Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only

I set off for the University Women United meeting at seven. I’d slept for three hours and felt on top of the world. The fritata had turned out well-an old recipe of my mother’s, accompanied by lots of toast, a salad constructed by Paul, and Paul’s warm appreciation. He’d decided his bodyguarding included spending the night, and had brought a sleeping bag. The dining room was the only place with space for him, Lotty warned him. “And I want you to stay in it,” she added. Jill was delighted. I could just imagine her sister’s reaction if she came back with Paul as a boyfriend.

It was an easy drive south, a lazy evening with a lot of people out cooling off. This was my favorite time of the day in the summer. There was something about the smell and feel of it that evoked the magic of childhood.

I didn’t have any trouble parking on campus, and got into the meeting room just before things began. About a dozen women were there, wearing work pants and oversized T-shirts, or denim skirts made out of blue jeans and with the legs cut apart and re-stitched, seams facing out. I was wearing jeans and a big loose shirt to cover the gun, but I was still dressed more elegantly that anyone else in the room.

Gail Sugarman was there. She recognized me when I came in, and said, “Hi, I’m glad you remembered the meeting.” The others stopped to look at me. “This is-” Gail stopped, embarrassed. “I’ve forgotten your name-it’s Italian, I remember you told me that. Anyway, I met her at the Swift coffee shop last week and told her about the meetings and here she is.”

“You’re not a reporter, are you?” one woman asked.

“No, I’m not,” I said neutrally. “I have a B.A. from here, pretty old degree at this point. I was down here the other day talking to Harold Weinstein and ran into Gail.”

“Weinstein,” another one snorted. “Thinks he’s a radical because he wears work shirts and curses capitalism.”

“Yeah,” another agreed. “I was in his class on ‘Big Business and Big Labor.’ He felt the major battle against oppression had been won when Ford lost the battle with the UAW in the forties. If you tried to talk about how women have been excluded not just from big business but from the unions as well, he said that didn’t indicate oppression, merely a reflection of the current social mores.”

“That argument justifies all oppression,” a plump woman with short curling hair put in. “Hell, the Stalin labor camps reflected Soviet mores of the 1930s. Not to mention Scheransky’s exile with hard labor.”

Thin, dark Mary, the older woman who’d been with Gail at the coffee shop on Friday, tried to call the group to order. “We don’t have a program tonight,” she said. “In the summer our attendance is too low to justify a speaker. But why don’t we get in a circle on the floor so that we can have a group discussion.” She was smoking, sucking in her cheeks with her intense inhaling. I had a feeling she was eyeing me suspiciously, but that may have just been my own nerves.

I obediently took a spot on the floor, drawing my legs up in front of me. My calf muscles were sensitive. The other women straggled over, getting cups of evil-looking coffee as they came. I’d taken one look at the overboiled brew on my way in and decided it wasn’t necessary to drink it to prove I was one of the group.

When all but two were seated, Mary suggested we go around the circle and introduce ourselves. “There are a couple of new people here tonight,” she said. “I’m Mary Annasdaughter.” She turned to the woman on her right, the one who’d protested women’s exclusion from big unions. When they got to me, I said, “I’m V. I. Warshawski. Most people call me Vic.”

When they’d finished, one said curiously, “Do you go by your initials or is Vic your real name?”

“It’s a nickname,” I said. “I usually use my initials. I started out my working life as a lawyer, and I found it was harder for male colleagues and opponents to patronize me if they didn’t know my first name.”

“Good point,” Mary said, taking the meeting back. “Tonight I’d like to see what we can do to support the ERA booth at the Illinois State Fair. The state NOW group usually has a booth where they distribute literature. This year they want to do something more elaborate, have a slide show, and they need more people. Someone who can go down to Springfield for one or more days the week of August fourth to tenth to staff the booth and the slide show.”

“Are they sending a car down?” the plump, curly-haired one asked.

“I expect the transportation will depend on how many people volunteer. I thought I might go. If some of the rest of you want to, we could all take the bus together-it’s not that long a ride.”

“Where would we stay?” someone wanted to know.

“I plan to camp out,” Mary said. “But you can probably find some NOW people to share a hotel room with. I can check back at the headquarters.”

“I kind of hate doing anything with NOW,” a rosy-cheeked woman with waist-long hair said. She was wearing a T-shirt and bib overalls; she had the face of a peaceful Victorian matron.

“Why, Annette?” Gail asked.

“They ignore the real issues-women’s social position, inequities of marriage, divorce, child care-and go screwing around supporting establishment politicians. They’ll support a candidate who does one measly little thing for child care, and overlook the fact that he doesn’t have any women on his staff, and that his wife is a plastic mannequin sitting at home supporting his career.”

“Well, you’re never going to have social justice until you get some basic political and economic inequalities solved,” a stocky woman, whose name I thought was Ruth, said. “And political problems can be grappled with. You can’t go around trying to uproot the fundamental oppression between men and women without some tool to dig with: laws represent that tool.”

This was an old argument; it went back to the start of radical feminism in the late sixties: Do you concentrate on equal pay and equal legal rights, or do you go off and try to convert the whole society to a new set of sexual values? Mary let the tide roll in for ten minutes. Then she rapped the floor with her knuckles.

“I’m not asking for a consensus on NOW, or even on the ERA,” she said. “I just want a head count of those who’d like to go to Springfield.”

Gail volunteered first, predictably, and Ruth. The two who’d been dissecting Weinstein’s politics also agreed to go.

“What about you, Vic?” Mary said.

“Thanks, but no,” I said.

“Why don’t you tell us why you’re really here,” Mary said in a steely voice. “You may be an old UC student, but no one stops by a rap group on Tuesday night just to check out politics on the old campus.”

“They don’t change that much, but you’re right: I came here because I’m trying to find Anita McGraw. I don’t know anyone here well, but I know this is a group she was close to, and I’m hoping that someone here can tell me where she is.”

“In that case, you can get out,” Mary said angrily. The group silently closed against me; I could feel their hostility like a physical force. “We’ve all had the police on us-now I guess they thought a woman pig could infiltrate this meeting and worm Anita’s address out of one of us-assuming we had it to worm. I don’t know it myself-I don’t know if anyone in here knows it-but you pigs just can’t give up, can you? ”

I didn’t move. “I’m not with the police, and I’m not a reporter. Do you think the police want to find Anita so that they can lay Peter Thayer’s death on her? ”

“Of course,” Mary snorted. “they’ve been poking around trying to find if Peter slept around and Anita was jealous or if he’d made a will leaving her money. Well, I’m sorry-you can go back and tell them that they just cannot get away with that.”