A waiter came by for our order. I asked for mostaccioli; Murray chose spaghetti with meatballs. I was going to have to start running again, sore muscles or not, with all the starch I was eating lately.
“Now, V. I. Warshawski, most beautiful detective in Chicago, what gives with these pictures,” Murray said, clasping his hands together on the table and leaning over them toward me. “I recall seeing that dead young Peter Thayer worked for Ajax, in fact for Mr. Masters, an old family friend. Also, somewhere in the thousands of lines that have been churned out since he died, I recall reading that his girl friend, the lovely and dedicated Anita McGraw, was the daughter of well-known union leader Andrew McGraw. Now you want pictures of both of them. Is it possible that you are suggesting they colluded in the death of young Thayer, and possibly his father as well?”
I looked at him seriously. “It was like this, Murray: McGraw has what amounts to a psychopathic hatred of capitalist bosses. When he realized that his pure young daughter, who had always been protected from any contact with management, was seriously considering marrying not just a boss, but the son of one of Chicago’s wealthiest businessmen, he decided the only thing to do was to have the young man put six feet underground., His psychosis is such that he decided to have John Thayer eliminated as well, just for—”
“Spare me the rest,” Murray said. “I can spell it out for myself. Is either McGraw or Masters your client?”
“You’d better be buying this lunch, Murray—it is definitely a business expense.”
The waiter brought our food, slapping it down in the hurried, careless way that is the hallmark of business restaurants at lunch. I snatched the pictures back just in time to save them from spaghetti sauce and started sprinkling cheese on my pasta: I love it really cheesy.
“Do you have a client?” he asked, spearing a meatball.
“Yes, I do.”
“But you won’t tell me who it is?” I smiled and nodded agreement.
“You buy Mackenzie as Thayer Junior’s murderer?” Murray asked.
“I haven’t talked to the man. But one does have to wonder who killed Thayer Senior if Mackenzie killed the son. I don’t like the thought of two people in the same family killed in the same week for totally unconnected reasons by unconnected people: laws of chance are against that,” I answered. “What about you?”
He gave a big Elliot Gould smile. “You know, I talked to Lieutenant Mallory after the case first broke, and he didn’t say anything about robbery, either of the boy or of the apartment. Now, you found the body, didn’t you? Well, did the apartment look ransacked?”
“I couldn’t really tell if anything had been taken—I didn’t know what was supposed to be there.”
“By the way, what took you down there in the first place?” he asked casually.
“Nostalgia, Murray—I used to go to school down there and I got an itch to see what the old place looked like.”
Murray laughed. “Okay, Vic, you win—can’t fault me for trying though, can you?”
I laughed too. I didn’t mind. I finished my pasta—no child had ever died in India because of my inhumane failure to clean my plate.
“ If I find out anything you might be interested in, I’ll let you know,” I said.
Murray asked me when I thought the Cubs would break this year. They were looking scrappy right now—two and a half games out.
“You know, Murray, I am a person with very few illusions about life. I like to have the Cubs as one of them.” I stirred my coffee. “But I’d guess the second week in August. What about you?”
“Well, this is the third week in July. I give them ten more games. Martin and Buckner can’t carry that team.”
I agreed sadly. We finished lunch on baseball and split the check when it came.
“There is one thing, Murray.”
He looked at me intently. I almost laughed, the change in his whole posture had been so complete—he really looked like a bloodhound on the trail, now.
“I have what I think is a clue. I don’t know what it means, or why it is a clue. But I’ve left a copy of it with my attorney. If I should be bumped off, or put out of action for any length of time, he has instructions to give it to you.”
“What is it?” Murray asked.
“You ought to be a detective, Murray—you ask as many questions and you’re just as hot when you’re on the trail. One thing I will say—Earl Smeissen’s hovering around this case. He gave me this beautiful black eye which you’ve been too gentlemanly to mention. It wouldn’t be totally out of the question for my body to come floating down the Chicago River—you might look out your office window every hour or so to see.”
Murray didn’t look surprised. “You already knew that?” I asked.
He grinned. “You know who arrested Donald Mackenzie?”
“Yes, Frank Carlson.”
“And whose boy is Carlson?” he asked.
“Henry Vespucci.”
“And do you know who’s been covering Vespucci’s back all these years?”