Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (36 page)

“I should find Connie, Mr. Devereux,” Karen Bigelow
said. “But what should I do about the microfiche? Should I report the theft to
security?”

Ralph hesitated, then told her she should lock the
cabinet and declare it off-limits. “Conduct a desk-by-desk search of your unit
tomorrow. Someone may have inadvertently kept the fiche after looking up some
other file. If you don’t find it by the end of the day, let me know: I’ll call
security.”

“Look, you two,” I said, impatient with this futile
proposal, “Connie’s name in Fepple’s calendar is serious. If she didn’t set up
the date, someone did it using her name. Which means it was someone who knows
her as a claims handler. And that means a very limited universe, especially
since it wasn’t me.”

Ralph knotted his tie and unrolled his cuffs.
“According to you, anyway.”

Strange Bedfellows

W
e found
Rossy’s secretary in the chairman’s conference room, watching the early-evening
news with the chairman’s secretary, the head of the marketing department—whom
I’d met at Ajax’s hundred-fiftieth-birthday celebration—and five other people
who were never introduced.

“We are demanding a boycott of all Ajax insurance by
America’s Jewish community,” Posner was proclaiming to the camera. “Preston
Janoff insulted the whole Jewish community, he insulted the sacred memories of
the dead, by his remarks in Springfield today.”

Beth Blacksin’s face replaced Posner’s on the screen.
“Preston Janoff is the chairman of the Ajax Insurance group. He testified today
against adoption of a bill that would require life-insurance companies to scan
their books to see if they have any outstanding obligations to families of
Holocaust victims.”

The camera switched to Janoff, standing in front of
the legislative chamber in Springfield. He was tall, silver-haired, somber in a
charcoal suit that suggested, but didn’t emphasize, mourning.

“We understand the pain of those who lost loved ones
in the Holocaust, but we believe it would be an insult to the African-American,
to the Native American, and to other communities who have suffered greatly in
this country, to single out for special treatment people whose families were
killed in Europe. And Ajax did not sell life insurance in Europe in the decades
before the Second World War. For us to turn our files inside out on the off
chance that one or two policies might come to light would place an
extraordinary burden on our shareholders.”

One of the legislators rose to ask if it wasn’t true
that Edelweiss Re of Switzerland was now the owner of Ajax. “Our committee
wants to know about Edelweiss’s life-insurance policies.”

Janoff held up a copy of Amy Blount’s history, “One
Hundred Fifty Years of Life and Still Going Strong.” “I believe this booklet
will show the committee that Edelweiss was a small regional player in the
life-insurance business in Switzerland during the war. The company has made
copies available to all members of the legislature. Again, any involvement with
consumers in Germany or eastern Europe would have been very small.”

A babble erupted as various members sprang to their
microphones, but the program returned us to the Global studio, where Murray
Ryerson, who occasionally did political commentary for Global, was speaking.
“Later this afternoon, the House Insurance Committee voted eleven-to-two to
table the proposed bill, which effectively kills it. Joseph Posner has been
leafletting, telephoning, and picketing in an effort to start a nationwide
boycott of all Ajax Insurance products in retaliation. It’s too early to tell
if he’s succeeding, but we have heard that the Birnbaum family will continue to
use Ajax for their workers’ compensation coverage, business reputedly worth
sixty-three million dollars in premiums to Ajax this year. Alderman Louis
Durham hailed Janoff’s speech and the vote with mixed reactions.”

We were treated to a close-up of Durham outside the
Ajax building in his beautifully cut jacket. “Ideally, we want to see
compensation for victims of African slavery in this country. Or at the very
least in this state. But we appreciate Chairman Janoff’s sensitivity to the
issue, to not letting Jews dominate a discussion of reparations in Illinois. We
will take our fight for reparations for the victims of slavery directly to the
legislature now, and we will fight until we win.”

When the evening news anchor, sitting next to Murray
in the studio, came on the screen saying, “In other news, the Cubs lost their
thirteenth straight today at Wrigley,” Janoff’s secretary switched off the set.

“This is wonderful news—Mr. Janoff will be
terrifically pleased,” she said. “He hadn’t heard the vote when he and Mr.
Rossy left Springfield. Chick, can you go on-line and find out who voted with
us? I’ll call him in his car: he was going straight from Meigs to a dinner
meeting.”

A fresh-faced young man obediently left the room.

“Was Mr. Rossy going to dinner with him?” I asked.

The rest of the room turned to stare at me as if I had
dropped in from Pluto. Rossy’s secretary, an extremely glossy specimen with
shiny black hair and a tailored navy dress, asked who I was and why I wanted to
know. I introduced myself, explaining that Rossy had invited me to dinner in
his home this evening. When Rossy’s secretary took me back to her own desk to
check her calendar, the room started buzzing behind us: if I’d been invited to
the Rossy home, I must be powerful; they needed to know who I was.

Rossy’s secretary tapped rapidly across the corridor
on very high heels. Ralph and I trailed in her wake.

“Yes, Ms. Warshawski: I remember getting your number
for Mr. Rossy yesterday morning, but he didn’t tell me he’d invited you to
dinner—it’s not in my book. Shall I check with Mrs. Rossy for you? She is the
decision-maker on his social calendar.”

Her hand was already poised over the phone. She hit a
speed-dial button, talked briefly with Mrs. Rossy, and assured me that they
were expecting me.

“Suzanne,” Ralph said as she started to pack up her
desk. “Bertrand took a claims file away to study last week. We’re anxious to
get it back—there’s an open investigation going on with it.”

Suzanne tapped into Rossy’s inner office and came back
almost immediately with the Sommers file. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Devereux. He left
a message in his dictation that I was to get this back to you, but he decided
at the last minute to go to Springfield with Mr. Janoff; in the flurry of
getting him down there, the file slipped my mind. Mr. Rossy wanted to make sure
you knew how much he appreciated the work Connie Ingram did for him on this.”

Ralph grunted unenthusiastically. He didn’t want to
admit doubts about his staff, but my finding Connie Ingram’s name in Fepple’s
diary was clearly troubling him.

“I know Connie Ingram was helpful in tracking down the
agent’s copy of the paper trail on this file,” I said. “Did Mr. Rossy ask her
to call on Fepple—the agent—in person?”

Suzanne lifted her perfectly tweezed eyebrows, as if
astonished that a peon would try to worm her boss’s secrets out of her. “You’d
have to ask Mr. Rossy that. Perhaps you’ll have a chance to do so at dinner.”

“Really, Vic,” Ralph spluttered as we got back to his
office. “What are you trying to suggest? That Connie Ingram was involved in
killing an insurance agent? That Rossy somehow ordered her to do it? Get a grip
on yourself.”

I thought of Connie Ingram’s round, earnest face and
had to admit she didn’t seem likely either as a murderer or a murderer’s tool.
“But I want to know how her name got into Fepple’s diary if she didn’t make the
appointment or if she didn’t go down herself to his office and back-enter it,”
I added stubbornly.

Ralph bared his teeth in a snarl. “I wouldn’t put it
past you to do it. If you thought that would get you in the door.”

“That brings us back to where we started. Why don’t
you let me thumb through the Sommers file so I can get out of here and leave
you in peace.”

“Somehow peace is not what you ever leave me in, V I.”

There was just enough of a double edge to his tone
that I hastily took the file from him and started thumbing through the
contents. He stood over me while I carefully looked at each page. I couldn’t
see anything odd, either in the client payment reports or the claim-payment
record. Aaron Sommers had started paying weekly installments on May 13, 1971,
and had paid the policy in full in 1986. Then a death claim, signed by the
widow, and notarized, had been filed in September 1991 and duly paid a few days
later. There were two copies of the canceled check—the one Connie had
originally printed from the fiche, and one which Fepple had faxed to her from
his files. They looked identical.

A copy of Rick Hoffman’s worksheet, where he’d typed
up the figures for the weekly payments, was attached to a letter to Ajax
alerting them to the sale. I had hoped the signature would be in the same
ornate writing as the document I’d found in Fepple’s briefcase, but it was a
very ordinary, nondescript hand.

Ralph inspected each document as I finished with it.
“I guess it’s okay,” he said when we got to the end.

“Guess? Is there something wrong?”

He shook his head, but he still looked puzzled.
“Everything’s here. Everything’s in order. It’s like ten thousand other claim
folders I’ve inspected in the last twenty years. I don’t know why something
doesn’t seem quite right. You run along: I’m going to stand over Denise while
she copies every document, so that there are two witnesses to the contents.”

It was after six now. In the event that Posner was
still out front, I wanted to get downstairs to see if I could pick up Radbuka’s
trail. I was almost at the elevators when Ralph caught up with me.

“Vic—sorry. I was out of line earlier. But the
coincidence of you being on the floor, the fiche missing, and knowing that you
sometimes use, well, unorthodox methods—”

I made a wry face. “You’re right, Ralph. But I really
swear, scout’s honor, that I was nowhere near your fiche.”

“I wish I knew what in hell was so important about
this one lousy life-insurance case.” He slammed the flat of his hand against
the elevator wall.

“The agent who sold it—Rick Hoffman—he’s been dead for
seven years now. Would the company still have a record of his home address, his
family, anything about him? He had a son—guy who’d be, I don’t know, close to
sixty now—maybe he has papers that would shed some light on the situation.” It
was a straw, but we didn’t have any more substantial building material right
now.

Ralph pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket
and scribbled a note. “I start the afternoon accusing you of theft and end it
as your errand boy. I’ll see what I can find out. I wish you hadn’t called the
cops, though. Now they’ll be around wanting to interrogate Connie. Who I refuse
to believe killed the guy. She might have shot him—if she had a gun—if she’d
agreed to go see him—and if he’d stepped across the line. But can you picture
her scheming to make a murder look like suicide?”

“I’ve always been way too impulsive, Ralph, but—you
can’t fling accusations at me without something more to go on than my
unorthodox methods. Also, you need to face the fact that someone was in that
drawer. Your and Ms. Bigelow’s solution is a Band-Aid: the team investigating
Fepple’s murder should know that someone stole that microfiche. You should get
them in here, regardless of the PR consequences. As for Connie Ingram, she
should answer those questions, but you can show you’re a good guy by alerting
Ajax’s legal team. Make sure senior counsel is with her when she’s questioned.
She seems to trust Ms. Bigelow; have Bigelow sit in on the interrogation. A lot
will hinge on when her name was entered into Fepple’s computer. And whether she
has an alibi for last Friday night.”

The elevator door pinged. As I got on, Ralph asked me
casually where I’d been on Friday night.

“With friends who will vouch for me.”

“Your friends would, Vic,” Ralph said sourly.

“Cheer up.” I put a hand in between the doors to keep
them from closing. “Connie Ingram’s mother will do the same for her. And Ralph?
Trust your instinct on that Sommers file: if your sixth sense is telling you
something isn’t quite right, try to figure it out, will you?”

The street was quiet by the time I reached the lobby.
The bulk of homebound commuters were gone, making it pointless for Posner and
Durham to parade their troops. A few extra cops lingered at the intersection,
but except for flyers scattered along the curb, there was no sign of the mob
that had been here when I arrived. I’d missed a chance to tail Radbuka home.
Radbuka, whose father’s name hadn’t been Ulrich.

On my way to the garage I stopped in a doorway to call
Max, partly to tell him I didn’t think Radbuka would be around tonight, partly
to see if he’d be willing to show Don the papers about his search for the
Radbuka family.

“This Streeter fellow is very good with the little
one,” Max said. “It’s been a big help to have him here. I think we’ll ask him
to stay on tonight, even if you know that this man calling himself Radbuka
won’t be coming around.”

“You should keep Tim, no question: I can’t guarantee
Radbuka won’t bother you, just that he’s attached himself to Joseph Posner for
the moment. I saw him marching with Posner outside the Ajax building an hour
ago—and I’m betting that’s making him feel accepted enough to keep him away
from you overnight—but he’s a loose cannon; he could come shooting back.”