Total Recall

by Sara Paretsky

  The television crews, which had been focusing their cameras on Lotty and Posner, suddenly switched to Radbuka and me. Beyond the lights I heard someone say, “Is that Warshawski, the detective? What’s she doing here?” Beth Blacksin called excitedly, “Vic, has the hospital hired you to investigate Posner’s claims? Are you working for Max Loewenthal?”

  I cupped my hands around my eyes so I could see past the glare of the camera lights. “I have a private question for Mr. Posner, Beth. It’s not anything to do with the hospital.”

  I tapped Posner on the arm, telling him I’d like him to come with me away from the cameras. Posner said sternly that he couldn’t talk privately with a woman.

  I smiled brightly. “Don’t worry: if your impulses get the better of you I can break one of your arms. Maybe both. But if you prefer, I can ask my question out loud on camera.”

  “Everything I have to say about this Lotty Herschel and about you, too, can be on camera,” Radbuka butted in. “You think you can come up here to keep me away from my family, just like you hired that bully to stay with my little cousin over at Max’s, but you won’t get away with it. Rhea and Don are going to help me take my story to the world.”

  Posner tried to get Radbuka to be quiet, telling him he’d take care of the detective. To me he added that he had nothing to hide.

  “Bertrand Rossy,” I said softly, then looked toward the cameras and raised my voice. “Beth, I’m asking Mr. Posner about his meeting-”

  With a rough gesture Posner turned his back to the cameras. “I don’t know what you think you know, but you’d be making a mistake to talk about him on television.”

  “What meeting, Mr. Posner?” one of the reporters asked. “Is this anything to do with the defeat of the Asset Recovery bill on Tuesday?”

  “You know I’m going to ask you about him, about why you pulled your demonstration away from Ajax,” I said softly to Posner. “It’s up to you whether it’s on- or off-mike. You like publicity, and they are using directional mikes, so if I raise my voice, they’ll pick up our conversation even if they’re not right on top of us.”

  Posner couldn’t afford to look indecisive in front of his troops. “Just to keep you from defaming my movement on television, I will talk to you away from the hospital. But not alone.”

  He called to another man to join him, ordering the rest of the group to wait in the group’s bus until he got back. The television crews watched in astonishment as the demonstrators drifted off toward the parking lot, then they plunged forward with a babble of excited questions for Posner and me: what had made him decide to cancel the demonstration?

  “We achieved our goals this afternoon,” Posner said grandly. “We have made the hospital realize that Jewish-backed institutions are just as liable as secular ones to become complacent and indifferent to Jewish needs. We will be back, however: Max Loewenthal and Charlotte Herschel can feel assured of that.”

  “What about you, Dr. Herschel? What do you think of their assertion that you’re keeping Paul Radbuka from his family?”

  She curled her lip. “I’m a surgeon with a full-time practice: I don’t have time for comic books. In fact, this man has kept me from my patients for long enough.”

  She turned on her heel and went back into the hospital. The reporters surged forward, wanting to know what I’d said to Posner. Who was my client? Did I suspect fraud in Posner’s group, or in the hospital? Who was financing the demonstrations?

  I told Beth and the other reporters that as soon as I had interesting information I’d share it with them-but that for right now I didn’t know about any fraud involving Posner or the hospital.

  “But, Beth,” I added, “what brought you up here?”

  “We were tipped off, you know how that works, Warshawski.” She gave me an urchin’s grin. “Not by him, though-a woman called the station. Could have been anyone, though.”

  Posner, annoyed that I’d stolen the limelight, snarled at me to come with him if I wanted to talk to him: he didn’t have all day to spend on foolish women with imaginary ideas. He moved rapidly down the drive with his chosen henchman; I lengthened my stride to catch up with him.

  A couple of reporters kept up a halfhearted pursuit. Radbuka, who hadn’t followed the other demonstrators to the bus, began declaiming that Max was his cousin but wouldn’t admit it, and I was the beast of Babylon who was keeping Max from talking to him, but the reporters already had that story; they weren’t interested in the rerun. If I wasn’t going to give the cameras raw meat, there wasn’t anything to keep them around Beth Israel any longer. The crews wrapped up their equipment and headed to their vans.

  XXXV Amateur Sleuth

  The crowd, realizing the show was over because the cameras had disappeared, began drifting away. By the time Posner and I were at the corner of Catalpa, the driveway in front of the hospital was almost empty. I laughed to myself: I should send Max a bill for this.

  I turned to see what Radbuka was doing. He stood alone at the bottom of the drive, his hurt feelings at being abandoned by both Posner and the cameras darkening his mobile face. He looked around uncertainly, then ran down the street after us.

  I turned back to Posner, who was impatiently tapping his watch. “So, Mr. Posner. Let’s talk about you and Bertrand Rossy.”

  “I have nothing to say about him.” His chin jutted out at a lofty angle: the Gladiator is not afraid of Death.

  “Nothing about your meeting with him last night? Nothing about how he persuaded you to abandon your protest outside Ajax for one here at Beth Israel?”

  He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Whoever told you I met with him is lying. I have private reasons for being here. They have nothing to do with Rossy.”

  “Let’s not start our nice little chat with accusations about lying: I saw you at Rossy’s place-I had dinner with him and his wife last night.”

  “I didn’t see you!”

  “Now, that disclaimer is pretty pure proof that you were there.” I gave a supercilious smile: Posner was so used to being the daddy in the story that I figured the way to keep him rattled was to treat him as if I found him childish.

  “Reb Joseph, I don’t think you should talk any more to this woman,” the sidekick said. “She’s trying to trick you into saying something that will discredit us. Remember what Radbuka said, that she’s been keeping him from his family.”

  “That’s not true, either,” I said. “I’m eager for Paul to rejoin his true family. But I’m curious about the situation between your Holocaust Asset Recovery group and Ajax Insurance. I know you know Preston Janoff was in Springfield yesterday, killing the Illinois Asset Recovery Act, so what made you abandon Ajax? I’d think today your wrath against them would be greater than ever. My bet is that Bertrand Rossy told you something last night, or offered you a nice little bribe, that made you withdraw from the Loop to come up here.”

  “You’re right, Leon.” Posner turned away from me. “This woman doesn’t know anything-she’s playing a guessing game to keep us from disturbing her rich friends at the hospital.”

  Even though I was getting tired of being “this woman” instead of having a name, I kept my voice genial. “I may not know anything, but I can make guesses that Beth Blacksin at Global will listen to. And believe me, I did see you at the Rossys’ last night-if I tell her that, she’ll be parked on your doorstep for a week.”

  Posner had turned to leave, but at that he looked back at me, darting a worried glance at Leon, then up the street to see if the cameras were there.

  I smiled. “I know that you were furious when you got to Rossy’s place, so I figure it was because you knew he was talking to Alderman Durham: you were afraid Ajax was going to offer Durham some special deal that would undercut your movement.

  “Rossy refused at first to see you at all when you showed up in the lobby, but you threatened over the house phone to expose him for doing business with Durham. Even so, Rossy said he wouldn’t see you if Durham learned you were
there. You arrived at Rossy’s place angry, but by the time you and he finished, you were all smiles again. So Rossy gave you something. Not money, perhaps. But information. He knows you’re aggressive with Jewish-run institutions that you think are too secular, so maybe he told you something that combined both insurance and one of Chicago ’s leading Jewish charities, Beth Israel. You should bring your protest up here, he told you, force the media to shine a light on the hospital and Max Loewenthal.”

  Standing on the corner in front of the Cozy Cup Café, I gave Posner a chance to answer. He didn’t say anything, but he was looking worried, nervously chewing his cheek.

  “What could it have been? Did he say, Oh, the hospital has been denying medical benefits to Holocaust survivors? No, that would be too crude-the media would have been all over that one. Maybe he said, Oh, Max Loewenthal got some kind of big bond package for the hospital in exchange for helping kill the bill. It sounds crazy, of course, because it is crazy, and in your heart of hearts you know any suggestion Rossy made is crazy. If you didn’t, you’d be blaring it to the world. But Bertrand Rossy would be happy because it would distract public attention from Ajax ’s role in killing the Asset Recovery Act. How am I doing? Is this the story you want me to share with Beth Blacksin and the rest of Chicago? That you’re Bertrand Rossy’s dupe?”

  While I was speaking, Radbuka kept trying to interrupt, to say they were here strictly on the issue of Max and his family, but I raised my voice and talked past him.

  Posner kept chewing his cheek. “You can’t prove any of this.”

  “Very lame, Mr. Posner. After all, you’re making accusations against Beth Israel that you can’t prove. I can prove that you spent fifteen minutes with Bertrand Rossy last night. I don’t have to prove that your conversation followed my story line-I only have to start the story moving around Chicago. The wires and Internet services will take it from there, because Rossy means Edelweiss, which means not only local but also international news.”

  “Are you trying to imply that I’m selling out the IHARA Committee?” Posner demanded.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if you are or not. But of course if your group finds out that you wasted precious resources on a wild-goose chase, I don’t expect they’ll be very supportive of your leadership.”

  “Whatever you may choose to believe, I take our mission with utter seriousness. Alderman Durham may be on the streets for votes. He may leave the streets for money, but neither of these-”

  “You know that Rossy offered him money to shut down his protest?” I interrupted.

  He pressed his lips together without answering.

  “But you did follow Durham to Rossy’s place last night. Do you follow him every night?”

  “Reb Joseph isn’t like you,” Radbuka burst out. “He doesn’t set out to spy on people, make their lives miserable, deny them their rights. Everything he does is aboveboard. Anyone could tell you that Rossy talked to Durham last night: we all saw Durham go over to Rossy’s car when it was stuck in traffic on Adams.”

  “What? Did Durham get in with Rossy?”

  “No, he leaned over to talk to him. We could all see Rossy’s face when he opened the window, and Leon said, Hey, that’s the guy who’s really running Ajax these-”

  “Shut up,” Leon said. “You weren’t asked to take part in this conversation. Go wait in the bus with the rest of the group until Reb Joseph has finished with this woman.”

  Radbuka stuck out his lower lip in a babyish pout. “You can’t order me around. I sought out Reb Joseph because he’s doing something for people like me whose lives were destroyed by the Holocaust. I didn’t risk being arrested today so I could be bossed around by a loser like you.”

  “Look, Radbuka, you only came along to take advantage-”

  “Leon, Paul,” Posner chided them, “this is only grist for this woman’s mill, to see us fighting each other. Save your energies for our common enemies.”

  Leon subsided, but Paul wasn’t part of the movement; he didn’t need to obey Posner any more than he did Leon. In one of his rapid mood shifts, he turned angrily on Posner. “I only came along on your march last night and this one today to get help in getting to my family. Now you’re accusing my cousin Max of cutting secret deals with the Illinois legislature. Do you think I’m related to someone who would act like that?”

  “No,” I put in quickly, “I don’t think your relatives would do anything so awful. What happened last night, after Durham talked to Rossy on the street? Did they drive off together? Or did the cops take Durham in a separate car?”

  “I didn’t know the police took him,” Radbuka said, ignoring shushing gestures from Posner and Leon, responsive as usual to anyone paying him serious attention-even when it was an ostensible enemy like myself. “All I know is Durham went off and got in his own car: we walked down to the corner of Michigan and saw him. It was parked right there in a no-parking zone, but of course he had a policeman guarding it, sleazebag that he is. And Reb Joseph didn’t trust Durham, so he decided to follow him.”

  “Very enterprising.” I smiled patronizingly at Posner. “So you skulked around in the bushes outside Rossy’s building until you saw Durham come out. And then Rossy, who’s got a lot of charm, talked you into believing some stupid rumor about the hospital.”

  “It wasn’t like that, not at all,” Posner snapped. “When I saw him with Durham, I wanted to see-I’d been aware for some time that Durham was trying to sabotage our efforts to force European banks and insurers to provide redress for the outright theft which they engineered in the wake of-”

  “You can assume I understand the underlying issue, Mr. Posner. But Durham didn’t manufacture the grounds for his protest. There’s a growing group of people who believe companies which benefited from African slavery should pay reparations in the same way that companies which benefited from Jewish or Polish slave labor should.”

  His beard jutted toward me at an aggressive angle. “That’s a separate issue. We’re concerned about actual money, in bank accounts and unpaid life-insurance policies, that European banks and insurers have stolen. You’ve been working for one black man in Chicago whose claim was denied after he paid up his policy. I’m trying to do the same for tens of thousands of people whose parents thought they were leaving their children a financial cushion. And I wanted to know why Louis Durham showed up outside Ajax so conveniently-he never started campaigning for slave reparations until we started our campaign to force Ajax to pay off life-insurance policies.”

  I was startled. “So you thought Rossy was bribing him to march against you? To disrupt operations at his own company? You should take it to Oliver Stone! But I guess you took it to Rossy himself. Did he say, Yes, yes, I confess: if you’ll only picket Beth Israel instead of Ajax I’ll stop giving money to Louis Durham?”

  “Are you being stupid on purpose?” Posner spat at me. “Naturally Rossy denied any collusion. But he also assured me he would do a thorough internal search for any policies at Ajax or Edelweiss that belonged to Holocaust victims.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I gave him a week. He convinced me he was serious enough to have one week.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” I asked. “Why not give the boys some time off?”

  “He came to help me.” Paul Radbuka, pink with excitement, turned on me as suddenly as he’d accepted me a moment earlier. “Just because you won’t let me see my family, just because you hired that-that Brownshirt to keep me from talking to my little cousin, that doesn’t mean they’re not my family. Let Max Loewenthal see how it feels to be ostracized for a change.”

  “Paul, you really need to understand that he is not related to you. You are not only making them and yourself miserable by stalking Mr. Loewenthal’s family, you are running a serious risk of being arrested. Believe me, life in prison is terrible.”

  Radbuka scowled. “Max is the one who belongs in prison, treating me with this kind of contempt.”

&nbs
p; I looked at him, baffled about how to penetrate his dense cloud of denial. “Paul, who was Ulrich, really?”

  “That was my foster father. Are you going to try to make me confess he was my real father? I won’t! He wasn’t!”

  “But Rhea says that Ulrich wasn’t his name.”

  His face turned from pink to red. “Don’t try to call Rhea a liar. You’re the liar. Ulrich left behind documents in code. They prove that my name is really Radbuka. If you believed in Rhea you’d understand the code, but you don’t, you’re trying to destroy her, you want to destroy me, I won’t let you, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

  I watched in alarm as he began shaking, wondering if he was having a seizure of some kind. When I moved to try to help him, Posner barked at me to keep my distance: he was not going to allow a woman to touch one of his followers, even if Radbuka himself was not aware of the danger a woman’s touch posed. He and Leon supported Radbuka over to a bench at the bus stop. I watched for a moment, but Radbuka seemed to be calming down. I left the men to it and walked slowly up the street back to the hospital, hoping for a word with Max before returning to my office.

  “Posner made a certain kind of sense,” I told Max, when his weary secretary got him to give me five minutes, “with his ideas about Ajax bribing Durham to start demonstrating, but really, he must be as crazy as Paul Radbuka to stage a demonstration here. How are things going with your donors?”

  Max doesn’t often look his age, but this afternoon his skin was drawn tight and grey across his cheekbones. “I don’t understand any of this, Victoria. Morrell’s friend Don Strzepek came over last night. In good faith I let him look at my old notes; I thought he believed them. Surely a friend of Morrell’s wouldn’t have been abusing my trust?”

  “But those notes-they don’t have enough detail about the Radbukas for anyone to know if this guy Paul is a relative or not-unless there’s something in your file I didn’t see?”