Indemnity Only

12

Pub Crawl

The eager bureaucrats at City Hall took longer than I expected with forms, fees, incomprehensible directions, and anger at being asked to repeat them. I was already running late, but I decided to stop at my lawyer’s office to drop off a Xerox of the claim draft I’d found in Peter Thayer’s apartment. He was a dry, imperturbable man, and accepted without a blink my instructions to give the draft to Murray Ryerson should anything happen to me in the next few days.

By the time I got to Fiorella’s, a pleasant restaurant whose outdoor tables overlooked the Chicago River, Murray was already finishing his second beer. He was a big man who looked like a red-haired Elliott Gould, and he waved a hand at me lazily when he saw me coming.

A high-masted sailboat was floating past. “You know, they’re going to raise every drawbridge along here for that one boat. Hell of a system, isn’t it,” he said as I came up.

“Oh, there’s something appealing about a little boat being able to stop all the traffic on Michigan Avenue. Unless, of course, the bridge gets stuck up just when you need to cross the river.” This was an all-too-frequent happening: motorists had no choice but to sit and boil quietly while they waited. “Has there ever been a murder when one of these bridges is stuck-someone getting too angry and shooting the bridge tender or something?”

“Not yet,” Murray said. “If it happens, I’ll be on the spot to interview you… What are you drinking?”

I don’t like beer that well; I ordered a white wine.

“Got your pix for you.” Murray tossed a folder over to me. “We had a lot of choice on McGraw, but only dug one up for Masters-he’s receiving some civic award out in Winnetka-they never ran the shot but it’s a pretty good three-quarter view. I got you a couple of copies.”

“Thanks,” I said, opening the folder. The one of Masters was good. He was shaking hands with the Illinois president of the Boy Scouts of America. At his right was a solemn-faced youth in uniform who apparently was his son. The picture was two years old.

Murray had brought me several of McGraw, one outside a federal courtroom where he was walking pugnaciously in front of a trio of Treasury men. Another, taken under happier circumstances, showed him at the gala celebration when he was first elected president of the Knifegrinders nine years ago. The best for my purposes, though, was a close-up, taken apparently without his knowledge. His face was relaxed, but concentrating.

I held it out toward Murray. “This is great. Where was it taken?”

Murray smiled. “Senate hearings on racketeering and the unions.”

No wonder he looked so thoughtful.

A waiter came by for our order. I asked for mostaccioli; Murray chose spaghetti with meatballs. I was going to have to start running again, sore muscles or not, with all the starch I was eating lately.

“Now, V. I. Warshawski, most beautiful detective in Chicago, what gives with these pictures,” Murray said, clasping his hands together on the table and leaning over them toward me. “I recall seeing that dead young Peter Thayer worked for Ajax, in fact for Mr. Masters, an old family friend. Also, somewhere in the thousands of lines that have been churned out since he died, I recall reading that his girl friend, the lovely and dedicated Anita McGraw, was the daughter of well-known union leader Andrew McGraw. Now you want pictures of both of them. Is it possible that you are suggesting they colluded in the death of young Thayer, and possibly his father as well?”

I looked at him seriously. “It was like this, Murray: McGraw has what amounts to a psychopathic hatred of capitalist bosses. When he realized that his pure young daughter, who had always been protected from any contact with management, was seriously considering marrying not just a boss, but the son of one of Chicago’s wealthiest businessmen, he decided the only thing to do was to have the young man put six feet underground., His psychosis is such that he decided to have John Thayer eliminated as well, just for-”

“Spare me the rest,” Murray said. “I can spell it out for myself. Is either McGraw or Masters your client?”

“You’d better be buying this lunch, Murray-it is definitely a business expense.”

The waiter brought our food, slapping it down in the hurried, careless way that is the hallmark of business restaurants at lunch. I snatched the pictures back just in time to save them from spaghetti sauce and started sprinkling cheese on my pasta: I love it really cheesy.

“Do you have a client?” he asked, spearing a meatball.

“Yes, I do.”

“But you won’t tell me who it is?” I smiled and nodded agreement.

“You buy Mackenzie as Thayer Junior’s murderer?” Murray asked.

“I haven’t talked to the man. But one does have to wonder who killed Thayer Senior if Mackenzie killed the son. I don’t like the thought of two people in the same family killed in the same week for totally unconnected reasons by unconnected people: laws of chance are against that,” I answered. “What about you?”

He gave a big Elliot Gould smile. “You know, I talked to Lieutenant Mallory after the case first broke, and he didn’t say anything about robbery, either of the boy or of the apartment. Now, you found the body, didn’t you? Well, did the apartment look ransacked?”

“I couldn’t really tell if anything had been taken-I didn’t know what was supposed to be there.”

“By the way, what took you down there in the first place?” he asked casually.

“Nostalgia, Murray-I used to go to school down there and I got an itch to see what the old place looked like.”

Murray laughed. “Okay, Vic, you win-can’t fault me for trying though, can you?”

I laughed too. I didn’t mind. I finished my pasta-no child had ever died in India because of my inhumane failure to clean my plate.

“ If I find out anything you might be interested in, I’ll let you know,” I said.

Murray asked me when I thought the Cubs would break this year. They were looking scrappy right now-two and a half games out.

“You know, Murray, I am a person with very few illusions about life. I like to have the Cubs as one of them.” I stirred my coffee. “But I’d guess the second week in August. What about you?”

“Well, this is the third week in July. I give them ten more games. Martin and Buckner can’t carry that team.”

I agreed sadly. We finished lunch on baseball and split the check when it came.

“There is one thing, Murray.”

He looked at me intently. I almost laughed, the change in his whole posture had been so complete-he really looked like a bloodhound on the trail, now.

“I have what I think is a clue. I don’t know what it means, or why it is a clue. But I’ve left a copy of it with my attorney. If I should be bumped off, or put out of action for any length of time, he has instructions to give it to you.”

“What is it?” Murray asked.

“You ought to be a detective, Murray-you ask as many questions and you’re just as hot when you’re on the trail. One thing I will say-Earl Smeissen’s hovering around this case. He gave me this beautiful black eye which you’ve been too gentlemanly to mention. It wouldn’t be totally out of the question for my body to come floating down the Chicago River-you might look out your office window every hour or so to see.”

Murray didn’t look surprised. “You already knew that?” I asked.

He grinned. “You know who arrested Donald Mackenzie?”

“Yes, Frank Carlson.”

“And whose boy is Carlson?” he asked.

“Henry Vespucci.”

“And do you know who’s been covering Vespucci’s back all these years?”

I thought about it. “Tim Sullivan?” I guessed.

“The lady wins a Kewpie doll,” Murray said. “Since you know that much, I’ll tell you who Sullivan spent Christmas in Florida with last year.

“Oh, Christ! Not Earl.”

Murray laughed. “Yes. Earl Smeissen himself. If you’re playing around with that crowd, you’d better be very, very careful.”

I got up and stuck the folder in my shoulder bag. “Thanks, Murray, you’re not the first one to tell me so. Thanks for the pictures. I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”

As I climbed over the barrier separating the restaurant from the sidewalk, I could hear Murray yelling a question behind me. He came pounding up to me just as I reached the top of the stairs leading from the river level to Michigan Avenue. “I want to know what it was you gave your lawyer,” he panted.

I grinned. “So long, Murray,” I said, and boarded a Michigan Avenue bus.

I had a plan that was really a stab in the dark more than anything else. I was assuming that McGraw and Masters worked together. And I was hoping they met at some point. They could handle everything over the phone or by mail. But McGraw might be wary of federal wiretaps and mail interception. He might prefer to do business in person. So say they met from time to time. Why not in a bar? And if in a bar, why not one near to one or the other of their offices? Of course, it was possible that they met as far from anyplace connected to either of them as they could. But my whole plan was based on a series of shots in the dark. I didn’t have the resources to comb the whole city, so I’d just have to add one more assumption to my agenda, and hope that if they met, and if they met in a bar, they did so near where they worked. My plan might not net me anything, but it was all I could think of. I was pinning more hope on what I might learn about Anita from the radical women’s group tomorrow night; in the meantime I needed to keep busy.

Ajax’s glass-and-steel high-rise was on Michigan Avenue at Adams. In the Loop, Michigan is the easternmost street. The Art Institute is across the street, and then Grant Park goes down to the lake in a series of pleasant fountains and gardens. I decided to take the Fort Dearborn Trust on La Salle Street as my western border, and to work from Van Buren, two blocks south of Ajax, up to Washington, three blocks north. A purely arbitrary decision, but the bars in that area would keep me busy for some time; I could expand it in desperation if that was necessary.

I rode my bus south past the Art Institute to Van Buren and got off. I felt very small walking between the high-rises when I thought of the vast terrritory I had to cover. I wondered how much I might have to drink to get responses from the myriad bartenders. There probably is a better way to do this, I thought, but this was the only way that occurred to me. I had to work with what I could come up with-no Peter Wimsey at home thinking of the perfect logical answer for me.

I squared my shoulders and walked half a block along Van Buren and went into the Spot, the first bar I came to. I’d debated about an elaborate cover story, and finally decided that something approximating the truth was best.

The Spot was a dark, narrow bar built like a railway caboose. Booths lined the west wall and a long bar ran the length of the east, leaving just enough room for the stout, bleached waitress who had to tend to orders in the booths.

I sat up at the ban The bartender was cleaning glasses. Most of the luncheon trade had left; only a few diehard drinkers were sitting farther down from me. A couple of women were finishing hamburgers and daiquiris in one of the booths. The bartender continued his work methodically until the last glass was rinsed before coming down to take my order. I stared ahead with the air of a woman in no particular hurry.

Beer is not my usual drink, but it was probably the best thing to order on an all-day pub crawl. It wouldn’t make me drunk. Or at least not as quickly as wine or liquor.

“I’d like a draft, “I said.

He went to his spigots and filled a glass with pale yellow and foam. When he brought it back to me, I pulled out my folder. “You ever seen these two guys come in here?” I asked.

He gave me a sour look. “What are you, a cop or something?”

“Yes,” I said. “Have you ever seen these two guys in here together?”

“I’d better get the boss on this one,” he said. Raising his voice, he called “Herman!” and a heavy man in a polyester suit got up from the booth at the far end of the room. I hadn’t noticed him when I came in, but now I saw that another waitress was sitting in the booth. The two were sharing a late lunch after the hectic noon-hour rush.

The heavy man joined the bartender behind the bar.

“What’s up, Luke?”

Luke jerked his head toward me. “Lady’s got a question.” He went back to his glasses, stacking them in careful pyramids on either side of the cash register. Herman came down toward me. His heavyset face looked tough but not mean. “What do you want, ma’am?”

I pulled my photos out again. “I’m trying to find out if these two men have ever been in here together,” I said in a neutral voice.

“You got a legal reason for asking?”

I pulled my P.I. license from my handbag. “I’m a private investigator. There’s a grand jury investigation and there’s some question of collusion between a witness and a juror.” I showed him the ID.

He looked at the ID briefly, grunted, and tossed it back to me. “Yeah, I see you’re a private investigator, all right. But I don’t know about this grand jury story. I know this guy.” He tapped Masters’s picture. “He works up at Ajax. Doesn’t come in here often, maybe three times a year, but he’s been doing it as long as I’ve owned the place.”

I didn’t say anything, but took a swallow of beer. Anything tastes good when your throat is dry from embarrassment.

“Tell you for free, though, this other fellow’s never been in here. At least not when I’ve been here.” He gave a shout of laughter and reached across the bar to pat my cheek. “That’s okay, cookie, I won’t spoil your story for you.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly. “What do I owe you for the beer?”

“On the house.” He gave another snort of laughter and rolled back down the aisle to his unfinished lunch. I took another swallow of the thin beer. Then I put a dollar on the counter for Luke and walked slowly out of the bar.

I walked on down Van Buren past Sears’s main Chicago store. A lot of short-order food places were on the other side, but I had to go another block to find another bar. The bartender looked blankly at the photos and called the waitress over. She looked at both of them doubtfully, and then picked up McGraw’s. “He looks kind of familiar,” she said. “Is he on TV or something?” I said no, but had she ever seen him in the bar. She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t swear to it. What about Masters? She didn’t think so, but a lot of businessmen came in there, and all men with gray hair and business suits ran together in her mind after a while. I put two singles on the counter, one for her and one for the bartender, and went on down the street.

Her TV question gave me an idea for a better cover story. The next place I went to I said I was a market researcher looking for viewer recognition. Did anyone remember ever seeing these two people together? This approach got more interest, but drew another blank.

The game was on TV in this bar, bottom of the fourth with Cincinnati leading 4-0.I watched Biittner hit a single and then die on second after a hair-raising steal before I moved on. In all, I went to thirty-two bars that afternoon, catching most of the game in between. The Cubs lost, 6-2. I’d covered my territory pretty thoroughly. A couple of places recognized McGraw vaguely, but I put that down to the number of times his picture had been in the paper over the years. Most people probably had a vague recognition of Jimmy Hoffa, too. One other bar knew Masters by sight as one of the men from Ajax, and Billy’s knew him by name and title as well. But neither place remembered seeing McGraw with him. Some places were hostile and took a combination of bribes and threats to get an answer. Some were indifferent. Others, like the Spot, had to have the manager make the decision. But none of them had seen my pair together.

It was after six by the time I got to Washington and State, two blocks west of Michigan. After my fifth bar I’d stopped drinking any of the beer I ordered, but I was feeling slightly bloated, as well as sweaty and depressed. I’d agreed to meet Ralph at Ahab’s at eight. I decided to call it an afternoon and go home to wash up first.

Marshall Field occupies the whole north side of the street between State and Wabash. It seemed to me there might be one other bar on Washington, close to Michigan, if my memory of the layout was correct. That could wait until another day. I went down the stairs to the State Street subway and boarded a B train to Addison.

Evening rush hour was still in full force. I couldn’t get a seat and had to stand all the way to Fullerton.

At Lotty’s I headed straight for the bathroom and a cold shower. When I came out, I looked into the guest room; Jill was up, so I dumped my clothes in a drawer and put on a caftan. Jill was sitting on the living-room floor playing with two rosy-cheeked, dark-haired children who looked to be three or four.

“Hi, honey. You get a good rest?”

She looked up at me and smiled. A lot of color had returned to her face and she seemed much more relaxed. “Hi,” she said. “Yes, I only woke up an hour ago. These are Carol’s nieces. She was supposed to baby-sit tonight, but Lotty talked her into coming over here and making homemade enchiladas, yum-yum.”

“Yum-yum,” the two little girls chorused.

“That sounds great. I’m afraid I have to go back out tonight, so I’ll have to give it a miss.”

Jill nodded. “Lotty told me. Are you doing some more detecting?”

“Well, I hope so.”

Lotty called out from the kitchen and I went in to say hi. Carol was working busily at the stove and turned briefly to flash me a bright smile. Lotty was sitting at the table reading the paper, drinking her everlasting coffee. She looked at me through narrowed eyes. “The detective work wasn’t so agreeable this afternoon, eh?”

I laughed. “No. I learned nothing and had to drink too much beer doing so. This stuff smells great; wish I could cancel this evening out.”

“Then do so.”

I shook my head. “I feel as though I don’t have much time-maybe this second murder. Even though I feel a little rocky-too long a day, too much heat, I can’t stop. I just hope I don’t get sick at dinner-my date is getting fed up with me as it is. Although maybe if I fainted or something it would make him feel stronger, more protective.” I shrugged. “Jill looks a lot better, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes. The sleep did her good. That was well thought of, to get her out of that house for a while. I talked to her a bit when I came in; she’s very well be, doesn’t whine and complain, but it’s obvious the mother has no emotions to spare for her. As for her sister-” Lotty made an expressive gesture.

“Yeah, I agree. We can’t keep her down here forever, though. Besides, what on earth can she do during the day? I’ve got to be gone again tomorrow, and not on the kind of errand that she can go along with.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. Carol and I had a bit of an idea, watching her with Rosa and Tracy-the two nieces. Jill is good with these children-took them on, we didn’t ask her to look after them. Babies are good when you’re depressed-something soft and unquestioning to cuddle. What would you think of her coming over to the clinic and minding children there for a day? As you saw this morning, they’re always tumbling around the place-mothers who are sick can’t leave them alone; or if one baby is sick, who looks after the other when Mama brings him in?”

I thought it over for a minute, but couldn’t see anything wrong with it. “Ask her,” I said. “I’m sure the best thing for her right now would be to have something to do.”

Lotty got up and went to the living room. I followed. We stood for a minute, watching the three girls on the floor. They were terribly busy about something, although it wasn’t clear what. Lotty squatted down next to them, moving easily. I moved into the background. Lotty spoke perfect Spanish, and she talked to the little girls in that language for a minute. Jill watched her respectfully.

Then Lotty turned to Jill, still balancing easily on her haunches. “You’re very good with these little ones. Have you worked with young children before?”

“I was a counselor at a little neighborhood day camp in June,” Jill said, flushing a bit. “ But that’s all. I never baby-sit or anything like that.”

“Well, I had a bit of a plan. See what you think. Vic must be gone all the time, trying to find out why your father and brother were killed. Now while you are visiting down here, you could be of great help to me at the clinic.” She outlined her idea.

Jill’s face lit up. “But you know,” she said seriously, “I don’t have any training. I might not know what to do if they all started to cry or something.”

“Well, if that happens, that will be the test of your knack and patience,” Lotty said. “I will provide you a little assistance by way of a drawerful of lollipops. Bad for the teeth, perhaps, but great for tears.”

I went into the bedroom to change for dinner. Jill hadn’t made the bed. The sheets were crumpled. I straightened them out, then thought I might just lie down for a minute to recover my equilibrium.

The next thing I knew Lotty was shaking me awake. “It’s seven thirty, Vic: don’t you have to be going?”

“Oh, hell!” I swore. My head was thick with sleep. “Thanks, Lotty.” I swung out of bed and hurriedly put on a bright orange sundress. I stuck the Smith & Wesson in my handbag, grabbed a sweater, and ran out the door, calling good-bye to Jill as I went. Poor Ralph, I thought. I really am abusing him, keeping him waiting in restaurants just so that I can pick his brains about Ajax.

It was 7:50 when I turned south on Lake Shore Drive and just 8:00 when I got onto Rush Street, where the restaurant lay. One of my prejudices is against paying to park the car, but tonight I didn’t waste time looking for street parking. I turned the car over to a parking attendant across from Ahab’s. I looked at my watch as I went in the door: 8:08. Damned good, I thought. My head still felt woolly from my hour of sleep, but I was glad I’d gotten it.

Ralph was waiting by the entrance. He kissed me lightly in greeting, then stood back to examine my face. “Definitely improving,” he agreed. “And I see you can walk again.”

The headwaiter came over. Monday was a light night and he took us directly to our table. “Tim will be your waiter,” he said. “Would you like a drink?”

Ralph ordered a gin-and-tonic; I settled for a glass of club soda-Scotch on top of beer didn’t sound too appetizing.

“One of the things about being divorced and moving into the city is all the great restaurants,” Ralph remarked. “I’ve come to this place a couple of times, but there are a lot in my neighborhood.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Over on Elm Street, not too far from here, actually. It’s a furnished place with a housekeeping service.”

“Convenient.” That must cost a fair amount, I thought. I wondered what his income was. “That’s quite a lot of money with your alimony, too.”

“Don’t tell me.” He grinned. “I didn’t know anything about the city when I moved in here, barring the area right around Ajax, and I didn’t want to get into a long lease in a place I’d hate. Eventually I expect I’ll buy a condominium.”

“By the way, did you find out whether McGraw had ever called Masters?”

“Yes, I did you that little favor, Vic. And it’s just what I told you. He’s never had a call from the guy.”

“ You didn’t ask him, did you?”

“No.” Ralph’s cheerful face clouded with resentment. “I kept your wishes in mind and only talked to his secretary. Of course, I don’t have any guarantee that she won’t mention the matter to him. Do you think you could let this drop now? ”

I was feeling a little angry, too, but I kept it under control: I still wanted Ralph to look at the claim draft.

Tim arrived to take our orders. I asked for poached salmon and Ralph took the scampi. We both went to the salad bar while I cast about for a neutral topic to keep us going until after dinner. I didn’t want to produce the draft until we’d eaten.

“I’ve talked so much about my divorce I’ve never asked whether you were ever married,” Ralph remarked.

“Yes, I was.”

“What happened?”

“It was a long time ago. I don’t think either of us was ready for it. He’s a successful attorney now living in Hinsdale with a wife and three young children.”

“Do you still see him?” Ralph wanted to know.

“No, and I really don’t think about him. But his name is in the papers a fair amount. He sent me a card at Christmas, that’s how I know about the children and Hinsdale-one of those gooey things with the children smiling sentimentally in front of a fireplace. I’m not sure whether he sent it to prove his virility or to let me know what I’m missing.”

“Do you miss it?”

I was getting angry. “Are you trying to ask in a subtle way about whether I wish I had a husband and a family? I certainly do not miss Dick, nor am I sorry that I don’t have three kids getting under my feet.”

Ralph looked astonished. “Take it easy, Vic. Can’t you miss having a family without confusing that with Dick’s family? I don’t miss Dorothy-but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on marriage. And I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t miss my children.”

Tim brought our dinners. The salmon had a very good pimento sauce, but my emotions were still riding me and I couldn’t enjoy it properly. I forced a smile. “Sorry. Guess I’m overreacting to people who think a woman without a child is like Welch’s without grapes.”

“Well, please don’t take it out on me. Just because I’ve been acting like a protective man, trying to stop you from running after gangsters, doesn’t mean I think you ought to be sitting home watching soaps and doing laundry.”

I ate some salmon and thought about Dick and our short, unhappy marriage. Ralph was looking at me, and his mobile face showed concern and a little anxiety.

“The reason my first marriage fell apart was because I’m too independent. Also, I’m not into housekeeping, as you noticed the other night. But the real problem is my independence. I guess you could call it a strong sense of turf. It’s-it’s hard for me-” I smiled. “It’s hard for me to talk about it.” I swallowed and concentrated on my plate for a few minutes. I bit my lower lip and continued. “1 have some close women friends, because I don’t feel they’re trying to take over my turf. But with men, it always seems, or often seems, as though I’m having a fight to maintain who I am.”

Ralph nodded. I wasn’t sure he understood, but he seemed interested. I ate a little more fish and swallowed some wine.

“With Dick, it was worse. I’m not sure why I married him-sometimes I think it’s because he represented the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, and part of me wanted to belong to that. But Dick was a terrible husband for someone like me. He was an attorney with Crawford, Meade-they’re a very big, high-prestige corporate firm, if you don’t know them-and I was an eager young lawyer on the Public Defender’s roster. We met at a bar association meeting. Dick thought he’d fallen in love with me because I’m so independent; afterwards it seemed to me that it was because he saw my independence as a challenge, and when he couldn’t break it down, he got angry.

“Then I got disillusioned with working for the Public Defender. The setup is pretty corrupt-you’re never arguing for justice, always on points of law. I wanted to get out of it, but I still wanted to do something that would make me feel that I was working on my concept of justice, not legal point-scoring. I resigned from the Public Defender’s office, and was wondering what to do next, when a girl came to me and asked me to clear her brother of a robbery charge. He looked hopelessly guilty-it was a charge of stealing video equipment from a big corporate studio, and he had access, opportunity, and so on, but I took the case on and I discovered he was innocent by finding out who the guilty person really was.”

I drank some more wine and poked at my salmon. Ralph’s plate was clean, but he was waving off Tim-”Wait until the lady’s finished.”

“Well, all this time, Dick was waiting for me to settle down to being a housewife. He was very supportive when I was worrying through leaving the Public Defender, but it turned out that that was because he was hoping I’d quit to stay home on the sidelines applauding him while he clawed his way up the ladder in the legal world. When I took on that case-although it didn’t seem like a case at the time, just a favor to the woman who had sent the girl to me-” (That had been Lotty.) It had been awhile since I’d thought about all this and I started to laugh. Ralph looked a question. “Well, I take my obligations very seriously, and I ended up spending a night on a loading dock, which was really the turning point in the case. It was the same night that Crawford, Meade were having a big cocktail party, wives invited. I had on a cocktail dress, because I thought I’d just slip down to the dock and then go to the party, but the time slipped away, and Dick couldn’t forgive me for not showing up. So we split up. At the time it was horrible, but when I look back on it, the evening was so ludicrous it makes me laugh.”

I pushed my plate away. I’d only eaten half the fish, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. “The trouble is, I guess I’m a bit gun-shy now. There really are times when I wish I did have a couple of children and was doing the middle-class family thing. But that’s a myth, you know: very few people live like an advertisement, with golden harmony, and enough money, and so on. And I know I’m feeling a longing for a myth, not the reality. It’s just-I get scared that I’ve made the wrong choice, or-I don’t quite know how to say it. Maybe I should be home watching the soaps, maybe I’m not doing the best thing with my life. So if people try to suggest it, I bite their heads off.”

Ralph reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I think you’re remarkable, Vic. I like your style. Dick sounds like an ass. Don’t give up on us men just because of him.”

I smiled and squeezed his hand in return. “I know. But-I’m a good detective, and I’ve got an established name now. And it’s not a job that’s easy to combine with marriage. It’s only intermittently demanding, but when I’m hot after something, I don’t want to be distracted by the thought of someone at home stewing because he doesn’t know what to do about dinner. Or fussing at me because Earl Smeissen beat me up.”

Ralph looked down at his empty plate, nodding thoughtfully. “I see.” He grinned. “Of course, you might find a guy who’d already done the children-and-suburbia number who would stand on the sidelines cheering your successes.”

Tim came back to take dessert orders. I chose Ahab’s spectacular ice-cream-and-cordial dessert. I hadn’t eaten all my fish, and I was sick of being virtuous anyway. Ralph decided to have some too.

“But I think this Earl Smeissen business would take a lot of getting used to,” he added after Tim had disappeared again.

“Aren’t there any dangers to claim handling?” I asked. “I would imagine you’d come across fraudulent claimants from time to time who aren’t too happy to have their frauds uncovered.”

“That’s true,” he agreed. “But it’s harder to prove a fraudulent claim than you might think. Especially if it’s an accident case. There are lots of corrupt doctors out there who will happily testify to nonprovable injuries-something like a strained back, which doesn’t show up on an X ray-for a cut of the award.

“I’ve never been in any danger. Usually what happens if you know it’s a blown-up claim, and they know you know, but no one can prove it either way, you give them a cash settlement considerably below what it would be if it came to court. That gets them off your back-litigation is very expensive for an insurance company, because juries almost always favor the claimant, so it’s really not as shocking as it sounds.”

“How much of there is that?” I asked.

“Well, everyone thinks the insurance company is there to give them a free ride-they don’t understand that it all comes out in higher rates in the end. But how often do we really get taken to the cleaners? I couldn’t say. When I was working in the field, my gut sense was that maybe one in every twenty or thirty cases was a phony. You handle so many, though, that it’s hard to evaluate each one of them properly-you just concentrate on the big ones.”

Tim had brought the ice cream, which was sinfully delicious. I scraped the last drops out of the bottom of my dish. “ I found a claim draft lying around an apartment the other day. It was an Ajax draft, a carbon of one. I wondered if it was a real one.”

“You did?” Ralph was surprised. “Where did you find it? In your apartment?”

“No. Actually, in young Thayer’s place.”

“Do you have it? I’d like to see it.”

I picked my bag up from the floor and got the paper out of the zippered side compartment and handed it to Ralph. He studied it intently. Finally he said, “This looks like one of ours all right. I wonder what the boy was doing with that on him. No claim files are supposed to go home with you.”

He folded it and put it in his wallet. “This should go back to the office.”

I wasn’t surprised, just pleased I’d had the forethought to make Xeroxes of it. “Do you know the claimant?” I asked.

He pulled out the paper again and looked at the name. “No, I can’t even pronounce it. But it’s the maximum indemnity payment for this state, so he must be on a total disability case-either temporary or permanent. That means there should be a pretty comprehensive file on him. How did it get so greasy?”

“Oh, it was lying on the floor,” I said vaguely.

When Tim brought the check, I insisted on splitting it with Ralph. “Too many dinners like this and you’ll have to give up either your alimony or your apartment.”

He finally let me pay my part of the bill. “By the way, before they kick me out for not paying the rent, would you like to see my place?”

I laughed. “Sure, Ralph. I’d love to.”