Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

Fillida Rossy was a woman in her early thirties, almost as tall as me. Her raw-silk palazzo pants, with a nubby sweater in the same dull gold hugging her chest, emphasized both her slenderness and her wealth. Her dark-blond curls were pulled back from her face with a couple of diamond clips, and another larger diamond nestled in the hollow above her breastbone.

She took my outstretched hand in both of hers and almost caressed it. “My husband has made me so interested in meeting you, signora,” she said in Italian. “Your talk to him was so full of entertaining surprises: he told me how you read his palm.”

She led me forward by the hand to greet the other guests, who included the Italian cultural attaché and his wife-a dark, vivacious woman around Fillida’s age-a Swiss banking executive and his wife-both much older-and an American novelist who had lived for many years in Sorrento.

“This is the detective about whom Bertrand has been speaking, the one who conducts her business among the palm readers.”

Fillida patted my own palm encouragingly, like a mother presenting a shy child to strangers. Uncomfortable, I withdrew my hand and asked where Signor Rossy was.

“Mio marito si comparta scandalosamente,” she announced with a vivid smile. “He has adopted American business habits and is on the telephone instead of greeting his guests, which is scandalous, but he will join us shortly.”

I murmured “piacere” to the other guests and tried to switch my thinking from English, and my conversation with Lotty, to Italian and the rival merits of Swiss, French, and Italian ski slopes, which was apparently what they had been discussing when I arrived. The attaché’s wife exclaimed enthusiastically over Utah and said that of course for Fillida, the more dangerous the slope the better she liked it.

“When you invited me to your grandfather’s place in Switzerland our last year in school, I stayed in the lodge while you went down the most terrifying run I have ever seen-without even getting your hair out of place, as I remember it. Your grandfather puffed out through his moustache and pretended to be nonchalant, but he was incredibly proud. Is your little Marguerita growing up similarly fearless?”

Fillida threw up her hands, with their beautifully manicured nails, and said her reckless days were behind her. “Now I can hardly bear to let my babies out of my sight, so I stay with them on the beginner slopes. What I will do when they pine for the giant runs I don’t know. I’ve learned to pity my own mother, who suffered agonies over my recklessness.” Her gaze flickered to the marble mantelpiece, where photographs of her children were standing-so many of them that the frames were almost stacked on top of one another.

“Then you won’t want to take them to Utah,” the banker’s wife said. “But there are good family slopes in New England.”

Skiing wasn’t a subject I knew enough about to participate-even if I spoke Italian often enough to plunge at once into the rapid talk. I began to wish I had called to cancel and stayed with Lotty, who had seemed even more distressed and anxious this evening than she’d been on Sunday.

After I’d seen Posner go into the Rossys’ building, I’d walked up the street to Lotty’s, not sure whether she would invite me up or not. After some hesitation, she had let the doorman admit me, but she was waiting in the hall when I got off the elevator on her floor. Before I could say anything, she demanded roughly what I wanted. I tried not to let her harshness hurt me but said I was worrying about her.

She scowled. “As I told you earlier on the phone, I’m sorry I spoiled Max’s party, but I’m fine now. Did Max send you to check on me?”

I shook my head. “Max is occupied with Calia’s safety. He’s not thinking about you right now.”

“Calia’s safety?” Her thick black brows twitched together. “Max is a doting grandfather, but I don’t think of him as a worrywart.”

“No, he’s not a worrywart,” I agreed. “Radbuka has been stalking Calia and Agnes.”

“Stalking them? Are you sure?”

“Hanging out across the street, accosting them when they leave, trying to make Agnes admit that Calia is related to him. Does that sound like stalking, or just a friendly visit?” I snapped, angry in spite of myself at her scornful tone.

She pressed her palms into her eyes. “That’s ridiculous. How can he think she’s related?”

I shrugged. “If any of us knew who he really was, or who the Radbukas really were, it might make that question easier to answer.”

Her generous mouth set in a hard line. “I don’t owe any explanation-to you, to Max, least of all to this absurd creature. If he wants to play at being a survivor of Theresienstadt, let him.”

“Play at? Lotty, do you know he’s playing at it?”

My voice had risen; the door at the opposite end of the hall opened a crack. Lotty flushed and took me into her own apartment.

“I don’t, of course. But Max-Max didn’t find any Radbukas when he went to Vienna. After the war, I mean. I don’t believe-I’d like to know where this bizarre man came up with the name.”

I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed. “I told you I went out on the Web and found the person looking for information about Sofie Radbuka. I left my own message, saying he or she should communicate with my lawyer if they wanted to initiate a confidential conversation.”

Her eyes blazed. “Why did you take it on yourself to do that?”

“There are two impenetrable mysteries here: Sofie Radbuka of the 1940’s in England, Paul Radbuka of Chicago today. You want information about Paul, he wants information about Sofie, but neither of you is willing to divulge anything. I have to start somewhere.”

“Why? Why do you have to start anywhere? Why don’t you leave it alone?”

I seized her hands. “Lotty. Stop. Look at yourself. Ever since this man came on the scene last week, you’ve been demented. You’ve been howling on the sidewalk and then insisting that the rest of us pay no attention because there isn’t a problem. I can’t believe this isn’t spilling over into the operating room. You’re a danger to yourself, your friends, your patients, carrying on like this.”

She jerked her hands away and looked at me sternly. “I have never compromised the attention I give my patients. Ever. Even in the aftermath of the war. Certainly not now.”

“That’s just great, Lotty, but if you think you can go on like this indefinitely, you’re wrong.”

“That’s my business. Not yours. Now, will you have the goodness to go back to this Web address and retract your message?”

I chose my words carefully. “Lotty, nothing can threaten the love I have for you: it’s too deep a part of my life. Max told me he has always respected the zone of privacy you erected around the Radbuka family. I would do that, too, if it weren’t for this heartbreaking torment you’re suffering. That means-if you won’t tell me yourself what is torturing you, I need to find it out.”

Her expression turned so stormy I thought she was going to blow up again, but she mastered herself and spoke quietly. “Mrs. Radbuka represents a part of my past of which I am ashamed. I-turned my back on her. She died while I was ignoring her. I don’t know that I could have saved her. I mean, probably I couldn’t have saved her. But-I abandoned her. The circumstances don’t matter; it’s only my behavior that you need to know about.”

I knit my brow. “I know she wasn’t part of your group in London, or Max would know her. Was she a patient?”

“My patients-I can treat them because our roles are so defined. It’s when people are outside that box that I become less reliable. I’ve never stinted a patient, not ever, not even in London when I was ill, when it was bitterly cold, when other students whisked through consultations as fast as possible. It’s a relief, a salvation, to be in the hospital, to be the doctor, not the friend or the wife or the daughter, or someone else utterly unreliable.”