Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

The banker laughed while Rossy, who’d just rejoined us-in a different, more subdued tie-said, “Perhaps Janet should have said that Europeans mask an interest in medals or winning behind a cloak of civilization. It’s bad manners to show off one’s accomplishments-they should emerge casually, by chance, under cover of other conversation.”

“Whereas Americans are confirmed braggarts,” the novelist persisted. “We’re rich, we’re powerful, everyone must bend to our way of doing things.”

Irina brought in mushroom soup, pale brown with cream drizzled in the shape of a mushroom cap. She was a silent, efficient woman whom I first assumed had come with the Rossys from Switzerland, until I realized that Fillida and Rossy always broke into English to talk to her.

The table conversation ran on in Italian for several caustic moments on the deficiencies of American power and American manners. I felt my hackles rise: it’s one of those funny things, that no one likes the family to be criticized by outsiders, even when the family is a collection of lunatics or bullies.

“So today’s vote in the Illinois legislature wasn’t about withholding life-insurance benefits from beneficiaries of Holocaust victims-it was about keeping America from imposing its standards on Europe?” I said.

The cultural attaché leaned across the table toward me. “In a manner of speaking, yes, signora. This black counselor-what is his name? Dur’am?-he makes a valid point in my eyes. Americans are so eager to condemn at a distance-the atrocities of a war which were truly atrocious, no one denies it-but Americans are not willing to examine their own atrocities at home, in the matter of Indians or of African slaves.”

The maid removed the soup dishes and brought in roast veal loin with an array of vegetables. The dinner plates were cream-colored porcelain, heavily encrusted in gold with a large H in the middle-perhaps for Fillida Rossy’s birth name, although offhand I couldn’t think of Italian names beginning with H.

Laura Bugatti said that despite Mafia terrorism in Italy or Russia, most European readers preferred to be shocked by American violence than their homegrown brand.

“You’re right.” The banker’s wife spoke for the first time. “My family won’t discuss violence in Zurich, but they are always quizzing me about murders in Chicago. Are you finding this true now with this murder in your husband’s firm, Fillida?”

Fillida ran her fingers over the ornate filigree on her knife. She ate very little, I noticed-not surprising that she had deep hollows around her breastbone. “D’accordo. This murder was reported in the Bologna paper, I suppose because they knew I was living here. My mother has been phoning every morning, demanding that I send Paolo and Marguerita back to Italy where they’ll be safe. In vain I tell her the murder was twenty miles from my front door, in a part of town most unsavory-which you could find certainly in Milan. Perhaps even in Bologna, although I can hardly believe it.”

“Not in your own hometown, eh, cara?” Bertrand said. “If it is your home it must be the best town, with nothing unsavory about it.”

He was laughing, saluting his wife with his wineglass, but she frowned at him. He scowled and put his glass down, turning to the banker’s wife. Fillida’s soft voice apparently carried a lot of wallop-no Bologna jokes at this dinner table-change your tie when she criticizes it-change the subject when she’s annoyed at this one.

Laura Bugatti, noticing Fillida’s irritation, quickly exclaimed in a girlish breathless voice, “Murder in Bertrand’s firm? How come I know nothing about this? You are keeping important cultural information from me,” she pouted at her husband.

“One of the agents selling insurance for Ajax was found dead in his office,” the banker replied to her. “Now the police are saying he was murdered, not suicided as they first thought. You worked for him, didn’t you, Signora Warshawski?”

“Against him,” I corrected. “He held the key to a disputed-” I fumbled for words: my Italian had never been geared to financial discussions. Finally I turned to Rossy, who translated life-insurance claim for me.

“Yes, anyway, he held the key to such a disputed claim with Ajax, and I could never get him to reveal what he knew.”

“So his death leaves you frustrated,” the banker said.

“Frustrated. And greatly baffled. Because all the papers relating to the claim have vanished. Even today someone rifled a file cabinet at the company to remove documents.”

Rossy set his wineglass down with a snap. “How do you know this? Why wasn’t I told?”

I spread my hands. “You were in Springfield. I, alas, was informed because your Signor Devereux suspected I might have been responsible for the theft.”

“From my office?” he demanded.

“From the claims department. The copy in your office was intact.” I didn’t tell him about Ralph’s nagging sense that something was amiss in the paper file.

“So you never saw the agent’s documents in this case?” Rossy ignored my suggestion. “Not even when you went in after the death?”

I laid my knife and fork carefully against the gold crust on my plate. “Now, how were you aware that I went into Fepple’s office after he died?”

“I spoke with Devereux this afternoon from Springfield. He told me that you had brought him some kind of document from the dead agent’s office.”

The maid replaced our dinner plates with more gold-rimmed dishes, this time containing raspberry mousse circled by fresh fruit.

“The dead man’s mother gave me an office key and asked me to look for any evidence that the police were ignoring. When I went in, I found that one piece of paper, which appeared to be a very old handwritten document. The only reason I even associate it with the disputed claim is that the dead policyholder’s name was on it, but whether it was about the claim or something else altogether, I couldn’t say.”

Laura Bugatti once more clapped her hands. “But this is exciting: a mysterious document. Can you tell who wrote it? Or when?”

I shook my head. The questions were making me uncomfortable; there was no need for her to know I’d had the paper analyzed.

“How disappointing.” Rossy smiled at me. “I have boasted of your supernatural gifts. Surely like Sherlock Holmes you know fifty-seven different kinds of paper by their ash?”

“Alas,” I said, “my powers are very erratic. They extend more to people and their motivations than to documents.”

“Then why are you even concerned?” Fillida asked, her fingers once again wrapped around the heavy handle of her unused spoon.

There was a kind of power in the soft, remote voice; it made me want to respond aggressively. “This is a claim affecting a poor African-American family on Chicago ’s South Side. It would be a wonderful opportunity for Ajax to make good the rhetoric that Preston Janoff uttered today, to pay the grieving widow her ten thousand dollars.”

The banker said, “So you are pursuing the matter merely out of nobility, not because you have evidence?” His tone didn’t make the words sound like a compliment.

“And why try to tie it to Bertrand’s firm at all?” the novelist added.

“I don’t know who cashed the check which Ajax issued in 1991,” I said, returning to English to make sure I expressed myself clearly. “But two things make me think it was either the agent or someone at the company: my study of the claimant’s family. And the fact that the original file has disappeared. Not only from the agency, but from the company as well-perhaps whoever took them didn’t realize that a paper copy was still in Mr. Rossy’s office.”

“Ma il corpo,” the banker’s wife said. “Did you see the body? Isn’t it true that his posture, the placement of the weapon, that all these made the police believe it was suicide?”