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him read the story. It was short and he must have gone through it several times. Then he looked up at me, bewildered.
    “Peter Thayer? Dead? What is this?”
    “I don’t know. I’d like to find out.”
    “You knew when you bought the paper?”
    I nodded. He glanced back down at the story, then at me. His mobile face looked angry.
    “How did you know?”
    “I found the body.”
    “Why the hell didn’t you tell me over at Ajax instead of putting me through this charade?” he demanded.
    “Well, anyone could have killed him. You, Yardley Masters, his girl friend … I wanted to get your reaction to the news.”
    “Who the hell
are you?”
    “My name’s V. I. Warshawski. I’m a private detectiveand I’m looking into Peter Thayer’s death.” I handed him a business card.
    “You? You’re no more a detective than I am a ballet dancer,” he exclaimed.
    “I’d like to see you in tights and a tutu,” I commented, pulling out the plastic-encased photostat of my private investigator’s license. He studied it, then shrugged without speaking. I put it back in my wallet.
    “Just to clear up the point, Mr. Devereux, did you kill Peter Thayer?”
    “No, I goddamn did not kill him.” His jaw worked angrily. He kept starting to talk, then stopping, unable to put his feelings into words.
    I nodded at Sal and she brought us a couple more drinks. The bar was beginning to fill up with precommute drinkers. Devereux drank his second gin and relaxed somewhat. “I’d like to have seen Yardley’s face when you asked him if he killed Peter,” he commented dryly.
    “I didn’t ask him. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to talk to me, though. Was he really very protective of Thayer? That’s what he intimated.”
    “No.” He considered the question. “He didn’t pay much attention to him. But there was the family connection…. If Peter was in trouble, Yardley’d feel he owed it to John Thayer to look after him…. Dead … he was a hell of a nice boy, his radical ideas notwithstanding. Jesus, this is going to cut up Yardley. His old man, too. Thayer didn’t like the kid living where he did—and now, shot by some junkie …”
    “How do you know his father didn’t like it?”
    “Oh, it wasn’t any secret. Shortly after Pete started with us, Jack Thayer came storming in showing his muscle and bellowing around like a vice-president in heat—how the kid was betraying the family with his labor-union talk, and why couldn’t he live in a decent place—I guess they’d bought a condo for him down there, if you can believe that. I must say, the boy took it very well—didn’t blow up back or anything.”
    “Did he work with any—well, highly confidential—papers at Ajax?”
    Devereux was surprised. “You’re not trying to link his death with Ajax, are you? I thought it was pretty clear that he was shot by one of those drug addicts who are always killing people in Hyde Park.”
    “You make Hyde Park sound like the site of the Tong Wars, Mr. Devereux. Of the thirty-two murders in the twenty-first police district last year, only six were in Hyde Park—one every two months. I don’t think Peter Thayer is just the neighborhood’s July-August statistic.”
    “Well, what makes you think it’s connected with Ajax, then?”
    “I don’t think so. I’m just trying to eliminate possibilities…. Have you ever seen a dead body—or at least a body that got that way because of a bullet?” He shook his head and moved defensively in his chair. “Well, I have. And you can often tell from the way the body lies whether the victim was trying to fight off the attacker. Well, this boy was sitting at his kitchen table in a white shirt—probably ready to come down hereMonday morning—and someone put a little hole smack in the middle of his head. Now a professional might have done that, but even so, he’d have to bring along someone whom the boy knew to get his confidence. It could’ve been you, or Masters, or his