Total Recall

by Sara Paretsky

  The lights were turned off in the waiting room, I suppose to deter would-be patients from thinking anyone was here. In the greenish light that filtered in through the glass fire blocks, I felt as though I were under water. Mrs. Coltrain wasn’t at her station behind the counter. The whole building appeared deserted-absurd, since she had just buzzed me in.

  Sharply calling her name, I pushed open the door that led to the examining rooms. “Mrs. Coltrain!” I called again.

  “I’m back here, dear.” Her voice came to me faintly from Lotty’s office.

  She never called me “dear”: even after knowing me for fifteen years I’m always “Ms. Warshawski.” I pulled out my Smith & Wesson and ran down the hall. She was behind Lotty’s desk, her cheeks white underneath her powder and rouge. I couldn’t take in the scene at first; it took me a second to notice Ralph. He was wedged into a back corner of the room on one of Lotty’s patient chairs, his arms tied to the chair arms, a piece of surgical tape over his mouth, his grey eyes black in his very white face. I was trying to take this in when his face contorted; he jerked his head toward the door.

  I turned, bringing up my gun, but Bertrand Rossy was close behind me. He grabbed my gun arm, and my shot went wide. He was using both hands on my right wrist. I kicked him hard on his shin. His hold slackened. I kicked again, harder, and wrenched my gun hand away.

  “Up against the wall,” I panted.

  “Fermatevi.” Fillida Rossy spoke sharply behind me. “Stop or I will shoot this woman.”

  She had appeared from some hiding place to stand behind Mrs. Coltrain’s chair. She held a gun against Mrs. Coltrain’s neck. Fillida looked strange; I realized after a moment that she had covered her blond hair in a black wig.

  Mrs. Coltrain was shaking, her mouth moving wordlessly. My lips tight with fury, I let Rossy take the Smith & Wesson. He pinned my arms behind me, wrapping them with surgical tape.

  “In English, Fillida. Your newest victims can’t understand you. She just said I should stop or she would shoot Mrs. Coltrain,” I added to Ralph. “So I’ve stopped. Is that another SIG, Fillida? Do your friends at the consulate smuggle them in from Switzerland for you? The cops can’t trace the one you used on Howard Fepple.”

  Rossy hit me on the mouth. His smiling charm had sure disappeared. “We have nothing to say to you in any language, whereas you have much to say to us. Where are Herr Hoffman’s notebooks?”

  “You have a lot to say to me,” I objected. “For instance, why is Ralph here?”

  Rossy made an impatient gesture. “It seemed easiest to bring him.”

  “But why? Oh-oh, Ralph, you found Connie’s desk file and you took it to Rossy. I begged you not to do that.”

  Ralph shut his eyes tightly, unwilling to look at me, but Rossy said impatiently, “Yes, he showed me that silly girl’s notes. Silly, conscientious little creature, keeping all her desk records. It never occurred to me-she never said a word to me.”

  “Of course not,” I agreed. “She took her clerical procedures for granted; you know nothing of the details of work at that level.”

  They had killed so many people, these two, I couldn’t think of a way to talk them out of killing three more. String them out, string them out while it comes to you. Above all, keep your voice calm, conversational: don’t let them see you’re terrified.

  “So was Fepple threatening to reveal that Edelweiss really had a huge Holocaust policy exposure? Would Connie Ingram even have understood the implications of that?”

  “Of course not,” Rossy said, impatient. “In the sixties and seventies, Herr Hoffman began to submit death certificates to Edelweiss for his European clients-the ones he had sold life insurance to in Vienna before the war.”

  “Can you believe such a thing?” Fillida was incensed over Hoffman’s effrontery. “He collected the life insurance for many Viennese Jews. He didn’t even know that they were dead, he had no proper procedures, he made up the death certificates. It is a total outrage, the way he stole money from me and my family.”

  “But Aaron Sommers wasn’t a Viennese Jew,” I objected, sidetracked for a moment by the lesser problem.

  Bertrand Rossy snapped impatiently, “Oh, this Hoffman, he must have become crazy. Either that or forgetful. He had insured an Austrian Jew named Aaron Sommers in 1935 and a black American of the same name in 1971. So he submitted a death claim for the black man instead of the Jew. It was all so foolish, so unnecessary-and yet, for us, so fortunate. He was the one agent we hadn’t been able to find with a large book of prewar Jewish policies. And then it turned out he was right here in Chicago. That day in Devereux’s office, when I looked in the Sommers papers and saw Ulrich Hoffman’s signature on his agency work sheet, I could hardly believe my fortune. The man we had been seeking for five years was right here in Chicago. I’m still astounded that you and Devereux didn’t notice my excitement.”

  He paused to congratulate himself on his public performance. “But Fepple, he was a total idiot. He found one of Hoffman’s old registers in the Sommers file, together with some blank signed death certificates. He thought he could blackmail us over the false death certificates. He didn’t even understand that the Holocaust claims were more important. Much more important.”

  “Bertrand, enough of this history,” Fillida said in Italian. “Get her to tell you where the doctor is.”

  “Fillida, you must speak English,” I said in English. “You’re in America now, and these two unfortunates can’t understand you.”

  “Then understand this,” Rossy said. “Unless you tell us where those books are at once, we will kill both these friends of yours, not fast with a bullet, but slowly with great pain.”

  “That woman last night, the therapist of Hoffman’s son, she said this Jewish doctor has them. These are my books. They belong to my family, to my company. They must come back to me,” Fillida said, her accent strong, her English not as smooth as her husband’s. “But this clerk opened the safe and nothing is in it. Everybody knows you are the friend of this Jewish doctor, the best friend. So you tell us where she is.”

  “She’s disappeared,” I said. “I thought you guys had her. It’s a relief to know she’s safe.”

  “Please don’t make the mistake of assuming we are stupid,” Rossy said. “This office clerk is totally expendable now that she’s opened the doctor’s safe.”

  “Is that why poor Connie Ingram had to die?” I asked. “Because she couldn’t tell you where Ulrich Hoffman’s notebooks were? Or because she would have told Ralph or the cops about fraudulent death certificates-your own obsession with Hoffman and Howard Fepple?”

  “She was a very loyal employee of the company. I feel regret over her death.”

  “You took her out for a lovely dinner, treated her with the kind of charm that persuaded Grandpapa Hirs’s little girl to marry you, and then took her to the forest preserve to kill her. Did you let her think you were attracted to her? Does it cheer you up, the thought that a naive young woman responds to you the same way the rich boss’s daughter does?”

  Fillida curled her lip scornfully. “Che maniere borghesi. Why should I bother my head if my husband gratifies the fantasies of some poor little creature?”

  “She’s complaining that I have bourgeois manners,” I explained to Ralph and to Mrs. Coltrain, who was staring straight ahead, glassy with shock. “In her world, if your husband sleeps with the staff it’s just a throwback to those old medieval customs. The queen of the castle doesn’t bother her head over it because she’s still queen. What is it, Fillida? Because you’re the queen you shoot anyone who doesn’t bow to you? Because you’re queen of Edelweiss, no one is allowed to get money from the company-you’ll shoot them if they submit a claim? You need to hold Edelweiss the way you hold your silverware and your daughter’s hair, don’t you?”

  “You are ignorant. It is my family’s company, the Edelweiss. My mother’s grandfather, he started this company, only then of course it was called the Nesthorn. The Jews for
ced us to change the name after the Second World War, but they cannot force us to let go of our company. I am protecting the future of my children, of Paolo and Marguerita, that is all.”

  She was angry, but she kept her gun pointed at Mrs. Coltrain. “That that cretin Howard Fepple could think he could drain money from us, it is unbelievable. And the Jews, only wanting money all the time, believing they could come to demand more money from us, that is an affront, an outrage. Speak quickly now, tell me where are these books of Signor Hoffman.”

  I felt very tired, very aware of how weak and ineffectual I was with my arms pinned behind me. “Oh, those Jews, paying their few pennies a week to Nesthorn so that you could ski at Mont Blanc and shop on Monte Napoleane. And now their grandchildren, their own little Paolos and Margueritas, want the company to pay what you owe them. That is a terribly bourgeois attitude: don’t they understand the aristocratic outlook-that you get to collect the premium and never have to pay on the policies? It’s a pity the Chicago police have such a limited worldview. When they’ve matched fibers from Bertie’s clothes to Connie Ingram’s body, well, that will make a big impact on a bourgeois jury, believe me.”

  “The police require a reason to think about Bertrand at all.” Fillida shrugged elegant shoulders. “I myself do not see such a thing happening.”

  “Paul Hoffman could identify you, Fillida. Your hand slipped badly on the trigger there, didn’t it?”

  “That lunatic! He couldn’t identify me in a thousand years. He thinks I am a concentration-camp guard. Who would even suggest me as being in his house!”

  “Max Loewenthal. He knows what’s happening here. Carl Tisov. Dr. Herschel herself. You and Bertie are like a couple of elephants going musth through the jungle. You can’t keep killing everyone in Chicago without getting caught out yourselves.”

  Rossy looked at his watch. “We need to be going soon, if Alderman Durham will only get here. Fillida, he advised against bullet wounds, so break the clerk’s arm. Persuade this detective that we are serious in our quest.”

  Fillida turned her gun over and slammed the stock against Mrs. Coltrain’s arm. Mrs. Coltrain screamed, the pain ripping her out of her shocked frozenness. The horrible noise turned everyone toward her.

  In that brief window of distraction, I launched myself at Rossy. I whirled, kicking him hard in the stomach, turning again as he lashed out at me to kick him on the kneecap. He was punching at me, but he wasn’t a street fighter. I was. I ducked underneath his flailing arms and butted him square in the solar plexus. He gagged and backed away.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fillida taking aim. I hit the floor. I was demented now. Unable to use my hands, I lay on my back kicking at Rossy over and over. I was screaming in rage, in impotent fury, as Fillida came around to the front of the desk to point her gun at me. I didn’t want to die like this, helpless on the floor.

  Behind me I heard Ralph give an enraged grunt. He got to his feet, dragging the chair with him, and flung himself at Fillida just before she fired. His blow knocked her off balance. Her gun went off but she fell, with Ralph in his chair falling on top of her. She screamed as he crashed onto her abdomen.

  Mrs. Coltrain stood up behind the desk. “I have called the police, Mr. Rossy, as I believe your name is. They will be here at any moment.”

  Her voice wobbled a bit, but she was back in command of her clinic. Hearing that majestic tone, the same one she used to keep small children from fighting in the waiting room, I lay on the floor and laughed.

  LI Wily Coyote

  I sat on the edge of Ralph’s bed, holding his right hand between both of my own. It was late on Saturday night, but the charge nurse told me he wouldn’t sleep until he’d talked to me.

  “I don’t have much luck with my corporate loyalties,” he said. “Why couldn’t I listen to you the second time around if I wouldn’t the first? So many people dead. Poor Connie. And me with another bullet in the shoulder. I guess I just can’t stand for you to be right, can I?”

  “At least they got your left shoulder this time,” I said. “Now you’re symmetrical. Ralph, you’re a good guy and a team player. You wanted your team to be as good as you were, and I was telling you they weren’t. You’re too honest yourself to believe the worst of the people around you. And anyway, you saved my life. I can’t possibly feel anything but overflowing gratitude.” I brought his right hand to my lips.

  “That’s generous.” His eyes flickered shut for a moment. “Connie. Why did she?”

  “I don’t think she was being disloyal to you or to the company, but I imagine Rossy turned her head. There was the big boss in from the new owners in Switzerland, telling her to report directly to him, that she shouldn’t tell anyone what he said to her because someone in the company was embezzling, and it might be anyone, you, her immediate supervisor Karen. I imagine that was how he worked it. Anyone who had spent fourteen years toiling as a claims clerk would have been thrilled, but she had that extra quality of loyalty and reliability. He said not to talk, she kept quiet. And then, he was sophisticated, he was glamorous.”

  “It’s a warning to me to cut out cheeseburgers,” Ralph said with a gleam of humor. “Guy’s only two years younger than me. I need to look more glamorous to my young claims handlers. So he romanced her and strangled her. What a horrible ending for her. Can they make it stick?”

  “Terry Finchley, the detective in charge, he got a search warrant. They’re looking at Rossy’s clothes, fingerprints-they may get a match with the marks on her neck. He and Fillida were so single-mindedly arrogant, they probably didn’t try too hard to conceal evidence.

  “Fillida, that’s another story. She could face a lot of charges-Fepple’s murder, attacking Paul Hoffman, attacking Rhea Wiell, but she’s attractive, rich. They’re searching for her prints or clothes fibers or anything at Paul’s house, but she’s going to be hard for the state’s attorney to nail down. At least those cheeseburgers of yours did some good: when you came down on her you cracked her pelvis. She won’t ski anywhere anytime soon.”

  He smiled briefly, the twisted smile that reminded me of the old Ralph, and shut his eyes. I thought he had drifted off to sleep, but as I started to get up he looked up at me again.

  “What was Alderman Durham doing at the clinic? I saw him as they were carrying me off on a stretcher.”

  “Oh, Fillida and Bertrand had gone berserk,” I said. “They thought they’d get a bomb, blow the three of us up, make it look as though anti-abortion terrorists had been responsible. They told Durham to get one for them-they assumed that they’d bought him, that he was just another one of their servants who’d do what they wanted.

  “See, Rossy had been doing favors for Durham in exchange for some muscle: Rossy got the legislature to block the Holocaust Asset Recovery Act unless it included slavery reparations, he gave Durham money so Durham could build a war chest to run for mayor-along with this high-profile issue, slavery reparations, to build a citywide platform on. In return for all this help, Durham directed Rossy to some South Side muscle when Rossy wanted to break in to Amy Blount’s apartment to see if she had the Hoffman notebooks. But he’s a wily coyote, the alderman-he never put anything in writing. He never directly told Rossy he could find muscle for him.

  “Rossy thought he’d bought Durham. But the alderman wants to be mayor more than he wants to be Al Capone. He called the cops, told them the Rossys were trying to get a bomb at the clinic. So the cops were on their way, even though they got there kind of late.”

  The alderman now looked like Mr. Virtue. He’d given me a bit of a smirk in passing, the smirk of the man who’d gotten clean away with having Colby Sommers killed and who had a nice stash to launch his citywide campaign besides. He’d confessed to Terry Finchley, more in sorrow than in outrage, that some of the young men on his EYE team weren’t as rehabilitated as he would have wished. And the Finch, normally one of the city’s straightest, levelest cops, had read me a lecture on my prejudice in flinging accusatio
ns at the alderman. If I had to win every match in order to be happy, I’d be a mighty sad detective-but this was one round where the loss stuck in my craw.

  The charge nurse came into the room. “He’s recovering from trauma. You’ve had your five minutes twice over, out you go, now.”

  Ralph was asleep. I bent to kiss his forehead where the shock of greying hair still flopped over.

  Down in the Beth Israel parking lot, I dug my fingers into my shoulders before climbing into my car. They were still sore from being tied behind my back. I’d gone home to rest when I finally finished talking to the cops, but I was still beat.

  At home I’d felt honor bound to tell Mr. Contreras what had happened, before stumbling up to bed. I slept a few hours, but I woke up still tired clear to the bone. All that death, all the energy I’d spent trying to figure it out, had turned on such sordidness. Fillida Rossy, protecting her great-grandfather’s company. Protecting her wealth and position. Not that she was the Lady Macbeth behind Bertrand-he didn’t need his wife to screw his courage to the sticking point. He’d had his own arrogance, his own sense of entitlement.

  When I got up, before driving to the hospital to see Ralph, I’d gone to my office to e-mail Morrell: How I wish you were here. How I need your arms around me tonight.

  He wrote back at once with love, commiseration-and a précis of the articles on Edelweiss I’d sent him yesterday. Not that it mattered now, just another little part of Fillida’s family’s wealth, Nesthorn had insured a lot of Nazi bigwigs during the war and had even forced people in occupied Holland and France to buy life insurance from them. In the sixties, they thought it would be prudent to change their name to Edelweiss because local resentment against the Nesthorn name still ran high in western Europe.

  Standing in the parking lot, I gave a bark of mirthless laughter and shook my shoulders out again. A giant figure loomed out of the shadows and moved toward me.