‘He’s entitled,’ I’d say. And when I met Peter, I thought, why not? The Thayers have more money than my father ever dreamed of, and they never worked for it.” She paused again. “That was my rationalization, you see. And guys like Smeissen. They’re around the house-not much, but some. I just wouldn’t believe any of it. You read about some mobster in the paper, and he’s been over drinking with your father? No way.” She shook her head.

“Peter came home from the office, you see. He’d been working for Masters as a favor to his dad. He was sick of the whole money thing-that was before we fell in love, even, although I know his father blamed me for it. He wanted to do something really fine with his life-he didn’t know what. But just to be nice, he agreed to work at Ajax. I don’t think my father knew. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t talk to him about Peter much-he didn’t like me going around with the son of such an important banker. And he is kind of a Puritan-he hated my living with Peter like that. So like I said, I didn’t talk to him about Peter.

“Anyway, Peter knew who some of the big shots in the union are. You know, when you’re in love, you learn that kind of thing about each other. I knew who the chairman of the Fort Dearborn Trust is, and that’s not the kind of thing I know as a rule.”

The story was starting to come easily now. I didn’t say anything, just made myself part of the landscape that Anita was talking to.