Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

Radbuka’s face crumpled, like a child about to cry. He reiterated his speech about not being able to wait one more minute. “And tomorrow your musician friend will be gone. What if he’s the one who is my missing cousin-how will I ever find him again?”

“Don’t you see,” Max began helplessly. “All this flailing around with no information is only harder on you, harder on me. Please. Let Ms. Warshawski take you upstairs and talk to you in a quiet way. Or leave your number with her and go home now.”

“But I came here by taxi. I can’t drive. I don’t have a way home,” Radbuka cried out in a childlike bewilderment. “Why won’t you make me welcome?”

As more people finished dinner, they began filling the hall on their way to the front room. An altercation at the foot of the stairs was a lightning rod for attention. The crowd began to grow, pressing against Max.

I took Paul’s arm again. “You are welcome-but not arguing in the hall in the middle of a party. Rhea wouldn’t want you to be so distressed, would she? Let’s sit down where we can be comfortable.”

“Not until I meet Max’s musician friend,” he said stubbornly. “Not until he tells me to my face that he knows me, remembers the mother whom I saw pushed alive into a pit of lime.”

Lotty had appeared at the door connecting the living room to the hall. She pushed her way through the group to my side. “What’s going on, Victoria?”

“This is the guy calling himself Radbuka,” I muttered to her. “He got here through some unfortunate fast footwork on his part.”

Behind us, we heard a woman echo Lotty’s question to someone else in the crowd. And we also heard the response: “I’m not sure; I think this man may be claiming Carl Tisov is his father or something.”

Radbuka heard her as well. “Carl Tisov? Is that the name of the musician? Is he here now?”

Lotty’s eyes widened in dismay. I whirled, determined to deny the rumor before it got started, but the crowd surged forward, the buzz catching like fire on straw and spreading through the room. Carl’s appearance at the back of the hall caused a sudden silence.

“What is this?” he asked gaily. “Are you having a prayer vigil out here, Loewenthal?”

“Is that Carl?” Paul’s face lit up again. “Is it you who is my cousin? Oh, Carl, I am here, your long-lost relation. Perhaps we are even brothers? Oh, will you people please move out of the way? I need to get to him!”

“This is horrifying,” Lotty muttered in my ear. “How did he get here? How did he decide Carl was related to him?”

The crowd stood frozen with the embarrassment people get when confronted with an adult whose emotions are running wild. As Paul tried to push his way through the throng, Calia suddenly appeared at the top of the hall, shrieking loudly. The other small ones followed, yelling just as loudly, as she pelted down the stairs. Lindsey was running after them, trying to reestablish order-some game must have gotten out of hand.

Calia stopped on the lower landing when she realized the size of her audience. Then she gave a loud whoop of laughter and pointed at Paul. “Look, it’s the big bad wolf, he’s going to eat my grandpa. He’ll catch us next.”

All the children took up the chant, pointing at Paul and screeching, “It’s a wolf, it’s a wolf, it’s the big bad wolf!”

When Paul realized he was the object of their taunting, he started to tremble. I thought he might cry again.

Agnes Loewenthal elbowed her way through the packed hall. She stomped up the short flight to the lower landing and scooped up her daughter.

“You’re over the top just now, young lady. You littlies were supposed to stay in the playroom with Lindsey: I’m most annoyed at this behavior. It’s long past time for your bath and bed-you’ve had enough excitement for the day.”

Calia began to howl, but Agnes marched up to the upper landing with her. The other children became quiet at once. They tiptoed up the stairs in front of a red-faced Lindsey.

The lesser drama with the children had unfrozen the crowd. They let Michael Loewenthal divert them into the front room where coffee was set up. I saw Morrell, who had appeared in the hall when my attention was on Calia, talking to Max and Don.

Radbuka was covering his face in distress. “Why is everyone treating me this way? The wolf, the big bad wolf, that was my foster father. Ulrich, that’s German for wolf, but it isn’t my name. Who told the children to call me that?”

“No one,” I said crisply, my sympathy worn completely thin. “The children were acting out, the way children will. No one here knows that Ulrich is German for big bad wolf.”

“It isn’t.” I’d forgotten Lotty was standing behind me. “It’s one of those medieval totemic names, wolflike ruler, something like that.” She added something in German to Paul.

Paul started to answer her in German, then stuck out his lower lip, like Calia’s when she was being stubborn. “I will not speak the language of my slavery. Are you German? Did you know the man who called himself my father?”

Lotty sighed. “I’m American. But I speak German.”

Paul’s mood shifted upward again; he beamed at Lotty. “But you are a friend of Max and Carl’s. So I was right to come here. If you know my family, did you know Sofie Radbuka?”

At that question, Carl turned to stare at him. “Where the hell did you come up with that name? Lotty, what do you know about this? Did you bring this man here to taunt Max and me?”

“I?” Lotty said. “I-need to sit down.”

Her face had gone completely white. I was just in time to catch her as her knees buckled.

Morrell helped me support Lotty into the sunroom, where we laid her on a wicker settee. She hadn’t fainted completely but was still pale and glad to lie down. Max, his face pinched with worry, covered Lotty with an afghan. Always calm in a crisis, he sent Don to the housekeeper for a bottle of ammonia. When I’d soaked a napkin with it and waved it under her nose, Lotty’s color improved. She pushed herself to a sitting position, urging Max to return to his guests. After assuring himself that she was really better, he reluctantly went back to the party.

“Melodrama must be in the air this evening,” Lotty said, trying unsuccessfully for her usual manner. “I’ve never done that before in my life. Who brought that extraordinary man here? Surely that wasn’t you, Victoria?”

“He brought himself,” I said. “He has an eel-like ability to wiggle into spaces. Including the hospital, where some moron in admin gave him Max’s home address.”

Morrell coughed warningly, jerking his head at the shadows on the far side of the room. Paul Radbuka was standing there, just beyond the edge of the circle of light cast by a floor lamp. Now he darted forward to stand over Lotty.

“Are you feeling better now? Do you feel like talking? I think you must know Sofie Radbuka. Who is she? How can I find her? She must be related to me in some way.”

“Surely the person you are looking for was named Miriam.” Despite her shaking hands, Lotty pulled herself together to use her “Princess of Austria” manner.

“My Miriam, yes, I long to find her again. But Sofie Radbuka, that is a name which was dangled in front of me like a carrot, making me believe one of my relations must still be alive somewhere. Only now the carrot has been withdrawn. But I’m sure you know her, why else did you faint when you heard the name?”

A question whose answer I would have liked to hear myself, but not in front of this guy.

Lotty raised haughty eyebrows at him. “What I do is no conceivable business of yours. It was my understanding from the uproar you caused in the hall that you came to see whether either Mr. Loewenthal or Mr. Tisov were related to you. Now that you’ve caused a great disturbance, perhaps you would be good enough to give your address to Ms. Warshawski and leave us in peace.”