Blacklist

by Sara Paretsky

  live to my great age, you will find that the past becomes such a broad landscape that many memories, even precious ones, get hidden under leaves and hillocks. You will have to excuse me now. Conversation fatigues me as it didn’t formerly.”

  I got up to leave; Lisa smiled in triumph.

  “You’re very kind to have taken the time. How did Mr. Bayard come to be involved with Mr. Llewellyn to the extent of providing the money he needed to start his own publishing firm?” I asked.

  “I was never involved in the business life of New Solway’s businessmen. When I was a young woman, we were supposed to be decorative, not to have heads for great affairs.”

  I shook off Lisa’s arm as she tried to steer me to the door. “Did Mr. Llewellyn support the same charity that you did?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t know, young woman. It’s possible. But it was all a long time ago, in another country.”

  Ms. Graham often dotted her speech with what sounded like quotations that I didn’t recognize. I knew this one. As I put my shoes on in the building’s foyer, I could even supply the missing second part of it: besides, the wench is dead.

  I didn’t think Geraldine had forgotten anything: the name of the charity, why her mother had objected so strongly or even how Calvin Bayard came to support Llewellyn. But for whatever reason, Geraldine thought the person she’d been in those days was dead. Her mother had triumphed-her mother’s portrait hung over her head day after day to remind her.

  How had she spent her days back then, while Mrs. Drummond ran Larchmont? Maybe she’d thrown herself into motherhood and amateur dramatics, or county politics. Marriage had been supposed to settle both her and MacKenzie Graham. I remembered again the articles describing her return from Europe in the early thirties, looking “interestingly thin.” She’d slept around, gotten pregnant, gone to Switzerland for an abortion? And MacKenzie? What form had his New York City peccadilloes taken?

  Even with thirteen bedrooms to wander through, how had Geraldine endured all those years with her mother and a husband with whom she had nothing in common? What had she been mourning, when she said she mourned MacKenzie’s death?

  CHAPTER 42

  Silence Is-?

  Lotty couldn’t give me as much comfort as I wanted. Over a bowl of lentil soup, I recounted the details of my last several days, trying to puzzle out the complicated relations of New Solway.

  When I finished, she asked, “Where does that Egyptian boy fit in?” “He doesn’t. Except I think he could tell me how Whitby got into the pond.” I described the layout of the Larchmont attic to her and my imagined picture of Benjamin Sadawi standing on a chair, watching for Catherine.

  Lotty pushed her reading glasses up into her hair. “So you do know where he is, Victoria.”

  I flushed, but nodded.

  “And is that why you’re concealing his whereabouts? Because you want to get information out of him? If he’s a terrorist, you should turn him over to the authorities.”

  “If I knew he was a terrorist, I’d turn him over in a heartbeat.” “And you’re the best judge of whether he is?”

  I got up from the couch and walked over to the window, where I could see the lake glistening when car lights hit it. “It’s the trouble with these times, Lotty. We don’t know who to trust. But an attorney general who

  thinks that calico cats are a sign of the devil doesn’t inspire me with greater confidence than I have in my own judgment.”

  “Your judgment on this isn’t backed up by any experience or expertise. You’ve never worked with Arab militants, so you don’t know how or what to look for to say whether he is one or not. You certainly don’t speak Arabic, so you can’t even talk to him.”

  I turned to look at her. “Lotty, do you think every Arab in this country should be interned?”

  “Of course not. You know I loathe stereotyping of any kind. But this morning’s paper ran a story about the mosque this youth attends. The antiJewish rhetoric there runs high.” She sighed and looked down at her hands. “It seems to run high these days in London and Paris as well. Nothing has changed since my childhood. All over Europe and the Middle East, instead of blaming terrorists for our current woes, people are blaming the Jews. Even some poet in New Jersey is chanting that tired old litany. So I’d like to make sure this particular Arab boy doesn’t want to see me dead before I applaud you for hiding him.”

  I pulled savagely on the cord for her blinds. “I understand: it’s what makes everything so difficult these days. What if I cut Benjamin loose and he kills someone like you-someone beloved, who’s saving lives, not a party to his quarrel with the universe? What if I turn him over to the authorities and they send him to a prison, remote from anyone he knows, where he can be gang-raped by the adult male population? If he’s not already a terrorist, that seems guaranteed to turn him into one.”

  She nodded, her face pinched with worry. “So what are you doing to resolve this dilemma?”

  “I’ve left him with Father Lou. He’s sorted out a lot of gangbangers in his day, maybe he can sort this kid out, too.”

  “I hope for everyone’s sake you’re right about this, Victoria. I’m worried about, oh, everything, but also your own safety. You could get badly hurt yourself, you know. Not even necessarily by this boy, but by some gunhappy policeman like the ones who shot the Bayard child. Is this Egyptian boy’s health and safety really worth the risk to your own life?” Her mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “Why am I even asking that question?

  You’re like your own dogs-once you have a bone in your teeth, you won’t let it go.”

  We talked of easier matters for a time, but at ten she told me she was due in the OR at six, and that I should go home. And try to be careful. She smiled at me, but her eyes were sad.

  Lotty’s somber words haunted my sleep, filling it with dreams where I caused disasters in which she died and Morrell stood in the entrance to a cave, shaking his head at me before turning his back and disappearing from sight. A little after four-thirty, I picked myself out of bed. It was better to stumble gritty-eyed through the day than get another hour of such tormented sleep.

  I drove over to St. Remigio’s for early Mass, taking a roundabout route through the early morning streets until I was sure that no one was on my tail. I slipped into the Lady Chapel about halfway through the lessons, read in Spanish by a stocky woman who was the school nurse. A handful of neighborhood women were there, and a sleepy boy, a student at the school, was serving.

  After the service, Father Lou beckoned me into his study. Benji was doing all right, a bit nervous about being in Christian hands, but he’d loved going to the gym yesterday afternoon and had started a workout on the equipment. And still had nothing to say about what, if anything, he’d seen from his attic window the night Marcus Whitby was killed.

  “Don’t know how well this is going to work. I put him in the fourth grade, he can read enough English for that, he’ll improve fast if he stays. Told the kids he was African-the truth, and keeps them from thinking he’s an enemy. But they’re teasing him for being in the kiddie class, so his pride is hurt. Explained to him and them what real strength is: not beating someone in the ring, beating your own devils at their game. Only weak people take part in mobs. Never know how much of a lecture like that gets through to them.”

  I nodded. “The mosque he goes to, yesterday’s papers said they carry literature on how Zionism is responsible for the World Trade Center, and Jews make Purim cakes out of Muslim children’s blood. I hate to think I’m protecting someone who wants to kill my friends.”

  He grunted. “Best I can tell you is, I grew up in the Catholic Church

  hearing same kinds of stories. Jews killed Jesus, made matzo out of Christian babies’ blood. Grew up, learned different, learned better, hope this kid can do the same. How’s the girl?”

  “Healing nicely. She’ll come home from the hospital today. To a showdown between her father and her grandmother. The father has the legal righ
ts, but my money is on Granny… Can I talk to Benji for a minute?”

  Father Lou looked at his clock. “Should be in the kitchen. Seems able to look after himself. I think he’s a good boy. Shy, but eager to respond to people.”

  I walked down the unlit hallways to the kitchen, where Benji was washing dishes in the old zinc sink. He looked up nervously at my entrance, but relaxed when he recognized me.

  I put a piece of bread in the toaster. “I saw Catherine yesterday. She’s doing well: she got hit in the upper arm but not badly, and they’re sending her home from the hospital today.”

  “That is very well, that news. You telling her where I am?”

  I nodded. “She’ll be in touch when she knows it won’t put you in any danger for her to visit you. Benji-what do you want to do in the long run, if we can sort out your problems? Do you want to stay in Chicago, or go back to Cairo?”

  He started drying the plates he’d washed, carefully, as if they were Sevres china instead of industrial pottery. “Sort out my problems? You are saying what? End my problems?”

  “Yes. Solve them.”

  “For my family, is good I am here. I send money and my sisters and my littlest brother, they go to school, they study. For me, always hiding is no good. Is unhealthy, is-” He made an expressive gesture, comprehending humiliation and anger. “And also when I hiding I cannot working. Cannot work. I cannot work when I am hiding always. This Christian priest is what you saying, he is good man, and he is helping with learning English, but still I cannot work, I cannot go mosque, I cannot see my people.”

  “So I need to figure out how to let you stay here but keep you out of the FBI’s clutches.” I spread butter on the toast. “Benji, last Sunday a man died in the pond behind Larchmont Hall-the house where Catherine hid you, you know its name is `Larchmont Hall,’ right? I think someone put

  this man in the pond; I think someone killed this man. When you were watching for Catherine, what did you see?”

  “Nothing. I seeing nothing.” He dropped the plate he was holding. It landed with a bang on the tiles, breaking into large jagged chunks.

  I knelt to gather up the pieces, but squatted on my haunches to look up at him. “Why are you afraid to tell me what you saw? I got you away from the police. You saw how much trouble I took to keep you safe. Why do you think I would hurt you now?”

  “I seeing nothing. I poor, I not a-a professor, but I know what be happening. I seeing someone, you telling police, they saying, ah, Egyptian boy, he terrorist, he killer. I seeing someone, and they killing me next. No, I seeing no person.” He flung the dish towel onto the kitchen table and fled into the interior of the rectory.

  CHAPTER 43

  Stiffed at the Morgue

  I left the church feeling tense and jumpy. My conversation with Benji had confirmed my assumption that he’d seen Marc’s killer. And he’d managed to explain why he was afraid to report what he’d seen. I couldn’t exactly blame him; the law had shot Catherine Bayard in their eagerness to kill him. Why should he trust that I could keep them from executing him if he came forward to testify?

  If I could figure out a way to get the justice Department off his back, maybe Benji would give me the information in exchange, but I didn’t have clever ideas about much of anything right now.

  My day didn’t unfold in a way that made me any happier. Back in my apartment, I found a message from Bryant Vishnikov. He’d phoned only a few minutes after I left. Hoping that meant he had hot information, I dropped my coat and purse on the floor and returned his call at once. He interrupted an autopsy to talk to me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the city wanted an autopsy on your stiff?” “Hi, Bryant. Have a nice weekend? Mine was good, too, thanks, just the usual two hours under bright lights with three law enforcement agencies. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but, despite my winsome manners, the police aren’t my biggest admirers. They don’t share their hopes and wishes with me. When did they order the autopsy?”

  “The paperwork came over from Bobby Mallory’s office yesterday afternoon. When I called to explain I’d already done it, as a private job, Captain Mallory not surprisingly wanted to know who for. He said you were at the meeting Sunday where they agreed to send Whitby here for a second opinion. And he was not happy that you hadn’t told him that you’d hired me on behalf of the Whitby family.”

  “I was at that meeting,” I agreed. “As a suspect in hiding an Egyptian boy from the Feds, not as a participant in discussions about crime fighting. What did you find when you did the autopsy?”

  “Damn you, Warshawski, don’t blindside me like this and then think I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “And damn you, Vishnikov, for calling me up to yell at me instead of talking it through with me,” I said, thoroughly angry. “I hired you in good faith, I followed the protocol you outlined for getting the body to you through a private funeral parlor. What did you find?”

  “For nothing I’ll tell you what I told Mallory: there weren’t any external blows or wounds. Whitby wasn’t shot or knifed or bludgeoned before he went into the pond. He drowned.”

  “And his blood alcohol?”

  “The tox screen will come in tonight or tomorrow. That you can get from Mallory. I won’t charge you for my work, since the county ordered the same job, but you also don’t get a free look at the screen.”

  He severed the connection. Whick, like slicing off the top of a corpse’s head. I looked at my hands with a sense of deflation. I had expected so much more from Vishnikov. I’d been so sure there’d be some kind of in jury… and then, the golf cart that had gone through the culvert-or maybe those wheel tracks hadn’t belonged to a golf cart. Sherlock Holmes would have measured a cart, taken a plaster cast of the wheels, checked them against the tracks in the culvert. Maybe I’d made up a whole lot of connections that didn’t exist, wanting to create a murder where there’d only been an inexplicable accident.

  My father used to lecture me about being too impulsive. “Don’t ride your emotions so much, Pepper Pot. Take the time to think it through first. You can save yourself a lot of grief, and me as well.”

  He’d said that more than once, but I vividly remembered his voice from a day he’d been called to meet me in the principal’s office. I’d tried to stage a sit-in to protest a schoolmate’s expulsion. I thought they’d done it because Joey lived in a shanty and stank; it turned out to be because Joey was setting fires in the lockers. I wondered now if riding my emotions was leading me to shelter another Joey, whether Benjamin Sadawi would prove to be a fire starter as well. I didn’t seem to have learned much in twentyfive years.

  I took the dogs for a short run, then went to the safe in my bedroom closet for my Smith & Wesson. I drove out to the range and fired a hundred rounds, venting my frustration with myself more than anything else. I was off the target more than I was on it, which didn’t improve my mood; I went to my office feeling that I’d better be able to use finesse to solve my problems.

  I didn’t remember any finesse when Bobby called me a little after ten. It was his turn to chew me out, for not letting him know that Vishnikov was already working on Whitby. “You heard that whole discussion about where the body was and who would do the second autopsy, and you didn’t let out one peep that you already had Vish working on it.”

  “I’d been the subject of a hostile interrogation for over two hours. If I said anything to that crew, I’d have been there another two hours.”

  “But later, when you were alone with me?”

  “Bobby, you were focusing on the Egyptian kid, and I was tired-I forgot. Have you found him yet?”

  “I’m telling you, Vicki, this isn’t a joke. If you know where Benjamin Sadawi is and you’re sitting on him, like you sat on the autopsy, I am personally going to tie you up in pink ribbon and deliver you to the federal marshals.”

  “Use some other color, okay?” I forgot I was going to think things through before speaking. “You know I hate sex stereotyping.
”

  He slammed the phone in my ear. I sat staring at nothing for a long time. The front door bell finally roused me from my stupor.

  It was a messenger with a large envelope from Cheviot Labs, which included the salvageable material from Whitby’s pocket organizer, separated and placed in protective plastic, as well as several pages summarizing the work done on them and the results. Excitement at the contents made me forget my frustrations for a moment.

  Kathryn Chang’s cover letter explained that she’d had to come in on a different project yesterday and had found my packet.

  You said your need for analysis was urgent, so I took care of it. Most of the paper had been destroyed, first by being wet too long, and then by drying out. For future reference, if you ever need this kind of work done again, keep the paper damp until we can work on it. As far as I can tell, a small notepad suffered the most damage.

  Two documents had been folded and placed in a side compartment; these were relatively intact and I was able to restore them. Of course it’s very difficult to judge paper and ink after they’ve been soaked as long as these pieces had. One was handwritten on school exercise paper that dated to the nineteen-thirties; the other typed on a 20-pound cream stock, around forty or fifty years old. I’ve placed the originals in protective casings; you should be very careful about touching them. Attached are photographed copies and transcriptions (photography preserves the original document better than photocopying).

  I laid out the photoed pages. One was a typed letter to Kylie Ballantine, the other her own spidery handwritten response. So Marc had found some documents. The letters so precious that he’d kept them in his breast pocket, over his heart. My own heart beat faster as I read the typed letter.

  Dear Kylie,

  Despite the turns of Dame Fortune’s wheel, which dictate when we mortals shall enjoy fame and money and when we shall live by writing bilge for women’s magazines under pseudonyms (my own, in case you haven’t been reading Woman’s Day lately, is Rosemary Burke) I have a few friends remaining at the august institution you no longer grace. One of them tells me that Olin Taverner somehow came by a photograph of you dancing at the lodge for ComThought back in ‘forty-eight. He sent it to the university president with a demand that they dismiss you. I don’t know who was at the resort with a camera, and who would have supplied that prize Fascist with a picture, but you might ask Taverner.