Marc was too experienced a reporter to push; he waited until Olin picked up the story himself. “I confronted him after the meeting and told him we had Llewellyn’s testimony. That I was going to put it into the record the next day, that he’d bullied Llewellyn into writing those checks. Unless Calvin began naming names. And if he didn’t, he could go to prison. He said he’d have to think about it, but I knew Calvin would never go to prison. He loved himself too much-he wouldn’t make the grand gestures of people like Pelletier or Dashiell Hammett. Calvin came back to me two days later with the dancer’s photograph. And Pelletier’s name. Of course, we already had Pelletier in our sights, and we didn’t care much about the dancer.”

“Only enough to destroy her career.” Marc spoke hotly, forgetting his reporter’s facade.

“She destroyed it herself, young man, by taking part in those Communist activities. But we couldn’t prove she’d ever given them money, or been a party member, so we let her go. I told Calvin he had another day to give me some real names, and he came back in the morning-with that letter.”

“That was enough? Why did you let Mr. Bayard off the hook?” Marc sounded bewildered, as bewildered as I felt.

“It’s there in the document, young man. I don’t want to discuss it.” The tape ended soon after that, with Marc thanking Olin, and the apartment door shutting behind him. I ran the tape to the end, but there wasn’t anything else on it.

Geraldine and I stared at each other in the dark car.

“Your young man went to Renee after that, didn’t he?” Geraldine said. “Marc was careful; he wouldn’t publish anything without checking the whole story,” I agreed sadly. “If he hadn’t been such a good journalist, he wouldn’t have died.”

CHAPTER 52

Someone’s Packing

At one-thirty in the morning, we finally reached Eagle River. Nothing was open, not a gas station, not even a hamburger stand. I wished I’d bought food back at the truck stop instead of the thin coffee, which had burned a hole in my stomach-and now was making me desperate for a bathroom.

Eagle River is a little resort town. It comes to life in the summer when Chicagoans by the thousands move up to their summer homes. Some return in the winter for snowmobiling, but in mid-March everything was shut up tightly as the locals rested between waves of outsiders. If we couldn’t find the lodge on our own, we’d have to wait until morning. We might even have to sleep in the car-noile of the motels we passed showed any lights.

Geraldine was dismayed by the strip malls lining the highway. “All of this is so new! When I came here with Calvin, none of these monstrous sterile stores existed.”

“Do you think you can find the lodge with the landmarks so changed?” I was testy. “If you can’t, we’re in trouble.”