Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

When he sputtered a request to can the sarcasm, that it disrupted everyone’s workday to have cops in the building, I added, “Connie Ingram was lucky, lucky to be a white female. Maybe it’s embarrassing to have the cops question you in your office, but they took my client away from his workstation in cuffs. They hauled him over to Twenty-ninth and Prairie for a chat in a windowless room with a bunch of guys watching through the one-way glass. He’s only eating at home tonight because I hired him the best criminal lawyer in town.”

Ralph brushed that aside. “Karen Bigelow-Connie’s supervisor, remember?-Karen sat in on the interrogation along with one of our lawyers. Connie was extremely upset, but the police seemed to believe her, or at least they didn’t arrest her. The trouble is, Vic, they pulled phone records for Fepple’s office and found several calls from her extension, including one the day before he was killed. She says she did call him, several times, to get him to fax his copies of the Sommers documents to her. But Janoff is pissed at having cops in the place, Rossy is pissed, and frankly, Vic, I’m not very happy myself.”

I put down the notes to give him my full attention. “Poor Connie: it’s a hard reward for doing your duty, to be grilled by the cops. I hope the company doesn’t abandon her.

“Ralph, what deal did Rossy do with Durham and Posner to get them to call off their protests?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He suddenly was really angry, not just blustering.

“I mean that Rossy swung down Adams Street yesterday while I was upstairs with you. He called Durham over to his car, met with him an hour later at his home, and finished up by talking privately to Joseph Posner. Today Posner was picketing Beth Israel Hospital, while Durham ’s left the arena. I called City Hall just now- Durham was in his office listening to pleas for exceptions to zoning ordinances in Stewart Ridge.”

Ralph blew frosty air across the line to me. “Is it so strange that the managing director tries for a one-on-one with the guys who want to shut down his company? He’s stuck in traffic like every other stiff in the Loop last night and sees his chance. Don’t try to spin that into a conspiracy for me.”

“Ralph, remember when we met? Remember how you got that bullet in your shoulder?”

The memory still rankled, how his boss had betrayed both him and the company. “What could Rossy possibly be doing that would involve a worthless agent on Chicago ’s South Side? Edelweiss couldn’t have anything to do with Howard Fepple. Use your head, Vic.”

“I’m trying, but it isn’t telling me anything very intelligible. Listen, Ralph, I know you have mixed feelings about me, but you’re a savvy insurance guy. Put these things together for me: all the Sommers documents disappear, except for the paper file-about which you think there’s something amiss, although you can’t put your finger on it-and that file spent a week in Rossy’s office.

“Throw this in: either Connie Ingram or someone pretending to be her set up a date with Fepple for last Friday night. Who besides Ajax personnel knew she’d been talking to him? Next, Fepple’s dead, and his copy of the file disappears, and Rossy invites me to dinner, very much on the spur of the moment. Whereupon Fillida and her Italian friends pump me in concert about Fepple, his death, and his files. And finally, there’s that odd document I found in Fepple’s papers, the one I showed you with Sommers’s name on it. What does all this add up to in your mind?”

“That we dropped the ball on Sommers, and on Fepple,” Ralph said coldly. “Preston Janoff’s been over this with the head of agency management, wanting to know why we kept a relationship with a guy who produced a policy a month for us in his good years. Janoff’s agreed to make the Sommers family whole: we’ll send out a check tomorrow. On a total exception basis, as I said. But other than that-Vic, the Rossys’ guests know you’re a detective, they’re avid about American crime, it’s natural they should pump you. And tell me this: what earthly reason could Bertrand Rossy have for getting involved with a loser like Fepple, whom he never even heard of before last week?”

He was right. That was the crux of the problem. I couldn’t think of a reason.

“Ralph, I was hearing last night that it’s Fillida’s money that runs Edelweiss, that Bertrand married the boss’s daughter.”

“That’s not news. Her mother’s family founded the company in the 1890’s. They were Swiss, and they’re still the majority shareholders.”

“She’s a funny woman. Very chic, very soft-spoken, but definitely in charge of what’s said and done in the Rossy home. I gather she keeps close watch on what happens on Adams Street as well.”

“Rossy’s a substantial guy. Just because he married up doesn’t mean he doesn’t do the job well. Anyway, I don’t have time for gossip about my managing director’s wife. I have work to do.”

“Oh, kiss my mistletoe,” I said, but the line was dead.

I dialed back into Ajax and asked for Rossy’s office. His secretary, the cool, well-groomed Suzanne, put me on hold. Rossy came on in a surprisingly short time.

When I thanked him for last night’s dinner, he said, “My wife so enjoyed meeting you last night. She says you are refreshing and original.”

“I’ll add that to my resumé,” I said politely, which earned me one of his hearty laughs. “You must be pleased that Joseph Posner’s stopped haunting the Ajax premises.”

“Of course we are. Any day without a disturbance in a big company is a good one,” he agreed.

“Yep. It may not surprise you to learn he’s moved his protesters up to Beth Israel Hospital. He spun me some rigmarole, which he says you gave him, about you promising a private search of the Edelweiss and Ajax policies if he’d leave Ajax alone and haunt Beth Israel instead.”

“I’m sorry? This word is new to me, rigmarole.”

“Farrago-a bunch of nonsense. What could the hospital possibly have to do with missing Holocaust assets?”

“That I don’t know, Ms. Warshawski, or Vic-I feel I can call you Vic after our friendly evening last night. About the hospital and Holocaust assets you would have to talk to Max Loewenthal. Is that all? Did you discover any new or unusual information about that unusual piece of paper from Mr. Fepple’s office?”

I sat up very straight: I could not afford to be inattentive. “The paper is at a lab, but they tell me it was made at a plant outside Basel sometime in the thirties. Does that ring a bell with you?”

“My mother was only just born in 1931, Ms. Warshawski, so paper from that era means very little to me. Does it mean anything to you?”

“Nothing yet, Mr. Rossy, but I’ll keep your intense interest in it in mind. By the way, there’s a rumor floating around the street. That Alderman Durham only started his campaign on slave reparations after Ajax got worried about the Holocaust Asset Recovery pressure. Have you heard that?”

His laugh bounced along the line again. “The bad thing about being a senior officer is that one becomes too isolated. I don’t hear rumors, which is a pity as they are after all the oil that turns the industrial engine, are they not? That is an interesting rumor, certainly, definitely, but it is also news to me.”

“I wonder if it’s also news to Signora Rossy?”

This time he paused fractionally before continuing. “It will be when I tell her. As you gathered last night, no affair of Ajax is too small for her keen interest. And I will tell her we have another new English expression from you. Rigmarole. I left a meeting for this rigmarole. Good-bye.”

What had that netted me? Just about nothing, but I dictated it to my word-processing center at once, so I could study it when I wasn’t feeling so overwhelmed-I still had a bunch more calls to make.