Blacklist (32 page)

“He said he was surprised old Mrs. Drummond cared, that her views on Negroes were as antiquated as she was-she hung on until 1984, you know, running Larchmont like it had been when she moved into it, except she installed electricity, talking about the coloreds knowing their place and hiring four Japanese gardeners to keep the pond and gardens in order. Mrs. Drummond was Olin’s aunt, but even though he made fun of her she intimidated him, too.”

“What did her views on blacks have to do with your father?” I tried staying on the main point, but I had trouble figuring out what it was. “Calvin had been stealing from Augustus Llewellyn, apparently. Olin never spelled it out, he said he wasn’t there to stir up old wounds, but as I’d seen his aunt’s letter, I should know that Calvin had been-“

“But that doesn’t make sense,” I interjected. “Your father lent Llewellyn the money to start T-Square.”

He stared at me. “Did Renee tell you that?”

“Yes. And they confirmed it over at Llewellyn enterprises.”

“Calvin did something with Llewellyn’s finances,” Bayard insisted. “Olin told me, and he wasn’t a liar.”

“So what else did he tell you?” I demanded. “Why did he hint around about your father’s financial deals but never spell them out?”

“Because he’d made a promise, and he kept his word.”

“Be your age, Bayard. Have you ever even read any of the transcripts of the hearings Taverner masterminded? He reveled in unveiling people’s secrets. He kept quiet because-“

“I know you share Calvin’s views,” he shouted me down. “You can’t believe Taverner had a sense of honor, because the Communists you admire so much didn’t believe in the concept.”

“You’ve said about twenty actionable things in the last five minutes,

Bayard.” My own temper was rising. “But let’s keep to the real questions here. Isn’t it more likely Taverner kept his secrets to himself because he didn’t want his own secrets coming out?”

“If you mean his homosexuality, he didn’t hide that from me. It didn’t affect my respect for him,” he said stiffly.

“It doesn’t matter now the way it did in the fifties,” I agreed. “So what secret of his own did Taverner care so much about that he kept one of your father’s for four decades?”

“You are completely wrong about Olin’s character because you only believe what you read in the liberal media.”

“This line about the liberal media is the same kind of garbage as `lies of the capitalist press’ that the old fellow travelers reiterated,” I snapped, exasperated. “Both of them are slogans to keep you from thinking about what you don’t want to know. But have it your way: Taverner pledged his life, his fortune and his sacred honor not to tell people your father had been stealing from Augustus Llewellyn. Now, tell me: How did you know Taverner had this secret file in his desk, the one you broke into his place to find?”

He scowled. “It was a desk that had belonged to one of the early Supreme Court justices, William Johnson, and it was Olin’s most prized possession. He had it in his Washington home, not his office, and he moved it back to Chicago with him. A couple of times when I was visiting him and we were talking about-about Calvin and Renee, he tapped the desktop and said, `It’s all in there, my boy, and when I’m gone you can learn the whole sorry story.”’

“So when you learned he was dead, you wanted to get to the whole sorry story before the lawyers did,” I suggested, “just in case Julius Arnoff thought the papers ought to go to your mother or even be suppressed, instead of including them with what he turned over to the heirs.”

“It would be like Julius,” he said bitterly. “Damned little busybody, trotting around like Calvin’s lapdog, wagging his tail anytime the big man threw him a biscuit.”

“And when you got there, and went to all that trouble busting open the patio door, what did you think when you saw the papers were already gone?” “I figured the Mexican who looked after him stole them to see what he could get for them.”

I thought of Domingo Rivas, with his quiet dignity in looking after his “gentlemen,” and felt another spurt of anger. “So did you talk to Mr. Rivas?” “I told him I’d pay him a thousand dollars for anything he removed from Olin’s desk, but he claimed he knew nothing about those papers.”

“He has his own code of honor, and I doubt it includes stealing from his patients. You know, of course, that if he’d wanted to take something of Taverner’s, he would have known where the keys were-he wouldn’t have had to follow your sterling example and break any locks.”

He flushed. “Who else could have them-unless that black reporter filched them. Because I sure as hell don’t have them.”

“Oh, it could be a black reporter or a Mexican orderly, but not a rich white guy?” I was thoroughly angry by now. “That’s the question, isn’t it: If you don’t have them, and Marcus Whitby didn’t take them, where are Olin Taverner’s secret documents?”

CHAPTER 40

Tangle,Tangle, Lives Entangled

The reporter must have taken them,” Edwards insisted. “Not because he was black, because he was a reporter. Just because I’m against affirmative action doesn’t mean I’m a racist, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Affirmative-“

“Yes, I’ve read all those position papers,” I interrupted. “I understand how insulting it is for African-Americans if whites give up any privileges. Marcus Whitby didn’t take Taverner’s papers. When Whitby left, Taverner locked the documents back in his drawer: Mr. Rivas saw him do so.”

“He could have come back for them later. Olin called me on Fridayhe wanted me to know he was going to make his story public now, while he was still alive. I asked-begged him over the phone-to tell me what was in those papers, but he wouldn’t, not on the phone. He was obsessed about phone taps, about the liberal media listening in on his conversations. So I said I’d fly out. I was going to Camp David with the president for the weekend, but I told him I’d fly out first thing Tuesday. But Tuesday Olin was dead.”

“Camp David with the president. A rarefied life, augmented by a little housebreaking. But of course, there’s a precedent for that, isn’t theredidn’t the Watergate burglars pal around at Camp David on the odd weekend? Maybe you got away early on Monday, though, and took an evening flight into O’Hare.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you say that?”

“Taverner had an unexpected visitor Monday night. It wouldn’t have been you, would it, trying to argue him out of going public, or knocking him off prematurely so you could collect his-“

He got to his feet. “I’ve had as much as I can stand of your innuendos. I wasn’t in Chicago on Monday, and it’s your word against mine that I was here on Thursday.”

“And the FBI’s,” I said lightly. “I think your pals in the justice Department are listening in on my conversations. At least, they sent in a couple of agents who knew how to bypass my alarm system and my locks. I don’t know whether they installed voice-activated bugs, but they might haveyou should ask them if they have a recording of our conversation today.”

He turned white, then red. “You taped this conversation without telling me?”

“No, Bayard. Do listen to what people are really saying to you. I’m letting you know that the attorney general whose methods you applaud may be taping my conversations. On account of they think I know where Ben jamin Sadawi is. Or because Marcus Whitby knew what was in Olin Taverner’s files and they’re hoping I’ll find out. Or because they care passionately about what the average citizen is thinking and doing. Take your pick.”

His eyes darted around the room, assessing where a bug could be placed. Like me, he seemed to find the possibilities both endless and daunting. “And you’re one of the people my mother has let into my daughter’s life. By God, Catherine is going back to Washington with me.”

“That should be an interesting conversation,” I said dryly. “Out of curiosity, why did you leave Catherine with her grandmother in the first place?” “It was easier,” he snapped. “When my wife died, I let Renee take over Catherine’s care. I was too shattered to look after a toddler and then I was traveling a great deal. I thought-I assumed that Catherine would see through Renee and Calvin’s political hypocrisy just as I had, and meanwhile she got the advantages of New Solway and that stable environment. But I should have known, easier is never better. And, by God, now I’ll do it the hard way.”

He stood so roughly that my desk chair rolled backward and cracked into the coffee table. “And the first change I’m making is that I forbid you

to talk to my daughter again. I will not have you continuing to involve her with terrorists.”

“I didn’t involve her with terrorists-I met her the same way I met you-by interrupting her housebreaking. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t let you hang out with her-I wouldn’t want her thinking that it’s okay to break the law if you’re rich and powerful.”

He glared at me, his square angry face looking very like Renee.

“You probably want to get back to the hospital.” I got up. “When I visit Catherine, I won’t mention our chat. I don’t pledge my honor, because we both know I’m a liberal and don’t have any, but I do care about disillusioning children’s belief in their parents. For whatever reason, your daughter seems fond of you.”

“I told you to stay away from my daughter, and I mean it.” He stalked from office.

I followed him down the hall to the front door. “You might notice the strong resemblance between Catherine and the portrait of Calvin’s mother that hangs over your big staircase in New Solway. Have you ever considered DNA testing? That could clear up your worries about your paternity.”

He didn’t thank me for my helpful advice, but walked around his BMW, looking for any damage. Elton crossed the street to offer him StreetWise, but Bayard ignored him and drove off with a great thrust of his afterburners.

I went back into my office. My anger had subsided, but Edwards Bayard’s turbulent emotions hung heavy in the room.

I wished I did have a tape recording of the conversation. I tried to reconstruct it, especially the letter Laura Taverner Drummond had written Calvin. “Theft against her household,” that could mean anything, from sexual to financial plundering.

I should have mastered my own temper better: I didn’t get as much out of the interview as I would have if I’d kept my cool. Edwards interpreted the letter as proof that Calvin had been stealing from the Grahams, or at least from the Drummond-Graham household. And then Olin Taverner said he was surprised that Laura Drummond cared about Negroes. Had Calvin stolen from some black servant in the Drummond family?

Augustus Llewellyn was the only African-American whose name had

cropped up in connection with Bayard’s. Just in case … I logged on to Nexis and looked up Llewellyn.

Like Bayard Publishing, Llewellyn was a closely held corporation, so I couldn’t find much on their finances. Besides T-square, they published four other magazines, including one for teens, two for women and a general news magazine. Llewellyn also owned the license for an AM radio station that featured jazz and gospel, an FM station that played rap and hip-hop and a couple of cable channels. I couldn’t see how they were financed or what their debt load was.

Personal data were easier to gather. Augustus Llewellyn was in his seventies, lived in a big home, some six thousand square feet, in Lake Forest. He had one getaway place in Jamaica, and an apartment in Paris on rue Georges V He was married, had three children and seven grandchildren. His daughter Janice managed the two women’s magazines, while a grandson worked at the AM radio station. Llewellyn himself still came to work every day. He was a big Republican Party donor, despite having been treated as a chauffeur by GOP operatives when he drove his Mercedes sedan to a recent fund-raiser at the opera house. He was a passionate sailor. A photograph showed a slender dapper man in tennis whites, carrying himself erect with no sign of aging except his grizzled hair.

From an old interview with him in T-Square, I learned that Llewellyn had gone to Northwestern University in the forties, where he’d majored in journalism. When he found it impossible to get the kind of job his white fellow graduates were finding, he’d started T-square in his basement while he worked days as a mail clerk at the old Daily News. In the early days, he and his wife, June, carried magazines to stores on the black South Side, ran and repaired a handpress and wrote all the copy for each issue.

In 1947, he was able to pay a photographer and a part-time staffer. In 1949, he found financing to set up a real piublishing operation. By 1953, he was making enough money to start Mero for women and to buy his FM and AM licenses. The radio stations began to make real money; he started his other publications in the early sixties, about the time he built his cube on west Erie Street.

I whistled “If you miss me at the back of the bus” under my breath. The

information was all interesting, but didn’t tell me whether Llewellyn’s family had ever worked for Laura Drummond in the dim past. I flipped back to the business reports and read them in more detail. And there, buried in the fine print on the third screen, was a fascinating little factoid. Registered agent for the Llewellyn Group: Lebold, Arnoff, attorneys with addresses in Oak Brook and on LaSalle Street.

“‘Come on over to the front of the bus, I’ll be riding right there,’ yes, indeedy,” I said aloud. “Why are you using New Solway’s tame lawyers as your registered agent, Mr. Llewellyn?”

I didn’t think Julius Arnoff would tell me anything, but the young associate might. I called Larry Yosano, both his home phone and his mobile, but only got voice mail at both places. I left a message with my own cell phone number.

Of course, Geraldine Graham would know. She’d also know what her mother was referring to when she talked about theft against her household. I called Anodyne Park. Ms. Graham was resting, Lisa told me, and couldn’t be disturbed.

“I really just wanted to know if Augustus Llewellyn’s family worked at Larchmont Hall before he became rich and famous.”

“Who are you working for?” she hissed. “Does Mr. Darraugh know you’re with the newspapers, trying to dig up that old dirt? We never knew the Llewellns. Mrs. Graham met him socially through Mr. Bayard. And if you try to say something else, the lawyer will deal with you, or Mr. Darraugh will take care of you himself.”

I hung up, more bewildered than ever. Had Geraldine been Llewellyn’s lover? But what did that have to do with her mother’s letter to Calvin Bayard?

Geraldine had met Llewellyn socially through Calvin Bayard. Which is also how she had met Kylie Ballantine. Who’d been fired from the University of Chicago because Olin Taverner demanded it of the university’s president. Olin was Geraldine’s cousin as well as a neighbor, even though he spent most of his time in Washington in those days.

Amy Blount had given me her photocopy of Taverner’s letter to the university, along with the picture of Kyhe Ballantine dancing for the Committee for Social Thought and Justice benefit. I still had the copies in my briefcase.

I took them out and studied them. Dancers in Western tights and toe shoes, faces obscured by African shields or masks-who had known one of them was Kylie Ballantine? Or, for that matter, where she was dancing? The shot was of the stage, not of the audience. All you could tell was that it was an outdoor venue, because evergreen branches appeared behind the wings.

Who had taken the picture? Who had sent it to Taverner? I dropped it on my desktop. The more bits and pieces about New Solway that I gathered, the more confused I became. And what about Edwards Bayard’s conviction that Calvin wasn’t his father? The gossip he’d overheard as a child-did that have anything to do with this story, or was it just gossip?

Amy had included a few notes on the Committee for Social Thought and Justice. She said not much had been written about it because it wasn’t as well known as other left-leaning groups of the forties and fifties, “not like the Civil Rights Congress, where Dashiell Hammett sat on the board, and Decca Mitford and Bob Truehoft did groundbreaking legal and social work for African-Americans out in Oakland.” She’d found one article in the Journal of Labor History, part of the oral history of black labor organizers of the forties, which included reminiscences about the beginnings of the group.

The article dealt mostly with the role that black members of the hotel workers union played in the struggle against the Mob and the hotel industry. One of the men interviewed had been a Communist who hung out at a West Side bar called Flora’s, where left-leaning workers and intellectuals, both black and white, congregated.

Apparently, when Armand Pelletier returned from Spain, he started bringing some of his writer and painter friends to Flora’s, where they had informal meetings, gave impromptu concerts and also helped the labor leaders write and print leaflets. Artists and writers from the Federal Negro Theater Project often showed up; “… the man in the interview definitely remembers Kylie Ballantine coming there,” Amy had written. “Not very many other writers or artists were mentioned by name, except Pelletier, because he was the important organizer of the artists; the interview was focusing on black labor leaders.”

One day Pelletier joked that the Dies Committee in Congress would shut down Flora’s if they knew that the Federal Theater Project was still

active there. “We’ll call ourselves a committee, too, just like Dies does, one that keeps American values alive. But we’re not here to investigate people’s toilets and peer in their bedrooms; we’ll have a committee for working people who believe in the real values of America.” Someone came up with the cumbersome title, Committee for Social Thought and justice, which the members themselves shortened to “ComThought.”

ComThought never had an active organization or board, but they did raise money to help fund some of the experimental arts programs Congress had cut out of the New Deal. And since many of the people at Flora’s were Communists, and were arrested, ComThought began providing legal defense money for them in the late forties and early fifties. Pelletier himself served six months in prison, both for giving to the fund himself and for refusing to name any other donors.

I thought again of Geraldine and the pet charity of Calvin’s she’d given money to. Her mother definitely would have hated any organization that she thought was a Communist front.

I looked at the clock. When I’d talked to Lotty yesterday, she had invited me to dinner with her tonight. It was five-thirty now-if the traffic gods were kind, I could make it out to Anodyne Park and back in two hours. I called to say I might be a bit late; she adjured me not to make it too late, since she had an early date in the OR, but if I could get to her by eight she’d still like to see me.