Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

A sudden rage, the culmination of the week’s frustrations, swept over me. Rhea Wiell, Fepple himself, my vacillating client, even Lotty-I was fed up with all of them. And most of all with Ralph and Ajax. Chewing me out for the Durham protest, stiffing me over my request to see the company copy of Aaron Sommers’s file-and staging this charade. Which they’d botched by stealing the guy’s handheld but not wiping the entry out of the computer.

I shoved open the bathroom door and stalked to the elevator, the blood roaring in my head. I zoomed to Lake Shore Drive, honking impatiently at any car daring to turn in front of me, swooping through lights as they turned red-behaving like a mad idiot. On the Drive I covered the five miles to the Grant Park traffic lights in five minutes. The evening rush hour had built in the park, stalling me. I earned the irate whistle of a traffic cop by cutting recklessly around the stack of cars onto one of the side roads, flooring the car up to the Inner Drive.

As I got to the corner of Michigan and Adams, I had to stand on the brakes: the street was a mass of honking, unmoving cars. Now what? I wasn’t going to get near the Ajax building in my car with this kind of blockage. I made an illegal and highly dangerous U-turn and roared back to the Inner Drive. By now I’d had so many near-misses I was coming to my senses. I could hear my father lecturing me on the dangers of driving under the influence of rage. In fact, once when he’d caught me in the act, he’d made me come with him when he had to untangle a crumpled teenager from the steering wheel through his chest. The memory of that made me take the next few blocks sedately. I left the car in an underground garage and walked north to the Ajax building.

As I got to Adams Street, the congestion built. This wasn’t the normal throng of homebound workers but a penned-up crowd. I threaded my way into it with difficulty, moving along the edges of the buildings. Through the jam of people I could hear the megaphones. The protestors had come back to life.

“No deals with slaveowners!” they were shouting, mixed with “No money to mass murderers!” “Economic justice for all” vied with “Boycott Ajax! No deals with thieves.”

So Posner had arrived. In full throttle, by the sound of it. And Durham had apparently come to rally his own troops in person. No wonder the street was backed up. Sidling past the crowd, I climbed up the steps to the Adams L platform so that I could see what was going on.

It wasn’t quite the mob that had created havoc outside the Hotel Pleiades last week, but besides Posner with his Maccabees and Durham with the EYE team, there were a couple of camera crews and a lot of unhappy people who wanted to get home. These last pushed against me on the L steps, snarling at both groups.

“I don’t care what happened a hundred years ago: I want to get home today,” one woman was saying to her companions.

“Yeah. Durham ’s got a point, but no one’s going to pay attention to it if he makes you pay overtime to the day care because you can’t get there on time.”

“And that other guy, that one in the funny hat and the curls and all, what’s his problem?”

“He’s saying Ajax stole life insurance from the Jews, but it all happened a long time ago, so who cares?”

I had thought I’d call Ralph from the street, but there was no way I could carry on a phone conversation in this melee. I climbed down from the platform and made my way along Wabash, past the cops who were trying to keep traffic moving, past the entrances to Ajax where security guards were letting frustrated commuters out one at a time, around the corner on Jackson to the alley behind the building where the buildings had their loading bays. The one for Ajax was still open.

I hoisted myself up to the metal lip where trucks decanted cargo and went inside. An overweight man in Ajax ’s blue security uniform slid off a stool in front of a large console filled with TV screens showing the alley and the building.

“You lost?”

“I’m a fraud investigator. Ralph Devereux-the head of claims-wants to talk to me, but the mob out front is making it impossible to get near the front entrance.”

He looked me over, decided I didn’t look like a terrorist, and called up to Ralph’s office with my name. He grunted a few times into the mouthpiece, then jerked his head to bring me over to the phone.

“Hello, Ralph. How glad I am you’re still here. We need to have a little conversation about Connie Ingram.”

“We do indeed. I wasn’t going to call you until tomorrow, but since you’re here we’ll talk now. And don’t imagine you can come up with any excuse that will make your behavior acceptable.”

“I love you, too, Ralph: I’ll be right up.”

The guard tapped the screens on the console to show me my route: a door at the rear of the loading bay led to a corridor which would take me to the main lobby. Once inside, I paused on my way to the elevators to stare at the dueling demonstrators. Durham, this time in executive navy, had the larger crowd, but Posner was controlling the chanting. As his little band of Maccabees circled past the door, I stood transfixed. Standing at Posner’s left elbow, his childlike face beaming underneath his thinning curls, was Paul Radbuka.

The elevator whooshed me to sixty-three so fast my ears filled, but I barely noticed the discomfort. Paul Radbuka with Joseph Posner. But why should I be startled? In a way it was a natural fit. Two men obsessed with memories of the war, with their identity as Jews, what could be more likely than that they’d get together?

The executive-floor attendant had left for the day. I went to the windows behind her mahogany station where I could see past the Art Institute to the lake. At the far horizon the soft blue became lost in clouds, so you couldn’t tell where water ended and sky began. It looked almost artificial, that horizon, as if some painter had started to stroke in a dirty-white sky and then lost interest in the project.

I was due at the Rossys’ at eight; it was just on five now. I wondered if I could tail Radbuka home from here-although perhaps he’d be going back to Posner’s house tonight. Maybe he’d found a family who would take him in, nurture him in the way he seemed to need. Maybe he’d start leaving Max alone.

“Vic! What are you doing out here? You called from the loading dock fifteen minutes ago.”

Ralph’s angry, anxious voice jolted me back to the present. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loosened, his eyes worried underneath his angry facade. It was the worry that made me keep my own voice level when I answered him.

“Admiring the view: it would be wonderful to leave all this turmoil and follow the horizon, wouldn’t it? I know why I’m peeved about Connie Ingram, but I don’t have any idea what’s got you so upset.”

“What did you do with the microfiche?”

“Oo-lu-lah vishti banko.”

His mouth set in a thin line. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Your question made just as little sense to me. I don’t know any microfiche, personally or by reputation, so you’d better start at the beginning-” I broke off. “Don’t tell me your microfiche for the Sommers file is damaged?”

“Very nice, Vic: surprised innocence. I’m almost convinced.”

At that my calm disappeared. I pushed past him to the elevator and hit the call button.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.” I bit off my words. “I wanted to ask you why Connie Ingram was the last person to see Howard Fepple alive, and why she made him think she’d be a hot date, and why after that really hot date, Fepple was dead and the agency copy of Sommers’s file had vanished. But I don’t need the garbage you’re flinging at me. I can take my questions directly to the cops. Believe me, they’ll talk to little Miss Company Loyalty in a way that will get her to respond.”