Total Recall

by Sara Paretsky

  “Families named Ulrich? Why would you want-” She broke off, her dark soft eyes widening, first in bewilderment, then amusement. “If that’s your best investigative effort, Vic, then Paul Radbuka is definitely safe from you.”

  I studied her for a moment, chin on hand, trying to decipher what lay behind her amusement. “So Ulrich wasn’t his father’s name after all? I’ll keep that in mind. Don, where should I leave a message for you about whether Max is free to talk to you tonight? At Morrell’s?”

  “I’ll ride down with you, Vic, give Rhea a chance to center herself. I have a cell-phone number I can give you.”

  He got up with me but lingered inside her consulting room for a private leave-taking. As I left, I noticed another young woman in the waiting room looking eagerly toward the inner door. It was a pity Rhea and I had gotten off to such a bad start: I would have liked to experience her hypnotic techniques to see whether they gave me the same rush they did her patients.

  Don caught up with me outside the elevators. When I asked if he knew what the inside joke was about the name Ulrich, he shifted uncomfortably. “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly? You mean you know sort of?”

  “Only that it wasn’t his father’s-foster father’s-last name. Not what the name really was. And don’t ask me to find out: Rhea won’t tell me because she knows you’ll try to wheedle it out of me.”

  “I guess I should feel flattered that she thinks I’d be able to. Give me your cell-phone number. I’ll call Max and get back to you, but I have to run: like Rhea, I need to center myself before my next appointment.”

  In the L going back to my car, I called Mary Louise to tell her she didn’t have to go door-to-door with Radbuka’s picture after all. I couldn’t recap the whole conversation over the noise of the train but told her that it apparently wasn’t his childhood name. She had started south, working her way west and north, and had only reached her third address, so she was happy to call it a day.

  As I picked up my car at the Western L stop, I wondered idly what would happen if Rhea Wiell hypnotized Lotty. Where would an elevator to the past take Lotty? From her behavior on Sunday, the monsters on those lower floors were pretty ferocious. It seemed to me, though, that Lotty’s problem wasn’t that she couldn’t remember her monsters but that she couldn’t forget them.

  I stopped in the office to check on mail and messages and whether I had any appointments for tomorrow that I’d forgotten. A couple of new things had come up. I entered them into my computer and pulled out my Palm Pilot to download them to the handheld device. As I did so I suddenly thought of Fepple’s mother telling me her gadget-happy son used a device like mine for a diary. If he’d kept his appointments up to date, they should still be sitting in that machine in his office. And I had a key: I could go in happy and legal, with the implicit consent of Rhonda Fepple.

  I quickly returned a few phone calls, looked at my e-mail, pulled up the missing persons bulletin board to see that Questing Scorpio hadn’t answered my message, and went south again, to Hyde Park.

  Collins, the four-to-midnight guard, recognized me. “Got some other tenants here we could do without if you want a hit list,” he said with heavy humor as I passed.

  I smiled weakly and rode up to the sixth floor. I had a hard time getting myself to open the door, not because of the yellow crime-scene tape sealing it, but because I didn’t want to face the remains of Fepple’s life again. I took a breath and tried the handle. A woman in a nurse’s uniform heading to the elevator stopped to watch me. The police or the building management had locked the office. I took out my key and unlocked the door, breaking the yellow tape as I pushed it open.

  “I thought that meant you can’t go in,” the woman said.

  “You thought right, but I’m a detective.”

  She walked over to peer around me into the room, then backed away, her face turning grey. “Oh, my God. Is that what happened in there? Oh, my God, if this is what can go on in this building, I’m getting a job at the hospital, hours or no hours. This is terrible.”

  I was just as appalled as she was, even though I more or less knew what to expect. Fepple’s body was gone, but no one had bothered to clean up after him. Pieces of brain and bone had hardened on the chair and desk. Those weren’t visible from the door, but what you could see was the mess of papers, and on top of it, grey fingerprint powder showing up nests of footprints on the floor. The powder had drifted like dirty snow onto the desk, the computer, the strewn papers. I thought briefly of poor Rhonda Fepple, trying to sort through the wreckage. I hoped she had the sense to hire help.

  The police hadn’t bothered to shut down the computer. Using a Kleenex to protect my fingers, I hit the ENTER key and brought the system back up. I couldn’t bring myself to sit on Fepple’s chair, or even touch it, so I leaned across the desk to operate the keyboard. Even in my awkward posture, it only took a few minutes to retrieve his computer datebook. On Friday, he’d had a dinner date with Connie Ingram. He’d even added a note: says she wants to discuss Sommers, but she sounds hot for me.

  I printed out the entry and scuttled out of the office as fast as I could move. The foul scene, the fetid air, the horrible image of Connie Ingram sounding hot for Fepple, all made me feel like throwing up again. I found a women’s bathroom, which was locked. I stuck Fepple’s door key in, which didn’t turn the lock but did get someone on the inside to open it for me. I swayed over one of the sinks, washing my face in cold water, rinsing my mouth, pushing the worst of the images out of my mind-away from my stomach.

  Connie Ingram, the earnest round-faced claims clerk whose company loyalty wouldn’t let me look at her files? Or who was so loyal that she would date a recalcitrant agent and set him up for a hit?

  A sudden rage, the culmination of the week’s frustrations, swept over me. Rhea Wiell, Fepple himself, my vacillating client, even Lotty-I was fed up with all of them. And most of all with Ralph and Ajax. Chewing me out for the Durham protest, stiffing me over my request to see the company copy of Aaron Sommers’s file-and staging this charade. Which they’d botched by stealing the guy’s handheld but not wiping the entry out of the computer.

  I shoved open the bathroom door and stalked to the elevator, the blood roaring in my head. I zoomed to Lake Shore Drive, honking impatiently at any car daring to turn in front of me, swooping through lights as they turned red-behaving like a mad idiot. On the Drive I covered the five miles to the Grant Park traffic lights in five minutes. The evening rush hour had built in the park, stalling me. I earned the irate whistle of a traffic cop by cutting recklessly around the stack of cars onto one of the side roads, flooring the car up to the Inner Drive.

  As I got to the corner of Michigan and Adams, I had to stand on the brakes: the street was a mass of honking, unmoving cars. Now what? I wasn’t going to get near the Ajax building in my car with this kind of blockage. I made an illegal and highly dangerous U-turn and roared back to the Inner Drive. By now I’d had so many near-misses I was coming to my senses. I could hear my father lecturing me on the dangers of driving under the influence of rage. In fact, once when he’d caught me in the act, he’d made me come with him when he had to untangle a crumpled teenager from the steering wheel through his chest. The memory of that made me take the next few blocks sedately. I left the car in an underground garage and walked north to the Ajax building.

  As I got to Adams Street, the congestion built. This wasn’t the normal throng of homebound workers but a penned-up crowd. I threaded my way into it with difficulty, moving along the edges of the buildings. Through the jam of people I could hear the megaphones. The protestors had come back to life.

  “No deals with slaveowners!” they were shouting, mixed with “No money to mass murderers!” “Economic justice for all” vied with “Boycott Ajax! No deals with thieves.”

  So Posner had arrived. In full throttle, by the sound of it. And Durham had apparently come to rally his own troops in person. No wonder the street was backed up. S
idling past the crowd, I climbed up the steps to the Adams L platform so that I could see what was going on.

  It wasn’t quite the mob that had created havoc outside the Hotel Pleiades last week, but besides Posner with his Maccabees and Durham with the EYE team, there were a couple of camera crews and a lot of unhappy people who wanted to get home. These last pushed against me on the L steps, snarling at both groups.

  “I don’t care what happened a hundred years ago: I want to get home today,” one woman was saying to her companions.

  “Yeah. Durham ’s got a point, but no one’s going to pay attention to it if he makes you pay overtime to the day care because you can’t get there on time.”

  “And that other guy, that one in the funny hat and the curls and all, what’s his problem?”

  “He’s saying Ajax stole life insurance from the Jews, but it all happened a long time ago, so who cares?”

  I had thought I’d call Ralph from the street, but there was no way I could carry on a phone conversation in this melee. I climbed down from the platform and made my way along Wabash, past the cops who were trying to keep traffic moving, past the entrances to Ajax where security guards were letting frustrated commuters out one at a time, around the corner on Jackson to the alley behind the building where the buildings had their loading bays. The one for Ajax was still open.

  I hoisted myself up to the metal lip where trucks decanted cargo and went inside. An overweight man in Ajax ’s blue security uniform slid off a stool in front of a large console filled with TV screens showing the alley and the building.

  “You lost?”

  “I’m a fraud investigator. Ralph Devereux-the head of claims-wants to talk to me, but the mob out front is making it impossible to get near the front entrance.”

  He looked me over, decided I didn’t look like a terrorist, and called up to Ralph’s office with my name. He grunted a few times into the mouthpiece, then jerked his head to bring me over to the phone.

  “Hello, Ralph. How glad I am you’re still here. We need to have a little conversation about Connie Ingram.”

  “We do indeed. I wasn’t going to call you until tomorrow, but since you’re here we’ll talk now. And don’t imagine you can come up with any excuse that will make your behavior acceptable.”

  “I love you, too, Ralph: I’ll be right up.”

  The guard tapped the screens on the console to show me my route: a door at the rear of the loading bay led to a corridor which would take me to the main lobby. Once inside, I paused on my way to the elevators to stare at the dueling demonstrators. Durham, this time in executive navy, had the larger crowd, but Posner was controlling the chanting. As his little band of Maccabees circled past the door, I stood transfixed. Standing at Posner’s left elbow, his childlike face beaming underneath his thinning curls, was Paul Radbuka.

  XXVIII (Old) Lovers’ Quarrel

  The elevator whooshed me to sixty-three so fast my ears filled, but I barely noticed the discomfort. Paul Radbuka with Joseph Posner. But why should I be startled? In a way it was a natural fit. Two men obsessed with memories of the war, with their identity as Jews, what could be more likely than that they’d get together?

  The executive-floor attendant had left for the day. I went to the windows behind her mahogany station where I could see past the Art Institute to the lake. At the far horizon the soft blue became lost in clouds, so you couldn’t tell where water ended and sky began. It looked almost artificial, that horizon, as if some painter had started to stroke in a dirty-white sky and then lost interest in the project.

  I was due at the Rossys’ at eight; it was just on five now. I wondered if I could tail Radbuka home from here-although perhaps he’d be going back to Posner’s house tonight. Maybe he’d found a family who would take him in, nurture him in the way he seemed to need. Maybe he’d start leaving Max alone.

  “Vic! What are you doing out here? You called from the loading dock fifteen minutes ago.”

  Ralph’s angry, anxious voice jolted me back to the present. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loosened, his eyes worried underneath his angry facade. It was the worry that made me keep my own voice level when I answered him.

  “Admiring the view: it would be wonderful to leave all this turmoil and follow the horizon, wouldn’t it? I know why I’m peeved about Connie Ingram, but I don’t have any idea what’s got you so upset.”

  “What did you do with the microfiche?”

  “Oo-lu-lah vishti banko.”

  His mouth set in a thin line. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Your question made just as little sense to me. I don’t know any microfiche, personally or by reputation, so you’d better start at the beginning-” I broke off. “Don’t tell me your microfiche for the Sommers file is damaged?”

  “Very nice, Vic: surprised innocence. I’m almost convinced.”

  At that my calm disappeared. I pushed past him to the elevator and hit the call button.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.” I bit off my words. “I wanted to ask you why Connie Ingram was the last person to see Howard Fepple alive, and why she made him think she’d be a hot date, and why after that really hot date, Fepple was dead and the agency copy of Sommers’s file had vanished. But I don’t need the garbage you’re flinging at me. I can take my questions directly to the cops. Believe me, they’ll talk to little Miss Company Loyalty in a way that will get her to respond.”

  The elevator dinged to a stop behind me. Before I could get on, Ralph grabbed my arm.

  “Since you’re already here, give me two more minutes. I want you to talk to someone in my office.”

  “If I lose my chance to tail a guy who’s in your demonstration, I am going to be one very cross detective, Ralph, so make it succinct for me, okay? Which raises another question in my mind: why are you focusing on your wretched microfiche when the building is under siege?”

  He ignored my question, moving fast along the rosy carpets to his office. His secretary, Denise, was still at her post. Connie Ingram and a strange black woman were sitting stiffly on the tubular chairs. They looked nervously at Ralph when we came in.

  Ralph introduced the strange woman-Karen Bigelow, who was Connie’s supervisor in claims. “Just tell Vic here what you told me, Karen.”

  She nodded, turning to face me. “I know about the whole Sommers situation. I was on vacation last week, but Connie explained how she’d had to leave the file up here with Mr. Rossy. And how this private detective might try to get her to reveal confidential company information. So when she-when you-came around asking to see the fiche, Connie came straight to me. Neither of us was too surprised. As you know, of course, Connie here stood her ground, but she got kind of worried and went to check the microfiche. The card that included the Sommers file has gone missing. Not checked out or anything. Disappeared. And I understand you were alone on the floor for some time, miss.”

  I smiled pleasantly. “I see. I have to confess I don’t know where the fiche are stored, or you might have legitimate grounds for suspicion. To you, who knows that rabbit warren on thirty-nine, it’s all familiar, but to a stranger it’s impenetrable. But there’s one easy thing to do: check for fingerprints. Mine are on file with the secretary of state, because I’m a licensed investigator as well as an officer of the court. Get the cops in, treat it like a real theft.”

  The room was silent for a minute, then Ralph said, “If you were in that cabinet, Vic, you’d have wiped it clean.”

  “All the more reason to dust it. If it’s covered with prints-besides Connie’s, which belong there since she just checked the drawer-or claims she did-you’ll know I wasn’t in there.”

  “What do you mean, claims she did, Miss Detective?” Karen Bigelow gave me a hard look.

  “It’s like this, Ms. Supervisor: I don’t know what kind of game Ajax is playing with the Sommers family claim, but it’s a game whose stakes are mighty high, now that a man’s been killed. Fepple’s mother gave
me a key to the agency office. I went down there today to see if I could find any trace of his appointment calendar.”

  I paused to stare hard at Connie Ingram, but her round face didn’t show any special anxiety. “Now, whoever killed Howard Fepple swiped the Sommers file. They swiped his handheld electronic diary. But they didn’t think to wipe out the appointment from his computer. Or-they were even more squeamish than I was about getting near the machine since it had his brains and blood all over it.”

  Both Bigelow and Connie flinched at that, which only proved they didn’t like the idea of brains and blood and computers all mixed together. “Well, guess who had an appointment with Howard Fepple last Friday night? Young Connie Ingram here.”

  Her mouth widened in a giant O of protest. “I never. I never made an appointment to see him. If he put that in his diary, he’s lying!”

  “Someone is,” I agreed. “I was with him Friday afternoon, and some very sophisticated person gave him a simple but slick method for ditching me. This person came back in with him under cover of a group of Lamaze parents and left with them. Probably after killing him. Connie Ingram is the only appointment he showed for Friday. And next to it he’d written, says she wants to discuss Sommers, but she sounds hot for me.” I pulled the diary printout from my bag and waved it at her.

  “He wrote that down about me? I only ever talked to him on the phone, to ask him to double-check about the payment. And that was last week right after you first came here. Mr. Rossy asked me to. I live at home. I live with my mother. I would never-I never made that kind of phone call.” She buried her face in her hands, crimson with shame.

  Ralph snatched the printout from me. He looked at it, then tossed it contemptuously aside. “I have a Palm. You can enter events after the date-anyone could have typed that in. Including you, Vic. To deflect criticism away from your helping yourself to our microfiche.”