A corner of his mouth lifted into a sneer. “Oh, I remember Geraldine Graham. She was like so many rich white girls of the forties. And the fifties. And the current age. Hot bored things who look for the secret thrill the black man can provide. In her case, it was the Red man, the Communist man, but the spice of feeling the sweat of black workers gave it an added zest for her. If she decides to talk to you about those days -I will be very surprised.”
“Every generation likes to think it was the first to discover sex; Ms. Graham might enjoy reminding the rest of us that.she got there ahead of us. If Pelletier can be believed, she was sleeping first with him, then with Calvin Bayard; meanwhile, you brought Kylie Ballantine to Flora’s bar, where she met Pelletier and Bayard and all those other people.” I was embroidering recklessly, both on Pelletier’s manuscript and on the hints I’d picked up from Geraldine Graham. “So when they decided to hold a fund-raiser for ComThought’s legal defense fund, you all went up to Eagle River together.”
He said coldly, “It’s not unusual for a journalist to write up a political fund-raiser, especially when it’s an unusual political group.”
“Pelletier wrote that you were a fellow traveler back in the forties. I’m sure that interested Bushnell’s committee no end.”
“Pelletier wrote a lot of crap in his later years. He was a drunk and bitter man. I didn’t worry about it then and I won’t lose sleep over it now.” “You wouldn’t mind if the Republican National Committee found out you’d been Communist, or at least a Communist sympathizer?”
He gave a derisive snort. “My fellow Republicans include many repentant former leftists. As a black man, I already command unusual attention in the party. If I confessed to Communism, it would only add to my luster.”
“So it didn’t bother you that Marc Whitby learned you’d been at the ComThought fund-raiser. Would you mind the world knowing it was you who sent Olin Taverner a photograph from that same event that cost Kylie Ballantine her job?”
“That’s a damned lie!” In fury, his voice rose to a shout. “Whether Armand wrote that or not, I’ll see anyone who spreads that rumor destroyed in the courts and damned in hell.”
“Or pushed into Larchmont’s pond to drown?”
He stood. “If that means what I think it does, my lawyers will talk to you about a slander suit, young woman.”
“Slander is slippery in court,” I said. “Mart’s notes would be part of my defense. Which means the accusations would come into the public domain.”
I was hoping he’d say, “What notes, I destroyed all his notes,” but instead he said Marc couldn’t have any notes about him sending Kylie’s picture to Olin, because he hadn’t done so.
“Taverner wrote a letter to Kylie Ballantine; she discussed it in a letter of her own to Pelletier.” I took the photocopy from my bag and showed it to him. “See where she says Taverner told her not to blame him and Bushnell, but to talk to `those of her own blood’? If he didn’t mean you, who did he mean? The hotel workers?”
An ugly smile creased Llewellyn’s face. “Even if I knew, you’re not the person I’d tell. You will do well to inform the Whitby family that the tragedy of their son’s death is one of those many murders of young black men that will never be resolved. Let them go home to Atlanta. Let them grieve decently and move forward with their lives. Get your stick out of that old pond you’re stirring. The stench from the rot on the bottom could rise up and choke you.”
The interview was clearly over.
CHAPTER 46
Hamster on a Wheel
Llewellyn’s children were waiting outside their father’s office. When I emerged, the sons hustled me into an elevator which they’d kept waiting, then muscled me outside with more force than the situation really warranted. They watched until I turned the corner onto Franklin.
The sky was dark; the area restaurants and nightspots were just starting to fill up. I passed knots of eagerly chattering thirty-somethings on their way to jazz bars and dinner. Was there a Geraldine among them, escaping from an impotent husband and an overbearing mother into the city’s nightlife? Or an Armand Pelletier, brilliant, impetuous, trying to organize them all to act?
I walked slowly, hunched over, my hands in my pockets. Llewellyn was yet another player from that old New Solway team with old secrets to keep. He said he didn’t care if people thought he’d been a Communist, but that could be a sophisticated bluff it’s always the best strategy to scoff at threats, not to cower before them. What made him furious was the suggestion that he’d cost Kylie her career. If Marc thought he’d found evidence proving Llewellyn had betrayed her to Olin Taverner, maybe Llewellyn would have silenced his star reporter.
Those muscular sons of his were-strong enough to carry someone from
his car to a pond and hold him under until he drowned to death. And they would pretty much do whatever their daddy wanted.