Final Option

been wholesale strokes. No, I take that back. Strokes or no strokes, I guarantee that by the time I made bail all of my things would have been in boxes, and my indefinite leave of absence arranged.”
    “I thought partners stuck together.”
    “They do, but I think there’s a bit more cohesion once you’ve been at the firm twenty years or so. I’ve been a partner less than four months, and there are still old guys who are having the bends about my being a woman and so young.”
    “Oh, come on. The way you talk about Callahan, you make it sound like it’s all old men. There have to be some young guys.”
    “Being an old man is a state of mind,” I replied. “With that attitude it’s no wonder you’re unpopular at your place of employment.”
    “It’s not like I’m a pariah or anything,” I protested. “I mean, they don’t throw things at me when I come in in the morning. I do get asked to lunch sometimes. But when you get right down to it, a big law firm is a lot like high school, and frankly, I wasn’t very popular in high school. What I want to know,” I demanded, “is how do you always manage to get me talking about things like this?”
    “It’s because I find you really interesting,” replied Elliott with disarming frankness. “Maybe they’re all like you where you come from, but I can’t figure you out.”
    “I’ve never considered myself much of a cipher,” I said.
    “Not many people do,” answered Elliott just as our food arrived.
     
    It was a nice night so we opted out of a cab. Elliott told me about Torey Lloyd as we walked toward the loop back to my office.
    “Victoria Lloyd,” said Elliott Abelman as we headed north on Wells, “born Pinkerton, Illinois. Youngest of four children. Father a farmer, mother died when she was four.”
    “Where, pray tell, is Pinkerton, Illinois?”
    “Bottom of the state, population twenty-five hundred. The guy I sent down there says they still have an A & W drive-in. You know, you sit in your car and the waitress clips a tray to your window.”
    “Fascinating.”
    “Pinkerton is a small town, religious sort of place. By the time Torey was sixteen, it was clear that she was a big-town sort of girl. The day she graduated from high school she got on a Greyhound bus and headed for Chicago. She did some modeling, waited on some tables, went to night school. She lived with a guy for six months, but it didn’t last. She tried to get a job as a stewardess, but they were laying people off and there were no openings. The night she turned twenty-one she met a man named Carl Savage in a bar on Rush Street.”
    “The same Carl Savage who worked for Hexter Commodities?”
    “Yep. They lived together for almost a year before Carl got her a job as a runner at Hexter.”
    “So when did she trade up to Black Bart?” I asked. “I’m still not exactly sure, so I ran a credit profile on her. Within three months of starting at Hexter Commodities, all of her bills were paid off, she had a new car—a Lexus, no less—and she opened accounts at Neiman Marcus, Saks, and Bloomies. She’s been charging right around ten grand a month at the department stores, paying in full every month. You’ll never guess which address the bills go to?”
    “Hexter’s?” I ventured.
    “No. Lake View Towers. Hexter was paying the rent.”
    “I guess I should feel flattered. According to Ruskowski, the night doorman picked me out of a photo array. Said I was the girl Hexter was keeping there.”
    “I talked to that doorman yesterday,” reported Elliott. “He’s got glaucoma.”
    “Oh, that makes me feel so much better.”
    We picked up the river as it wound past the Merchandise Mart, hulking and dark across the water. The night was surprisingly warm, and the air was blessed with an undercurrent of lilacs, a whispered promise of the summer to come.
    “I know you didn’t ask me for surveillance, but I stopped over at Lake View Towers this morning to see if I could catch a glimpse of her. I got a peek when she left for work. Wow. No wonder Hexter went after her.“
    “You realize, of course,” I said, after I’d taken a minute to consider, “that Torey Lloyd is nothing less than a motive on the hoof for Pamela Hexter. When he came to the police station last night, Elkin told me that this was the kind of case that would try itself in the press before it ever got to court.” I told Elliott about the sales contract for River North Condominiums that turned up in