Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

It was 6:30 and the sun was going down when I returned to the kitchen. The chair where Peter Thayer had been sitting had had its back to the stove. It was possible, of course, that the missing thing had not been hidden deliberately, but had dropped. A piece of paper might float unnoticed under the stove. I lay on my stomach and shone a flashlight under it. I couldn’t see anything, and the opening was pretty small. How thorough did I want to be? My muscles were aching and I had left my phenylbutazone at Lotty’s. But I went to the living room and got some bricks from a brick-and-board bookcase. Using the jack from my trunk as a lever and the bricks as a wedge, I slowly pried the stove off the floor. It was an impossible task; the jack would catch and raise the thing, and just as I was kicking a brick under the side, down it would slip again. Finally, by dint of pulling the table over and wedging the jack underneath it, I was able to get one brick under the right side. After that the left came up more easily. I checked the gas line to make sure it wasn’t straining, and carefully raised the stove by another brick. I then got down on my stomach again and looked underneath. There it was, a piece of paper stuck by grease to the bottom of the stove. I peeled it slowly off in order not to tear it, and took it over to the window to examine.

It was a carbon copy about eight inches square. The top left corner had the Ajax logo on it. In the center it read, “Draft only: not negotiable,” and it was made out to Joseph Gielczowski, of 13227 South Ingleside in Matteson, Illinois. He could take this to a bank and have it certified, at which point Ajax would pay the sum of $250 to the bank as a Workers Compensation indemnity payment. The name meant nothing to me and the transaction sounded perfectly straightforward. What was so important about it? Ralph would know, but I didn’t want to call him from here-better get the stove down and leave while the leaving was good.

I levered up the stove, using the table again as a wedge, and pulled the bricks out. The stove made a dull thud as it dropped-I hoped the downstairs neighbors weren’t home or were too self-engrossed to call the police. I gathered up my tools, folded the claim draft and put it in my shirt pocket, and left. A second-floor apartment door opened a crack as I went by. “Plumber,” I called. “There won’t be any water on the third floor tonight.” The door closed again and I left the building quickly.

When I got back to my car, the game was long over and I had to wait for the eight o’clock news to come on to get the score. The Cubs had pulled it out in the eighth inning. Good old Jerry Martin had hit a double; Ontiveros had singled, and wonderful Dave Kingman had gotten all three of them home with his thirty-second homer of the season. And all this with two out. I knew how the Cubs were feeling tonight, and sang a little Figaro on the way home to show it.

Beautiful People

Lotty lifted her thick eyebrows as I came into the living room. “Ah,” she said, “success shows in your walk. The office was all right?”

“No, but I found what they were looking for.” I took out the draft and showed it to her. “Make anything of it?”

She put on a pair of glasses and looked at it intently, pursing her lips. “I see these from time to time, you understand, when I get paid for administering to industrial accident victims. It looks totally in order, as far as I can tell-of course, I don’t read them for their content, just glance at them and send them to the bank. And the name Gielczowski means nothing to me, except that it is Polish: should it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t mean anything to me either. I’d better make a copy of it and get it stowed away, though. Have you eaten?”

“I was waiting for you, my dear,” she answered.

“Then let me take you out to dinner. I need it-it took a lot of work finding this, physical I mean, although the mental process helped-nothing like a university education to teach you logic.”

Lotty agreed. I showered and changed into a respectable pair of slacks. A dressy shirt and a loose jacket completed the outfit, and the shoulder holster fitted neatly under my left arm. I put the claim draft in my jacket pocket.

Lotty scrutinized me when I came back into the living room. “You hide it well, Vic.” I looked puzzled and she laughed. “My dear, you left the empty box in the kitchen garbage, and I knew I had brought no Smith & Wesson into the house. Shall we go?”

I laughed but said nothing. Lotty drove us down to Belmont and Sheridan and we had a pleasant, simple dinner in the wine cellar at the Chesterton Hotel. An Austrian wine store, it had expanded to include a tiny restaurant. Lotty approved of their coffee and ate two of the rich Viennese pastries.

When we got home, I insisted on checking front and back entrances, but no one had been around. Inside, I called Larry Anderson, my cleaning friend, and arranged for him to right my apartment. Not tomorrow-he had a big job on, but he’d go over with his best crew personally on Tuesday. Not at all, he’d be delighted. I got hold of Ralph and agreed to meet him for dinner the next night at Ahab’s. “How’s your face?” he asked.

“Much better, thanks. I should look almost presentable for you tomorrow night.”

At eleven I bade Lotty a very sleepy good night and fell into bed. I was instantly asleep, falling down a black hole into total oblivion. Much later I began dreaming. The red Venetian glasses were lined up on my mother’s dining-room table. “Now you must hit high C, Vicki, and hold it,” my mother said. I made a tremendous effort and sustained the note. Under my horrified eyes, the row of glasses dissolved into a red pooh It way my mother’s blood. With a tremendous effort I pulled myself awake. The phone was ringing.

Lotty had answered it on her extension by the time I oriented myself in the strange bed. When I lifted the receiver, I could hear her crisp, soothing voice saying, “Yes, this is Dr. Herschel.” I hung up and squinted at the little illuminated face of the bedside clock: 5:13. Poor Lotty, I thought, what a life, and rolled back over to sleep.

The ringing phone dragged me back to life again several hours later. I dimly remembered the earlier call and, wondering if Lotty were back yet, reached for the phone. “Hello?” I said, and heard Lotty on the other extension. I was about to hang up again when a tremulous little voice said, “Is Miss Warshawski there?”

“Yes, speaking. What can I do for you?” I heard the click as Lotty hung up again.

“This is Jill Thayer,” the little voice quavered, trying to speak calmly. “Can you come out to my house, please?”

“You mean right now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Sure thing, honey. Be right out. Can you tell me the trouble now?” I had shoved the receiver between my right shoulder and my ear and was pulling on some clothes. It was 7:30 and Lotty’s burlap curtains let in enough light to dress by without my having to fumble for the lamp switch.

“It’s-I can’t talk right now. My mother wants me. Just come, please.”

“Okay, Jill. Hold the fort. I’ll be there in forty minutes.” I hung up and hurriedly finished dressing in the clothes I’d worn last night, not omitting the gun under my left shoulder. I stopped in the kitchen where Lotty was eating toast and drinking the inevitable thick Viennese coffee.

“So,” she said, “the second emergency of the day? Mine was a silly hemorrhaging child who had a bad abortion because she was afraid to come to me in the first place.” She grimaced. “And the mother was not to know, of course. And you?”