Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

Posner’s most recent cause was an effort to get Illinois to pass the Illinois Holocaust Asset Recovery Act. The IHARA, suggested by legislation in Florida and California, would bar insurance companies from doing business in the state unless they proved that they weren’t sitting on any life or property claims from Holocaust victims. It also had clauses dealing with banks and with firms that benefited from use of forced labor during the Second World War. Posner had been able to generate enough publicity that the bill was being debated in committee.

The second group outside the Pleiades, mostly black, was carrying signs with a large red slash through Pass the IHARA. NO DEALS WITH SLAVE OWNERS and ECONOMIC JUSTICE FOR ALL, their signs proclaimed. The guy leading this group was also easy to recognize: Alderman Louis “Bull” Durham. Durham had been looking for a long time for a cause that would turn him into a high-profile opponent to the mayor, but opposition to the IHARA didn’t strike me as a citywide issue.

If Posner had his Maccabees, Durham had his own militant followers. He’d set up Empower Youth Energy teams, first in his own ward and then around town, as a way of getting young men off the streets and into job-training programs. But some of the EYE teams, as they were called, had a shadier side. There were whispers on the street of extortion and beatings for store owners who didn’t contribute to the alderman’s political campaigns. And Durham himself always had his own group of EYE-team bodyguards, who surrounded him in their signature navy blazers whenever he appeared in public. If the Maccabees and the EYE team were going head to head, I was glad I was a private detective trying to make my way through traffic, not one of the policemen hoping to keep them apart.

The traffic finally inched me past the hotel entrance. I turned east onto Randolph Street, where it perches over Grant Park. All the meters there were taken, but I figured the cops were too busy at the Pleiades to spare time for ticketing.

I locked my briefcase in the trunk and pulled Calia from the backseat. She woke briefly, then slumped against my shoulder. She wasn’t going to manage the walk to the hotel. I gritted my teeth. Making the best load I could of her forty-pound deadweight, I staggered down the stairs leading to the lower level of Columbus Drive, where the hotel’s service entrance lay. It was already almost five: I hoped I’d find Max without too much trouble.

As I’d hoped, no one was blocking the lower entrance. I walked past the attendants with Calia and rode the elevator up to the lobby level. The crowd here was as thick as the mob outside, if quieter. Hotel guests and Birnbaum conference participants were wedged around the doors, anxiously wondering what was going on and what to do about it.

I was despairing of finding Max in this mob when I spotted a face I knew: Al Judson, the Pleiades security chief, was near the revolving doors, talking on a two-way radio.

I elbowed my way to him. “What’s up, Al?”

Judson was a small black man, unobtrusive in crowds, an ex-cop who’d learned how to keep an eye on volatile groups from patrolling Grant Park with my dad forty years ago. When he saw me he gave a smile of genuine pleasure. “Vic! Which side of the door are you here for?”

I laughed, but with some embarrassment: my dad and I had argued about my joining antiwar protesters in Grant Park when he was assigned to riot control duty. I’d been a teenager with a dying mother and emotions so tangled I hadn’t known what I wanted. So I’d run wild with the Yippies for a night.

“I need to find this small person’s grandfather. Should I take to the streets instead?”

“Then you’d have to choose between Durham and Posner.”

“I know about Posner’s crusade on the life-insurance payments, but what’s Durham ’s?”

Judson hunched a shoulder. “He wants the state to make it illegal for a company to do business here if they profited from slavery in the U.S. Unless they pay restitution to the descendants of slaves, that is. So he says, Don’t pass the IHARA unless you add that clause to it.”

I gave a little whistle of respect: the Chicago City Council had passed a resolution demanding reparations for descendants of slaves. Resolutions are a nice gesture-nods to constituencies without costing businesses anything. The mayor might be in an awkward spot if he fought Durham publicly over turning the resolution into a law with teeth in it.

It was an interesting political problem, but not as immediate a one for me as Calia, who was making my arms feel as though they were on fire. One of Judson’s subordinates was hovering, ready to snatch his attention. I quickly explained my need to find Max. Judson spoke into his lapel radio. Within a few minutes, a young woman from hotel security appeared with Max, who took Calia from me. She stirred and began to cry. He and I had time for a few flustered words, about his panel, the melee outside, Calia’s day, before I left him the unenviable task of soothing Calia and getting her to his car.

As I sat in the thicket of traffic waiting to move back past the protest site toward Lake Shore Drive, I nodded off several times. By the time I reached Isaiah Sommers’s house in Avalon Park, I was thick with sleepiness. I was almost twenty minutes late, though. He swallowed his annoyance as best he could, but it wouldn’t do for me to fall asleep in front of him.

When did your aunt give the policy to the funeral home?” I shifted on the couch, the heavy plastic covering the upholstery crinkling as I moved.

“On the Wednesday. My uncle passed on the Tuesday. They came for the body in the morning, but before they would collect it, they wanted proof that she could pay for the funeral. Which was scheduled for the Saturday. My mother had gone over to be with my aunt, and she found the policy in Uncle Aaron’s papers just like we knew it would be. He was methodical in everything he did, great and small, and he was methodical in his documents, as well.”

Sommers massaged his neck with his square hands. He was a lathe operator for the Docherty Engineering Works; his neck and shoulder muscles were bunched from leaning over a machine every day. “Then, like I said, when my aunt got to the church on Saturday they told her they weren’t starting the funeral until she came up with the money.”

“So after they took your uncle’s body on Wednesday, the funeral parlor must have called the policy number in to the company, who told them that the policy had already been cashed. What a horrible experience for all of you. Did the funeral director know who the money had been paid to?”

“That’s just my point.” Sommers pounded his fist on his knee. “They said it was to my aunt. And that they wouldn’t do the funeral-well, I told you all that.”

“So how did you manage to get your uncle buried? Or did you?” I had an uneasy vision of Aaron Sommers lying in cold storage until the family shelled out three thousand dollars.

“I came up with the money.” Isaiah Sommers looked reflexively toward the hall: his wife, who had let me in, had made clear her disapproval of his exerting himself for his uncle’s widow. “And believe me, it wasn’t so easy. If you’re worried about your fee, don’t be: I can take care of that. And if you can find out who took the money, maybe we can get it back. We’d even give you a finder’s fee. The policy was worth ten thousand dollars.”

“I don’t need a finder’s fee, but I will need to see the policy.”

He lifted a presentation copy of Roots from the coffee table. The policy was folded carefully underneath.

“Do you have a photocopy of it?” I asked. “No? I’ll mail you one tomorrow. You know that my fee is a hundred dollars an hour, with a minimum of five hours’ work, right? I charge for all non-overhead expenses, as well.”