Total Recall

by Sara Paretsky

  He made a tired gesture. “Just that letter of Lotty’s, which you read. Surely Don wouldn’t have used that to encourage Paul to believe he was a relative, would he?”

  “I don’t think so, Max,” I said, but not with total confidence: I was remembering the glow in Don’s eyes when he looked at Rhea Wiell. “I can try to talk to him tonight, though, if you’d like.”

  “Yes, why don’t you do that.” He sat heavily at his desk, his face an effigy. “I never thought I would be happy to see the last of my family, but I will be glad when Calia and Agnes get on that plane.”

  XXXVI Rigmarole: New Word for the Same Old Story

  I slowly walked back to my car and drove down to my office, obeying every speed limit, every traffic sign. The morning’s adrenaline-fueled fury was long gone. I stared at the stack of messages Mary Louise had left for me, then caught up with Morrell at his hotel in Rome, where it was nine at night. The conversation both cheered and further depressed me. He said the kinds of things one wants to hear from a lover, especially when the lover is about to go into the land of the Taliban for eight weeks. But when we hung up I felt more forlorn than ever.

  I tried to take a nap on the cot in my back room, but my mind wouldn’t shut down. I finally got up again and determinedly went through the messages, returning phone calls. Halfway through the pile was a note to call Ralph at Ajax: the company had decided to make the Sommers family whole. I got back to him at once.

  “Mind you, Vic, this is a one-time-only event,” Ralph Devereux warned when I called him. “Don’t expect to make it a habit.”

  “Ralph, this is wonderful news-but whose idea was it? Yours? Rossy’s? Did Alderman Durham call and urge you on to do this?”

  He ignored me. “And another thing: I would greatly appreciate it if you let me know the next time you sic the cops on my employees.”

  “You’re right, Ralph. I got caught up in an emergency at a hospital, but I should have called you. Did they arrest Connie Ingram?”

  Mary Louise had left a typed report about Sommers and about Amy Blount which I was trying to scan while I talked: between Mary Louise’s police contacts and Freeman Carter’s skill, the state had let Isaiah Sommers go home, but they’d made it clear he was their front-runner. The trouble was not his prints on the door per se: the Finch said the 911 techs had confirmed what the Twenty-first District cops had told Margaret Sommers: they’d received an anonymous phone tip-probably from a black male-which was what made them print the room.

  “No. But they came right here to the building to question her.”

  “Right to the sacred halls of Ajax itself?”

  When he sputtered a request to can the sarcasm, that it disrupted everyone’s workday to have cops in the building, I added, “Connie Ingram was lucky, lucky to be a white female. Maybe it’s embarrassing to have the cops question you in your office, but they took my client away from his workstation in cuffs. They hauled him over to Twenty-ninth and Prairie for a chat in a windowless room with a bunch of guys watching through the one-way glass. He’s only eating at home tonight because I hired him the best criminal lawyer in town.”

  Ralph brushed that aside. “Karen Bigelow-Connie’s supervisor, remember?-Karen sat in on the interrogation along with one of our lawyers. Connie was extremely upset, but the police seemed to believe her, or at least they didn’t arrest her. The trouble is, Vic, they pulled phone records for Fepple’s office and found several calls from her extension, including one the day before he was killed. She says she did call him, several times, to get him to fax his copies of the Sommers documents to her. But Janoff is pissed at having cops in the place, Rossy is pissed, and frankly, Vic, I’m not very happy myself.”

  I put down the notes to give him my full attention. “Poor Connie: it’s a hard reward for doing your duty, to be grilled by the cops. I hope the company doesn’t abandon her.

  “Ralph, what deal did Rossy do with Durham and Posner to get them to call off their protests?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” He suddenly was really angry, not just blustering.

  “I mean that Rossy swung down Adams Street yesterday while I was upstairs with you. He called Durham over to his car, met with him an hour later at his home, and finished up by talking privately to Joseph Posner. Today Posner was picketing Beth Israel Hospital, while Durham ’s left the arena. I called City Hall just now- Durham was in his office listening to pleas for exceptions to zoning ordinances in Stewart Ridge.”

  Ralph blew frosty air across the line to me. “Is it so strange that the managing director tries for a one-on-one with the guys who want to shut down his company? He’s stuck in traffic like every other stiff in the Loop last night and sees his chance. Don’t try to spin that into a conspiracy for me.”

  “Ralph, remember when we met? Remember how you got that bullet in your shoulder?”

  The memory still rankled, how his boss had betrayed both him and the company. “What could Rossy possibly be doing that would involve a worthless agent on Chicago ’s South Side? Edelweiss couldn’t have anything to do with Howard Fepple. Use your head, Vic.”

  “I’m trying, but it isn’t telling me anything very intelligible. Listen, Ralph, I know you have mixed feelings about me, but you’re a savvy insurance guy. Put these things together for me: all the Sommers documents disappear, except for the paper file-about which you think there’s something amiss, although you can’t put your finger on it-and that file spent a week in Rossy’s office.

  “Throw this in: either Connie Ingram or someone pretending to be her set up a date with Fepple for last Friday night. Who besides Ajax personnel knew she’d been talking to him? Next, Fepple’s dead, and his copy of the file disappears, and Rossy invites me to dinner, very much on the spur of the moment. Whereupon Fillida and her Italian friends pump me in concert about Fepple, his death, and his files. And finally, there’s that odd document I found in Fepple’s papers, the one I showed you with Sommers’s name on it. What does all this add up to in your mind?”

  “That we dropped the ball on Sommers, and on Fepple,” Ralph said coldly. “Preston Janoff’s been over this with the head of agency management, wanting to know why we kept a relationship with a guy who produced a policy a month for us in his good years. Janoff’s agreed to make the Sommers family whole: we’ll send out a check tomorrow. On a total exception basis, as I said. But other than that-Vic, the Rossys’ guests know you’re a detective, they’re avid about American crime, it’s natural they should pump you. And tell me this: what earthly reason could Bertrand Rossy have for getting involved with a loser like Fepple, whom he never even heard of before last week?”

  He was right. That was the crux of the problem. I couldn’t think of a reason.

  “Ralph, I was hearing last night that it’s Fillida’s money that runs Edelweiss, that Bertrand married the boss’s daughter.”

  “That’s not news. Her mother’s family founded the company in the 1890’s. They were Swiss, and they’re still the majority shareholders.”

  “She’s a funny woman. Very chic, very soft-spoken, but definitely in charge of what’s said and done in the Rossy home. I gather she keeps close watch on what happens on Adams Street as well.”

  “Rossy’s a substantial guy. Just because he married up doesn’t mean he doesn’t do the job well. Anyway, I don’t have time for gossip about my managing director’s wife. I have work to do.”

  “Oh, kiss my mistletoe,” I said, but the line was dead.

  I dialed back into Ajax and asked for Rossy’s office. His secretary, the cool, well-groomed Suzanne, put me on hold. Rossy came on in a surprisingly short time.

  When I thanked him for last night’s dinner, he said, “My wife so enjoyed meeting you last night. She says you are refreshing and original.”

  “I’ll add that to my resumé,” I said politely, which earned me one of his hearty laughs. “You must be pleased that Joseph Posner’s stopped haunting the Ajax premises.”

  “Of
course we are. Any day without a disturbance in a big company is a good one,” he agreed.

  “Yep. It may not surprise you to learn he’s moved his protesters up to Beth Israel Hospital. He spun me some rigmarole, which he says you gave him, about you promising a private search of the Edelweiss and Ajax policies if he’d leave Ajax alone and haunt Beth Israel instead.”

  “I’m sorry? This word is new to me, rigmarole.”

  “Farrago-a bunch of nonsense. What could the hospital possibly have to do with missing Holocaust assets?”

  “That I don’t know, Ms. Warshawski, or Vic-I feel I can call you Vic after our friendly evening last night. About the hospital and Holocaust assets you would have to talk to Max Loewenthal. Is that all? Did you discover any new or unusual information about that unusual piece of paper from Mr. Fepple’s office?”

  I sat up very straight: I could not afford to be inattentive. “The paper is at a lab, but they tell me it was made at a plant outside Basel sometime in the thirties. Does that ring a bell with you?”

  “My mother was only just born in 1931, Ms. Warshawski, so paper from that era means very little to me. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Nothing yet, Mr. Rossy, but I’ll keep your intense interest in it in mind. By the way, there’s a rumor floating around the street. That Alderman Durham only started his campaign on slave reparations after Ajax got worried about the Holocaust Asset Recovery pressure. Have you heard that?”

  His laugh bounced along the line again. “The bad thing about being a senior officer is that one becomes too isolated. I don’t hear rumors, which is a pity as they are after all the oil that turns the industrial engine, are they not? That is an interesting rumor, certainly, definitely, but it is also news to me.”

  “I wonder if it’s also news to Signora Rossy?”

  This time he paused fractionally before continuing. “It will be when I tell her. As you gathered last night, no affair of Ajax is too small for her keen interest. And I will tell her we have another new English expression from you. Rigmarole. I left a meeting for this rigmarole. Good-bye.”

  What had that netted me? Just about nothing, but I dictated it to my word-processing center at once, so I could study it when I wasn’t feeling so overwhelmed-I still had a bunch more calls to make.

  I went back to Mary Louise’s notes first, before calling my lawyer. Freeman, on the run as usual, said he was convinced personally of Isaiah Sommers’s innocence, but the anonymous phone tip and the fingerprints weren’t good signs.

  “Then I guess we need to find the real killer,” I said with dogged cheerfulness.

  “I don’t think the guy can afford your fee, Vic.”

  “He can’t afford yours, either, Freeman, but I’m still asking you to look after him.”

  Freeman chuckled. “So this will get added to your unpaid balance?”

  “I send you a big chunk of change every month,” I protested.

  “Yep. You’ve gotten the balance down to thirteen thousand-before Sommers’s fees, of course. But you’ll go find me some evidence? Excellent. I was sure we could count on you. In the meantime I keep reminding the state’s attorney that Fepple had a date Friday night with someone using the name Connie Ingram. Whom he was anxious to keep you from seeing. I’m running, Vic-we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  That outstanding balance at Freeman’s was one of my biggest headaches. It had gotten out of hand last year when I’d had serious legal troubles, but even before that it had always hovered in the four-figure range. I’ve been putting a thousand on it every month, but it seems like every month I also generate some new need for his billable hours.

  I called Isaiah Sommers. When I told him that someone had ratted him out to the cops, he was flabbergasted. “Who could have done that, Ms. Warshawski?”

  “How do you know she didn’t do it herself?” Margaret Sommers hissed on the extension.

  “The cops had a tip. From a man, by the way, Ms. Sommers, who sounded African-American to them on the replay. My sources in the department say they’re pretty sure the call really was anonymous. I will keep looking into the situation, but it would be helpful if you could tell me of anyone who hates you enough to turn you in for murder.”

  “You can’t keep looking,” he mumbled. “I can’t afford to pay you.”

  “Don’t worry about that part. The investigation is getting big enough that someone else will pay the bill.” He didn’t need to know the someone would be me. “By the way, not that it’s much consolation when you’re worrying about a murder charge, but Ajax is going to pay your aunt the value of the policy.”

  “Funny how that happened just as your bill was going to grow,” Margaret snapped.

  “Maggie, Maggie, please-she just said someone else would be taking care of her bill. Ms. Warshawski, this is wonderful news; Margaret, she’s just worried. Like I am, too, of course, but Mr. Carter, he seems like a good lawyer. A real good lawyer. And he’s sure you and he together can get this bad business straightened out.”

  It’s good when the client is happy. Trouble was, he seemed to be alone in his good cheer. His wife was miserable. As was Amy Blount. And Paul Radbuka. Me. Max. And most especially Lotty.

  She had left the hospital for her clinic after her confrontation with Posner, but when I phoned, Mrs. Coltrain said Dr. Herschel wouldn’t interrupt her schedule to talk to me. I thought of her vehement outcry yesterday evening, that she’d never stinted a patient, that it was a relief to be in the hospital, to be the doctor, not the friend or the wife or the daughter.

  “Oh, Lotty, who were the Radbukas?” I cried to the empty room. “Whom do you feel you betrayed?” Not a patient, she’d said that last night. Someone she’d turned her back on whose death consumed her with guilt. It had to have been someone in England -otherwise how had Questing Scorpio gotten the name? A relative was all I could imagine, perhaps a relative who appeared in England after the war that Lotty couldn’t cope with. Someone she had loved in Vienna, but whom the horrors of war had so damaged that Lotty turned away from her. I could see it, could see doing it myself. So why couldn’t she talk to me about it? Did she really think I would judge her?

  I checked Questing Scorpio again, but there was still no response to my posting. What else could I do-besides go home to walk the dogs, make dinner, go to bed. Sometimes routine is soothing, but at other times it’s a burden. I searched for Edelweiss on the Web to see if I could come up with any information about Fillida Rossy’s family. I sent the query through both Lexis and ProQuest and went back to the phone, calling Don Strzepek.

  He answered my greeting cautiously, remembering that we hadn’t parted very cordially yesterday. “Any word from the intrepid journalist?”

  “He’s made it as far as Rome without a scratch. I guess they’re off to Islamabad tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry about him, Vic: he’s been in worse places than Kabul, hard as it is for me to think of any offhand. I mean, it’s not a war zone these days-no one’s going to shoot at him. He may get heckled, but he’s more likely to be the object of curiosity, at least among the kids.”

  I felt a little better. “Don, on a different subject-what did you think after you saw Max’s notebooks last night? Do you agree that he didn’t know the Radbukas before he made that trip to Vienna after the war?”

  “Yes, it was clearly Dr. Herschel’s connection, more than Max’s. Especially since it was she who fainted at the party on Sunday when she heard Sofie Radbuka’s name. She seemed to have an awful lot of detail about exactly how to hunt down the apartment on the Leopoldsgasse,” he added hesitantly. “I’m wondering if the Radbukas were her family.”

  “So Radbuka can start stalking her instead of Max? You know he was at Beth Israel today, with Posner and his Maccabees, screaming to the world that Lotty and Max were trying to keep Holocaust survivors from their birth families?”

  “I know it must be painful for them, but Paul really is a tormented spirit, Vic. If he could just find someplace to anch
or himself it would calm him down.”

  “Have you actually talked to the recovered-memory poster boy yourself?” I asked. “Is there any hope of getting him to show you those papers his father left behind? The ones that proved to him that his father was with the Einsatzgruppen and that he himself was a camp survivor named Radbuka?”

  Don paused to make a hissing noise-presumably inhaling smoke. “I did meet him briefly this morning-I guess before he joined Posner at the hospital. He’s pretty agitated these days. Rhea wouldn’t let me ask him too many questions for fear of getting him more upset. He won’t let me see the papers-he seems to think I might be a rival for Rhea’s affection, so he’s clamming up on me.”

  I couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter. “I’ve got to hand it to Rhea for sticking with the guy. He’d have me in the locked ward at Elgin within a week if I tried to follow his gyrations around the dance floor. Although of course you are a rival, I can see his point of view. What does Rhea say?”

  “She says she can’t betray a patient confidence, which of course I respect her for. Although my old reporter’s instincts make that hard to do.” He gave a little laugh that managed to sound both rueful and admiring. “She encouraged his involvement with Posner because Posner’s giving him a sense of real family. But of course we didn’t know when we saw him they were going to go picket Max at the hospital. I’m seeing her for dinner tonight, so I’ll talk to her about it then.”

  I made a little structure out of paper clips while I chose my words. “Don, I asked Radbuka today who Ulrich was, and he had kind of a fit on the street, saying it was his foster father’s name and that I was accusing Rhea of being a liar. But you know, yesterday she made quite a point that Ulrich wasn’t the guy’s name. She even seemed to be laughing at me a little over that.”

  He sucked in another lungful of smoke. “I’d forgotten that. I can try to ask her again tonight, but-Vic, I’m not going to play man in the middle between you and Rhea.”