Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

“He could have come back for them later. Olin called me on Fridayhe wanted me to know he was going to make his story public now, while he was still alive. I asked-begged him over the phone-to tell me what was in those papers, but he wouldn’t, not on the phone. He was obsessed about phone taps, about the liberal media listening in on his conversations. So I said I’d fly out. I was going to Camp David with the president for the weekend, but I told him I’d fly out first thing Tuesday. But Tuesday Olin was dead.”

“Camp David with the president. A rarefied life, augmented by a little housebreaking. But of course, there’s a precedent for that, isn’t theredidn’t the Watergate burglars pal around at Camp David on the odd weekend? Maybe you got away early on Monday, though, and took an evening flight into O’Hare.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you say that?”

“Taverner had an unexpected visitor Monday night. It wouldn’t have been you, would it, trying to argue him out of going public, or knocking him off prematurely so you could collect his-“

He got to his feet. “I’ve had as much as I can stand of your innuendos. I wasn’t in Chicago on Monday, and it’s your word against mine that I was here on Thursday.”

“And the FBI’s,” I said lightly. “I think your pals in the justice Department are listening in on my conversations. At least, they sent in a couple of agents who knew how to bypass my alarm system and my locks. I don’t know whether they installed voice-activated bugs, but they might haveyou should ask them if they have a recording of our conversation today.”

He turned white, then red. “You taped this conversation without telling me?”

“No, Bayard. Do listen to what people are really saying to you. I’m letting you know that the attorney general whose methods you applaud may be taping my conversations. On account of they think I know where Ben jamin Sadawi is. Or because Marcus Whitby knew what was in Olin Taverner’s files and they’re hoping I’ll find out. Or because they care passionately about what the average citizen is thinking and doing. Take your pick.”

His eyes darted around the room, assessing where a bug could be placed. Like me, he seemed to find the possibilities both endless and daunting. “And you’re one of the people my mother has let into my daughter’s life. By God, Catherine is going back to Washington with me.”

“That should be an interesting conversation,” I said dryly. “Out of curiosity, why did you leave Catherine with her grandmother in the first place?” “It was easier,” he snapped. “When my wife died, I let Renee take over Catherine’s care. I was too shattered to look after a toddler and then I was traveling a great deal. I thought-I assumed that Catherine would see through Renee and Calvin’s political hypocrisy just as I had, and meanwhile she got the advantages of New Solway and that stable environment. But I should have known, easier is never better. And, by God, now I’ll do it the hard way.”

He stood so roughly that my desk chair rolled backward and cracked into the coffee table. “And the first change I’m making is that I forbid you

to talk to my daughter again. I will not have you continuing to involve her with terrorists.”

“I didn’t involve her with terrorists-I met her the same way I met you-by interrupting her housebreaking. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t let you hang out with her-I wouldn’t want her thinking that it’s okay to break the law if you’re rich and powerful.”

He glared at me, his square angry face looking very like Renee.

“You probably want to get back to the hospital.” I got up. “When I visit Catherine, I won’t mention our chat. I don’t pledge my honor, because we both know I’m a liberal and don’t have any, but I do care about disillusioning children’s belief in their parents. For whatever reason, your daughter seems fond of you.”

“I told you to stay away from my daughter, and I mean it.” He stalked from office.

I followed him down the hall to the front door. “You might notice the strong resemblance between Catherine and the portrait of Calvin’s mother that hangs over your big staircase in New Solway. Have you ever considered DNA testing? That could clear up your worries about your paternity.”

He didn’t thank me for my helpful advice, but walked around his BMW, looking for any damage. Elton crossed the street to offer him StreetWise, but Bayard ignored him and drove off with a great thrust of his afterburners.

I went back into my office. My anger had subsided, but Edwards Bayard’s turbulent emotions hung heavy in the room.

I wished I did have a tape recording of the conversation. I tried to reconstruct it, especially the letter Laura Taverner Drummond had written Calvin. “Theft against her household,” that could mean anything, from sexual to financial plundering.

I should have mastered my own temper better: I didn’t get as much out of the interview as I would have if I’d kept my cool. Edwards interpreted the letter as proof that Calvin had been stealing from the Grahams, or at least from the Drummond-Graham household. And then Olin Taverner said he was surprised that Laura Drummond cared about Negroes. Had Calvin stolen from some black servant in the Drummond family?

Augustus Llewellyn was the only African-American whose name had

cropped up in connection with Bayard’s. Just in case… I logged on to Nexis and looked up Llewellyn.

Like Bayard Publishing, Llewellyn was a closely held corporation, so I couldn’t find much on their finances. Besides T-square, they published four other magazines, including one for teens, two for women and a general news magazine. Llewellyn also owned the license for an AM radio station that featured jazz and gospel, an FM station that played rap and hip-hop and a couple of cable channels. I couldn’t see how they were financed or what their debt load was.

Personal data were easier to gather. Augustus Llewellyn was in his seventies, lived in a big home, some six thousand square feet, in Lake Forest. He had one getaway place in Jamaica, and an apartment in Paris on rue Georges V He was married, had three children and seven grandchildren. His daughter Janice managed the two women’s magazines, while a grandson worked at the AM radio station. Llewellyn himself still came to work every day. He was a big Republican Party donor, despite having been treated as a chauffeur by GOP operatives when he drove his Mercedes sedan to a recent fund-raiser at the opera house. He was a passionate sailor. A photograph showed a slender dapper man in tennis whites, carrying himself erect with no sign of aging except his grizzled hair.

From an old interview with him in T-Square, I learned that Llewellyn had gone to Northwestern University in the forties, where he’d majored in journalism. When he found it impossible to get the kind of job his white fellow graduates were finding, he’d started T-square in his basement while he worked days as a mail clerk at the old Daily News. In the early days, he and his wife, June, carried magazines to stores on the black South Side, ran and repaired a handpress and wrote all the copy for each issue.

In 1947, he was able to pay a photographer and a part-time staffer. In 1949, he found financing to set up a real piublishing operation. By 1953, he was making enough money to start Mero for women and to buy his FM and AM licenses. The radio stations began to make real money; he started his other publications in the early sixties, about the time he built his cube on west Erie Street.

I whistled “If you miss me at the back of the bus” under my breath. The

information was all interesting, but didn’t tell me whether Llewellyn’s family had ever worked for Laura Drummond in the dim past. I flipped back to the business reports and read them in more detail. And there, buried in the fine print on the third screen, was a fascinating little factoid. Registered agent for the Llewellyn Group: Lebold, Arnoff, attorneys with addresses in Oak Brook and on LaSalle Street.