Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

I dragged my attention back to Ralph. “Would you like me to take you home?” he was asking.

“Ralph, I’d like a chance to explain some things to you. I know it must look as though I don’t want to be here, showing up an hour late and all. Are you too upset for me to tell you about it?”

“Not at all,” he said politely.

“Well, could we go someplace and sit down? It’s a little confusing and hard to do standing up.”

“I’ll check on our table.” When he went off, I sank gratefully onto the barstool and ordered a Johnnie Walker Black. How many could I drink before they combined with my tired muscles and put me to sleep?

Ralph came back with the news that our table was a good ten-minute wait away. The ten stretched into twenty, while I sat with my uninjured cheek propped on my hand and he stood stiffly behind me. I sipped my Scotch. The bar was over-air-conditioned. Normally the heavy cotton of the dress would have kept me plenty warm, but now I started to shiver slightly.

“Cold?” Ralph asked.

“A little,” I admitted.

“I could put my arms around you,” he offered tentatively.

I looked up at him and smiled. “That would be very nice,” I said. “Just do it gently, please.”

He crossed his arms around my chest. I winced a little at first, but the warmth and the pressure felt good. I leaned back against him. He looked down at my face, and his eyes narrowed.

“Vic, what wrong with your face?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“No, really,” he said, bending closer, “you’ve gotten cut-and that looks like a bruise and swelling on your cheek.”

“Is it really bad?” I asked. “I thought the makeup covered it pretty well.”

“Well, they’re not going to put you on the cover of Vogue this week, but it’s not too awful. It’s just that as an old claims man I’ve seen lots of accident victims. And you look like one.”

“I feel like one too,” I agreed, “but really, this wasn’t-”

“Have you been to a doctor about this?” he interrupted.

“You sound just like the cabbie who took me home this afternoon. He wanted to rush me to Passavant-I practically expected him to come in with me and start making me chicken soup.”

“Was your car badly damaged?” he asked.

“My car is not damaged at all.” I was beginning to lose my temper-irrationally, I knew-but the probing made me feel defensive.

“Not damaged,” he echoed, “then how-”

At that moment our table was announced in the bar. I got up and went over to the headwaiter, leaving Ralph to pay for drinks. The headwaiter led me off without waiting for Ralph, who caught up with us just as I was being seated. My spurt of temper had infected him; he said, “I hate waiters who haul off ladies without waiting for their escorts.” He was just loud enough for the maitre d’ to hear. “ I’m sorry, sir-I didn’t realize you were with madame,” he said with great dignity before moving off.

“Hey, Ralph, take it easy,” I said gently. “A little too much ego-jockeying is going on-my fault as much as yours. Let’s stop and get some facts and start over again.”

A waiter materialized. “Would you care for a drink before dinner?”

Ralph looked up in irritation. “Do you know how many hours We’ve spent in the bar waiting for this table? No, we don’t want a drink-at least, I don’t.” He turned to me. “Do you?”

“No, thanks,” I agreed. “Any more and I’ll fall asleep-which will probably ruin forever any chance I have of making you believe that I’m not trying to get out of an evening with you.”

Were we ready to order? the waiter persisted. Ralph told him roundly to go away for five minutes. My last remark had started to restore his native good humor, however. “Okay, V. I. Warshawski-convince me that you really aren’t trying to make this evening so awful that I’ll never ask you out again.”

“Ralph,” I said, watching him carefully, “do you know Earl Smeissen?”

“Who?” he asked uncomprehendingly. “Is this some kind of detective guessing game?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I answered. “Between yesterday afternoon and this afternoon I’ve talked to a whole lot of different people who either knew Peter Thayer or his girl friend-the gal who’s vanished. You and your boss, among others.

“Well, when I got home late this afternoon, two hired thugs were waiting for me. We fought. I was able to hold them off for a while, but one of them knocked me out. They took me to Earl Smeissen’s home. If you don’t know Earl, don’t try to meet him. He was just starting to muscle to the top of his racket-extortion, prostitution-when I was with the Public Defender ten years ago, and he seems to have kept right on trucking since then. He now has a stable of tough guys who all carry guns. He is not a nice person.”

I stopped to marshal my presentation. From the corner of my eye I saw the waiter shimmering up again, but Ralph waved him away. “Anyway, he ordered me off the Thayer case, and set one of his tame goons on me to back it up.” I stopped. What had happened next in Earl’s apartment was very raw in my mind. I had calculated it carefully at the time, decided that it was better to get everything over at once and convince Earl that I was scared than to sit there all evening while he took increasingly violent shots at me. Nonetheless, the thought of being so helpless, the memory of Tony beating me, like a disloyal whore or a welching loan customer-to be so vulnerable was close to unbearable. Unconsciously, my left hand had clenched, and I realized I was slicing it against the tabletop. Ralph was watching me, an uncertain look on his face. His business and suburban life hadn’t prepared him for this kind of emotion.

I shook my head and tried for a lighter touch. “Anyway, my rib cage is a little sore-which is why I winced and yelled when you grabbed hold of me in the bar. The question that’s exercising me, though, is who told Earl that I’d been around asking questions. Or more precisely, who cared so much that I’d been around that he asked-or paid-Earl to frighten me off.”

Ralph was still looking a little horrified. “Have you been to the police about this? ”

“No,” I said impatiently. “I can’t go to the police about this kind of thing. They know I’m interested in the case-they’ve asked me to get off, too, although more politely. If Bobby Mallory-the lieutenant in charge of the case-knew I’d been beaten up by Earl, Smeissen would deny the whole thing, and if I could prove it in court, he could say it was a million things other than this that made him do it. And Mallory wouldn’t give me an earful of sympathy-he wants me out of there anyway.”

“Well, don’t you think he’s right? Murder really is a police matter. And this group seems pretty wild for you to be mixed up with.”

I felt a quick surge of anger, the anger I get when I feel someone is pushing me. I smiled with an effort. “Ralph, I’m tired and I ache. I can’t try explaining to you tonight why this is my job-but please believe that it is my job and that I can’t give it to the police and run away. It’s true I don’t know specifically what’s going on here, but I do know the temperament and reactions of a guy like Smeissen. I usually only deal with white-collar criminals-but when they’re cornered, they’re not much different from an extortion artist like Smeissen.”

“I see.” Ralph paused, thinking, then his attractive grin came. “I have to admit that I don’t know much about crooks of any kind-except the occasional swindlers who try to rip off insurance companies. But we fight them in the courts, not with hand-to-hand combat. I’ll try to believe you know what you’re up to, though.”