Total Recall

L Jumped for Joy

Before I left Ralph’s office, I gave Denise another copy of my card. “He’s going to want to get in touch with me,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Make sure he knows he can reach me on my cell phone anytime this weekend.”

I almost couldn’t bear not seeing Connie Ingram’s desk file myself, but Karen Bigelow rode with me as far as the thirty-ninth floor, assuring me that she would summon building security if I followed her to Connie’s workstation.

When I left the building, I turned into a whirlwind of useless activity. Don Strzepek had decided not to take my advice on leaving town; I got him to persuade Rhea to let me visit her in her town house on Clarendon, hoping a firsthand description of her attacker would tell me one way or another if it had been one of the Rossys.

That was my first wasted hour. Don let me into the house, past a waterfall with lotus flowers floating in it, to a solarium, where Rhea sat in a large armchair. Her luminous eyes peered at me from a cocoon of shawls. While she sipped herbal tea and Don held her hand, she stepped me through the events of the night before. When I tried to press her on anything-the height, the build, the accent, the strength, of her assailant, she leaned back in the chair, a hand over her forehead.

“Vic, I know you mean well, but I have been over this ground, not just with Donald and the police, but with myself. I put myself in a light trance and spoke the whole incident into a tape recorder, which you may listen to-if any detail had stuck out I would have recalled it then.”

I listened to the tape, but she refused to reinduce a trance so that I could question her myself. I suggested that she might have noticed the color of the eyes glittering through the ski mask, the color of the mask or of the bulky jacket the person wore-her trance recital didn’t cover any of those points. At that she became wearily belligerent: if she had thought such questions would produce useful answers, she would have asked them herself.

“Don, could you help Vic find her way out. I’m exhausted.”

I didn’t have time to waste on anger or arguments. I went back past the lotus petals, only venting my feelings by pinging a penny against the Buddha at the top of the waterfall.

I next drove down to the South Side, to Colby Sommers’s mother, to try to gather any information about Isaiah’s cousin’s last evening on the planet. Various relations were comforting her, including Gertrude Sommers, who talked with me softly in one corner. Colby had been a weak boy and a weak man; he had liked to feel important by hanging out with dangerous people, and now, sadly, he’d paid the price. But Isaiah, Isaiah was a different story: she wanted to make sure I knew that I could not let Isaiah share Colby’s fate.

I nodded bleakly and turned to Colby’s mother. She hadn’t seen her son for a week or two, she didn’t know what he’d been up to. She did give me the names of some of Colby’s friends.

When I tracked them to a local pool hall, they put their cues aside, watching me with a glittering hostility. Even when I broke through the haze of reefer and bitterness that enveloped them, they didn’t tell me much. Yes, Colby had hung with some brothers who did sometimes run errands for Durham ’s EYE team. Yes, he’d been flashing a roll for a few days, Colby was like that. When he was in the money, everyone got a share. When he was flat, everyone else was expected to ante up. Last night he’d said he was going to be doing something with the EYE brothers, but names? No, they knew no names. Neither bribes nor threats could shake them.

I left, frustrated. Terry didn’t want to suspect Alderman Durham, and the guys on the South Side were too intimidated by the EYE team to rat them out. I could go see Durham again myself, but that would be wasted energy when I didn’t have a viable lever. And anyway, right now my worries about Lotty, and Ulrich’s journals, made it more important that I try to figure out a way to get to the Rossys.

I was wondering if there was some way I could start checking their alibis for last night without showing myself too obviously when my cell phone rang. I was northbound on the Ryan, in that stretch where sixteen lanes cross each other again and again in something like a maypole dance-not the place to distract myself. I pulled off at the nearest exit to answer.

I’d hoped for Ralph, but it was my answering service. Mrs. Coltrain had called me from Lotty’s clinic. It was urgent, I should get back to her at once.

“She’s at the clinic?” I looked at the dashboard clock-Lotty’s Saturday hours were nine-thirty to one; it was past two now.

I don’t know the weekend operators at my service; this man read me the number Mrs. Coltrain had given him and hung up. It was the clinic, all right-perhaps she’d stayed on to do some paperwork.

Mrs. Coltrain is usually calm, even majestic-in all the years she’s managed the flow of people at Lotty’s storefront, I’ve only seen her flustered once, and that was when the clinic was invaded by an angry mob. When I called back today, she sounded as agitated as she had that day six years ago.

“Oh, Ms. Warshawski, thank you for calling. I-something strange has come up-I didn’t know what to do-I hope you-it would be good if you-I don’t want to impose. Are you busy?”

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Coltrain? Has someone broken in?”

“It’s-it’s something from Dr. Herschel. She-she-uh-sent a packet of dictation.”

“From where?” I demanded sharply.

“It doesn’t say on the packet. It came Federal Express. I’ve been-trying to listen to it. Something strange has happened. But I don’t want to bother you.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can. Half an hour at the outside.” I made a U on Pershing and accelerated back on-to the Ryan, calculating route, calculating time. I was ten miles south of the clinic here, but the expressway curved sharply west before it reached the Irving Park Road exit. Better to get off on Damen and drive straight north. Eight miles to Damen, eight minutes unless the traffic glued. Then three miles on city streets to Irving, another fifteen minutes.

My knuckles were white on the steering wheel, I was clutching it so hard. What was wrong? What was in the tape? Lotty was dead? Lotty was a hostage somewhere and Mrs. Coltrain couldn’t bear to tell me on the phone?

The light at Damen was interminable. Steady, Old Paint, I admonished myself. No need to shoot out the tires on the Beemer that crowded around me to prove I had a right to the intersection. When I finally got to the clinic, I parked at a reckless angle and jumped out.

Mrs. Coltrain’s silver Eldorado was the only car in the tiny parking strip Lotty had installed on the clinic’s north edge. The whole street had a Saturday afternoon sleepiness to it: a woman with three small children and a large trolley of laundry was the only person I saw.

I ran to the front and tried the door, but it was locked. I pushed the after-hours bell. After a long pause, Mrs. Coltrain asked in a quavering, tinny voice who it was. When I identified myself, there was another long pause before she buzzed me in.

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 forced 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.