Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

He pulled me to him. “It will be hard for me to be away from you, too, pepaiola. You keep me stirred up, sneezing, with your vigorous remarks.”

I’d told Morrell once that my father used to call my mother and me that-one of the few Italian words he’d picked up from my mother. Pepper mill. My two pepaiole, he’d say, pretending to sneeze when we were haranguing him over something. You’re making my nose red, okay, okay, we’ll do it your way just to protect my nose. When I was a little girl he could make me burst out laughing with his fake sneezes.

“Pepaiola, huh-sneeze at this!” I tossed a little sand at Morrell and sprinted away from him down the beach. He chased after me, which he normally wouldn’t do-he doesn’t like to run, and anyway, I’m faster. I slowed so he could catch me. We spent the rest of the day avoiding all difficult topics, including his imminent departure. The air was chilly, but the lake was still warm: we swam naked in the dark, then huddled in a blanket on the beach, making love with Andromeda overhead and Orion the hunter, my talisman, rising in the east, his belt so close it seemed we might pluck it from the sky. Sunday at noon we changed reluctantly into our dress clothes and drove back into the city for the Cellini’s final Chicago concert.

When we stopped for gas near the entrance to the tollway, the weekend felt officially over, so I bought the Sunday papers. Durham ’s protest led both the news and the op-ed sections in the Herald-Star. I was glad to see that my interview with Blacksin and Murray had made Durham cool his jets about me.

Mr. Durham has dropped one of his complaints, that Chicago private investigator V I Warshawski confronted a bereaved woman in the middle of her husband’s funeral. “My sources in the community were understandably devastated by the terrible inhumanity of an insurance company failing to keep its promise to pay to bury a loved one; in their agitation they may have misspoken Ms. Warshawski’s role in the case.”

“May have misspoken? Can’t he come right out and say he was wrong?” I snarled at Morrell.

Murray had added a few sentences saying that my investigation was raising troubling questions about the role of both the Midway Insurance Agency and the Ajax Insurance company. Midway owner Howard Fepple had not returned phone calls. An Ajax spokesperson said the company had uncovered a fraudulent death claim submitted ten years ago; they were trying to see how that could have occurred.

The op-ed page had an article by the president of the Illinois Insurance Institute. I read it aloud to Morrell.

Imagine that you go into Berlin, the capital of Germany, and find a large museum dedicated to the horrors of three centuries of African slavery in the United States. Then imagine that Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Bonn all have smaller versions of American slavery museums. That’s what it’s like for America to put up Holocaust museums while completely ignoring atrocities committed here against Africans and Native Americans.

Now suppose Germany passed a law saying that any American company which benefited from slavery couldn’t do business in Europe. That’s what Illinois wants to do with German companies. The past is a tangled country. No one’s hands are clean, but if we have to stop every ten minutes to wash them before we can sell cars, or chemicals, or even insurance, commerce will grind to a halt.

“And so on. Lotty isn’t alone in wanting the past to stay good and buried. Pretty slick, in a superficial kind of way.”

Morrell grimaced. “Yes. It makes him sound like a warmhearted liberal, worrying about African-Americans and Indians, when all he really wants to do is keep anyone from inspecting life-insurance records to see how many policies were sold which Illinois insurers don’t want to pay out.”

“Of course, the Sommers family also bought a policy they can’t collect on. Although I don’t think it was the company that defrauded them, but the agent. I wish I could see Fepple’s file.”

“Not today, Ms. Warshawski. I’m not giving back your picklocks until I board that 777 on Tuesday.”

I laughed and subsided into the sports section. The Cubs had gone so far into free fall that they’d have to send the space shuttle to haul them back to the National League. The Sox, on the other hand, were looking pretty, the best record in the majors going into the final week of the season. Even though the pundits were saying they’d be eliminated in the first round of the play-offs, it was still an amazing event in Chicago sports.

We reached Orchestra Hall seconds before the ushers closed the doors. Michael Loewenthal had left tickets for Morrell and me. We joined Agnes and Calia Loewenthal in a box, Calia looking angelic in white smocking with gold roses embroidered on it. Her doll and dog, festooned with ribbons in matching gold, were propped up in the chair next to hers.

“Where’re Lotty and Max?” I whispered as the musicians took the stage.

“Max is getting ready for the party. Lotty came over to help him, then got into a huge row with both him and Carl. She doesn’t look well; I don’t know if she’ll even stay for the party.”

“Shh, Mommy, Aunt Vicory, you can’t talk when Daddy is playing in public.” Calia looked at us sternly.

She had been warned against this sin many times in her short life. Agnes and I obediently subsided, but my worries about Lotty rushed back to the front of my mind. Also, if she was having a major fight with Max, I wasn’t looking forward to the evening.

As the musicians took the stage they looked remote in their formal wear, like strangers, not friends. For a moment I wished we’d skipped the concert, but once the music began, with the controlled lyricism that marked Carl’s style, the knots inside me began to unwind. In a Schubert trio, the richness of Michael Loewenthal’s playing, and the intimacy he seemed to feel-with his cello, with his fellow musicians-made me ache with longing. Morrell took my fingers and squeezed them gently: separation will not part us.

During intermission, I asked Agnes if she knew why Lotty and Max were fighting.

She shook her head. “Michael says they’ve been arguing off and on all summer over this conference on Jews where Max spoke on Wednesday. Now they seem to be fighting about a man Max met there, or heard speak, or something, but I was trying to get Calia to hold still while I braided the ribbons into her hair and didn’t really pay attention.”

After the concert Agnes asked if we would drive Calia up to Evanston with us. “She’s been so good, sitting like a princess for three hours. The sooner she can run around and let off steam the better. I’d like to stay until Michael’s ready to leave.”

Calia’s angelic mood vanished as soon as we walked out of Orchestra Hall. She ran shrieking down the street, shedding ribbons and even Ninshubur, the blue stuffed dog. Before she actually careened into the street, I caught up with her and scooped her up.

“I am not a baby, I do not get carried,” she yelled at me.

“Of course not. No baby would be such a pain.” I was panting with the exertion of carrying her down the stairs to the garage. Morrell was laughing at both of us, which made Calia at once assume an icy dignity.

“I am most annoyed at this behavior,” she said, echoing her mother, her little arms crossed in front of her.

“Speaking for both of us,” I murmured, setting her back on her feet.

Morrell handed her into the car and gravely offered Ninshubur back to her. Calia wouldn’t allow me to fasten her seat belt but decided Morrell was her ally against me and stopped squirming when he leaned in to do the job. On the ride to Max’s, she scolded me through the medium of lecturing her doll: “You are a very naughty girl, picking up Ninshubur and carrying him down the stairs when he was running. Ninshubur is not a baby. He needs to run and let off steam.” She certainly took my mind off any other worries. Perhaps that would be a good reason to have a child: you wouldn’t have energy left to fret about anything else.