Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

Ralph was very white. He unconsciously massaged his right shoulder, where he’d taken a bullet from his old boss ten years ago.

“I presume the police are connecting Connie’s murder to Ajax, or you all wouldn’t be gathered here on a Saturday,” I said.

“The girls-women-she usually had a drink with on Friday nights say she canceled because she had to work late,” Ralph said leadenly. “She certainly left the building when everyone else did, according to her coworkers. When one of them teased her about having a date that she didn’t want to tell them about, she became very embarrassed, said it wasn’t like that, but she’d been asked to keep it confidential. The cops are looking at the company.”

“So will you let me take a look at Connie’s desk file?”

“No.” His voice was barely above a whisper now. “I want you to leave the building. And in case you’re imagining stopping on thirty-nine to hunt for it yourself, don’t: I’m sending Karen down to Connie’s desk right now to collect all her papers and bring them up here. I’m not going to have you riding through my department like a cowgirl herding mavericks.”

“Will you promise me one thing? Two things, actually. Will you look through Connie’s papers without telling Bertrand Rossy about it? And will you let me know what you find?”

“I’m not promising you anything, Warshawski. But you can rest assured that I’m not jeopardizing what’s left of my career by taking this story to Rossy.”

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?