Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

“Mr. Sommers?”

The smile vanished, leaving his face in the guarded lines I’d seen the other night. “Oh. It’s you. What do you want?”

I pulled the broadsheet from my purse and handed it to him. “I see the steps you took on your own led you straight to Alderman Durham. There are a few factual errors, but it’s having quite a galvanizing effect on the city: you should be pleased.”

He read the sheet with the same slow concentration he’d given my contract. “Well?”

“You know as well as I that I wasn’t present at your uncle’s funeral. Did you tell Mr. Durham that I was?”

“Maybe he put the two pieces of the story together wrong, but, yes, I did talk to him. Told him about you accusing my aunt.” He stuck his jaw out pugnaciously.

“I’m not here to play he-said, she-said with you but to find out why you went out of your way to pillory me in this public way, instead of trying to work things out in private.”

“My aunt-she doesn’t have money or connections or a way to get even when someone like you comes along to accuse her unjustly.”

Several men passed us, looking us over curiously. One of them called a greeting to Sommers. He flipped up a palm, but kept his angry gaze on me.

“Your aunt feels bereft. She needs someone to blame, so she’s blaming me. Almost ten years ago, someone using your aunt’s name cashed a check for the policy, with a death certificate claiming your uncle was dead to back up the claim. Either your aunt did it, or someone else. But her name was on the check. I had to ask her. You’ve fired me, so I won’t be asking any more questions, but don’t you wonder how it got there?”

“The company did it. The company did it and hired you to frame me, like it says here.” He pointed at the broadsheet, but his voice lacked conviction.

“It’s a possibility,” I conceded. “It’s a possibility the company did it. We’ll never know, of course.”

“Why not?”

I smiled. “I have no reason to look into it. You could hire someone else to do so, but it would cost you a fortune. Of course it’s much easier to toss accusations around than it is to look for facts. It’s the American way these days, isn’t it: find a scapegoat instead of a fact.”

His face was bunched in confusion. I took the broadsheet from him and turned back to my car. The phone, which I’d left attached to the charger, was ringing-Mary Louise, with Amy Blount’s details. I scribbled them down and started the car.

“Wait,” Isaiah Sommers yelled.

He shook off someone who’d stopped to talk to him and ran over to my car. I put it in park and looked up at him, my brows raised, my expression bland.

He fumbled for words, then blurted out, “What do you think?”

“About-”

“You said it’s a possibility that the company cashed in the policy. Is that what you think?”

I turned off the engine. “To be honest, no. I won’t say it’s impossible: I uncovered claims fraud at that company once before, but it was under a different management team, which had to resign when the news got out. The thing is, it would mean collusion between someone in the company and the agent, since the agency deposited the check, but the claims manager made no demur about bringing the file up where I could see it.” It’s true Rossy had put me through a song and dance to keep me from examining the complete file-but Edelweiss had only been involved with Ajax for four months, so I didn’t see how he could possibly be part of an Ajax life-insurance fraud.

“The agent is a more likely candidate. Although none of the other policies Hoffman sold at your uncle’s workplace was fraudulently cashed, the check was paid through Midway. It’s also possible your uncle did it, for reasons you might never know or you might find very painful to know. Or some other family member. And before you blow your stack and get on to Bull Durham from the nearest phone, I don’t seriously think it was your aunt, not after talking to her. But your family or the agency would be the two places I would look. If I was looking.”

He slammed the roof of my car in frustration. He was strong enough that the car bounced slightly.

“Look here, Ms. Warashki. I don’t know who to believe, or who to listen to. My wife-she thought I should go talk to Alderman Durham. Camilla Rawlings, the lady who gave me your name to begin with, she already chewed me out for firing you: she thinks I should make my peace with you. But what can I believe? Mr. Durham, he said he had proof the insurance company profited from slavery, and this is one more cover-up, and no offense, but you being white, how can you understand?”

I got out of the car so he wouldn’t have to bend over and I wouldn’t get a crick in my neck looking up. “Mr. Sommers, I can’t ever, completely, but I do try to listen empathically-and impartially-to whatever I hear. The situation with your aunt, I realize it’s complicated by America ’s history. If I want to ask her how her name got to be on that check, then you and your wife and your aunt see me as a white woman, someone in league with the company to defraud you. But if I start screaming in chorus with you-company cover-up! fraud!-when I have no facts, then I’m useless as a detective. My only lodestar is sticking to the truth-as far as I can know it. It’s a costly decision-I lose clients like you, I lost a wonderful man in Camilla’s brother. I’m not always right, but I have to stick to the truth or be buffeted like a leaf by every wind that blows.”

It took me a long time to get over my breakup with Conrad Rawlings. I love Morrell, he’s a great guy-but Conrad and I were attuned in a way that you only find once in a very blue moon.

Sommers’s face contorted with strain. “Would you consider going back to work for me?”

“I’d consider it. I’d be a little wary, though.”

He nodded in a kind of rueful understanding, then blurted out, “I’m sorry about Durham getting the facts mixed up. I do have cousins, one anyway, that could have gone and done it. But you see, it’s painful, too painful, to expose my family like that. And if it was my cousin Colby, then, hell, I’ll never see the money again. I’d be out the price of the funeral and the price of your fee, besides making my family ashamed in public.”

“It’s a serious problem. I can’t advise you on it.”

He shut his eyes tightly for a moment. “Is there-do you still owe me any more time from my five hundred dollars?”

He’d had an hour and a half coming to him before Mary Louise checked with the men at South Branch Scrap Metal. Any more work would be with the meter running again.

“About an hour,” I said gruffly, cursing myself.

“Could you-is there anything you could find out about the agent in just an hour?”

“You going to call Mr. Durham and tell him he made a mistake? I have a press interview scheduled at six-thirty; I don’t want to mention your name if I’m working for you.”

He took a breath. “I’ll call him. If you’ll ask a few questions of the insurance agency.”

Family spokesman Andy Birnbaum, great-grandson of the patriarch who parlayed a scrap-metal pushcart into one of America ’s great fortunes, said the family is bewildered by Durham ’s accusations. The Birnbaum Foundation has supported inner-city education, arts, and economic development for four decades. Birnbaum added that relations of the African-American community with both the Birnbaum Corporation and its foundation have been mutually supportive, and he is sure that if Alderman Durham sits down to talk, the alderman will realize there has been a misunderstanding.”

I got that sound bite on the radio as I was riding back into the city. The inbound traffic was heavy but moving fast, so I didn’t pay close attention until my own name jumped out at me.