Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (60 page)

“I’m sure all this history is fascinating,” Ralph
interrupted me with heavy sarcasm, “but my staff is waiting for me.”

“Old Ulrich kept a list of his Viennese clients. The
life-insurance policies that Edelweiss claims they never sold,” I hissed.
“Their line has been they were a small regional company, they weren’t involved
with people who died in the Holocaust. Edelweiss
was
a small company
back then, but Nesthorn was the biggest player in Europe. If Ulrich’s books
come to light, then this charade Rossy and Janoff played in Springfield on
Tuesday—getting the legislature to kill the Holocaust Asset Recovery Act—is
going to cause a backlash the size of a tidal wave.”

“Damn you, Vic, you can’t prove any of this!” Ralph
smacked his aluminum desktop so hard he winced in pain.

“No, because those wretched journals of Ulrich’s keep
disappearing. But believe me, Rossy is hot on their trail. The head office in
Zurich can’t afford for this to come to light. Edelweiss can’t afford for
anyone to see those books of Ulrich’s. I’m betting Rossy and his wife
engineered Howard Fepple’s death. I’m betting he killed poor little Connie. I’m
betting he told her she was on a top-secret project, working just for him, that
she couldn’t tell anyone, not Karen, not you, not her mother. He was handsome,
rich, powerful; she was a plain little Cinderella toiling in the ranks. He
probably was her Prince Charming fantasy come to life. She was loyal to Ajax,
and he was Ajax—no conflict for her there, but a lot of excitement.”

Ralph was very white. He unconsciously massaged his
right shoulder, where he’d taken a bullet from his old boss ten years ago.

“I presume the police are connecting Connie’s murder
to Ajax, or you all wouldn’t be gathered here on a Saturday,” I said.

“The girls—women—she usually had a drink with on
Friday nights say she canceled because she had to work late,” Ralph said
leadenly. “She certainly left the building when everyone else did, according to
her coworkers. When one of them teased her about having a date that she didn’t
want to tell them about, she became very embarrassed, said it wasn’t like that,
but she’d been asked to keep it confidential. The cops are looking at the company.”

“So will you let me take a look at Connie’s desk
file?”

“No.” His voice was barely above a whisper now. “I
want you to leave the building. And in case you’re imagining stopping on
thirty-nine to hunt for it yourself, don’t: I’m sending Karen down to Connie’s
desk right now to collect all her papers and bring them up here. I’m not going
to have you riding through my department like a cowgirl herding mavericks.”

“Will you promise me one thing? Two things, actually.
Will you look through Connie’s papers without telling Bertrand Rossy about it?
And will you let me know what you find?”

“I’m not promising you anything, Warshawski. But you
can rest assured that I’m not jeopardizing what’s left of my career by taking
this story to Rossy.”

Jumped for Joy

B
efore I
left Ralph’s office, I gave Denise another copy of my card. “He’s going to want
to get in touch with me,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Make sure
he knows he can reach me on my cell phone anytime this weekend.”

I almost couldn’t bear not seeing Connie Ingram’s desk
file myself, but Karen Bigelow rode with me as far as the thirty-ninth floor,
assuring me that she would summon building security if I followed her to
Connie’s workstation.

When I left the building, I turned into a whirlwind of
useless activity. Don Strzepek had decided not to take my advice on leaving
town; I got him to persuade Rhea to let me visit her in her town house on
Clarendon, hoping a firsthand description of her attacker would tell me one way
or another if it had been one of the Rossys.

That was my first wasted hour. Don let me into the
house, past a waterfall with lotus flowers floating in it, to a solarium, where
Rhea sat in a large armchair. Her luminous eyes peered at me from a cocoon of
shawls. While she sipped herbal tea and Don held her hand, she stepped me
through the events of the night before. When I tried to press her on
anything—the height, the build, the accent, the strength, of her assailant, she
leaned back in the chair, a hand over her forehead.

“Vic, I know you mean well, but I have been over this
ground, not just with Donald and the police, but with myself. I put myself in a
light trance and spoke the whole incident into a tape recorder, which you may
listen to—if any detail had stuck out I would have recalled it then.”

I listened to the tape, but she refused to reinduce a
trance so that I could question her myself. I suggested that she might have
noticed the color of the eyes glittering through the ski mask, the color of the
mask or of the bulky jacket the person wore—her trance recital didn’t cover any
of those points. At that she became wearily belligerent: if she had thought
such questions would produce useful answers, she would have asked them herself.

“Don, could you help Vic find her way out. I’m
exhausted.”

I didn’t have time to waste on anger or arguments. I
went back past the lotus petals, only venting my feelings by pinging a penny
against the Buddha at the top of the waterfall.

I next drove down to the South Side, to Colby
Sommers’s mother, to try to gather any information about Isaiah’s cousin’s last
evening on the planet. Various relations were comforting her, including
Gertrude Sommers, who talked with me softly in one corner. Colby had been a
weak boy and a weak man; he had liked to feel important by hanging out with
dangerous people, and now, sadly, he’d paid the price. But Isaiah, Isaiah was a
different story: she wanted to make sure I knew that I could not let Isaiah
share Colby’s fate.

I nodded bleakly and turned to Colby’s mother. She hadn’t
seen her son for a week or two, she didn’t know what he’d been up to. She did
give me the names of some of Colby’s friends.

When I tracked them to a local pool hall, they put
their cues aside, watching me with a glittering hostility. Even when I broke
through the haze of reefer and bitterness that enveloped them, they didn’t tell
me much. Yes, Colby had hung with some brothers who did sometimes run errands
for Durham’s EYE team. Yes, he’d been flashing a roll for a few days, Colby was
like that. When he was in the money, everyone got a share. When he was flat,
everyone else was expected to ante up. Last night he’d said he was going to be
doing something with the EYE brothers, but names? No, they knew no names.
Neither bribes nor threats could shake them.

I left, frustrated. Terry didn’t want to suspect
Alderman Durham, and the guys on the South Side were too intimidated by the EYE
team to rat them out. I could go see Durham again myself, but that would be
wasted energy when I didn’t have a viable lever. And anyway, right now my
worries about Lotty, and Ulrich’s journals, made it more important that I try
to figure out a way to get to the Rossys.

I was wondering if there was some way I could start
checking their alibis for last night without showing myself too obviously when
my cell phone rang. I was northbound on the Ryan, in that stretch where sixteen
lanes cross each other again and again in something like a maypole dance—not
the place to distract myself. I pulled off at the nearest exit to answer.

I’d hoped for Ralph, but it was my answering service.
Mrs. Coltrain had called me from Lotty’s clinic. It was urgent, I should get
back to her at once.

“She’s at the clinic?” I looked at the dashboard
clock—Lotty’s Saturday hours were nine-thirty to one; it was past two now.

I don’t know the weekend operators at my service; this
man read me the number Mrs. Coltrain had given him and hung up. It was the
clinic, all right—perhaps she’d stayed on to do some paperwork.

Mrs. Coltrain is usually calm, even majestic—in all
the years she’s managed the flow of people at Lotty’s storefront, I’ve only
seen her flustered once, and that was when the clinic was invaded by an angry
mob. When I called back today, she sounded as agitated as she had that day six
years ago.

“Oh, Ms. Warshawski, thank you for calling.
I—something strange has come up—I didn’t know what to do—I hope you—it would be
good if you—I don’t want to impose. Are you busy?”

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Coltrain? Has someone broken in?”

“It’s—it’s something from Dr. Herschel.
She—she—uh—sent a packet of dictation.”

“From where?” I demanded sharply.

“It doesn’t say on the packet. It came Federal
Express. I’ve been—trying to listen to it. Something strange has happened. But
I don’t want to bother you.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can. Half an hour at the
outside.” I made a U on Pershing and accelerated back on-to the Ryan,
calculating route, calculating time. I was ten miles south of the clinic here,
but the expressway curved sharply west before it reached the Irving Park Road
exit. Better to get off on Damen and drive straight north. Eight miles to
Damen, eight minutes unless the traffic glued. Then three miles on city streets
to Irving, another fifteen minutes.

My knuckles were white on the steering wheel, I was
clutching it so hard. What was wrong? What was in the tape? Lotty was dead?
Lotty was a hostage somewhere and Mrs. Coltrain couldn’t bear to tell me on the
phone?

The light at Damen was interminable. Steady, Old
Paint, I admonished myself. No need to shoot out the tires on the Beemer that
crowded around me to prove I had a right to the intersection. When I finally
got to the clinic, I parked at a reckless angle and jumped out.

Mrs. Coltrain’s silver Eldorado was the only car in
the tiny parking strip Lotty had installed on the clinic’s north edge. The
whole street had a Saturday afternoon sleepiness to it: a woman with three
small children and a large trolley of laundry was the only person I saw.

I ran to the front and tried the door, but it was
locked. I pushed the after-hours bell. After a long pause, Mrs. Coltrain asked
in a quavering, tinny voice who it was. When I identified myself, there was
another long pause before she buzzed me in.

The lights were turned off in the waiting room, I
suppose to deter would-be patients from thinking anyone was here. In the
greenish light that filtered in through the glass fire blocks, I felt as though
I were under water. Mrs. Coltrain wasn’t at her station behind the counter. The
whole building appeared deserted—absurd, since she had just buzzed me in.

Sharply calling her name, I pushed open the door that
led to the examining rooms. “Mrs. Coltrain!” I called again.

“I’m back here, dear.” Her voice came to me faintly
from Lotty’s office.

She never called me “dear”: even after knowing me for
fifteen years I’m always “Ms. Warshawski.” I pulled out my Smith & Wesson
and ran down the hall. She was behind Lotty’s desk, her cheeks white underneath
her powder and rouge. I couldn’t take in the scene at first; it took me a
second to notice Ralph. He was wedged into a back corner of the room on one of
Lotty’s patient chairs, his arms tied to the chair arms, a piece of surgical
tape over his mouth, his grey eyes black in his very white face. I was trying
to take this in when his face contorted; he jerked his head toward the door.

I turned, bringing up my gun, but Bertrand Rossy was
close behind me. He grabbed my gun arm, and my shot went wide. He was using
both hands on my right wrist. I kicked him hard on his shin. His hold
slackened. I kicked again, harder, and wrenched my gun hand away.

“Up against the wall,” I panted.

“
Fermatevi
.” Fillida Rossy spoke sharply behind
me. “Stop or I will shoot this woman.”

She had appeared from some hiding place to stand
behind Mrs. Coltrain’s chair. She held a gun against Mrs. Coltrain’s neck.
Fillida looked strange; I realized after a moment that she had covered her
blond hair in a black wig.

Mrs. Coltrain was shaking, her mouth moving
wordlessly. My lips tight with fury, I let Rossy take the Smith & Wesson.
He pinned my arms behind me, wrapping them with surgical tape.

“In English, Fillida. Your newest victims can’t
understand you. She just said I should stop or she would shoot Mrs. Coltrain,”
I added to Ralph. “So I’ve stopped. Is that another SIG, Fillida? Do your
friends at the consulate smuggle them in from Switzerland for you? The cops
can’t trace the one you used on Howard Fepple.”

Rossy hit me on the mouth. His smiling charm had sure
disappeared. “We have nothing to say to you in any language, whereas you have
much to say to us. Where are Herr Hoffman’s notebooks?”

“You have a lot to say to me,” I objected. “For
instance, why is Ralph here?”

Rossy made an impatient gesture. “It seemed easiest to
bring him.”

“But why? Oh—oh, Ralph, you found Connie’s desk file
and you took it to Rossy. I begged you not to do that.”

Ralph shut his eyes tightly, unwilling to look at me,
but Rossy said impatiently, “Yes, he showed me that silly girl’s notes. Silly,
conscientious little creature, keeping all her desk records. It never occurred
to me—she never said a word to me.”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “She took her clerical
procedures for granted; you know nothing of the details of work at that level.”