Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

“You’re right. It won’t happen again-put it down to sleep deprivation clouding my judgment. Here’s what’s going on, though.” I sketched out the situations with Sommers, with Amy Blount, and now the demonstration outside Beth Israel. “I can understand why Radbuka wants to hook up with Posner, but what does Posner get out of attacking Max and Lotty? He went to see Rossy last night-I’m wondering if Rossy somehow set him on to Beth Israel.”

“Who knows why someone like Posner does anything?” Mary Louise said impatiently. “Look, I only have two more hours to give you today. I don’t think it’s very helpful for you if I spend it going over conspiracy theories. And really, Vic-it makes sense for me to deal with Sommers’s situation-I can call the Finch to get the details of the investigation and give Freeman’s assistant some support. But why did you agree to go all the way down to the South Side for this Amy Blount? The cops are right, you know-this kind of B &E is a dime a dozen. We just file reports-they do, I mean-and keep a lookout for stolen goods. If she didn’t lose anything valuable, why waste your time on it?”

I grinned. “Conspiracy theory, Mary Louise. She wrote a history for Ajax. Ralph Devereux and Rossy are all hot on who’s stealing Ajax files, or leaking Ajax files to Durham -at least, they were worrying about that last week. Maybe Rossy’s spiked Durham ’s guns for now. If Amy Blount’s papers and floppies have been rifled, I want to know what’s missing. Is it something the alderman wanted for his campaign on slave reparations? Or is there really some junkie out there who’s so addled that he thinks he can sell history papers for enough money to buy a fix?”

She scowled. “It’s your business. Just remember when you’re writing the rent and insurance checks in two weeks why you don’t have more cash flow this month.”

“But you will go down to Hyde Park to look over Ms. Blount’s place? After you’ve gotten Sommers’s situation squared away with the Finch?”

“Like I said, Vic, it’s your business, it’s your money to waste. But quite frankly, I can’t see what good I’ll do you by going to Hyde Park, or what benefit you’ll get from joining Joseph Posner up at the hospital.”

“I’ll have a chance to talk to Radbuka, which I’ve been desperate for. And maybe I’ll find out what Rossy and Posner had to say to each other.”

She sniffed and turned to the phone. While she called the Finch-Terry Finchley, her old commanding officer from her days in the Central District-I went to my own desk. I had a handful of messages, one from an important client, and a half dozen e-mails. I dealt with them as quickly as I could and took off.

The hospital was on the city’s northwest side, far enough from the trendy neighborhoods that nearby traffic usually flowed fast. Today, though, when I was about a mile away, the main road got so heavy I tried the side streets. Five blocks from Beth Israel, I came to a total halt. I looked around frantically for an alley so I could escape to an alternate route, but as I was about to make a U-turn, it dawned on me that if the jam came from gapers rubbernecking at Posner’s demonstrators, traffic would be blocked on all sides of Beth Israel. I pulled over to an empty meter and sprinted the last half mile.

Sure enough, I found Posner and several dozen protesters in the middle of the kind of crowd he seemed to adore. Chicago cops were furiously directing traffic at the intersection; staff in green-and-gold hospital security blazers were trying to guide patients to side entrances; television crews were filming. The last had attracted a crowd of gawkers. It was just on one-anyone coming back from lunch had probably stopped to enjoy the show.

I was too far back to read the signs, but I could hear a chant that chilled my heart: Max and Lotty, have a heart! Don’t smash survivors’ lives apart!

I ran around to the back, to the service entrance, where I opened my wallet and flashed my PI license in the face of a security guard so fast he couldn’t tell whether it was an FBI badge or a credit card. By the time he’d figured that out, I had disappeared into the labyrinth of halls and stairwells that make security at any hospital a nightmare.

I tried to keep my bearings but still ended up in radiation oncology and file storage before finding the main lobby. I could hear shouting from the group outside, but I couldn’t see anything: Beth Israel is an old brick building, without a plate-glass front or even any windows low enough to see outside. Hospital guards, who were completely unused to this kind of chaos, were doing an ineffectual job of keeping gawkers from blocking the main entrance. An older woman sobbed helplessly to one side that she’d just had outpatient surgery, that she needed a taxi to get home, while a second woman with a newborn looked around anxiously for her husband.

I stared at the scene for an appalled moment, then told the guards to keep people away from the door. “Tell them that anyone who obstructs the entryway is facing a fine. The back exit is free and clear-get these patients out through there. Send an SOS to the cab companies to use the rear.”

I watched until the startled guard started giving orders through his walkie-talkie before I marched down the corridor to Max’s office. Cynthia Dowling, Max’s secretary, interrupted a heated telephone exchange when she saw me.

“Cynthia, why doesn’t Max get the cops to arrest that group of yahoos?”

She shook her head. “The board’s afraid of alienating major donors. Beth Israel is one of the big Jewish charities in town. Most of the calls we’ve been getting since Posner hit the news have agreed with you, but old Mrs. Felstein is one of Posner’s supporters-she survived the war in hiding in Moldavia, you know, but when she came here she made a fortune in gum balls. Lately she’s been active in lobbying Swiss banks to release Holocaust victims’ assets. And she’s pledged twenty million dollars for our new oncology wing.”

“So if she sees Posner carried off to a paddy wagon she’ll cancel? But if someone who’s having a heart attack dies because they can’t get here, you’d face a lawsuit that would more than offset any pledge she made.”

“That’s Max’s decision. His and the board’s, and of course they’re aware of the pitfalls.” Her phone console started to blink; she pressed a button. “Mr. Loewenthal’s office… No, I know you have a one-thirty deadline. As soon as Mr. Loewenthal is available I’ll let him have your message… Yes, I wish we weren’t in the business of saving lives here; it would make us better able to drop everything to respond to media deadlines. Mr. Loewenthal’s office, please hold… Mr. Loewenthal’s office, please hold.” She looked at me, distracted, with her hand over the phone. “This place is so inefficient. The stupid temp the clerical pool sent me went to lunch an hour ago. She’s probably out front enjoying the show, and even though I’m the executive director’s secretary, the clerical office won’t send me another backup.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll leave you to it. I have some questions for Posner-tell Max if you see him that I won’t implicate the hospital.”

When I got to the main lobby, I elbowed my way through to the front of the crowd, which was once again pushing against the revolving doors. As soon as I got outside I saw the reason for their avidity: the demonstrators had stopped marching and were clumped together behind Joseph Posner, who was shouting at a small woman in a hospital coat, “You’re the worst kind of anti-Semite, a traitor to your own people.”

“And you, Mr. Posner, are the worst kind of abuser of human emotion, exploiting the horrors of Treblinka for your own aggrandizement.”