Indemnity Only Read Online Free PDF Page B

for a few minutes as I pulled open the drawers and sorted through the papers. “You can search me on my way out to see if I’ve taken anything,” I told her without looking up. She sniffed, but walked back to her own desk.
    These papers were as innocuous as those in the boy’s apartment. Numerous ledger sheets with various aspects of the department’s budget added up, a sheaf of computer printouts that dealt with Workers Compensation case estimates, correspondence to Ajaxclaim handlers—“Dear Mr. So-and-So, please verify the case estimates for the following claimants.” Nothing you’d murder a boy for.
    I was scratching my head over these slim pickings, wondering what to do next, when I realized someone was watching me. I looked up. It wasn’t the secretary.
    “You’re certainly a lot more decorative than young Thayer,” my observer remarked. “You taking his place?”
    The speaker was in his shirt-sleeves, a man in his thirties who didn’t have to be told how good-looking he was. I appreciated his narrow waist and the way his Brooks Brothers trousers fit.
    “Does anyone around here know Peter Thayer at all well?” I asked.
    “Yardley’s secretary is making herself sick over him, but I don’t know whether she knows him. He moved closer. “Why the interest? Are you with the IRS? Has the kid omitted taxes on some of the vast family holdings deeded to him? Or absconded the Claim Department funds and made them over to the revolutionary committee?”
    “You’re in the right occupational ball park,” I conceded, “and he has, apparently, disappeared. I’ve never talked to him,” I added carefully. “Do you know him?”
    “Better than most people around here.” He grinned cheerfully and seemed likable despite his arrogance. “He supposedly did legwork for Yardley—Yardley Masters—you were just seen talking to him. I’m Yardley’s budget manager.”
    “How about a drink?” I suggested.
    He looked at his watch and grinned again.
    “You’ve got a date, little lady.”
    His name was Ralph Devereux. He was a suburbanite who had only recently moved to the city, following a divorce that left his wife in possession of their Downers Grove house, he informed me in the elevator. The only Loop bar he knew was Billy’s, where the Claim Department hung out. I suggested the Golden Glow a little farther west, to avoid the people he knew. As we walked down Adams Street, I bought a
Sun-Times.
    The Golden Glow is an oddity in the South Loop. A tiny saloon dating back to the last century, it still has a mahogany horseshoe-shaped bar where serious drinkers sit. Eight or nine little tables and booths are crammed in along the walls, and a couple of real Tiffany lamps, installed when the place was built, provide a homey glow. Sal, the bartender, is a magnificent black woman, close to six feet tall. I’ve watched her break up a fight with just a word and a glance—no one messes with Sal. This afternoon she wore a silver pantsuit. Stunning.
    She greeted me with a nod and brought a shot of Black Label to the booth. Ralph ordered a gin-and-tonic. Four o’clock is a little early, even for the Golden Glow’s serious-drinking clientele, and the place was mostly deserted.
    Devereux placed a five-dollar bill on the table for Sal. “Now tell me why a gorgeous lady like yourself is interested in a young kid like Peter Thayer.”
    I gave him back his money. “Sal runs a tab for me,” I explained. I thumbed through the paper. The story hadn’t come in soon enough for the front page, but they’d given it two quarter columns on page seven. RADICAL BANKING HEIR SHOT , the headline read. Thayer’s father was briefly mentioned in the last paragraph; his four roommates and their radical activities were given the most play. The Ajax Insurance Company was not mentioned at all.
    I folded the paper back and showed the column to Devereux. He glanced at it briefly, then did a double take and snatched the paper from me. I watched