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.