Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (32 page)

“Does trouble always follow you, Vic?” he said when we
were in his office with the door shut. “Or does it just jump up to bite me
anytime you’re in the vicinity?”

“If you really only have five minutes, don’t spend it
blaming me for Alderman Durham’s pickets.” I sat on one of the hard tubular
chairs, while Ralph leaned against the edge of his desk. “I came to suggest
that you make the Sommers family whole. Then you can issue a big PR statement
about how your respect for the widow’s grief—”

He cut me short. “We paid them ten thousand dollars in
1991. I won’t double-pay a life-insurance policy.”

“The question is, who got that money back in 1991?
Personally, I don’t think anyone in the Sommers family ever saw it. That check
started and stopped at the agency door.”

He folded his arms in an uncompromising line. “Do you
have proof of this?”

“You know, don’t you, that Howard Fepple is dead?
There’s no one—”

“He committed suicide because his agency was going
down the toilet. It was in our executive briefing this morning.”

I shook my head. “Old news. He was murdered. The
Sommers family file has disappeared. There’s no one from the agency left to
explain what really happened.”

Ralph stared at me in angry disbelief. “What do you
mean, he was murdered? The cops found his body, they found the suicide note. It
was in the papers.”

“Ralph, listen to me: barely an hour ago, the medical
examiner called to tell me the autopsy proves murder. Don’t you think it was
funny that the Sommers family file disappeared at the same time Fepple was
killed?”

“What are you trying to do to me? Am I supposed to
believe this on your say-so?”

I shrugged. “Call the medical examiner. Call the watch
commander at the Twenty-first District. I’m not trying to do anything but help
my client—and give you a way of defusing the protest down there on Adams.”

“All right: let’s hear it.” The scowl emphasized his
incipient jowls.

“Make the Sommers family whole,” I repeated steadily,
trying not to let my own temper get the better of me. “It’s only ten thousand
dollars. That’s one round-trip ticket to Zurich for a member of your executive
committee, but it’s the difference between penury and comfort for Gertrude
Sommers and the nephew who fronted for the funeral. Make a big PR splash out of
it. What can Durham do then? He may claim he forced you to take action, but he
can’t go around saying you stole the widow’s mite.”

“I’ll think about it. But it isn’t your best idea.”

“Personally, I think it’s a beauty. It shows how
utterly reliable the company is, even in the most unreliable of situations. I
could probably write the ad copy for you.”

“Because it isn’t your money.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “What, will Rossy storm in,
crying, ‘Young man, every penny of this is coming out of your stock options’?”

“This isn’t a joke, Vic.”

“I know. The unfunny part is the connections
nasty-minded people will make about the Sommers file vanishing. Did the company
do something a decade back that they were eager to keep hidden?”

“We did not—categorically—” He cut off his own denial,
remembering that we’d met over an Ajax claim fraud. “Is that what the cops
think?”

“I don’t know. I can put out some feelers, although if
it’s any comfort to you, what I’m hearing about the guy heading the
investigation is that he doesn’t want to break a sweat.” I stood up, pulling a
copy of the old ledger sheet from my briefcase. “This was the one document
relating to Sommers that was left in Fepple’s office. Does it mean anything to
you?”

Ralph looked at it briefly, shaking his head
impatiently. “What is this? Who are these people?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. When I was here last
week, Connie Ingram, that young woman from your claims-records unit, left
Sommers’s company file up here. If it has copies of all the agency documents in
it, maybe it’s got a complete copy of this one. I don’t know who these other
people are, but the two crosses suggest they’re dead. The original of this page
is quite old. And here’s a funny thing about it, Ralph: a forensics lab tells
me the paper was made in Switzerland before the war. Second World War, I mean,
not the Persian Gulf.”

His face tightened. “You’d better not be trying to
suggest—”

“Edelweiss? Good heavens, Ralph, the thought only
drifted slightly through my mind. The lab says the paper was sold to
narcissists all over the world—it was apparently quite expensive. But Swiss
paper, a Swiss-made gun, both in an insurance agency that is attracting a lot
of attention—the human mind isn’t rational, Ralph, it just puts contiguous
events together. And that’s what mine is doing.”

He looked at the paper now as if it were a cobra that
had hypnotized him. The buzzer on his desk phone sounded, his secretary
reminding him he was running late. He jerked his head away with a visible
effort.

“You can leave this here—I’ll have Denise check the
file to see if there’s anything else in this handwriting in it. Right now I
need to run to another meeting. On reserves, on our potential exposure from
Holocaust survivors, and other matters worth a whole lot more than ten thousand
dollars. And than baseless accusations against Edelweiss.”

On my way down, I stopped on the thirty-ninth floor,
where claims processing took place. Unlike the executive floor, with an
attendant behind a mahogany console to monitor traffic, there was no obvious
person to ask the way to Connie Ingram’s desk. There also weren’t rosy Chinese
rugs floating on oceans of parquet. Hard mustard matting took me through a
labyrinth of cubicles, mostly empty because of the lunch hour.

Near the south end of the floor I found someone
sitting at her desk, working the
Tribune
crossword while she ate bean
sprouts out of a plastic container. She was a middle-aged woman with tight,
dyed corkscrew curls, but when she looked up she gave me a warm smile and asked
what I needed.

“Connie Ingram? She’s on the other side. Come on, I’ll
take you over, it’s too hard to figure out where anyone in the maze is if
you’re not one of the rats yourself.”

She slid her feet back into her pumps and took me
across to the other side of the floor. Connie Ingram was just returning to her
desk with a group of other women. They were giving the usual return-to-work
moans, along with a few quick plans for the afternoon coffee break. They
welcomed me and my guide with friendly interest: much better to have someone to
talk to than stare at computer screens and files.

“Ms. Ingram?” I gave my own forthright, girlfriends-
together smile. “I’m V I Warshawski—we met last week in Ralph Devereux’s
office, looking at the Aaron Sommers file.”

Her round face turned wary. “Does Mr. Rossy know
you’re here?”

I held out my security pass, turning my smile up a few
watts. “I’m here at Ralph Devereux’s invitation. Do you want to call up to his
secretary to ask? Or do you want me to call Bertrand Rossy to tell him what I
need?”

Her coworkers ranged themselves around her, protective,
inquisitive. She muttered that she guessed that wasn’t necessary, but what did
I want, anyway?

“To look at the file. You know the agent who sold the
policy is dead? His copy of the file is missing. I need to see the paperwork so
I can try to figure out who filed the original death benefit claim. Mr.
Devereux is considering the idea of paying the widow because of the confusion
around the file, the agent’s death, and so on.”

She flushed. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Rossy told me
definitely not to show the file to anyone outside the company. And anyway, it’s
still up on sixty-three.”

“How about the microfiche? Didn’t you say you printed
the documents from the fiche? This is about an elderly woman who spent her life
changing bedpans while her husband worked two shifts to make his premium
payments. If the policy was paid out because of a bookkeeping error or because
the agent committed a swindle, should this old woman have to suffer indignity
on top of her bereavement?” Instead of writing copy for Ajax, I could be putting
out stuff for Bull Durham.

“Honestly, it’s company policy not to show our files
to outsiders: you can ask my supervisor when she gets back from lunch.”

“I’m having dinner tonight with the Rossys. I’ll
mention it to him then.”

At that, her face became even more troubled. She liked
to please people: what if I and the all-powerful foreign boss were both angry
with her? But she was an honest young woman, as well, and in the end, she stuck
by the company’s demands on her loyalty. I didn’t like it—but I certainly
respected her for it. I smiled my thanks for her time and left her with one of
my cards in case she changed her mind.

Hypnotic Suggestion

O
utside, I
turned the corner and went into the comparative quiet of the alley to check in
with Tim Streeter. He was at the zoo with Calia. Radbuka had appeared in the
park again as they were getting into Tim’s car, but Tim had found him more
annoying than alarming.

“Of course we both know that stalkers turn violent,
but at least as far as today went, he seemed more bewildered than menacing: he
kept saying he only wanted a chance to speak to Max, to find out about his true
family. But Calia started shrieking, which brought Agnes to the scene. She
yelled for the cops, who did eventually come, she says—I’d already taken off
after him. I did tell Radbuka he would have to leave, that Max was swearing out
a peace bond, which meant he could be arrested for hanging around the
premises.”

I blinked. “Is Max doing that?”

“I called the hospital and told him he really should.
Anyway, everyone seems calm now. Agnes stayed at home to paint: I called my
brother and told him to get up to look after the house. I wanted to get the kid
out so that Agnes doesn’t freak thinking her daughter’s life is in imminent
danger. Which it isn’t. Guy is a nuisance, but he’s physically no match for any
of us.”

I frowned, worried. “Could he have followed you to the
zoo?”

“No. He was on a bike. My brother phoned from the
house half an hour ago to say he did a thorough search of Max’s garden and the park
across the street and didn’t see any sign of Radbuka.”

“How’s Calia now?”

“Fine. We’re looking at real walruses—I’m supposed to
be getting tips on how to beg for fish. Seeing me cool keeps her cool.”

A delivery truck backed into the alley, its insistent
beep making it impossible to hear anything else Tim was saying. I bellowed that
I’d check at Max’s later.

I skirted the edge of the truck, feeling unusually
ineffectual. I hadn’t made any progress on Radbuka’s past. I hadn’t done
anything for the Sommers family. Lotty, whose state was alarming me, wouldn’t
talk to me. Rossy’s apartment was near hers on Lake Shore Drive. I supposed I
could try to drop in on her tonight on my way to dinner, but I couldn’t think
of a way to get her to confide in me.

I crossed Michigan Avenue to the statue garden by the
Art Institute, where I called the office to see whether Mary Louise was making
any progress showing Radbuka’s photo to neighbors of the various Ulrich
families listed around town. She’d been trying to dodge the assignment, but
when I told her about Radbuka lurking around Max’s she agreed we needed some
kind of wedge. If she could find someone who knew Radbuka when he was still
Ulrich, that might give us a starting point.

The easiest wedge would clearly come from getting Rhea
Wiell to help out. Since I was in the Loop already, I decided to pay a surprise
visit: maybe she’d be more responsive in person than on the phone. And if she
wouldn’t give me background material on her patient, maybe she’d at least help
come up with a strategy for controlling him.

I walked the length of Michigan Avenue to Water Tower
Place, stopping partway up for something the shop called a vegetarian sandwich.
The mild day had drawn a throng of office workers outside for lunch. I sat on a
marble slab between a guy buried in a paperback and a couple of women who were
smoking while denouncing someone’s horrible behavior in asking them to fill out
a second set of time sheets.

The sandwich turned out to be a thick roll with a few
slices of eggplant and peppers. I crumbled up part of the roll for the sparrows
who were pecking hopefully at my feet. Out of nowhere a dozen pigeons appeared,
trying to muscle the sparrows aside.

The guy with the paperback looked at me in disgust.
“You’re only encouraging pests, you know.” He dog-eared his page and got up.

“I wonder if you’re right.” I stood as well. “I always
thought my work was keeping them at bay, but you may be on to something.”

His disgust changed to alarm and he turned hastily
into the office building behind us. I crumbled the rest of the bread for the
birds. It was almost one o’clock. Morrell would be over the Atlantic now, away
from land, away from me. I felt a little hollow below my diaphragm and
increased my pace, as if I could leave loneliness behind me.

At Rhea Wiell’s office, a young woman was sitting
in he waiting room, her hands nervously clutching a cup of herbal tea. I
sat down and studied the fish in the aquarium while the woman darted suspicious
looks at me.