Total Recall

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.