Indemnity Only

4

You Can’t Scare Me

(I’m Sticking to the Union)

The headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Knifegrinders, Shear Edgers, and Blade Sharpeners is located on Sheridan Road just south of Evanston. The ten-story building was put up about five years ago, and is sided with white Italian marble. The only other building in Chicago built with such opulence is the headquarters for Standard of Indiana; I figured that put the brotherhood’s excess profits on a par with those of the oil industry.

Local 108 headquarters was on the ninth floor. I gave the floor receptionist my card. “Mr. McGraw is expecting me,” I told her. I was shunted down the north corridor. McGraw’s secretary was guarding the entrance to a lakeside office in an antechamber that would have done Louis XIV proud. I wondered how the International Brothers felt when they saw what their dues had built for them. Or maybe there were some beaten-up offices lower down for entertaining the rank-and-file.

I gave my card to the secretary, a middle-aged woman with gray sausage curls and a red-and-white dress that revealed an unlovely sag in her upper arms. I keep thinking I should lift five-pound weights to firm up my triceps. Looking at her, I wondered if I would have time to stop at Stan’s Sporting Goods on my way home to pick up some barbells.

“I have an appointment with Mr. McGraw.”

“You’re not in the book,” she said abruptly, not really looking at me. I had on my navy raw silk suit, with the blouson jacket. I looked stunning in this outfit and thought I deserved a little more attention. Must be those sagging triceps.

I smiled. “I’m sure you know as well as I do that Mr. McGraw conducts some of his business on his own. He arranged to see me privately.”

“Mr. McGraw may sometimes take up with whores,” she said, her face red, her eyes on her desktop, “but this is the first time he’s ever asked one up to his office.”

I restrained an impulse to brain her with her desk lamp. “Good-looking lady like you in his front office, he doesn’t need outside talent… Now will you please inform Mr. McGraw that I’m here?”

Her shapeless face shook under the thick pancake. “Mr. McGraw is in conference and can’t be disturbed.” Her voice trembled. I felt like a creep-I couldn’t find a girl or a murderer, but I sure knew how to rough up middle-aged secretaries.

McGraw’s office was soundproofed, but noise of the conference came into the antechamber. Quite a conference. I was about to announce my intention of sitting and waiting when one sentence rose above the din and penetrated the rosewood door.

“Goddamnit, you set my son up!”

How many people could possibly have sons who might have been set up in the last forty-eight hours and be connected with the Knifegrinders? Maybe more than one, but the odds were against it. With the sausage curls protesting loudly, I opened the door into the inner office.

Not as large as Masters’s, but by no means shabby, it overlooked Lake Michigan and a nice little private beach. At the moment it was none too peaceful. Two men had been sitting at a round table in the corner, but one was on his feet yelling to make his point. Even with his face distorted by anger I didn’t have any trouble recognizing the original of the picture in the Fort Dearborn Trust’s annual report. And rising to his feet and yelling back as I entered was surely my client. Short, squat without being fat, and wearing a shiny gray suit.

They both stopped cold as they saw me.

“What the hell are you doing in here!” my client roared. “Mildred?”

Sausage curls waddled in, her eyes gleaming. “I told her you wouldn’t want to see her, but no, she has to come barging in like she’s-”

“Mr. McGraw, I am V. I. Warshawski.” I pitched my voice to penetrate the din. “And you may not want to see me, but I look like an angel compared to a couple of homicide dicks who’re going to be after you pretty soon… Hi, Mr. Thayer,” I added, holding out a hand. “I’m sorry about your son-I’m the person who found the body.”

“It’s all right, Mildred,” McGraw said weakly. “I know this lady and I do want to talk to her.” Mildred gave me a furious look, then turned and stalked out, shutting the door with what seemed unnecessary violence.

“Mr. Thayer, what makes you think Mr. McGraw set your son up?” I asked conversationally, seating myself in a leather armchair in a corner.

The banker had recovered himself. The anger had smoothed out of his face, leaving it dignified and blank. “McGraw’s daughter was going out with my son,” he said, smiling a little. “When I learned my boy was dead, had been shot, I just stepped in to see if McGraw knew anything about it. I don’t think he set Peter up.”

McGraw was too angry to play along with Thayer. “The hell you say,” he yelled, his husky voice rising. “Ever since Annie started hanging around with that whey-faced, North Shore pipsqueak, you’ve been coming around here, calling her names, calling me names. Now the kid is dead, you’re trying to smear her! Well, by God you won’t get away with it!”

“All right!” Thayer snapped. “If that’s the way you want to play ball, that’s how we’ll play it. Your daughter-I saw the kind of girl she was the first time I set eyes on her. Peter never had a chance-innocent young kid, high ideals, giving up everything his mother and I had planned for him for the sake of a girl who’d hop into bed with-”

“Watch what names you call my daughter,” McGraw growled.

“I practically begged McGraw here to leash his daughter,” Thayer continued. “I might as well have saved my pride. This type of person doesn’t respond to any human feeling. He and his daughter had earmarked Peter for some kind of setup because he came from a wealthy family. Then, when they couldn’t get any money out of him, they killed him.”

McGraw was turning purple. “Have you shared this theory with the police, Mr. Thayer?” I asked.

“If you have, Thayer, I’ll have your ass in court for slander,” McGraw put in.

“Don’t threaten me, McGraw,” Thayer growled. John Wayne impersonation.

“Have you shared this theory with the police, Mr. Thayer?” I repeated.

He flushed slightly under his careful tan. “No, I didn’t want it blurted all over the newspapers-I didn’t want any of my neighbors to see what the boy was up to.”

I nodded. “But you’re really convinced that Mr. McGraw here-and/or his daughter-set up Peter and had him shot.”

“Yes, I am, damnit!”

“And have you any evidence to support this allegation?” I asked.

“No, he doesn’t, goddamnit!” McGraw yelled. “No one could support such a goddamn asshole statement! Anita was in love with that North Shore snot. I told her that it was a colossal mistake. Get involved with the bosses and you get your ass burned. And now look what’s happened.”

It seemed to me that the bosses had been the ones to get burned in this case, but I didn’t think it would do any good to mention it.

“Did you give Mr. McGraw one of your business cards when you were here before?” I asked Thayer.

“I don’t know,” he said impatiently. “I probably gave one to his secretary when I arrived. Anyway, what business is it of yours?”

I smiled. “I’m a private investigator, Mr. Thayer, and I’m investigating a private matter for Mr. McGraw here. He showed me one of your business cards the other night, and I wondered where he got it.”

McGraw shifted uncomfortably. Thayer stared at him with a look of disbelief. “You showed her one of my cards? Why the hell did you do that? For that matter, why were you talking to a private investigator at all?”

“I had my reasons.” McGraw looked embarrassed, but he also looked mean.

“I bet you did,” Thayer said heavily. He turned to me. “What are you doing for McGraw?”

I shook my head. “My clients pay for privacy.”

“What kinds of things do you investigate?” Thayer asked. “Divorces?”

“Most people think of divorce when they meet a private detective. Frankly divorce is pretty slimy. I do a lot of industrial cases… You know Edward Purcell, the man who used to be chairman of Transicon? ”

Thayer nodded. “I know of him anyway.”

“I did that investigation. He hired me because his board was pressuring him to find out where the disposable assets were going. Unfortunately he didn’t cover his tracks well enough before he hired me.” Purcell’s subsequent suicide and the reorganization of a badly damaged Transicon had been a ten-day wonder in Chicago.

Thayer leaned over me. “In that case, what are you doing for McGraw?” He lacked McGraw’s raw menace, but he, too, was a powerful man, used to intimidating others. The force of his personality was directed at me and I sat up straight to resist it.

“What business is it of yours, Mr. Thayer?”

He gave me the frown that got obedience from his junior trust officers. “If he gave you my card, it’s my business.”

“It didn’t have anything to do with you, Mr. Thayer.”

“That’s right, Thayer,” McGraw growled. “Now get your ass out of my office.”

Thayer turned back to McGraw and I relaxed slightly. “You’re not trying to smear me with any of your dirty business, are you, McGraw?”

“Watch it, Thayer. My name and my operation have been cleared in every court in this country. In Congress too. Don’t give me that crap.”

“Yeah, Congress cleared you. Lucky, wasn’t it, the way Derek Bernstein died right before the Senate hearings began.”

McGraw walked right up to the banker. “You SOB. You get out of here now or I’ll get some people to throw you out in a way that’ll pop your high-and-mighty executive dignity for you.”

“I’m not afraid of your thugs, McGraw; don’t threaten me.”

“Oh, come on,” I snapped. “Both of you are tough as all get out, and you’re both frightening me to pieces. So can you cut out this little-boy stuff? Why do you care so much about it, Mr. Thayer? Mr. McGraw here may have tossed a business card of yours around-but he hasn’t tried to smear your name with his dirty business-if he’s got dirty business. You got something on your conscience that’s making you so upset? Or do you just have to prove you’re the toughest guy in any crowd you’re in?”

“Watch what you say to me, young lady. I’ve got a lot of powerful friends in this city, and they can-”

“That’s what I mean,” I interrupted. “Your powerful friends can take away my license. No doubt. But why do you care?”

He was silent for a minute. Finally he said, “Just be careful what you get into with McGraw here. The courts may have cleared him, but he’s into a lot of ugly business.”

“All right; I’ll be careful.”

He gave me a sour look and left.

McGraw looked at me approvingly. “ You handled him just right, Warshawski.”

I ignored that. “Why did you give me a fake name the other night, McGraw? And why did you give your daughter a different phony one?”

“How’d you find me, anyway?”

“Once I saw the McGraw name, it began stirring in the back of my mind. I remembered you from the night you were shot-it came back to me when Lieutenant Mallory mentioned the Knifegrinders. Why’d you come to me to begin with? You think my dad might help you out the way he did back then?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, can it, McGraw. I was there. You may not remember me-but I remember you. You came in absolutely covered with blood and my dad fixed up your shoulder and got you out of the building. Did you think he’d help you out of whatever trouble you’re in this time, until you found out he was dead? Then what-you found my name in the Yellow Pages and thought maybe I was Tony’s son? Now, why did you use Thayer’s name?”

The fight died down in him a bit. “I wasn’t sure you’d do a job for me if you knew who I was.”

“But why Thayer? Why drag in the senior guy in Chicago’s biggest bank? Why not just call yourself Joe Blow?”

“I don’t know. It was just an impulse, I guess.”

“Impulse? You’re not that dumb. He could sue you for slander or something, dragging his name in like that.”

“Then why the hell did you let him know I’d done it? You’re on my payroll.”

“No, I’m not. You’ve hired me to do some independent professional work, but I’m not on your payroll. Which brings us to the original question: what’d you hire me for, anyway?”

“To find my daughter.”

“Then why did you give her a false name? How could I possibly look for her? No. I think you hired me to find the body.”

“Now, look here, Warshawski-”

“You look, McGraw. It’s so obvious you knew the kid was dead. When did you find out? Or did you shoot him yourself?”

His eyes disappeared in his heavy face and he pushed close to me. “Don’t talk smart with me, Warshawski.”

My heart beat faster but I didn’t back away. “When did you find the body?”

He stared at me another minute, then half-smiled. “You’re no softie. I don’t object to a lady with guts… I was worried about Anita. She usually calls me on Monday evening, and when she didn’t, I thought I should go down and check up on her. You know what a dangerous neighborhood that is.”

“You know, Mr. McGraw, it continues to astonish me the number of people who think the University of Chicago is in an unsafe neighborhood. Why parents ever send their children to school there at all amazes me. Now let’s have a little more honesty. You knew Anita had disappeared when you came to see me, or you would never have given me her picture. You are worried about her, and you want her found. Do you think she killed the boy?”

That got an explosive reaction. “No, I don’t, goddamnit. If you must know, she came home from work Tuesday night and found his dead body. She called me in a panic, and then she disappeared.”

“Did she accuse you of killing him?”

“Why should she do that?” He was bellicose but uncomfortable.

“I can think of lots of reasons. You hated young Thayer, thought your daughter was selling out to the bosses. So in a mistaken fit of paternal anxiety, you killed the kid, thinking it would restore your daughter to you. Instead-”

“You’re crazy, Warshawski! No parent is that cuckoo.”

I’ve seen lots of kookier parents but decided not to argue that point. “Well,” I said, “you don’t like that idea, try this one. Peter somehow got wind of some shady, possibly even criminal, activities that you and the Knifegrinders are involved in. He communicated his fears to Anita, but being in love he wouldn’t welch on you to the cops. On the other hand, being young and idealistic, he had to confront you. And he couldn’t be bought. You shot him-or had him shot-and Anita knew it had to be you. So she did a bunk.”

McGraw’s nerves were acting up again, but he blustered and bellowed and called me names. Finally he said, “Why in Sam Hill would I want you to find my daughter if all she’d do is finger me?”

“ I don’t know. Maybe you were playing the odds-figuring you’ve been close and she wouldn’t turn on you. Trouble is, the police are going to be making the connection between you and Anita before too long. They know the kids had some tie-in with the brotherhood because there was some literature around the house created by your printer. They’re not dummies, and everyone knows you’re head of the union and they know there was a McGraw in the apartment.

“When they come around, they’re not going to care about your daughter, or your relationship with her. They’ve got a murder to solve, and they’ll be happy to tag you with it-especially with a guy in Thayer’s position pressuring them. Now if you tell me what you know, I may-no promises, but may-be able to salvage you and your daughter-if you’re not guilty, of course.”

McGraw studied the floor for a while. I realized I’d been clutching the arms of the chair while I was talking and carefully relaxed my muscles. Finally he looked up at me and said, “If I tell you something, will you promise not to take it to the police?”

I shook my head. “can’t promise anything, Mr. McGraw. I’d lose my license if I kept knowledge of a crime to myself.”

“Not that kind of knowledge, damnit! Goddamnit, Warshawski, you keep acting like I committed the goddamn murder or something.” He breathed heavily for a few minutes. Finally he said, “I just want to tell you about-you’re right. I did-I was-I did find the kid’s body.” He choked that out, and the rest came easier. “Annie-Anita-called me Monday night. She wasn’t in the apartment, she wouldn’t say where she was.” He shifted a bit in his chair. “Anita’s a good, levelheaded kid. She never got any special pampering as a child, and she grew up knowing how to be independent. She and I are, well, we’re pretty close, and she’s always been union all the way, but she’s no clinging daddy’s girl. And I never wanted her to be one.

“Tuesday night I hardly recognized her. She was pretty damn near hysterical, yelling a lot of half-assed stuff which didn’t make any sense at all. But she didn’t mention the kid’s murder.”

“What was she yelling?” I asked conversationally.

“Oh, just nonsense, I couldn’t make anything out of it.”

“Same song, second verse,” I remarked.

“What?”

“Same as the first,” I explained. “A little bit louder and a little bit worse.”

“Once and for all, she didn’t accuse me of killing Peter Thayer!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

We weren’t moving too quickly.

“Okay, she didn’t accuse you of murdering Peter. Did she tell you about his being dead?”

He stopped for a minute. If he said yes, the next question was, why had the girl done a bunk if she didn’t think McGraw had committed the murder? “No, like I said, she was just hysterical. She-Well, later, after I saw the body, I figured she was calling because of-of, well, that.” He stopped again, but this time it was to collect some memories. “She hung up and I tried calling back, but there wasn’t any answer, so I went down to see for myself. And I found the boy.”

“How’d you get in?” I asked curiously.

“I have a key. Annie gave it to me when she moved in, But I’d never used it before.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a key. I looked at it and shrugged.

“That was Tuesday night?” He nodded. “And you waited ‘til Wednesday night to come to see me?”

“I waited all day hoping that someone else would find the body. When no report came out-you were right, you know.” He smiled ruefully, and his whole face became more attractive. “I hoped that Tony was still alive. I hadn’t talked to him for years, he’d warned me off good and proper over the Stellinek episode-didn’t know old Tony had it in him-but he was the only guy I could think of who might help me.”

“Why didn’t you call the cops yourself?” I asked. His face closed up again. “I didn’t want to,” he said shortly.

I thought about it. “You probably wanted your own source of information on the case, and you didn’t think your police contacts could help you.” He didn’t disagree.

“Do the Knifegrinders have any pension money tied up with the Fort Dearborn Trust?” I asked.

McGraw turned red again. “Keep your goddamn mitts out of our pension fund, Warshawski. We have enough snoopers smelling around there to guarantee it grade A pure for the next century. I don’t need you, too.”

“Do you have any financial dealings with the Fort Dearborn Trust?”

He was getting so angry I wondered what nerve I’d touched, but he denied it emphatically.

“What about the Ajax Insurance Company?”

“Well, what about them?” he demanded.

“I don’t know, Mr. McGraw-do you buy any insurance from them?”

“I don’t know.” His face was set and he was eyeing me hard and cold, the way he no doubt had eyed young Timmy Wright of Kansas City Local 4318 when Timmy had tried to talk to him about running a clean election down there. (Timmy had shown up in the Missouri River two weeks later.) It was much more menacing than his red-faced bluster. I wondered.

“Well, what about your pensions? Ajax is big in the pension business.”

“Goddamnit, Warshawski, get out of the office. You were hired to find Anita, not to ask a lot of questions about something that isn’t any of your goddamned business. Now get out and don’t come back.”

“You want me to find Anita?” I asked.

McGraw suddenly deflated and put his head in his hands. “Oh, jeez, I don’t know what to do.”

I looked at him sympathetically. “Someone got you in the squeeze?”

He just shook his head but wouldn’t answer. We sat it out in silence for a while. Then he looked at me, and he looked gray. “Warshawski, I don’t know where Annie is. And I don’t want to know. But I want you to find her. And when you do, just let me know if she’s all right. Here’s another five hundred dollars to keep you on for a whole week. Come to me when it runs out.” It wasn’t a formal apology, but I accepted it and left.

I stopped at Barb’s Bar-B-Q for some lunch and called my answering service. There was a message from Ralph Devereux at Ajax; would I meet him at the Cartwheel at 7:30 tonight. I called him and asked if he had discovered anything about Peter Thayer’s work.

“Look,” he said, “will you tell me your first name? How the hell can I keep on addressing someone as ‘V.I.’?”

“The British do it all the time. What have you found out?”

“Nothing. I’m not looking-there’s nothing to find. That kid wasn’t working on sensitive stuff. And you know why-V.I.? Because insurance companies don’t run to sensitive stuff. Our product, how we manufacture it, and what we charge for it are only regulated by about sixty-seven state and federal agencies.”

“Ralph, my first name is Victoria; my friends call me Vic. Never Vicki. I know insurance isn’t your high-sensitivity business-but it offers lots of luscious opportunities for embezzlement.”

A pregnant silence. “No,” he finally said, “at least-not here. We don’t have any check-signing or authorizing responsibility.”

I thought that one over. “Do you know if Ajax handles any of the Knifegrinders’ pension money?”

“The Knifegrinders?” he echoed. “What earthly connection does that set of hoodlums have with Peter Thayer?”

“I don’t know. But do you have any of their pension money?”

“I doubt it. This is an insurance company, not a mob hangout.”

“Well, could you find out for me? And could you find out if they buy any insurance from you?”

“We sell all kinds of insurance, Vic-but not much that a union would buy.”

“Why not?”

“Look,” he said, “it’s a long story. Meet me at the Cartwheel at seven thirty and I’ll give you chapter and verse on it.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “But look into it for me, anyway. Please?”

“What’s the I stand for?”

“None of your goddamn business.” I hung up. I stood for Iphigenia. My Italian mother had been devoted to Victor Emmanuel. This passion and her love of opera had led her to burden me with an insane name.

I drank a Fresca and ordered a chef’s salad. I wanted ribs and fries, but the memory of Mildred’s sagging arms stopped me. The salad didn’t do much for me. I sternly put french fries out of my mind and pondered events.

Anita McGraw had called up and-at a minimum-told her father about the murder. My bet was she’d accused him of being involved. Ergo, Peter had found out something disreputable about the Knifegrinders and had told her. He probably found it out at Ajax, but possibly from the bank. I loved the idea of pensions. The Loyal Alliance Pension Fund got lots of publicity for their handling, or mishandling, of Knife-grinder pension money, but twenty million or so could easily have been laid off on a big bank or insurance company. And pension money gave one so much scope for fraudulent activity.

Why had McGraw gone down to the apartment? Well, in the first place, he knew whatever discreditable secret Thayer had uncovered. He was afraid that Anita was probably in on it-young lovers don’t keep much to themselves. And if she called up because she’d found her boyfriend with a hole in his head, McGraw probably figured she’d be next, daughter or no daughter. So he went racing down to Hyde Park, terrified he’d find her dead body too. Instead she’d vanished. So far, so good.

Now if I could find Anita, I’d know the secret. Or if I found the secret, I could publicize it, which would take the heat off the girl and maybe persuade her to return. It sounded good.

What about Thayer, though? Why had McGraw used his card, and why had this upset him so much? Just the principle of the thing? I ought to talk to him alone.

I paid my bill and headed back to Hyde Park. The college Political Science Department was on the fourth floor of one of the older campus buildings. On a hot summer afternoon the hallways were empty. Through the windows along the stairwell I could see knots of students lying on the grass, some reading, some sleeping. A few energetic boys were playing Frisbee. An Irish setter loped around, trying to catch the disk.

A student was tending the desk in the department office. He looked about seventeen, his long blond hair hanging over his forehead, but no beard-he didn’t appear ready to grow one yet. He was wearing a T-shirt with a hole under the left arm and was sitting hunched over a book. He looked up reluctantly when I said hello but kept the book open on his lap.

I smiled pleasantly and told him I was looking for Anita McGraw. He gave me a hostile look and turned back to his book without speaking.

“Come on. What’s wrong with asking for her? She’s a student in the department, right?” He refused to look up. I felt my temper rising, but I wondered if Mallory had been here before me. “Have the police been around asking for her?”

“You ought to know,” he muttered, not looking up.

“You think just because I’m not wearing sloppy blue jeans I’m with the police?” I asked. “How about digging out a departmental course list for me?”

He didn’t move. I stepped around to his side of the desk and pulled open a drawer.

“Okay, okay,” he said huffily. He put the book spine up on the desktop. Capitalism and Freedom, by Marcuse. I might have guessed. He rummaged through the drawer and pulled out a nine-page list, typed and mimeographed, labeled “College Time Schedule: Summer 1979.”

I flipped through it to the Political Science section. Their summer schedule filled a page. Class titles included such things as “The Concept of Citizenship in Aristotle and Plato”; “Idealism from Descartes Through Berkeley”; and “Superpower Politics and the Idea of Weltverschwinden.“ Fascinating. Finally I found one that sounded more promising: “The Capitalist Standoff: Big Labor Versus Big Business.” Someone who taught a course like that would surely attract a young labor organizer like Anita McGraw. And might even know who some of her friends were. The instructor’s name was Harold Weinstein.

I asked the youth where Weinstein’s office was. He hunched further into Marcuse and pretended not to hear. I came around the desk again and sat on it facing him, and grabbed his shirt collar and jerked his face up so that I could see his eyes. “I know you think you’re doing the revolution a great service by not revealing Anita’s whereabouts to the pigs,” I said pleasantly. “Perhaps when her body is found in a car trunk you will invite me to the party where you celebrate upholding your code of honor in the face of unendurable oppression.” I shook him a bit. “Now tell me where to find Harold Weinstein’s office.”

“You don’t have to tell her anything, Howard,” someone said behind me. “And you,” he said to me, “Don’t be surprised when students equate police with fascism-I saw you roughing up that boy.”

The speaker was thin with hot brown eyes and a mop of unruly hair. He was wearing a blue work shirt tucked neatly into a pair of khaki jeans.

“Mr. Weinstein?” I said affably, letting go of Howard’s shirt. He stared at me with his hands on his hips, brooding. It looked pretty noble. “I’m not with the police-I’m a private detective. And when I ask anyone a civil question, I like to get a civil answer, not an arrogant shrug of the shoulders.

“Anita’s father, Andrew McGraw, hired me to find her. I have a feeling, which he shares, that she may be in bad trouble. Shall we go somewhere and talk about it?”

“You have a feeling, do you,” he said heavily. “Well, go feel about it somewhere else. We don’t like police-public or private-on this campus.” He turned to stalk back down the corridor.

“Well executed,” I applauded. “you’ve been studying Al Pacino. Now that you’ve finished emoting, could we talk about Anita?”

The back of his neck turned red, and the color spread to his ears, but he stopped. “What about her?”

“I’m sure you know she’s disappeared, Mr. Weinstein. You may also know that her boyfriend, Peter Thayer, is dead. I am trying to find her in the hopes of keeping her from sharing his fate.” I paused to let him absorb it. “My guess is that she’s hiding out someplace and she thinks she won’t be found by whoever killed him. But I’m afraid she’s crossed the path of an ugly type of killer. The kind that has a lot of money and can buy his way past most hideouts.”

He turned so that I could see his profile. “Don’t worry, Philip Marlowe-they won’t bribe me into revealing her whereabouts.”

I wondered hopefully if he could be tortured into talking. Aloud, I said, “Do you know where she is?”

“No comment.”

“Do you know any of her good friends around here?”

“No comment.”

“Gee, you’re helpful, Mr. Weinstein-you’re my favorite prof. I wish you’d taught here when I went to school.” I pulled out my card and gave it to him. “If you ever feel like commenting, call me at this number.”

Back outside in the heat I felt depressed. My navy silk suit was stunning, but too heavy for the weather; I was sweating, probably ruining the fabric under the arms. Besides, I seemed to be alienating everyone whose path I crossed. I wished I’d smashed in Howard’s face.

A circular stone bench faced the college building. I walked over to it and sat down. Maybe I’d give up on this stupid case. Industrial espionage was more my speed, not a corrupt union and a bunch of snotty kids. Maybe I’d use the thousand dollars McGraw had given me to spend the summer on the Michigan peninsula. Maybe that would make him angry enough to send someone after me with cement leggings.

The Divinity School was just behind me. I sighed, pulled myself to my feet, and moved into its stonewalled coolness. A coffee shop used to serve overboiled coffee and tepid lemonade in the basement. I made my way downstairs and found the place still in operation. There was something reassuring in this continuity and in the sameness of the young faces behind the makeshift counter. Kindly and naive, they preached a lot of violent dogma, believed that burglars had a right to the goods they took because of their social oppression, and yet would be rocked to their roots if someone ever required them to hold a machine gun themselves.

I took a Coke and retired to a dark corner with it. The chairs weren’t comfortable, but I pulled my knees up to my chin and leaned against the wall. About a dozen students were seated around the wobbly tables, some of them trying to read in the dim light, most of them talking. Snatches of conversation reached me. “Of course if you’re going to look at it dialectically, the only thing they can do is-” “I told her if she didn’t put her foot down he’d-” “Yeah, but Schopenhauer says-” I dozed off.

I was jerked awake a few seconds later by a loud voice saying, “Did you hear about Peter Thayer?” I looked up. The speaker, a plump young woman with wild red hair, wearing an ill-fitting peasant blouse, had just come into the room. She dumped her book bag on the floor and joined a table of three in the middle of the room. “I was just coming out of class when Ruth Yonkers told me.”

I got up and bought another Coke and sat down at a table behind the redhead.

A thin youth with equally wild but dark hair was saying, “Oh, yeah, the cops were all over the Political Science Office this morning. You know, he was living with Anita McGraw, and she hasn’t been seen since Sunday. Weinstein really told them off,” he added admiringly.

“Do they think she killed him?” the redhead asked.

A dark, somewhat older woman snorted. “Anita McGraw? I’ve known her for two years. She might off a cop, but she wouldn’t shoot her boyfriend.”

“Do you know him, Mary?” the redhead breathed.

“No,” Mary answered shortly. “I never met him. Anita belongs to University Women United-that’s how I know her. So does Geraldine Harata, her other roommate, but Geraldine’s away for the summer. If she wasn’t, the cops would probably suspect her. They always pick on women first.”

“I’m surprised you let her into UWU if she has a boyfriend,” a bearded young man put in. He was heavy and sloppy-his T-shirt gaped, revealing an unlovely expanse of stomach.

Mary looked at him haughtily and shrugged.

“Not everyone in UWU is a lesbian,” the redhead bristled.

“With so many men like Bob around, it’s hard to understand why not,” Mary drawled. The fat youth flushed and muttered something, of which “castrating” was the only word I caught.

“But I never met Anita,” the redhead continued. “I only started going to UWU meetings in May. Has she really disappeared, Mary?”

Mary shrugged again. “If the pigs are trying to put Peter Thayer’s death off on her, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Maybe she went home,” Bob suggested.

“No,” the thin youth said. “If she’d done that, the police wouldn’t have been around here looking for her.”

“Well,” Mary said, “I, for one, hope they don’t catch up with her.” She got up. “I have to go listen to Bertram drone on about medieval culture. One more crack about witches as hysterical women and he’ll find himself attacked by some after class.”

She hoisted a knapsack over her left shoulder and ambled off. The others settled closer to the table and switched to an animated discussion of homo- versus heterosexual relationships. Poor Bob favored the latter, but didn’t seem to get many opportunities for actively demonstrating it. The thin boy vigorously defended lesbianism. I listened in amusement. College students had enthusiastic opinions about so many topics. At four the boy behind the counter announced he was closing. People started gathering up their books, The three I was listening to continued their discussion for a few minutes until the counterman called over, “Hey, folks, I want to get out of here.”

They reluctantly picked up their book bags and moved toward the stairs. I threw out my paper cup and slowly followed them out. At the top of the stairs I touched the redhead’s arm. She stopped and looked at me, her face friendly and ingenuous.

“I heard you mention UWU,” I said. “Can you tell me where they meet?”

“Are you new on campus?” she asked.

“I’m an old student, but I find I have to spend some time down here this summer,” I answered truthfully.

“Well, we have a room in a building at fifty-seven thirty-five University. It’s one of those old homes the university has taken over. UWU meets there on Tuesday nights, and other women’s activities go on during the rest of the week.”

I asked her about their women’s center. It was clearly not large, but better than nothing at all, which was what we’d had in my college days when even women radicals treated women’s liberation as a dirty phrase. They had a women’s health counseling group, courses on self-defense, and they sponsored rap groups and the weekly University Women United meetings.

We had been moving across campus toward the Midway, where my car was parked. I offered her a ride home and she flung herself puppylike into the front seat, talking vigorously if ingenuously about women’s oppression. She wanted to know what I did.

“Free-lance work, mostly for corporations,” I said, expecting more probing, but she took that happily enough, asking if I would be taking photographs. I realized she assumed that I must be a free-lance writer. I was afraid if I told her the truth, she would tell everyone at UWU and make it impossible for me to find any answers about Anita. Yet I didn’t want to tell glaring lies, because if the truth did come out, these young radical women would be even more hostile. So I said “no photographs” and asked her if she did any photography herself. She was still chattering cheerfully when we pulled up in front of her apartment.

“I’m Gail Sugarman,” she announced as she struggled clumsily out of the car.

“How do you do, Gail,” I replied politely. “I’m V.I. Warshawski.”

“Veeyai!” she exclaimed. “What an unusual name. Is it African?”

“No,” I answered gravely, “it’s Italian.” Driving off, I could see her in the rearview mirror, scrambling up the front steps of her apartment. She made me feel incredibly old. Even at twenty I had never possessed that naive, bouncing friendliness; and now it made me feel cynical and remote. In fact, I felt a bit ashamed of deceiving her.