Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

“Signor Rossy, I wasn’t threatening you with a lawsuit: I was an indovina, reading your fortune, foreseeing an inevitable future.”

The frost melted abruptly. “What other things do you divine?”

I put his hand down. “My powers are limited. But you seem to have a long lifeline. Now, with your permission may I copy the canceled check and the death certificate?”

“Forgive my Swiss habits of being unwilling to part with official documents. By all means, make copies of these two papers. But the file as a whole I think I’ll keep with me. Just in case your charm makes you more persuasive with this young lady than her normal loyalties would allow you to be.”

He gestured at Connie Ingram, who blushed. “Sir, I’m really sorry, sir, but can you fill out a slip for me? I can’t let a claim file stay out of our area without a notice of the number and of who has it.”

“Ah, so you have respect for documents as well. Excellent. You write down what you need, and I will sign it. Will that fulfill the requirements?”

Her color spreading to her collarbone, Connie Ingram went out to Ralph’s secretary to type up what she needed. I followed with the documents I was allowed to have; Ralph’s secretary copied them for me.

Ralph walked partway down the hall with me. “Stay in touch, Vic, okay? I would be grateful to hear from you if you learn anything about this business.”

“You’ll be the second to know,” I promised. “You going to be equally forthcoming?”

“Naturally.” He grinned, briefly showing a trace of the old Ralph. “And if I remember right, I’m likely to be much more forthcoming than you.”

I laughed, but I still felt sad as I waited for the elevator. When the doors finally opened with a subdued ding, a young woman in a prim tweed suit stepped off, clutching a tan briefcase to her side. The dreadlocks tidily pulled away from her face made me blink in recognition.

“Ms. Blount-I’m V I Warshawski-we met at the Ajax gala a month ago.”

She nodded and briefly touched my fingertips. “I need to be in a meeting.”

“Ah, yes: with Bertrand Rossy.” I thought of putting her on her guard against Rossy’s accusation that she was siphoning off company documents for Bull Durham, but she whisked herself down the hall toward Ralph’s office before I could make up my mind.

The elevator that brought her had left. Before another arrived, Connie Ingram joined me, her paperwork apparently finished.

“Mr. Rossy seems very protective of his documents,” I commented.

“We can’t afford to misplace any paper around here,” she said primly. “People can sue us if we don’t have our records in tiptop shape.”

“Are you worried about a suit from the Sommers family?”

“Mr. Devereux said the agent was responsible for the claim. So it’s not our problem here at the company, but of course he and Mr. Rossy-”

She stopped, red-faced, as if remembering Rossy’s comment about my persuasive charms. The elevator arrived and she scurried into it. It was twelve-forty, heart of the lunch hour. The elevator stopped every two or three floors to take in people before making its express descent from forty to the ground. I wondered what indiscretion she had bitten back, but there wasn’t any way I could pump her.

Something there is that doesn’t love a fence,” I muttered as I boarded the northbound L. Lots of people on the train were muttering to themselves: I fit right in. “When someone is guarding documents, is it because his corporate culture is obsessive, as Rossy said? Or because there’s something in them he doesn’t want me to see?”

“Because he’s in the pay of the U-nited Nations,” the man next to me said. “They’re bringing in tanks. Those U-nited Nations helie-copters landing in Dee-troit, I seen them on TV.”

“You’re right,” I said to his beery face. “It’s definitely a UN plot. So you think I should go down to Midway Insurance, talk to the agent, see if my charms are persuasive enough to wangle a look at the sales file?”

“Your charms plenty persuasive enough for me,” he leered.

That was esteem-enhancing. When I got off the train at Western, I picked up my car and immediately headed south again. Down in Hyde Park, I found a meter with forty minutes on it on one of the side streets near the bank where Midway Insurance had their offices. The bank building itself was the neighborhood’s venerable dowager, its ten stories towering over Hyde Park ’s main shopping street. The facade had recently been cleaned up, but once I got off the elevator onto the sixth floor, the dim lights and dingy walls betrayed a management indifference to tenant comfort.

Midway Insurance was wedged between a dentist and a gynecologist. The black letters on the door, telling me they insured life, home, and auto, had been there a long time: part of the H in Home had peeled away, so that it looked as though Midway insured nome.

The door was locked, but when I rang the bell someone buzzed me in. The office beyond was even drearier than the hall. The flickering fluorescent light was so dim that I didn’t notice a peeling corner of linoleum until I’d tripped on it. I grabbed at a filing cabinet to keep from falling.

“Sorry-I keep meaning to fix that.” I hadn’t noticed the man until he spoke-he was sitting at a desk that took up most of the room, but the light was bad enough I hadn’t seen him when I opened the door.

“I hope you buy premises insurance, because you’re inviting a nasty suit if you don’t glue that down,” I snapped, coming all the way into the room.

He turned on a desk lamp, revealing a face with freckles so thick that they formed an orange carpet across his face. At my words the carpet turned a deeper red.

“I don’t get much walk-in business,” he explained. “Most of the time we’re in the field.”

I looked around, but there wasn’t a desk for a second person. I moved a phone book from the only other chair and sat down. “You have partners? Subordinates?”

“I inherited the business from my dad. He died three years ago, but I keep forgetting that. I think the business is going to die, too. I never have been much good with cold calls, and now the Internet is killing independent agents.”

Mentioning the Internet reminded him that his computer was on. He flicked a key to start the screensaver, but before the fish began cascading I saw he’d been playing some kind of solitaire.

The computer was the only newish item in the room. His desk was a heavy yellow wooden one, the kind popular fifty years ago, with two rows of drawers framing a kneehole for the user’s legs. Black stains from decades of grime, coffee, ink, and who knows what scarred the yellow in the places I could see it-most of the surface was covered in a depressing mass of paper. My own office looked monastic by comparison.

Four large filing cabinets took up most of the remaining space. A curling poster of the Chinese national table-tennis team provided the only decoration. A large pot hung from a chain above the window, but the plant within had withered down to a few drying leaves.

He sat up and tried to put a semblance of energy into his tone. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m V I Warshawski.” I handed him one of my cards. “And you are?”

“Fepple. Howard Fepple.” He looked at my card. “Oh. The detective. They told me you’d be calling.”

I looked at my watch. It had been just over an hour since I left Ajax. Someone in the company had moved fast.

“Who told you that? Bertrand Rossy?”

“I don’t know the name. It was one of the girls in claims.”

“Women,” I corrected irritably.

“Whatever. Anyway, she told me you’d be asking about one of our old policies. Which I can’t tell you anything about, because I was in high school when it was sold.”