Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (4 page)

“Thanks, I have my own copy—they held a gala a couple
of weeks ago to celebrate. My most important client sits on their board, so I
got chapter and verse close up. I even met the author.” She’d been a thin,
severe-looking young woman, dreadlocks tied back from her face with grosgrain
ribbons, sipping mineral water on the fringes of a black-tie crowd. I tapped
her booklet. “How’d you get this? Bull Durham going after Ajax? Or is Posner?”

Don patted his cigarette pocket again. “Both, as far
as I can tell. Now that Edelweiss Re owns Ajax, Posner wants a printout of all
their policies from 1933 on. And Durham is quite as insistent that Ajax open
their books so he can see whom they insured from 1850 to 1865. Naturally Ajax
is fighting like crazy to keep the IHARA, with or without Durham’s amendment,
from getting passed here or anywhere. Although the Florida and California
legislation that inspired the Illinois act doesn’t seem to have hurt insurers
any. I guess they’ve figured they can stall until the last beneficiary dies. .
. . Morrell, I’m going to kill in a minute if I don’t get some nicotine. You
cuddle Vic. I’ll give my great hacking smoker’s cough to warn you I’m coming
back in.”

“Poor guy.” Morrell followed me as I went into the
bedroom to change. “Mmph. I don’t remember that bra.”

It was a rose and silver number I rather liked myself.
Morrell nuzzled my shoulder and fiddled with the hooks. After a few minutes I
pulled away. “That smoker’s cough is going to hack in our ears in a minute.
When did you find out he was coming to town?”

“He called from the airport this morning. I tried to
let you know, but your mobile phone wasn’t on.”

Morrell took my skirt and sweater and hung them in the
closet. His extreme tidiness is a big reason I can’t imagine our ever living together.

He perched on the edge of the tub when I went into the
bathroom to take off my makeup. “As much as anything, I think Don wanted an
excuse to get away from New York. You know, since Envision’s parent company was
bought by that big French firm, Gargette, he hasn’t been having much fun in
publishing. So many of his authors are being axed that he’s afraid his job will
be cut. He wants to scope out the issues surrounding the Birnbaum
conference—see if there’s enough in them for a book of his own.”

We went back into the bedroom, where I pulled on jeans
and a sweatshirt. “What about you?” I leaned against him, closing my eyes and
letting the wall of fatigue I’d been battling crash over me. “Is there any risk
of your contract for the Taliban book being canceled?”

“No such luck, babe.” Morrell ruffled my hair. “Don’t
sound so hopeful.”

I blushed. “I didn’t mean to be so obvious. But—Kabul.
An American passport is as big a liability there as a woman’s exposed arms.”

Morrell held me more tightly. “You’re more likely to
get into trouble here in Chicago than I am in Afghanistan. I’ve never been in
love before with a woman who was beaten up and left to die on the Kennedy.”

“But you could visit me every day while I was
recuperating,” I objected.

“I promise you, Victoria Iphigenia, that if I am left
to die in the Khyber Pass, I will get Humane Medicine to fly you over so you
can see me every day.”

Humane Medicine was a human-rights group Morrell had
traveled with in the past. They were based in Rome and were hoping to set up an
inoculation program for Afghan children before the Himalayan winter set in in
earnest. Morrell was going to roam around talking to anyone he could, observe
the state-sanctioned boys’ schools, see if he could find any of the underground
girls’ schools, and generally try to get some understanding of the Taliban.
He’d even been taking a course on the Koran in a mosque on Devon Avenue.

“I’m going to fall asleep if I don’t start moving,” I
murmured into his chest. “Let’s get some dinner for Don. We’ve got that
fettuccine I bought on the weekend. Put some tomatoes and olives and garlic in
it; that’ll do the job.”

We went back into the living room, where Don was
flipping through a copy of the
Kansas City Review
—Morrell had a critique
of some recent books on Guatemala in it. “Good job, Morrell—it’s a tough
question, what to do about old juntas in new clothes, isn’t it? Tough question
to know what to do about our own government’s involvement with some of these
groups, too.”

I drifted for a bit while they talked about South
American politics. When Don announced a need for another cigarette, Morrell
followed me to the kitchen to pull supper together. We ate at the island
countertop in the kitchen, perched on barstools, while Don talked with a
certain gloomy humor about the changes in publishing. “While I was in
Barcelona, my corporate masters announced to the
Journal
that writers
are just content providers. Then they sent out a protocol on how to type
manuscripts, demoting the content providers to clerk-typists.”

A few minutes before ten he pushed his chair away from
the counter. “There should be some coverage of the Birnbaum conference on the
ten o’clock news. I’d like to watch, although the cameras probably concentrated
on the action out front.”

He helped Morrell scrape the plates into the garbage,
then went to the back porch for another cigarette. While Morrell loaded the
dishwasher, wiped down the counters, and wrapped leftovers in airtight
containers, I went into the living room to turn on Channel 13, Global
Entertainment’s Chicago station. The evening anchor, Dennis Logan, was just
finishing his summary of the upcoming news.

“Events turned stormy at times at the conference on
Jews in America being held today at the Hotel Pleiades, but the real surprise
came at the end of the afternoon from someone who wasn’t even on the program.
Beth Blacksin will have the whole story later in our broadcast.”

I curled up in the corner of Morrell’s couch. I
started to nod off, but when the phone rang, I woke up to see two young women
on-screen raving about a drug for yeast infections. Morrell, who’d come into
the room behind me, muted the set and answered the phone.

“For you, sweet. Max.” He stretched the receiver out
to me.

“Victoria, I’m sorry to phone so late.” Max’s tone was
apologetic. “We have a crisis here that I’m hoping you can solve.
Ninshubur—that blue stuffed dog Calia takes everywhere—do you have it by any
chance?”

I could hear Calia howling in the background, Michael
shouting something, Agnes’s voice raised to yell something else. I rubbed my
eyes, trying to remember far enough back in the day to Calia’s dog. I had
stuffed Calia’s day pack into my case, then forgotten about it in the
harassment of getting her to Max. I put the phone down and looked around. I finally
asked Morrell if he knew where my briefcase was.

“Yes, V I,” he said in a voice of long-suffering. “You
dropped it on the couch when you came in. I put it in my study.”

I set the receiver on the couch and went down the hall
to his study. My briefcase was the only thing on his desk, except for his copy
of the Koran, with a long green string marking his place. Ninshubur was buried
in the bottom, with some raisins, Calia’s day pack, and the tale of the
princess and her faithful hound. I picked up the study extension and apologized
to Max, promising to run right over with the animal.

“No, no, don’t disturb yourself. It’s only a few
blocks and I’ll be glad to get out of this upheaval.”

When I returned to the living room, Don said the
suspense was mounting: we were on the second commercial break with the promise
of fireworks to come. Max rang the bell just as Dennis Logan began speaking
again.

When I let Max into the little entryway, I saw he had
Carl Tisov with him. I handed the toy dog to Max, but he and Carl lingered long
enough that Morrell came over to invite them in for a drink.

“Something strong, like absinthe,” Carl said. “I had
always wished for a large family, but after this evening’s waterworks, I think
I didn’t miss so much. How can one small diaphragm generate more sound than an
entire brass section?”

“It’s the jet lag,” Max said. “It always hits small
ones hard.”

Don called out to us to hush. “They’re finally getting
to the conference.”

Max and Carl moved into the living room and stood
behind the couch. Don turned up the volume as Beth Blacksin’s pixieish face
filled the screen.

“When the Southern Baptists announced their plan to
send a hundred thousand missionaries to Chicago this past summer as part of
their plan to convert Jews to Christianity, a lot of people were troubled, but
the Birnbaum Foundation took action. Working with the Illinois Holocaust
Commission, the Chicago Roman Catholic archdiocese, and Dialogue, an interfaith
group here in Chicago, the foundation decided to hold a conference on issues
that affect not just Illinois’s substantial Jewish population but the Jewish
community in America as a whole. Hence today’s conference, ‘Christians and
Jews: a New Millennium, a New Dialogue.’

“At times, it seemed as though dialogue was the last
thing on anyone’s mind.” The screen shifted to footage of the demonstrations
out front. Blacksin gave both Posner and Durham equal sound bites, then shifted
back to the hotel ballroom.

“Sessions inside the building also grew heated. The
liveliest one covered the topic which sparked the demonstrations outside: the
proposed Illinois Holocaust Asset Recovery Act. A panel of banking and
insurance executives, arguing that the act would be so costly that all
consumers would suffer, drew a lot of criticism, and a lot of anguish.”

Here the screen showed furious people yelling into the
mikes set up in the aisles for questions. One man shouted the insult that
Margaret Sommers and Alderman Durham had both made earlier, that the
reparations debate proved that all Jews ever thought about was money.

Another man yelled back that he didn’t understand why
Jews were considered greedy for wanting bank deposits their families had made:
“Why aren’t the banks called greedy? They held on to the money for sixty years
and now they want to hang on to it forever.” A woman stomped up to a mike to
say that since the Swiss reinsurer Edelweiss had bought Ajax, she assumed
Edelweiss had their own reasons to oppose the legislation.

Channel 13 let us watch the melee for about twenty
seconds before Blacksin’s voice cut in again. “The most startling event of the
day didn’t take place in the insurance session, but during one on forcible
conversion, when a small man with a shy manner made the most extraordinary
revelation.”

We watched as a man in a suit that seemed a size too
big for him spoke into one of the aisle mikes. He was closer to sixty than
fifty, with greying curls that had thinned considerably at his temples.

“I want to say that it is only recently I even knew I
was Jewish.”

A voice from the stage asked him to identify himself.

“Oh. My name is Paul—Paul Radbuka. I was brought here
after the war when I was four years old by a man who called himself my father.”

Max sucked in his breath, while Carl exclaimed, “What!
Who is this?”

Don and Morrell both turned to stare.

“You know him?” I asked.

Max clamped my wrist to hush me while the little
figure in front of us continued to speak. “He took everything away from me,
most especially my memories. Only recently have I come to know that I spent the
war in Terezin, the so-called model concentration camp that the Germans named
Theresienstadt. I thought I was a German, a Lutheran, like this man Ulrich who
called himself my father. Only after he died, when I went through his papers,
did I find out the truth. And I say it is wrong, it is criminally wrong, to
take away from people the identity which is rightfully theirs.”

The station let a few seconds’ silence develop, then
Dennis Logan, the anchor, appeared in a split screen with Beth Blacksin. “It’s
a most extraordinary story, Beth. You caught up with Mr. Radbuka after the
session, didn’t you? We’ll be showing your exclusive interview with Paul
Radbuka at the end of our regular newscast. Coming up, for fans who thought the
Cubs couldn’t sink lower, a surprising come-from-ahead loss today at Wrigley.”

Memory Plant

D
o you know
him?” Don asked Max, muting the sound as yet another round of ads came up.

Max shook his head. “I know the name, but not this
man. It’s just—it’s a most unusual name.” He turned to Morrell. “If I can
impose on you—I’d like to stay for the interview.”

Like Max, Carl was a short man, not quite as tall as I
am, but where Max smiled good-naturedly on the world around him—often amused by
the human predicament—Carl held himself on alert—a bantam rooster, ready to
take on all comers. Right now, he seemed edgier than usual. I looked at him but
decided not to quiz him in front of Don and Morrell.

Morrell brought Max herbal tea and poured brandy for
Carl. Finally the station finished its lengthy dissection of the weather and
turned to Beth Blacksin. She was talking to Paul Radbuka in a small meeting
room at the Pleiades. Another woman, with wings of black hair framing her oval
face, was with them.

Beth Blacksin introduced herself and Paul Radbuka, then
let the camera focus on the other woman. “Also here this evening is Rhea Wiell,
the therapist who has treated Mr. Radbuka and helped him recover his hidden
memories. Ms. Wiell has agreed to talk to me later tonight in a special edition
of ‘Exploring Chicago.’”