My stomach tightened at the accusation, but I kept my voice steady. “Did your mother have affairs? It doesn’t seem in character, although I didn’t know her when she was twenty.”

“That’s what I would have thought, too,” he said savagely. “And of course it’s what she said when I put it to her.”

“So what did you tell Taverner when you met? Did you ask him who your father really was, or just about the letter from Ms. Drummond?”

He began picking at the rubber edge to one of my legal pads. “It-I decided to explore other viewpoints than Calvin and Renee’s and served as an intern in Senator Tower’s office. That was when I really met Olin, got to know him. He was astonished, of course, to see a Bayard in that office, but he and Tower were good friends. Olin was a different kind of person than Calvin, not as easygoing, not expecting people to fall down and worship him. I liked him, and we got to be friends.”

“And there was the added benefit that knowing him made your parents see red-so to speak.”

“As if that isn’t what they always saw.” He ripped a length of rubber from the pad. Now the pages would all fall off, but that was a small price for the information I was getting.

“So you came to tell him about the letter from Ms. Drummond. Did he know about it?”

“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.”