Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

I kicked a stone in irritation. “Damn it all! I’d better run. Look, just read the thing, will you-I’ll call you tonight.”

“Yeah, I’ll read the blessed book, and I’ll make you a copy of it. Now

go, unless these are clients you want to blow off.” Amy gave me a push between my shoulder blades.

I sprinted past the dorms stuffed behind the library to Fifty-fifth Street, where I’d left my car. My clients were in the west Loop, on Wacker Drive, which the city had completely dismembered; by the time I found parking and ran back to their building, I was over twenty minutes late. Not good for my professional image. Worse, I had forgotten to put a pen in my bag and had to borrow one from the client. Worse still, I had trouble keeping my mind on their problem, which wasn’t fair, since they pay their bills on time. As I was looking at my notes in the elevator down to the ground floor, I saw to my embarrassment that I’d written “Toffee Noble” on my legal pad three or four times, like a schoolgirl with a crush.

The reports I’d read on Llewellyn said he still came to work every dayunless he was in Jamaica or Paris. I looked at my watch. It was five-thirty, and the lobby was thick with departing office workers. But I was only a ten minute walk across the river from Llewellyn’s building, and it was possible that he stayed late. I stuffed my notes into my bag and started north.

When I got to Erie Street, my optimism was rewarded: a navy Bentley with a license reading “T-SQUARE” was parked in front of the building. A uniformed chauffeur sat inside with the Sun-Times propped open on the steering wheel. That meant the great man was still in his office.

As I’d trotted up Franklin Street, I tried to figure out how to get past the hostile receptionist in the lobby. It was one thing to crawl through a culvert to get into Anodyne Park, but more difficult to get into an office building where they don’t want to see you. I still hadn’t come up with a good idea when I saw Jason Tompkin about half a block away on Erie. I broke into a run again. When I caught up with him at the light on Wells, I tapped him on the arm and called his name.

He turned, brows raised, then gave his cocky grin. “The lady detective. Well, well. Have you come to arrest me for killing Marc?”

“Did you kill him? That would be a help. I could stop trying to ask people questions that they don’t want to answer.”

“I think a gal like you would develop a pretty thick skin by now. No one

wants to answer a dick’s questions. Not even me.” The grin was still in place, but it pushed me back as effectively as a stiff arm.

“Yeah, well, even a rhinoceros starts showing wear and tear if it’s hit by enough big sticks. I don’t imagine you killed Marc Whitby, but maybe I’ve been barking up the wrong tree all week; maybe you got tired of his ambition and his standoffishness, got him drunk, and drove him to a pond to drown him.”

He stopped smiling. “I didn’t kill the brother. I just didn’t join in the choir of the blessed shouting `Hallelujah’ every time someone said his name.”

“If you do me a favor, I won’t ask you any more questions, or even expect you to shout `Hallelujah’ over Marc’s name. I want to see Mr. Llewellyn. Without having to sweet-talk my way past your receptionistshe’s one of the people who’s whacked at my rhino hide recently.”

“Ah, yes, the dulcet Shantel. I can’t get you in to Mr. Llewellyn. He knows all his staff, of course, because he owns us, and, anyway, it’s not like we’re Time, Inc. At the Christmas party or in the elevator, when our paths cross, he greets me by name: he says, `How are you today, Mr. Thompson. That was a nice piece you did for the last issue, a very fine piece of writing indeed.’ One year he called me Mr. Pumpkin.”

I laughed. “I’ll take my chances once I’m in the building. If he hasn’t left for the day.”

“And in return?”

“If you lose your dog, I’ll find it for you, no charge.”

“Dang. You must’ve known I have a cat.” He turned around and led me back to the Llewellyn building.

The chauffeur was still reading the Sun-Times, a good sign since it meant he didn’t expect to see the boss for a bit. Inside the lobby, the hostile receptionist was gone, replaced by a uniformed guard, who asked for my ID but didn’t make any objection to J.T taking me up in the elevator. After all, the place published magazines. Writers are always bringing in people to interview.

On the sixth floor, I got J.T. to let me use his computer to type up a note for Llewellyn. “Do you know that Marcus Whitby tried to see you before he died? He had read Armand Pelletier’s unpublished memoirs about the group that used to get together at Flora’s on the West Side. He went to see Olin Taverner after he read the memoir. The forties must have been heady days for you. Can we discuss them?”

J.T. kept shifting from foot to foot as we waited for my note to come out of the community printer. He quickly deleted my file from his machine, told me Llewellyn’s office was on the eighth floor and fled down the hall while I was stapling a business card to my note. By the time I reached the elevator bank, J.T. had disappeared.

When the elevator opened on the eighth floor, a woman about my own age was standing on the other side. Age was all that we had in common: the makeup on her cinammon skin was fresh but subtle, her hair was perfectly combed, her nails recently manicured. The wool in her rust-colored suit was that smooth soft weave that doesn’t make it into the stores where people like me shop. She looked me up and down as if she could see the tear in the lining of my own jacket before asking if I needed help.

“I’m here to see Mr. Augustus Llewellyn.” “And you have an appointment?”

“I know you’re not his secretary, and this is a confidential matter.” The name of the daughter who ran Llewellyn’s two women’s magazines came to me. “I suppose you’re Ms. Janice Llewellyn?”

She didn’t smile back. “Mr. Llewellyn is leaving for the day. If you don’t have an appointment and you want to-talk to him, you can call his secretary in the morning.”

Just at that minute, a door at the end of the hall opened, and Llewellyn came out in person, accompanied by a couple of young men and an older woman.

Janice called out, “Daddy, go back into your office for a minute, why don’t you. I’m going to get this person out of the building.”

In the second that everyone stood frozen, trying to absorb the situation at the elevator, I walked up the hall and handed Llewellyn my note. He took it reflexively, but the two young men formed a barrier between him and me and ushered him back into his executive offices, along with the older woman. As soon as they had the old man safely inside, one of the young men reappeared and joined Janice and me by the elevators.

He seized my arm and said to Janice, “You go in with Daddy and call down to Ricky in the lobby; I’ll get her out of the building.”

He had the stocky build of a middle linebacker. I knew I couldn’t really fight him, but I never like being grabbed. And I was tired of being stiffed and pushed around by everyone I wanted to talk to. I moved into the circle of his arm and elbowed him sharply in the ribs. He cried out and dropped my arm.

“I’ll leave if your daddy doesn’t want to see me,” I said, moving away from him. “But you don’t need to help me.”

Janice had her cell phone out. She was starting a firm conversation with the lobby guard, demanding to know how I had come to be in the building without permission, when the door to the executive offices opened again. The other brother appeared. In a voice overflowing with astonishment and indignation, he announced that “Daddy” wanted to talk to me.