Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

When we finished, I leaned my head wearily against the steering wheel. Too much was going on that I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. Where had Lotty gone? She’d stalked angrily off into the night last night, driven home-and disappeared. I dialed her apartment, where her clipped voice came on again from the machine. “Lotty, please call me if you are picking up your messages. I’m seriously worried.” I called back up to Evanston, intending to leave a message for Max, but he’d just walked in the door.

“ Victoria, have you had any word from Lotty? No? Mrs. Coltrain called, wanting to know if you had been able to get into her apartment.”

“Oh, nuts-calling Mrs. Coltrain back went out of my head-I’m spinning in too many directions right now.” I told Max about my tour through the apartment this morning and asked if he could tell Mrs. Coltrain about it himself.

“If Lotty disappeared of her own free will, how could she leave without letting us know?” I added. “Surely she must know how much this would upset all her friends, not to say Mrs. Coltrain and her clinic staff.”

“She’s seriously disturbed,” Max said. “Something has knocked her off-balance, so that she’s thinking only of some small world, not the bigger one with her friends in it. Her whole behavior is-it’s frightening me, Victoria. I’m tempted to call it some kind of long-delayed post-traumatic breakdown, as if she held so much in for so many decades that it’s hitting her with the force of a tidal wave. If you get any kind of word from her, no matter the hour, let me know at once. As I will you.”

It helped that Max was as troubled as I. Post-traumatic stress-it’s a diagnosis bandied about so glibly these days that one forgets how real and terrifying a condition it is. If Max was right, it could explain Lotty’s unbearable edginess lately, as well as her sudden evaporation. I wished I hadn’t gotten myself bogged down in the trailing tentacles of the investigation: I wanted to find her now. I wanted to console her if that lay within my power. I wanted to bring her back to life. But I was frighteningly aware that I had few powers. I wasn’t an indovina. I was barely making progress slogging through quicksand as an investigator.

I climbed stiffly out of the car. It was six-thirty; I was late for my meeting with the alderman. I walked up the street to the Golden Glow. It’s the closest thing I have to a private club, not that it’s private, but I’ve been a regular for so many years that they let me run a tab that I pay once a month.

Sal Barthele, who owns the place, flashed me a smile but didn’t have time to come around to say hello-the horseshoe mahogany bar, which her brothers and I had helped her retrieve from a Gold Coast mansion when it went under the wrecking ball ten years ago, was three-deep with weary traders. The half dozen little tables with their signature Tiffany lamps were also crowded. I scanned the room but didn’t spot the alderman.

Durham came in just as Jacqueline, who was working the floor, whizzed past me with a full tray. She handed me a glass of Black Label without breaking stride and went on to a table where she served eight drinks without checking the order. I took a deep swallow of scotch, steadying myself from my worries about Lotty, bracing myself to talk to the alderman.

Jacqueline saw me edge my way to the door to greet Durham: she flashed an arm at me, pointing to a table in the corner. Sure enough, just as Durham had given me an easy greeting, the five women clustered at the table hopped up to leave. By the time the alderman and I were sitting down, half the bar had emptied as people ran to catch seven-o’clock trains. I’d wondered if he would come with an escort; now that the room had cleared I could see two youths in their EYE blazers standing just inside the door.

“So, Investigator Warshawski. You are still on your quest to link African-American men with any crime that floats by your nose.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I don’t have to go on a quest,” I said with a gentle smile. “The news gets hand-delivered to me. Colby Sommers has not only been flashing a roll but telling everyone and their dog Rover what he did to-well, I hate to say earn, that demeans the hard work that most people do for a living. Let’s call it scoring.”

“Call it what you want, Ms. Warshawski. Call it what you want, it doesn’t change the ugly truth behind the insinuations.” When Jacqueline hovered briefly in front of us, he ordered Maker’s Mark and a twist; I shook my head-one whisky is my limit when I’m in a tricky conversation.

“People say you’re smart, alderman; people say you’re the one man who can give the mayor a run for his money in the next election cycle. I don’t see it myself. I know Colby Sommers was a lookout when a couple of EYE youths broke into Amy Blount’s apartment earlier this week. When you and I talked on Wednesday, I was wondering about an anonymous tip the cops got, one to frame Isaiah Sommers. Now I know Colby Sommers made that phone call. I know that Isaiah and Margaret Sommers went to Fepple’s agency the Saturday morning his body was lying there, brains and blood all over everything, on your advice. I guess what I don’t know is what Bertrand Rossy could possibly offer you to make you get up to your neck in his problems.”

Durham smiled, a genial smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You don’t know much, Ms. Warshawski, because there’s no way you can know folks in my ward. It’s no secret that Colby Sommers hates his cousin: everyone along Eighty-seventh Street knows that. If he tried to frame Isaiah for murder and if he got involved in the fringes of hard-core crime, it doesn’t shock me the way it might you: I understand all the indignities, all the centuries of injustice, that make black men turn on themselves, or turn on their own community. I doubt you could ever understand such things. But if Colby has tried to harm his cousin, I’ll make a call to the local police commander, see if I can’t help sort that out so that Isaiah doesn’t suffer needlessly.”

“I hear things, too, alderman.” I twirled the last small mouthful of whisky in my glass. “One of the most interesting is about you and reparations for descendants of slaves. An important issue. A good one to put the mayor in a bind over-he can’t afford to alienate the international business community by pushing it; he can’t afford to look bad to his constituents by ignoring it, especially since he backed the City Council’s condemnation of slavery.”

“So you understand local politics, detective. Maybe that means you’ll vote for me, if I ever run for an office that covers whatever chardonnay district you live in.”

He was deliberately trying to goad me; I gave him a quizzical smile to show I understood the effort even if I didn’t get the reason. “Oh, yes, I understand local politics. I understand it might not look so good if people found out that you only started on your campaign when Bertrand Rossy came to town. When he-persuaded-you to take the spotlight off Joseph Posner and the Holocaust asset issue by banging the drum over reparations for slavery.”

“Those are mighty ugly words, detective, and as you know, I am not a patient man when it comes to people like you slandering me.”

“Slander. Now, that assumes a baseless accusation. If I wanted to take the trouble, or ask, say, Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star to take the trouble, I’m betting we could find some substantial chunk of change moving from Rossy to you. Either something from him personally, or something on an Ajax corporate check. I’m betting from him personally. And maybe he was even savvy enough to give you cash. But someone will know about it. It’s just a question of digging deep enough.”