Larry and his friend the carpenter had done a beautiful job on my apartment. The door was a masterpiece, with carved flowers on the panels. The carpenter had installed two dead bolts, and the action on them was clean and quiet. Inside, the place shone as it had not for months. Not a trace of the weekend ravage remained. Although Larry had sent the shredded couch away, he had moved chairs and an occasional table around to fill the empty space. He had left a bill in the middle of the kitchen table. Two people for two days at $8.00 an hour, $256.00. The door, locks, and installation, $315.00. New supplies of flour, sugar, beans, and spices; new pillows for the bed: $97.00. It seemed like a pretty reasonable bill to me. I wondered who was going to pay me, though. Maybe Jill could borrow from her mother until her trust fund matured.
I went to look through my jewelry box. By some miracle the vandals had not taken my mother’s few valuable pieces, but I thought I’d better lock them in a
bank vault and not leave them around for the next invader. Larry seemed to have thrown out the shards of the broken Venetian glass. I should have told him to save them, but that couldn’t be helped; it was beyond restoration, anyway. The other seven held pride of place in the built-in china cupboard, but I couldn’t look at them without a thud in my stomach.
I tried Ralph again. This time he answered on the fourth ring. “What’s up, Miss Marple?” he asked. “I thought you were out after Professor Moriarty until tomorrow.”
“I found him earlier than I expected. In fact, I found out the secret that Peter Thayer died to protect. Only he didn’t want to protect it. You know that claim draft I gave you? Did you ever find the file?”
“No. I told you I put it on the missing-file search, but it hasn’t turned up.”
“Well, it may never. Do you know who Joseph Gielczowski is?”
“What is this? Twenty questions? I’ve got someone coming over in twenty minutes, Vic.”
“Joseph Gielczowski is a senior vice-president of the Knifegrinders union. He has not been on an assembly line for twenty-three years. If you went to visit him in his home, you would find he was as healthy as you are. Or you could go see him at Knifegrinders headquarters where he is able to work and draw a salary without needing any indemnity payments.”
There was a pause. “Are you trying to tell me that that guy is fraudulently drawing Workers Compensation payments?”
“No,” I said.
“Goddamnit, Vic, if he’s healthy and is getting indemnity drafts, then he’s drawing them fraudulently.”
“No,” I reiterated. “Sure, they’re fraudulent, but he’s not drawing them.”
“Well, who is, then?”
“Your boss.”
Ralph exploded into the phone. “you’ve got this damned bee in your bonnet about Masters, Vic, and I’m sick of it! He’s one of the most respected members of a highly respected company in a very respectable industry. To suggest that he’s involved in something like that—”
“I’m not suggesting it, I know it,” I said coldly. “I know that he and Andrew McGraw, head of the Knifegrinders union, set up a fund with themselves as joint trustees, enabling them to cash drafts, or whatever it is you do to get payments on drafts, drawn to Gielczowski and at least twenty-two other healthy people.”
“How can you possibly know something like that?” Ralph said, furious.
“Because, I just listened to someone read a copy of the agreement to me over the phone. I’ve also found someone who has seen Masters with McGraw on numerous occasions up near Knifegrinder headquarters. And I know that Masters had an appointment with Peter Thayer—at his apartment—at nine on the morning he was killed.”
“I still don’t believe it. I have worked for Yardley for three years, and been in his organization for ten
years before that, and I’m sure there’s a different explanation for everything you’ve found out—if you’ve found it out. You haven’t seen this trust agreement. And Yardley may have eaten with McGraw, or drunk with him or something—maybe he was checking out some coverage or claims, or something. We do do that from time to time.”
I felt like screaming with frustration. “Just let me know ten minutes before you go to Masters to check the story with him, will you? So I can get there in time to save your ass.”
“If you think I’m going to jeopardize my career by telling my boss that I’ve been listening to that kind of rumor about him, you’re nuts,” Ralph roared. “As a matter of fact, he’s coming over here in a few minutes, and I promise you, without any difficulty, that I am not such an ass as to tell him about it. Of course, if that Gielczowski claim is fraudulent, that explains a lot. I’ll tell him that.”
My hair seemed to stand straight up on my head. “What? Ralph, you are so goddamn naive it’s unbelievable. Why the hell is he coming over?”
“You really don’t have any right to ask me that,” he snapped, “but I’ll tell you anyway, since you started the whole uproar by finding that draft. Claims that big are handled out of the home office, not by a field adjustor. I went around to the guys today and asked who’d handled the file. No one remembered it. If anyone had been handling such a big file for so many years, there’s no way they would forget it. This puzzled me, so when I called Yardley this afternoon—
he hasn’t been in the office this week—I call him at home once a day—I mentioned it to him.”
“Oh, Christ! That is the absolute end. So he told you it sounded like a serious problem, didn’t he? And that since he had to come down to the city tonight for some other reason, he’d just drop by and talk it over with you? Is that right?” I said savagely.
“Why, yes, it is,” he shouted. “Now go find someone’s missing poodle and stop screwing around in the Claim Department.”
“Ralph, I’m coming over. Tell Yardley
that
when he walks in the door, as soon as he walks in, and maybe it will save your goddamn ass for a few minutes.” I slammed down the phone without waiting for his answer.
I looked at my watch. 7:12. Masters was due there in twenty minutes. Roughly. Say he got there around 7:30, maybe a few minutes earlier. I put my driver’s license, my gun permit, and my P.I. license in my hip pocket with some money—I didn’t want a purse in my way at this point. Checked the gun. Put extra rounds in my jacket pocket. Wasted forty-five seconds changing to running shoes. Locked the new, oiled dead bolts behind me and sprinted down the stairs three at a time. Ran the half-block to my car in fifteen seconds. Put it in gear and headed for Lake Shore Drive.
Why was every goddamn person in Chicago out tonight, and why were so many of them on Belmont Avenue? I wondered savagely. And why were the lights timed so that every time you hit a corner they
turned and some asshole grandfather wouldn’t clear the intersection in front of you on the yellow? I pounded the steering wheel in impatience, but it didn’t make the traffic flow faster. No point in sitting on the horn, either. I took some deep diaphragm breaths to steady myself. Ralph, you stupid jerk. Making a present of your life to a man who’s had two people killed in the last two weeks. Because Masters wears the old-boy network tie and you’re on his team he couldn’t possibly do something criminal. Naturally not. I swooped around a bus and got a clear run to Sheridan Road and the mouth of the Drive. It was 7:24. I prayed to the patron saint who protects speeders from speed traps and floored the Monza. At 7:26 I slid off the Drive onto La Salle Street, and down the inner parallel road to Elm Street. At 7:29 I left the car at a fireplug next to Ralph’s building and sprinted inside.
The building didn’t have a doorman. I pushed twenty buttons in quick succession. Several people squawked “Who is it?” through the intercom, but someone buzzed me in. No matter how many break-ins are executed this way, there is always some stupid idiot who will buzz you into an apartment building without knowing who you are. The elevator took a century or two to arrive. Once it came, though, it carried me quickly to the seventeenth floor. I ran down the hall to Ralph’s apartment and pounded on the door, my Smith & Wesson in my hand.
I flattened myself against the wall as the door opened, then dove into the apartment, gun out. Ralph
was staring at me in amazement. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said. No one else was in the room.
“Good question,” I said, standing up.
The bell rang and Ralph went to push the buzzer. “I wouldn’t mind if you left,” he remarked. I didn’t move. “At least put that goddamn gun away.” I put it in my jacket pocket but kept my hand on it.
“Do me one favor,” I said. “When you open the door, stand behind it, don’t frame yourself in the doorway.”
“You are the craziest goddamn—”
“If you call me a crazy broad I will shoot you in the back. Block your damned body with the door when you open it.”
Ralph glared at me. When the knocking came a few minutes later, he went straight to the door and deliberately opened it so that it would frame his body squarely. I moved to the side of the room parallel with the door and braced myself. No shots sounded.
“Hello, Yardley, what’s all this?” Ralph was saying.
“This is my young neighbor, Jill Thayer, and these are some associates who’ve come along with me.”
I was stunned and moved toward the door to look. “Jill?” I said.
“Are you here, Vic?” the clear little voice quavered a bit. “I’m sorry. Paul called to say he was coming up on the train and I started to walk into town to meet him at the station. And Mr.—Mr. Masters passed me
asked him about that paper and he made me come along with him. I’m sorry, Vic, I know I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“That’s okay, honey—” I started to say, but Masters interrupted with “Ah, you’re here, are you? We thought we’d come visit you and that Viennese doctor Jill admires so much a little later, but you’ve saved us a trip.” He looked at my gun, which I’d pulled out, and smiled offensively. “I would put that away if I were you. Tony here is pretty trigger-happy and I know you’d hate to watch anything happen to Jill.”
Tony Bronsky had come into the room behind Masters. With him was Earl. Ralph was shaking his head, like a man trying to wake up from a dream. I put the gun back into my pocket.
“Don’t blame the girl,” Masters said to me. “But you really shouldn’t have gotten her involved, you know. As soon as Margaret Thayer told me she had come back home, I tried finding a way of talking to her without anyone in the house knowing about it. Sheer luck, really, that she walked down Sheridan just at that time. But we got her to explain quite a bit, didn’t we, Jill?”
I could see now that there was an ugly bruise on the side of her face. “Cute, Masters,” I said. “You’re at your best when you’re beating up little girls. I’d like to see you with a grandmother.” He was right: I’d been stupid to bring her down to Lotty’s and get her involved in things that Masters and Smeissen didn’t want anyone to know about. I’d save my self-reproach for later, though—I didn’t have time for it now.
“Want me to put her away?” Tony breathed, his eyes glistening with happiness, his Z-shaped scar vivid as a wound.
“Not yet, Tony,” Masters said. “We want to find out how much she knows and who she’s told it to…. You, too, Ralph. It’s really a shame you got this Polish gal over here—we weren’t going to shoot you unless it was absolutely necessary, but now I’m afraid we’ll have to.” He turned to Smeissen. “Earl, you’ve had more experience at this kind of thing than I have. What’s the best way to set them up?”
“Get the Warchoski broad’s gun away from her,” Earl said in his squeaky voice. “Then have her and the guy sit together on the couch so that Tony can cover them both.”
“You heard him,” Masters said. He started toward me.
.“No,” Earl squeaked. “Don’t go close to her. Make her drop it. Tony, cover the kid.”
Tony pointed his Browning at Jill. I dropped the S&W on the floor. Earl came and kicked it into the corner. Jill’s little face was white and pinched.
“Over to the couch,” Masters said. Tony continued to cover Jill. I went and sat down. The couch was firm, one good thing—one didn’t sink into it. I kept my weight distributed forward onto my legs and feet. “Move,” Earl squeaked at Ralph. Ralph was looking dazed. Little drops of sweat covered his face. He stumbled a bit on the thick carpet as he came to sit next to me.
“You know, Masters, this cesspool you’ve built is
stinking so high you’re going to have to kill everyone in Chicago to cover it up,” I said.
“You think so, do you? Who knows about it besides you?” He was still smiling unpleasantly. My hand itched to break his lower jaw.
“Oh, the
Star
has a pretty good idea. My attorney. A few others. Even little Earl over here isn’t going to be able to buy off the cops if you shoot down an entire newspaper crew.”
“Is this true, Yardley?” Ralph asked. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper and he cleared his throat. “I don’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe Vic when she tried to tell me. You didn’t shoot Peter, did you?”
Masters gave a superior little laugh. “Of course not. Tony here shot him. I had to go along, though, just as I did tonight—to get Tony into the building. And Earl came along as an accessory. Earl doesn’t usually get involved, do you, Earl? But we don’t want any blackmail after this.”
“That’s good, Masters,” I praised him. “The reason Earl’s ass is so fat is because he’s been protecting it all these years.”
Earl turned red. “You two-cent bitch, just for that, I’m going to let Tony work you over again before he shoots you!” he squeaked.
“Attaboy, Earl.” I looked at Masters. “Earl never beats anyone up himself,” I explained. “I used to think it was because he didn’t have any balls, but last week I found out that wasn’t true, right, Earl?”
Earl started for me, as I hoped he would, but Masters held him back. “Calm down, Earl, she’s just
trying to ride you. You can do whatever you want to her—after I find out how much she knows and where Anita McGraw is.”
“I don’t know, Yardley,” I said brightly.
“Don’t give me that,” he said, leaning forward to hit me on the mouth. “You disappeared early this morning. That heap of shit Smeissen had watching the back alley went to sleep and you got away. But we questioned some of the girls you talked to at the UWU meeting last night and Tony here—persuaded—one of them to tell him where Anita had gone. But when we got to Hartford, Wisconsin, at noon, she’d disappeared. And the woman at the restaurant described you pretty well. An older sister, she thought, who’d come to take Jody Hill away with her. Now where is she?”