cropped up in connection with Bayard’s. Just in case … I logged on to Nexis and looked up Llewellyn.
Like Bayard Publishing, Llewellyn was a closely held corporation, so I couldn’t find much on their finances. Besides T-square, they published four other magazines, including one for teens, two for women and a general news magazine. Llewellyn also owned the license for an AM radio station that featured jazz and gospel, an FM station that played rap and hip-hop and a couple of cable channels. I couldn’t see how they were financed or what their debt load was.
Personal data were easier to gather. Augustus Llewellyn was in his seventies, lived in a big home, some six thousand square feet, in Lake Forest. He had one getaway place in Jamaica, and an apartment in Paris on rue Georges V He was married, had three children and seven grandchildren. His daughter Janice managed the two women’s magazines, while a grandson worked at the AM radio station. Llewellyn himself still came to work every day. He was a big Republican Party donor, despite having been treated as a chauffeur by GOP operatives when he drove his Mercedes sedan to a recent fund-raiser at the opera house. He was a passionate sailor. A photograph showed a slender dapper man in tennis whites, carrying himself erect with no sign of aging except his grizzled hair.
From an old interview with him in T-Square, I learned that Llewellyn had gone to Northwestern University in the forties, where he’d majored in journalism. When he found it impossible to get the kind of job his white fellow graduates were finding, he’d started T-square in his basement while he worked days as a mail clerk at the old Daily News. In the early days, he and his wife, June, carried magazines to stores on the black South Side, ran and repaired a handpress and wrote all the copy for each issue.
In 1947, he was able to pay a photographer and a part-time staffer. In 1949, he found financing to set up a real piublishing operation. By 1953, he was making enough money to start Mero for women and to buy his FM and AM licenses. The radio stations began to make real money; he started his other publications in the early sixties, about the time he built his cube on west Erie Street.
I whistled “If you miss me at the back of the bus” under my breath. The
information was all interesting, but didn’t tell me whether Llewellyn’s family had ever worked for Laura Drummond in the dim past. I flipped back to the business reports and read them in more detail. And there, buried in the fine print on the third screen, was a fascinating little factoid. Registered agent for the Llewellyn Group: Lebold, Arnoff, attorneys with addresses in Oak Brook and on LaSalle Street.
“‘Come on over to the front of the bus, I’ll be riding right there,’ yes, indeedy,” I said aloud. “Why are you using New Solway’s tame lawyers as your registered agent, Mr. Llewellyn?”
I didn’t think Julius Arnoff would tell me anything, but the young associate might. I called Larry Yosano, both his home phone and his mobile, but only got voice mail at both places. I left a message with my own cell phone number.
Of course, Geraldine Graham would know. She’d also know what her mother was referring to when she talked about theft against her household. I called Anodyne Park. Ms. Graham was resting, Lisa told me, and couldn’t be disturbed.
“I really just wanted to know if Augustus Llewellyn’s family worked at Larchmont Hall before he became rich and famous.”
“Who are you working for?” she hissed. “Does Mr. Darraugh know you’re with the newspapers, trying to dig up that old dirt? We never knew the Llewellns. Mrs. Graham met him socially through Mr. Bayard. And if you try to say something else, the lawyer will deal with you, or Mr. Darraugh will take care of you himself.”
I hung up, more bewildered than ever. Had Geraldine been Llewellyn’s lover? But what did that have to do with her mother’s letter to Calvin Bayard?
Geraldine had met Llewellyn socially through Calvin Bayard. Which is also how she had met Kylie Ballantine. Who’d been fired from the University of Chicago because Olin Taverner demanded it of the university’s president. Olin was Geraldine’s cousin as well as a neighbor, even though he spent most of his time in Washington in those days.
Amy Blount had given me her photocopy of Taverner’s letter to the university, along with the picture of Kyhe Ballantine dancing for the Committee for Social Thought and Justice benefit. I still had the copies in my briefcase.