Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

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?”