Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

A handful of cars were in Max’s drive when we got there, including Lotty’s dark-green Infiniti, its battered fenders an eloquent testimony to her imperious approach to the streets. She hadn’t learned to drive until she arrived in Chicago at the age of thirty, when she apparently took lessons from a NASCAR crash dummy. She must have patched up her disagreement with Max if she was staying for the party.

A black-suited young man opened the door for us. Calia ran down the hall, shrieking for her grandfather. When we moved more slowly after her, we saw two other men in waiters’ costumes folding napkins in the dining room. Max had set up a series of small tables there and in the adjacent parlor so that people could eat dinner sitting down.

Lotty, her back to the door, was counting forks into bundles and slapping them onto a sideboard. Judging from her rigid posture she was still angry. We slipped by without saying anything.

“Not the best mood for a party,” I muttered.

“We can pay our respects to Carl and leave early,” Morrell agreed.

We tracked Max down in the kitchen, where he was conferring with his housekeeper on how to manage the party. Calia ran to tug at his arm. He hoisted her up to the countertop but didn’t let her stop his discussion with Mrs. Squires. Max has been an administrator for years-he knows you never finish anything if you keep accepting interruptions.

“What’s going on with Lotty?” I asked when he and Mrs. Squires were done.

“Oh, she’s having a temper tantrum. I wouldn’t pay much attention to it,” he said lightly.

“This isn’t about the Radbuka business, is it?” I asked, frowning.

“Opa, Opa,” Calia shouted, “I was quiet the whole time, but Aunt Vicory and Mommy talked and then Aunt Vicory was very bad, she hurted my tummy when she carried me down the stairs.”

“Terrible, puppchen,” Max murmured, stroking her hair, adding to me, “Lotty and I have agreed to keep our disagreements to one side for the evening. So I am not going to violate the concordat by giving my views.”

One of the waiters brought a young woman in jeans into the kitchen. Max introduced her as Lindsey, a local student who was going to entertain the small ones at the party. When I told Calia I’d go upstairs to help her put on play clothes, she told me scornfully it was a formal party, so she had to keep her party dress on, but she consented to go with Lindsey to the garden.

Lotty swept into the kitchen, acknowledging Morrell and me with a regal nod, and said she was going up to change. Despite her daunting manner, it was a relief to see her imperious rather than anguished. She reappeared in a crimson silk jacket and long skirt about the time the other guests began to arrive.

Don Strzepek walked over from Morrell’s, actually wearing an ironed shirt-Max had readily agreed to include Morrell’s old friend in the invitation. The musicians showed up in a bunch. Three or four had children around Calia’s age; the cheerful Lindsey scooped them all together and took them upstairs to watch videos and eat pizza.

Carl had changed from his tails into a soft sweater and trousers. His eyes were bright with pleasure in himself, his music, his friends; the tempo of the party began to accelerate with the force of his personality. Even Lotty was relaxing, laughing in one corner with the Cellini bass player.

I found myself discussing Chicago architecture with Michael Loewenthal’s first cello instructor. Over wine and little squares of goat-cheese polenta, the Cellini’s manager suggested today’s anti-American sentiment in France resembled anti-Roman feelings in ancient Gaul. Near the piano Morrell was deep in the kind of political controversy he delights in. We forgot our idea of leaving early.

Around nine, when the rest of the guests had gone into the back of the house for dinner, the doorbell rang. I had lingered in the sunroom, listening to Rosa Ponselle sing “L’amero, sarò costante.” It had been one of my mother’s favorite arias and I wanted to hear the recording to the end. The bell rang again as I crossed the empty hall to join the rest of the party-the waiters were apparently too busy serving dinner to respond to it. I turned back to the heavy double doors.

When I saw the figure on the doorstep, I sucked in my breath. His curly hair was thinning at the temples, but despite the grey, and the lines around his mouth, his face had a kind of childlike quality. The pictures I’d been looking at showed him contorted with anguish, but even with his cheeks creased in a shy, eager smile, Paul Radbuka was unmistakable.

He looked around the hall with a kind of nervous eagerness, as if he had arrived early for an audition. “Are you Mrs. Loewenthal, perhaps? Or a daughter?”

“Mr. Radbuka-or is it Mr. Ulrich-who invited you here?” I wondered wildly if that was what Lotty and Max had been fighting about-Max had found the guy’s address and invited him to come while Carl was still in town; Lotty, with her intense fear of reawakening the past, strenuously objected.

“No, no, Ulrich was never my name; that was the man who called himself my father. I’m Paul Radbuka. Are you one of my new relatives?”

“Why are you here? Who invited you?” I repeated.

“No one. I came on my own, when Rhea told me that some of the people who knew my family, or perhaps are my family, were leaving Chicago tomorrow.”

“When I talked to Rhea Wiell Friday afternoon, she said you didn’t know there were any other Radbukas and that she’d see how you felt about meeting them.”

“Oh. Oh-you were part of that meeting with Rhea. Are you the publisher who wants to write my story?”

“I’m V I Warshawski. I’m an investigator who spoke to her about the possibility of meeting you.” I knew I sounded chilly, but his unexpected arrival had me off-balance.

“I know-the detective who went to see her when she was talking to her publisher. Then you’re the person who is friends with the survivors from my family.”

“No,” I said sharply, trying to slow him down. “I have friends who may know someone from the Radbuka family. Whether that person is related to you would depend on a lot of details that we can’t really get into tonight. Why don’t you-”

He interrupted me, his eager smile replaced by anger. “I want to meet anyone who could possibly be a relative. Not in some cautious way, going back to you, finding out who these other Radbukas are, checking to see whether they could really be related to me, whether they want to meet me. That might take months, even years-I can’t wait for that kind of time to pass.”

“So you prayed and the Lord directed you to Mr. Loewenthal’s address?” I said.

Spots of color burned in his cheeks. “You’re being sarcastic, but there’s no need to be. I learned at Rhea’s that Max Loewenthal was the man who was interested in finding me. That he had a musician friend who knew my family, and that the musician was here only until tomorrow. When she put it like that, that Max and his friend thought they might know someone of my family, I knew the truth: either Max or his musician friend must be my missing relation. They are hiding behind a cloak of pretending to have a friend-I know that-it’s a common disguise, especially for people who are frightened of having their identities known. I saw I would have to take the initiative, come to them, overcome their fears of being found out. So I studied the newspapers, I saw the Cellini was visiting from England, with their last concert today, I saw the name Loewenthal as the cellist and knew he must be Max’s relation.”

“Rhea told you Mr. Loewenthal’s name?” I demanded, furious with her for breaching Max’s privacy.