Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

I looked through the papers, but they were impersonal-flyers urging people to boycott nonunion-made sheets, some Marxist literature, and the massive number of notebooks and term papers to be expected in a student apartment. I found a couple of recent pay stubs made out to Peter Thayer from the Ajax Insurance Company stuffed in one drawer. Clearly the boy had had a summer job. I balanced them on my hand for a minute, then pushed them into my back jeans pocket. Wedged behind them were some other papers, including a voter registration card with a Winnetka address on it. I took that, too. You never know what may come in handy. I picked up the photograph and left the apartment.

Once outside I took some gulping breaths of the ozone-laden air. I never realized it could smell so good. I walked back to the shopping center and called the twenty-first police district. My dad had been dead for ten years, but I still knew the number by heart.

“Homicide, Drucker speaking,” growled a voice.

“There’s a dead body at Fifty-four sixty-two South Harper, apartment three,” I said.

“Who are you?” he snapped.

“Fifty-four sixty-two South Harper, apartment three,” I repeated. “Got that?” I hung up.

I went back to my car and left the scene. The cops might be all over me later for leaving, but right now I needed to sort some things out. I made it home in twenty-one minutes and took a long shower, trying to wash the sight of Peter Thayer’s head from my mind. I put on white linen slacks and a black silk shirt-clean, elegant clothes to center me squarely in the world of the living. I pulled the assortment of stolen papers from my back jeans pocket and put them and the photograph into a big shoulder bag. I headed back downtown to my office, ensconced my evidence in my wall safe, then checked in with my answering service. There were no messages, so I tried the number Thayer had given me. I rang three times and a woman’s voice answered: “The number you have dialed-674-9133-is not in service at this time. Please check your number and dial again.” That monotonous voice destroyed whatever faith I still had in the identity of my last night’s visitor. I was certain he was not John Thayer. Who was he, then, and why had he wanted me to find that body? And why had he brought the girl into it, then given her a phony name?

With an unidentified client and an identified corpse, I’d been wondering what my job was supposed to be-fall girl for finding the body, no doubt. Still… Ms. McGraw had not been seen for several days. My client might just have wanted me to find the body, but I had a strong curiosity about the girl.

My job did not seem to include breaking the news of Peter’s death to his father, if his father didn’t already know. But before I completely wrote off last night’s visitor as John Thayer, I should get his picture. “Clear as you go” has ever been my motto. I pulled on my lower lip for a while in an agony of thought and finally realized where I could get a picture of the man with a minimum of fuss and bother-and with no one knowing I was getting it.

I locked the office and walked across the Loop to Monroe and La Salle. The Fort Dearborn Trust occupied four massive buildings, one on each corner of the intersection. I picked the one with gold lettering over the door, and asked the guard for the PR department.

“Thirty-second floor,” he mumbled. “You got an appointment?” I smiled seraphically and said I did and sailed up thirty-two stories while he went back to chewing his cigar butt.

PR receptionists are always trim, well-lacquered, and dressed in the extreme of fashion. This one’s form-fitting lavender jumpsuit was probably the most outlandish costume in the bank. She gave me a plastic smile and graciously tendered a copy of the most recent annual report. I stuck on my own plastic smile and went back to the elevator, nodded beneficently to the guard, and sauntered out.

My stomach still felt a little jumpy, so I took the report over to Rosie’s Deli to read over ice cream and coffee. John L. Thayer, Executive Vice-President, Trust Division, was pictured prominently on the inside cover with some other big-wigs. He was Jean, tanned, and dressed in banker’s gray, and I did not have to see him under a neon light to know that he bore no resemblance to my last night’s visitor.

I pulled some more on my lip. The police would be interviewing all the neighbors. One clue I had that they didn’t because I had taken it with me, was the boy’s pay stubs. Ajax Insurance had its national headquarters in the Loop, not far from where I was now. It was three in the afternoon, not too late for business calls.

Ajax occupied all sixty floors of a modern glass-and-steel skyscraper. I’d always considered it one of the ugliest buldings downtown from the outside. The lower lobby was drab, and nothing about the interior made me want to reverse my first impression. The guard here was more aggressive than the one at the bank, and refused to let me in without a security pass. I told him I had an appointment with Peter Thayer and asked what floor he was on.

“Not so fast, lady,” he snarled. “We call up, and if the gentleman is here, he’ll authorize you.”

“Authorize me? You mean he’ll authorize my entry. He doesn’t have any authority over my existence.”

The guard stomped over to his booth and called up. The news that Mr. Thayer wasn’t in today didn’t surprise me. I demanded to talk to someone in his office. I was tired of being feminine and conciliatory, and made myself menacing enough that I was allowed to speak to a secretary.

“This is V. I. Warshawski,” I said crisply. “Mr. Thayer is expecting me.”

The soft female voice at the other end apologized, but “Mr. Thayer hasn’t been in all week. We’ve even tried calling him at home, but no one answers.”

“Then I think I’d better talk to someone else in your office.” I kept my voice hard. She wanted to know what my business was.

“I’m a detective,” I said. “Something rotten’s going on which young Thayer wanted to talk to me about. If he’s not in, I’ll talk to someone else who knows his job.” It sounded pretty thin to me, but she put me on hold and went off to consult someone. Five minutes later, the guard still glaring at me and fingering his gun, the soft-voiced female came back on the line, rather breathless. Mr. Masters, the Claim Department vice-president, would talk to me.

The guard hated letting me go up-he even called back up to Ms. Softy, in hopes I was lying. But I finally made it to the fortieth floor. Once off the elevator, my feet sank deep into green pile. I made my way through it to a reception area at the south end of the hall. A bored receptionist left her novel and shunted me to the soft-voiced young woman, seated at a teak desk with a typewriter to one side. She in turn ushered me in to see Masters.

Masters had an office big enough for the Bears to work out in, with a magnificent view of the lake. His face had the well-filled, faintly pink look a certain type of successful businessman takes on after forty-five, and he beamed at me above a well-cut gray summer suit. “Hold my calls, Ellen,” he said to the secretary as she walked out.

I gave him my card as we exchanged firm handshakes.

“Now what was it you wanted, Miss-ah-?” He smiled patronizingly.

“Warshawski. I want to see Peter Thayer, Mr. Masters. But as he’s apparently not in and you’ve agreed to see me, I’d like to know why the boy felt he needed a private detective.”

“I really couldn’t tell you that, Miss-ah-do you mind if I call you-” He looked at the card. “What does the V stand for?”

“My first name, Mr. Masters. Maybe you can tell me what Mr. Thayer does here.”

“He’s my assistant,” Masters obliged genially. “Jack Thayer is a good friend of mine, and when his boy-who’s a student at the University of Chicago-needed summer work, I was glad to help out.” He adjusted his features to look sorrowful. “Certainly if the boy is in the kind of trouble that it takes a detective to solve, I think I should know about it.”