Total Recall

by Sara Paretsky

  “Are you cold, Signora Warshawski? You shouldn’t linger in the night air.” Bertrand Rossy had come through the window behind me.

  I turned. “I don’t often have the chance to see the view this clearly.”

  “Since I’ve been remiss in attending to my guests, I can scarcely chide you for avoiding them, as well, but I hope you will join us now.” He held the curtain for me, giving me no choice really except to return to the gathering.

  “Irina,” he called in English to a woman in a traditional maid’s uniform, “Signora Warshawski needs a glass of wine.”

  “I gather you spent the day saving millions of dollars for your shareholders,” I said, also switching to English. “That must have been very gratifying, having the legislature support you so quickly.”

  He laughed, his dimples showing. “Oh, I was there only as an observer. I was most impressed with Preston Janoff, most impressed. He is quite cool under attack.”

  “An eleven-to-two vote in committee sounds like the attack of the tabby cats.”

  He laughed again. “Attack of the tabby cats! What an original way you have of expressing yourself.”

  “What is it, caro?” Fillida Rossy, who had come to me herself with a glass of wine, took her husband’s arm. “What is making you laugh so gaily?”

  Rossy repeated my remark; Fillida smiled sweetly and echoed it again in English. “I must remember that. An attack of the tabby cats. Who were they attacking?”

  I felt remarkably foolish and gulped my wine as Rossy explained the legislature’s vote.

  “Ah, yes, you told me when you got in. How clever of you to know firsthand about these legislative matters, signora. I must wait for Bertrand’s reports.” She straightened his tie. “Darling, this lightning bolt is so bold, don’t you think?”

  “How did you know the vote so exactly?” Rossy asked. “By more divination?”

  “I saw the news in Janoff’s conference room. About other things I’m woefully ignorant.”

  “Such as?” He pressed his wife’s fingers, an assurance that she was the real center of his attention.

  “Such as why Louis Durham would need to meet with you at home after the vote. I didn’t think he and Ajax ’s senior staff were on such cozy terms. Or why that mattered to Joseph Posner.”

  Fillida turned to me. “You are indeed an indovina, signora. I laughed when Bertrand said you had read his palm, but this is remarkable, that you know so much of our private business.”

  Her voice was soft, uncritical, but under her poised, remote gaze I felt embarrassed. I had imagined this as a bold stroke; now it seemed merely crude.

  Rossy spread his hands. “Life in Chicago is not so different after all from Bern and Zurich: here as there it seems that the personal touch with city governors is helpful in the smooth running of the company. As to Mr. Posner-one understands his disappointment after today’s vote.” He clasped my shoulder lightly, as Laura Bugatti, the attaché’s wife, joined us. “Allora. Why do we discuss matters which no one else understands?”

  Before I could respond, two children of about five and six came in under the watchful eye of a woman in a grey nurse’s uniform. They were both very blond, the girl with a thick mane of hair down her back. They were dressed for bed in nightwear that had kept a team of embroiderers busy for a month. Fillida bent over to kiss them good night and to instruct them to say good night to Zia Laura and Zia Janet. Zia Laura was the attaché’s wife, Zia Janet the American novelist. Both came to kiss the children while Fillida smoothed her daughter’s long hair around her shoulders.

  “Giulietta,” she said to the nanny, “we must put a rosemary rinse in Marguerita’s hair; it’s too coarse after a day in these Chicago winds.”

  Bertrand scooped his daughter up to carry her off to bed. Fillida folded down the collar of her son’s pajama top and handed him to the nurse. “I will be in later, my darlings, but I must feed our guests or they will soon faint from hunger. Irina,” she added to the maid in the same soft voice, “I want to serve now.”

  She asked Signor Bugatti to escort me in, giving his wife to the Swiss banker. On our way across the hall to the paneled dining room I stopped to admire an old grandfather clock, whose face showed the solar system. It struck nine as I was watching, and the sun and planets began revolving around the earth.

  “Enchanting, isn’t it?” Signor Bugatti said. “Fillida has exquisite taste.”

  If the paintings and little bits of sculpture lining the rooms were hers, she not only had exquisite taste but plenty of money to indulge it. She had a whimsical side, too: next to a child’s painting of the ocean she had placed snapshots of her children at the beach.

  Laura exclaimed over it. “Oh, look, here’s your little Paolo at Samos last summer. He’s adorable! Are you letting him swim in Lake Michigan?”

  “Please,” Fillida said, putting up a hand to adjust the photograph of her son. “He longs to go in. Don’t suggest it-the pollution!”

  “Anyone who can brave the Adriatic can tolerate Lake Michigan,” the banker said, and everyone laughed. “Do you agree, Signora Warshawski?”

  I smiled. “I often swim in the lake myself, but perhaps my system has built up a tolerance for our local pollution. At least we’ve never isolated cholera in our coastal waters here in Chicago.”

  “Oh, but Samos, that’s not the same as Naples,” said the American novelist, the “Aunt Janet” who had kissed an unwilling Paolo good night a few minutes ago. “It’s so typical of an American to feel superior about life here without experiencing Europe. America has to be number one in everything, even clean coastal waters. In Europe, one cares much more for the well-rounded life.”

  “So when a German firm becomes America ’s largest publisher, or a Swiss company buys Chicago ’s biggest insurer, they’re not really concerned with market domination?” I asked. “It’s a by-product of the well-rounded life?”

  The banker laughed while Rossy, who’d just rejoined us-in a different, more subdued tie-said, “Perhaps Janet should have said that Europeans mask an interest in medals or winning behind a cloak of civilization. It’s bad manners to show off one’s accomplishments-they should emerge casually, by chance, under cover of other conversation.”

  “Whereas Americans are confirmed braggarts,” the novelist persisted. “We’re rich, we’re powerful, everyone must bend to our way of doing things.”

  Irina brought in mushroom soup, pale brown with cream drizzled in the shape of a mushroom cap. She was a silent, efficient woman whom I first assumed had come with the Rossys from Switzerland, until I realized that Fillida and Rossy always broke into English to talk to her.

  The table conversation ran on in Italian for several caustic moments on the deficiencies of American power and American manners. I felt my hackles rise: it’s one of those funny things, that no one likes the family to be criticized by outsiders, even when the family is a collection of lunatics or bullies.

  “So today’s vote in the Illinois legislature wasn’t about withholding life-insurance benefits from beneficiaries of Holocaust victims-it was about keeping America from imposing its standards on Europe?” I said.

  The cultural attaché leaned across the table toward me. “In a manner of speaking, yes, signora. This black counselor-what is his name? Dur’am?-he makes a valid point in my eyes. Americans are so eager to condemn at a distance-the atrocities of a war which were truly atrocious, no one denies it-but Americans are not willing to examine their own atrocities at home, in the matter of Indians or of African slaves.”

  The maid removed the soup dishes and brought in roast veal loin with an array of vegetables. The dinner plates were cream-colored porcelain, heavily encrusted in gold with a large H in the middle-perhaps for Fillida Rossy’s birth name, although offhand I couldn’t think of Italian names beginning with H.

  Laura Bugatti said that despite Mafia terrorism in Italy or Russia, most European readers preferred to be shocked by American violence than their homegrown brand
.

  “You’re right.” The banker’s wife spoke for the first time. “My family won’t discuss violence in Zurich, but they are always quizzing me about murders in Chicago. Are you finding this true now with this murder in your husband’s firm, Fillida?”

  Fillida ran her fingers over the ornate filigree on her knife. She ate very little, I noticed-not surprising that she had deep hollows around her breastbone. “D’accordo. This murder was reported in the Bologna paper, I suppose because they knew I was living here. My mother has been phoning every morning, demanding that I send Paolo and Marguerita back to Italy where they’ll be safe. In vain I tell her the murder was twenty miles from my front door, in a part of town most unsavory-which you could find certainly in Milan. Perhaps even in Bologna, although I can hardly believe it.”

  “Not in your own hometown, eh, cara?” Bertrand said. “If it is your home it must be the best town, with nothing unsavory about it.”

  He was laughing, saluting his wife with his wineglass, but she frowned at him. He scowled and put his glass down, turning to the banker’s wife. Fillida’s soft voice apparently carried a lot of wallop-no Bologna jokes at this dinner table-change your tie when she criticizes it-change the subject when she’s annoyed at this one.

  Laura Bugatti, noticing Fillida’s irritation, quickly exclaimed in a girlish breathless voice, “Murder in Bertrand’s firm? How come I know nothing about this? You are keeping important cultural information from me,” she pouted at her husband.

  “One of the agents selling insurance for Ajax was found dead in his office,” the banker replied to her. “Now the police are saying he was murdered, not suicided as they first thought. You worked for him, didn’t you, Signora Warshawski?”

  “Against him,” I corrected. “He held the key to a disputed-” I fumbled for words: my Italian had never been geared to financial discussions. Finally I turned to Rossy, who translated life-insurance claim for me.

  “Yes, anyway, he held the key to such a disputed claim with Ajax, and I could never get him to reveal what he knew.”

  “So his death leaves you frustrated,” the banker said.

  “Frustrated. And greatly baffled. Because all the papers relating to the claim have vanished. Even today someone rifled a file cabinet at the company to remove documents.”

  Rossy set his wineglass down with a snap. “How do you know this? Why wasn’t I told?”

  I spread my hands. “You were in Springfield. I, alas, was informed because your Signor Devereux suspected I might have been responsible for the theft.”

  “From my office?” he demanded.

  “From the claims department. The copy in your office was intact.” I didn’t tell him about Ralph’s nagging sense that something was amiss in the paper file.

  “So you never saw the agent’s documents in this case?” Rossy ignored my suggestion. “Not even when you went in after the death?”

  I laid my knife and fork carefully against the gold crust on my plate. “Now, how were you aware that I went into Fepple’s office after he died?”

  “I spoke with Devereux this afternoon from Springfield. He told me that you had brought him some kind of document from the dead agent’s office.”

  The maid replaced our dinner plates with more gold-rimmed dishes, this time containing raspberry mousse circled by fresh fruit.

  “The dead man’s mother gave me an office key and asked me to look for any evidence that the police were ignoring. When I went in, I found that one piece of paper, which appeared to be a very old handwritten document. The only reason I even associate it with the disputed claim is that the dead policyholder’s name was on it, but whether it was about the claim or something else altogether, I couldn’t say.”

  Laura Bugatti once more clapped her hands. “But this is exciting: a mysterious document. Can you tell who wrote it? Or when?”

  I shook my head. The questions were making me uncomfortable; there was no need for her to know I’d had the paper analyzed.

  “How disappointing.” Rossy smiled at me. “I have boasted of your supernatural gifts. Surely like Sherlock Holmes you know fifty-seven different kinds of paper by their ash?”

  “Alas,” I said, “my powers are very erratic. They extend more to people and their motivations than to documents.”

  “Then why are you even concerned?” Fillida asked, her fingers once again wrapped around the heavy handle of her unused spoon.

  There was a kind of power in the soft, remote voice; it made me want to respond aggressively. “This is a claim affecting a poor African-American family on Chicago ’s South Side. It would be a wonderful opportunity for Ajax to make good the rhetoric that Preston Janoff uttered today, to pay the grieving widow her ten thousand dollars.”

  The banker said, “So you are pursuing the matter merely out of nobility, not because you have evidence?” His tone didn’t make the words sound like a compliment.

  “And why try to tie it to Bertrand’s firm at all?” the novelist added.

  “I don’t know who cashed the check which Ajax issued in 1991,” I said, returning to English to make sure I expressed myself clearly. “But two things make me think it was either the agent or someone at the company: my study of the claimant’s family. And the fact that the original file has disappeared. Not only from the agency, but from the company as well-perhaps whoever took them didn’t realize that a paper copy was still in Mr. Rossy’s office.”

  “Ma il corpo,” the banker’s wife said. “Did you see the body? Isn’t it true that his posture, the placement of the weapon, that all these made the police believe it was suicide?”

  “Signora Bugatti is right,” I said. “Europeans do long for the details of American violence. Unfortunately, it was only after the murder that Mrs. Fepple gave me a key to her son’s office, so I can’t fill in the details of his body in death.”

  Rossy frowned. “I’m sorry if we seem voyeuristic to you, but as you heard, the mothers in Europe worry greatly about their daughters and their grandchildren. Perhaps, though, we can discuss something less bloodthirsty.”

  Fillida nodded at him. “Yes, I think this is enough discussion of bloodshed at my dinner table. Why don’t we return to the drawing room for coffee.”

  As the rest of the group settled themselves on the nubby straw-colored couches, I offered thanks and apologies to Fillida Rossy. “Una serata squisita. But I regret that an early appointment tomorrow means I must depart without coffee.”

  Neither Fillida nor Bertrand made any effort to keep me, although Fillida murmured something about sharing an evening at the opera. “Although I cannot believe Tosca can be sung anywhere outside of La Scala. It is heresy to me.”

  Bertrand himself escorted me to the door, assuring me heartily that I’d brought them much pleasure. He waited with the door open until the elevator arrived. Behind him, I heard the conversation turn to Venice, where Fillida, Laura, and Janet all attended the film festival.

  XXXII Client in the Slammer

  My face in the elevator mirror looked wild and haggard, as though I’d spent years in a forest away from human contact. I ran a comb through my thick hair, hoping that my hollow eyes were merely a trick of the light.

  I took a ten from my wallet and folded it into the palm of my hand. In the lobby I gave the doorman what was supposed to be a charming smile, with a comment on the weather.

  “Mild for this time of year,” he agreed. “Do you need a taxi, miss?”

  I said I didn’t have far to go. “I hope it isn’t hard getting taxis later-the rest of the Rossys’ company seemed to be prepared to stick it out all night.”

  “Oh, yes. Very cosmopolitan, their parties. People often stay until two or three in the morning.”

  “Mrs. Rossy is such a devoted mother, it must be hard for her to get up with her children in the morning,” I said, thinking of the way she had held and stroked them at bedtime.

  “The nanny takes them to school, but if you ask me, they’d be happier if she was
less devoted. At least the little guy, he’s always trying to get her to let go of him in public. I guess he’s seen in American schools little boys don’t let their mothers hold them and fuss with their clothes so much.”

  “She’s such a soft-speaking lady, but she seems to run the show upstairs.”

  He opened the door for an older woman with a small dog, commenting on the nice night they had for their walk. The little dog bared its teeth under its mop of white hair.

  “You going to work there?” he asked when the pair were outside.

  “No. Oh, no-I’m a business associate of the husband.”

  “I was going to say-I wouldn’t take a job up there on a bet. She has very European views on the place of the help, including me: I’m a piece of furniture who gets her cabs. It’s her money, what I hear, that runs the show. Mister married the boss’s daughter, still asks ‘how high’ when the family says ‘jump.’ That’s what I hear, anyway.”

  I fanned the flame gently. “I’m sure she must be good to work for, or Irina wouldn’t have come from Italy with her.”

  “ Italy?” he held the door for a couple of teenage boys but didn’t stop to chat with them. “Irina’s from Poland. Probably illegal. Sends all her money to the family back home like all the other immigrants. Nah, the missus brought a girl from Italy with her to look after the kids so they won’t forget their Italian living here. Stuck-up girl who doesn’t give you the time of day,” he added resentfully: gossip about the bosses keeps a dull job interesting.

  “So both women live here? At least Irina can sleep in after a late night like tonight.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m telling you, for Mrs. Rossy, servants are servants. The mister, no matter how late the guests stay, he’s up at eight ready for work, and you’d better believe it isn’t the missus who gets up first thing to make sure that morning coffee is ready the way he likes it.”