“Not until I’ve consulted with him,” she cut me off. “And I would have to have your-friends’-names before I could do so. I hate to have to be so suspicious, but I have had too many traps set for me by the Planted Memory Foundation.”
My eyes narrowed as I tried to hear behind her words. Was this paranoia born of too much skirmishing with Arnold Praeger, or a legitimate prudence?
Before I could decide, Don said, “You don’t think Max would mind your giving his name, do you, Vic?”
“Max?” Wiell cried. “Max Loewenthal?”
“How do you know him?” Don asked, again before I could respond.
“He spoke at the session on the efforts of survivors to track down the fates of their families and whether they had any assets tied up in Swiss or German banks. Paul and I sat in on that: we hoped we could learn some new ideas for ways of looking for his family. If Max is your friend, I’m sure Paul would be glad to talk to him-he seemed an extraordinary man, gentle, empathic, yet assured, authoritative.”
“That’s a good description of his personality,” I said, “but he also has a strong sense of privacy. He would be most annoyed if Paul Radbuka approached him without my having a chance to speak to Mr. Radbuka first.”
“You can rest assured that I understand the value of privacy. My relations with my clients would not be possible if I didn’t protect them.” Wiell gave me the same sweet, steely smile she’d directed at Arnold Praeger on TV the other night.
“So can we arrange a meeting with your client, where I can talk to him before introducing him to my friends?” I tried to keep irritation out of my voice, but I knew I couldn’t match her in sanctity.
“Before I do anything, I will have to talk to Paul. Surely you understand that any other course would violate my relationship with him.” She wrote Max’s name in her datebook next to Paul Radbuka’s appointment: her square, printlike hand was easy to read upside down.
“Of course I understand that,” I said with what patience I could muster. “But I can’t let Paul Radbuka come to Mr. Loewenthal out of the blue in the belief that they’re related. In fact, I don’t think Mr. Loewenthal is himself a part of the Radbuka family. If I could ask Paul a few questions first, it might spare everyone some anxiety.”
She shook her head with finality: she would not turn Paul over to someone like me, an unskilled outsider. “Whether it’s Mr. Loewenthal or his musician friend who is part of the family, I assure you, I would approach them with the utmost empathy. And the first step is to talk to Paul, to get his permission for me to go to them. How long will your musician be in Chicago?”
At this point I didn’t want to tell her anything about anyone I knew, but Don said, “I think he said that he’s leaving for the West Coast on Monday.”
While I fumed to myself, Don got Wiell to give a précis on how hypnosis worked and how she used it-sparingly, and only after her patients felt able to trust her-before he brought up the kind of controversy the book was likely to generate.
He grinned engagingly. “From our standpoint, controversy is highly desirable, because it gives a book access to the kind of press coverage you can’t buy. But from yours-you may not want that kind of spotlight on you and your practice.”
She smiled back at him. “Like you, I would welcome the publicity-although for a different reason. I want as many people as possible to start understanding how we block memories, how we recover them, and how we can become liberated in the process. The Planted Memory Foundation has done a great deal of damage to people suffering from trauma. I haven’t had the resources to make the truth clear to a wider audience. This book would help me greatly.”
A silvery bell, like a Japanese temple bell, chimed on her desk. “We’ll have to stop now-I have another patient coming and I need time to prepare for my session.”
I handed her my card, reminding her that I wanted an early meeting with Paul Radbuka. She shook my hand in a cool, dry clasp, giving my hand a slight pressure intended to reassure me of her goodwill. To Don she added that she could help him stop smoking if he wanted.
“Most of my hypnotic work is in the arena of self-exploration, but I do work with habit management sometimes.”
Don laughed. “I hope we’ll be working closely together for the next year or so. If I decide I’m ready to quit we’ll put the manuscript aside while I lie back on your couch here.”
XI Ramping Up
As we walked past the liposuckers to the elevator, Don congratulated himself on how well things had gone. “I’m a believer: it’s going to be a great project. Those eyes of hers could convince me to do just about anything.”
“They apparently did,” I said dryly. “I wish you hadn’t brought Max’s name into the discussion.”
“Chrissake, Vic, it was a pure fluke that she guessed it was Max Loewenthal.” He stood back as the elevator doors opened to let out an elderly couple. “This is going to be a career-saving book for me. I bet I can get my agent to go to high six figures, not to mention the film rights-don’t you see Dustin Hoffman as the broken-down Radbuka remembering his past?”
Lotty’s bitter remark on ghouls profiting on the remains of the dead came back to me full force. “You said you wanted to prove to Lotty Herschel that you’re not the mike-in-the-face kind of journalist. She’s not going to be very persuaded if you’re prancing around in glee about turning her friends’ misery into commercial movies.”
“Vic, get a grip,” Don said. “Can’t you let me have my moment of triumph? Of course I won’t violate Dr. Herschel’s most sacred feelings. I started out feeling a bit doubtful of Rhea, but by the end of the hour she had me totally on her side-sorry if the excitement’s gone to my head.”
“She rubbed me the wrong way a bit,” I said.
“That’s because she wouldn’t toss you her patient’s home phone number. Which she absolutely should not give anyone. You know that.”
“I know that,” I had to agree. “I guess what bugs me is her wanting to mastermind the situation: she’ll meet Max and Lotty and Carl, she’ll decide what they’re about, but she’s resisting the idea that I might meet her client. Don’t you think it’s odd that he gave her office as his home address-as if his identity was wrapped up in her?”
“You’re overreacting, Vic, because you like to be the one in control yourself. You read some of the articles you printed out for me on the attacks against her by Planted Memory, right? She’s sensible to be cautious.”
He paused while the elevator landed and we negotiated our way past the group waiting to get on. I scanned them, hoping I might see Paul Radbuka, wondering about the destination of the people boarding. Were they getting fat sucked out? Root canals? Which one was Rhea Wiell’s next patient?
Don continued with the thought uppermost in his own mind. “Do you think it’s Lotty, Max, or Carl who really is related to Radbuka? They sound pretty prickly for people who are only looking out for their friends’ interests.”
I stopped behind the newsstand to stare at him. “I don’t think any of them is related to Radbuka. That’s why I’m so annoyed that Ms. Wiell has Max’s name now. I know, I know,” I added, as he started to interrupt, “you didn’t really give it to her. But she’s so focused on her prize exhibit’s well-being that she’s not thinking outside that landscape now to anyone else’s needs.”
“But why should she?” he asked. “I mean, I understand that you want her to be as empathic to Max or Dr. Herschel as she is to Paul Radbuka, but how could she be that concerned about a group of strangers? Besides, she’s got such an exciting event going on with what she’s done with this guy that it’s not surprising, really. But why are your friends so very defensive if it isn’t their own family they’re worrying about?”
“Good grief, Don-you’re almost as experienced as Morrell in writing about war-scarred refugees. I’m sure you can imagine how it must have felt, to be in London with a group of children who all shared the same traumas-first of leaving their families behind to go to a
strange country with a strange language, then the even bigger trauma of the horrific way in which their families died. I think you’d feel a sense of bonding that went beyond friendship-everyone’s experiences would seem as though they had happened to you personally.”
“I suppose you’re right. Of course you are. I only want to get in with Rhea on the story of the decade.” He grinned again, disarming me, and pulled the half-smoked cigarette out of his pocket again. “Until I decide to let Rhea cure me, I need to get this inside me. Can you come over to the Ritz with me? Share a glass of champagne and let me feel just a minute moment of euphoria about my project?”
I still wasn’t in a very celebratory mood. “Let me check with my answering service while you go over to the hotel. Then a quick one, I guess.”
I went back to the corner to use the pay phones, since my cell phone was dead. Why couldn’t I let Don have his moment of triumph, as he had put it? Was he right, that I was only resentful because Rhea Wiell wouldn’t give me Radbuka’s phone number? But that sense of an ecstatic vision when she was talking about her triumph with Paul Radbuka had made me uncomfortable. It was the ecstasy of a votary, though, not the triumphant smirk of a charlatan, so why should I let it raise my hackles?
I fed change into the phone and dialed my answering service.
“Vic! Where have you been?” Christie Weddington, a day operator who’d been with the service for longer than me, jolted me back to my own affairs.
“What’s up?”
“Beth Blacksin has phoned three times, wanting a comment; Murray Ryerson has called twice, besides messages from a whole bunch of other reporters.” She read off a string of names and numbers. “Mary Louise, she called and said she was switching the office line over to us because she felt like she was under siege.”
“But about what?”
“I don’t know, Vic, I just take the messages. Murray said something about Alderman Durham, though, and-here it is.” She read the message in a flat, uninflected voice. “‘Call me and tell me what’s going on with Bull Durham. Since when have you started robbing the widow and orphan of their mite?’”
I was completely bewildered. “I guess just forward all those to my office computer. Are there any business messages, things that don’t come from reporters?”
I could hear her clicking through her screen. “I don’t think-oh, here is something from a Mr. Devereux at Ajax.” She read me Ralph’s number.
I tried Murray first. He’s an investigative reporter with the Herald-Star who does occasional special reports for Channel 13. This was the first time he’d called me in some months-we’d had quite a falling out over a case that had involved the Star’s owners. In the end, we’d made a kind of fragile peace, but we’ve been avoiding involvement with each other’s cases.
“Warshawski, what in hell did you do to yank Bull Durham’s chain so hard?”
“Hi, Murray. Yes, I’m depressed about the Cubs and worried because Morrell is leaving for Kabul in a few days. But otherwise things go on same as always. How about you?”
He paused briefly, then snarled at me not to be a smart-mouthed pain in the ass.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” I suggested. “I’ve been in meetings all morning and have no idea what our aldercreatures have been saying or doing.”
“Bull Durham is leading a charge of pickets outside the Ajax company headquarters.”
“Oh-on the slave-reparations issue?”
“Right. Ajax is his first target. His handouts name you as an agent of the company involved in the continuing suppression of black policyholders by depriving them of their settlements.”
“I see.” A recorded message interrupted us, telling me to deposit twenty-five cents if I wanted to continue the call. “Gotta go, Murray, I’m out of change.”
I hung up on his squawk that that was hardly an answer-what had I done?! That must be why Ralph Devereux was calling. To find out what I’d done to provoke a full-scale picket. What a mess. When my client-ex-client-told me he was going to take steps, these must have been the ones he had in mind. I gritted my teeth and put another thirty-five cents into the phone.
I got Ralph’s secretary, but by the time she put me through to him I’d been on hold so long I really had run out of quarters. “Ralph, I’m at a pay phone with no more money, so let’s be brief: I just heard about Durham.”
“Did you feed the Sommers file to him?” he asked, voice heavy with suspicion.
“So that he could denounce me as an Ajax stooge and have every reporter in the city hounding me? Thank you, no. My client’s aunt reacted with indignation to my asking her about the previous death certificate and the check; my client fired me. I’m guessing he went to Durham, but I don’t know that definitely. When I find out, I’ll call you. Anything else? Rossy on your butt over this?”
“The whole sixty-third floor. Although Rossy is saying it shows he was right not to trust you.”
“He’s just flailing in fury, looking for a target. These are the snows of summer, they won’t stick on Ajax, although they may freeze me some. I’m going to see Sommers to find out what he told Durham. What about your historian, Amy Blount, the young woman who wrote up the book on Ajax? Yesterday Rossy was saying he didn’t trust her not to give Ajax data to Durham. Did he ask her that?”
“She denied showing our private papers to anyone, but how else could Durham have found out who we insured back in the 1850’s? We mention Birnbaum in our history, bragging that they go back with us to 1852, but not the detail Durham has, about insuring plow shipments they made to slaveholders. Now the Birnbaum lawyers are threatening us with breach of fiduciary responsibility, although whether it extends back that far-”
“Do you have Blount’s phone number? I could try asking her.”
The metallic voice announced that I needed another twenty-five cents. Ralph quickly told me Blount had gotten her Ph.D. in economic history at the University of Chicago last June; I could reach her through the department. “Call me when you-” he started to add, but the phone company cut us off.
I dashed through the lobby to the cab rank, but the sight of a pair of smokers huddled along the wall made me remember Don, sitting in the Ritz bar. I hesitated, then remembered my phone charger was still in Morrell’s car-I wouldn’t be able to call Don from the road to explain why I’d stood him up.
I found him under a fern tree in the smoking section of the bar, with two glasses of champagne in front of him. When he saw me he put out his cigarette. I bent over to kiss his cheek.
“Don-I wish you every success. With this book and with your career.” I picked up a glass to toast him. “But I can’t stay to drink: there’s a crisis involving the players you originally came here to interview.”
When I told him about Durham ’s pickets outside Ajax and that I wanted to go see what they were up to, he relit his cigarette. “Did anyone ever tell you you have too much energy, Vic? It’ll age Morrell before his time, trying to keep up with you. I am going to sit here with my champagne, having a happy conversation about Rhea Wiell’s book with my literary agent. I will then drink your glass as well. If you learn anything as you bounce around Chicago like a pinball in the hands of a demented wizard, I will listen breathlessly to your every word.”
“For which I will charge you a hundred dollars an hour.” I swallowed a large gulp of champagne, then handed him the glass. I curbed my impulse to dart across the lobby to the elevators: the image of myself as a pinball careening around the city was embarrassing-although it kept recurring to me as the afternoon progressed.
XII Pinball Wizard
I bounced first to the Ajax building on Adams. Durham only had a small band of pickets out-in the middle of a workday most people don’t have time to demonstrate. Durham himself led the charge, surrounded by his cadre of Empower Youth Energy members, their eyes watching the passersby with the sullenness of men prepared to fight on a moment’s notice. Behind them came a small group of ministers and community
leaders from the South and West Sides, followed by the usual handful of earnest college students. They chanted “Justice now,” “No high-rises on the bones of slaves,” and “No reparations for slaveowners.” I walked in step with one of the students, who welcomed me as a convert to the fold.
“I didn’t realize Ajax had benefited so much from slavery,” I said.
“It’s not just that, but did you hear what happened yesterday? They sicced a detective on this poor old woman who had just lost her husband. They cashed his life-insurance check and then, like, pretended she had done it and sent this detective down to accuse her, right in the middle of the funeral.”
“What?” I shouted.
“Really sucks, doesn’t it. Here-you can read the details.” He thrust a broadsheet at me. My name jumped out at me.
AJAX -HAVE YOU NO MERCY?
WARSHAWSKI-HAVE YOU NO SHAME?
BIRNBAUM-HAVE YOU NO COMPASSION?
Where is the widow’s mite? Gertrude Sommers, a God-fearing woman, a churchgoing woman, a taxpaying woman, lost her son. Then she lost her husband. Must she lose her dignity, as well?
Ajax Insurance cashed her husband’s life-insurance policy ten years ago. When he died last week, they sent their tame detective, V I Warshawski, to accuse Sister Sommers of stealing it. In the middle of the funeral, in front of her friends and loved ones, they shamed her.
Warshawski, we all have to make a living, but must you do it on the bodies of the poor? Ajax, make good the wrong. Pay the widow her mite. Repair the damage you have done to the grandchildren of slaves. Birnbaum, give back the money you made with Ajax on the backs of slaves. No Holocaust restitution until you make the African-American community whole.
I could feel the blood drumming in my head. No wonder Ralph was angry-but why should he take it out on me? It wasn’t his name that was being slandered. I almost jumped out of the line to tackle Alderman Durham, but in the nick of time I imagined the scene on television-the EYE team wrestling with me as I screamed invective, the alderman shaking his head more in sorrow than anger and declaiming something sanctimonious to the camera.
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