Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (61 page)

They had killed so many people, these two, I couldn’t
think of a way to talk them out of killing three more. String them out, string
them out while it comes to you. Above all, keep your voice calm,
conversational: don’t let them see you’re terrified.

“So was Fepple threatening to reveal that Edelweiss
really had a huge Holocaust policy exposure? Would Connie Ingram even have
understood the implications of that?”

“Of course not,” Rossy said, impatient. “In the
sixties and seventies, Herr Hoffman began to submit death certificates to
Edelweiss for his European clients—the ones he had sold life insurance to in
Vienna before the war.”

“Can you believe such a thing?” Fillida was incensed
over Hoffman’s effrontery. “He collected the life insurance for many Viennese
Jews. He didn’t even know that they were dead, he had no proper procedures, he
made up the death certificates. It is a total outrage, the way he stole money
from me and my family.”

“But Aaron Sommers wasn’t a Viennese Jew,” I objected,
sidetracked for a moment by the lesser problem.

Bertrand Rossy snapped impatiently, “Oh, this Hoffman,
he must have become crazy. Either that or forgetful. He had insured an Austrian
Jew named Aaron Sommers in 1935 and a black American of the same name in 1971.
So he submitted a death claim for the black man instead of the Jew. It was all
so foolish, so unnecessary—and yet, for us, so fortunate. He was the one agent
we hadn’t been able to find with a large book of prewar Jewish policies. And
then it turned out he was right here in Chicago. That day in Devereux’s office,
when I looked in the Sommers papers and saw Ulrich Hoffman’s signature on his
agency work sheet, I could hardly believe my fortune. The man we had been
seeking for five years was right here in Chicago. I’m still astounded that you
and Devereux didn’t notice my excitement.”

He paused to congratulate himself on his public
performance. “But Fepple, he was a total idiot. He found one of Hoffman’s old
registers in the Sommers file, together with some blank signed death
certificates. He thought he could blackmail us over the false death certificates.
He didn’t even understand that the Holocaust claims were more important. Much
more important.”

“Bertrand, enough of this history,” Fillida said in
Italian. “Get her to tell you where the doctor is.”

“Fillida, you must speak English,” I said in English.
“You’re in America now, and these two unfortunates can’t understand you.”

“Then understand this,” Rossy said. “Unless you tell
us where those books are at once, we will kill both these friends of yours, not
fast with a bullet, but slowly with great pain.”

“That woman last night, the therapist of Hoffman’s
son, she said this Jewish doctor has them. These are my books. They belong to
my family, to my company. They must come back to me,” Fillida said, her accent
strong, her English not as smooth as her husband’s. “But this clerk opened the
safe and nothing is in it. Everybody knows you are the friend of this Jewish
doctor, the best friend. So you tell us where she is.”

“She’s disappeared,” I said. “I thought you guys had
her. It’s a relief to know she’s safe.”

“Please don’t make the mistake of assuming we are
stupid,” Rossy said. “This office clerk is totally expendable now that she’s
opened the doctor’s safe.”

“Is that why poor Connie Ingram had to die?” I asked.
“Because she couldn’t tell you where Ulrich Hoffman’s notebooks were? Or
because she would have told Ralph or the cops about fraudulent death
certificates—your own obsession with Hoffman and Howard Fepple?”

“She was a very loyal employee of the company. I feel
regret over her death.”

“You took her out for a lovely dinner, treated her
with the kind of charm that persuaded Grandpapa Hirs’s little girl to marry
you, and then took her to the forest preserve to kill her. Did you let her
think you were attracted to her? Does it cheer you up, the thought that a naive
young woman responds to you the same way the rich boss’s daughter does?”

Fillida curled her lip scornfully. “
Che maniere
borghesi.
Why should I bother my head if my husband gratifies the fantasies
of some poor little creature?”

“She’s complaining that I have bourgeois manners,” I
explained to Ralph and to Mrs. Coltrain, who was staring straight ahead, glassy
with shock. “In her world, if your husband sleeps with the staff it’s just a
throwback to those old medieval customs. The queen of the castle doesn’t bother
her head over it because she’s still queen. What is it, Fillida? Because you’re
the queen you shoot anyone who doesn’t bow to you? Because you’re queen of
Edelweiss, no one is allowed to get money from the company—you’ll shoot them if
they submit a claim? You need to hold Edelweiss the way you hold your
silverware and your daughter’s hair, don’t you?”

“You are ignorant. It is my family’s company, the
Edelweiss. My mother’s grandfather, he started this company, only then of
course it was called the Nesthorn. The Jews forced us to change the name after
the Second World War, but they cannot force us to let go of our company. I am
protecting the future of my children, of Paolo and Marguerita, that is all.”

She was angry, but she kept her gun pointed at Mrs.
Coltrain. “That that cretin Howard Fepple could think he could drain money from
us, it is unbelievable. And the Jews, only wanting money all the time,
believing they could come to demand more money from us, that is an affront, an
outrage. Speak quickly now, tell me where are these books of Signor Hoffman.”

I felt very tired, very aware of how weak and
ineffectual I was with my arms pinned behind me. “Oh, those Jews, paying their
few pennies a week to Nesthorn so that you could ski at Mont Blanc and shop on
Monte Napoleane. And now their grandchildren, their own little Paolos and
Margueritas, want the company to pay what you owe them. That is a terribly
bourgeois attitude: don’t they understand the aristocratic outlook—that you get
to collect the premium and never have to pay on the policies? It’s a pity the
Chicago police have such a limited worldview. When they’ve matched fibers from
Bertie’s clothes to Connie Ingram’s body, well, that will make a big impact on
a bourgeois jury, believe me.”

“The police require a reason to think about Bertrand
at all.” Fillida shrugged elegant shoulders. “I myself do not see such a thing
happening.”

“Paul Hoffman could identify you, Fillida. Your hand
slipped badly on the trigger there, didn’t it?”

“That lunatic! He couldn’t identify me in a thousand
years. He thinks I am a concentration-camp guard. Who would even suggest me as
being in his house!”

“Max Loewenthal. He knows what’s happening here. Carl
Tisov. Dr. Herschel herself. You and Bertie are like a couple of elephants
going musth through the jungle. You can’t keep killing everyone in Chicago
without getting caught out yourselves.”

Rossy looked at his watch. “We need to be going soon,
if Alderman Durham will only get here. Fillida, he advised against bullet
wounds, so break the clerk’s arm. Persuade this detective that we are serious
in our quest.”

Fillida turned her gun over and slammed the stock
against Mrs. Coltrain’s arm. Mrs. Coltrain screamed, the pain ripping her out
of her shocked frozenness. The horrible noise turned everyone toward her.

In that brief window of distraction, I launched myself
at Rossy. I whirled, kicking him hard in the stomach, turning again as he
lashed out at me to kick him on the kneecap. He was punching at me, but he
wasn’t a street fighter. I was. I ducked underneath his flailing arms and
butted him square in the solar plexus. He gagged and backed away.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fillida taking aim.
I hit the floor. I was demented now. Unable to use my hands, I lay on my back
kicking at Rossy over and over. I was screaming in rage, in impotent fury, as
Fillida came around to the front of the desk to point her gun at me. I didn’t
want to die like this, helpless on the floor.

Behind me I heard Ralph give an enraged grunt. He got
to his feet, dragging the chair with him, and flung himself at Fillida just
before she fired. His blow knocked her off balance. Her gun went off but she
fell, with Ralph in his chair falling on top of her. She screamed as he crashed
onto her abdomen.

Mrs. Coltrain stood up behind the desk. “I have called
the police, Mr. Rossy, as I believe your name is. They will be here at any
moment.”

Her voice wobbled a bit, but she was back in command
of her clinic. Hearing that majestic tone, the same one she used to keep small
children from fighting in the waiting room, I lay on the floor and laughed.

Wily Coyote

I
sat on the
edge of Ralph’s bed, holding his right hand between both of my own. It was late
on Saturday night, but the charge nurse told me he wouldn’t sleep until he’d
talked to me.

“I don’t have much luck with my corporate loyalties,”
he said. “Why couldn’t I listen to you the second time around if I wouldn’t the
first? So many people dead. Poor Connie. And me with another bullet in the
shoulder. I guess I just can’t stand for you to be right, can I?”

“At least they got your left shoulder this time,” I
said. “Now you’re symmetrical. Ralph, you’re a good guy and a team player. You
wanted your team to be as good as you were, and I was telling you they weren’t.
You’re too honest yourself to believe the worst of the people around you. And
anyway, you saved my life. I can’t possibly feel anything but overflowing
gratitude.” I brought his right hand to my lips.

“That’s generous.” His eyes flickered shut for a
moment. “Connie. Why did she?”

“I don’t think she was being disloyal to you or to the
company, but I imagine Rossy turned her head. There was the big boss in from
the new owners in Switzerland, telling her to report directly to him, that she
shouldn’t tell anyone what he said to her because someone in the company was
embezzling, and it might be anyone, you, her immediate supervisor Karen. I
imagine that was how he worked it. Anyone who had spent fourteen years toiling
as a claims clerk would have been thrilled, but she had that extra quality of
loyalty and reliability. He said not to talk, she kept quiet. And then, he was
sophisticated, he was glamorous.”

“It’s a warning to me to cut out cheeseburgers,” Ralph
said with a gleam of humor. “Guy’s only two years younger than me. I need to
look more glamorous to my young claims handlers. So he romanced her and
strangled her. What a horrible ending for her. Can they make it stick?”

“Terry Finchley, the detective in charge, he got a
search warrant. They’re looking at Rossy’s clothes, fingerprints—they may get a
match with the marks on her neck. He and Fillida were so single-mindedly
arrogant, they probably didn’t try too hard to conceal evidence.

“Fillida, that’s another story. She could face a lot
of charges—Fepple’s murder, attacking Paul Hoffman, attacking Rhea Wiell, but
she’s attractive, rich. They’re searching for her prints or clothes fibers or
anything at Paul’s house, but she’s going to be hard for the state’s attorney
to nail down. At least those cheeseburgers of yours did some good: when you
came down on her you cracked her pelvis. She won’t ski anywhere anytime soon.”

He smiled briefly, the twisted smile that reminded me
of the old Ralph, and shut his eyes. I thought he had drifted off to sleep, but
as I started to get up he looked up at me again.

“What was Alderman Durham doing at the clinic? I saw
him as they were carrying me off on a stretcher.”

“Oh, Fillida and Bertrand had gone berserk,” I said.
“They thought they’d get a bomb, blow the three of us up, make it look as
though anti-abortion terrorists had been responsible. They told Durham to get
one for them—they assumed that they’d bought him, that he was just another one
of their servants who’d do what they wanted.

“See, Rossy had been doing favors for Durham in
exchange for some muscle: Rossy got the legislature to block the Holocaust
Asset Recovery Act unless it included slavery reparations, he gave Durham money
so Durham could build a war chest to run for mayor—along with this high-profile
issue, slavery reparations, to build a citywide platform on. In return for all
this help, Durham directed Rossy to some South Side muscle when Rossy wanted to
break in to Amy Blount’s apartment to see if she had the Hoffman notebooks. But
he’s a wily coyote, the alderman—he never put anything in writing. He never
directly told Rossy he could find muscle for him.

“Rossy thought he’d bought Durham. But the alderman
wants to be mayor more than he wants to be Al Capone. He called the cops, told
them the Rossys were trying to get a bomb at the clinic. So the cops were on
their way, even though they got there kind of late.”

The alderman now looked like Mr. Virtue. He’d given me
a bit of a smirk in passing, the smirk of the man who’d gotten clean away with
having Colby Sommers killed and who had a nice stash to launch his citywide
campaign besides. He’d confessed to Terry Finchley, more in sorrow than in
outrage, that some of the young men on his EYE team weren’t as rehabilitated as
he would have wished. And the Finch, normally one of the city’s straightest,
levelest cops, had read me a lecture on my prejudice in flinging accusations at
the alderman. If I had to win every match in order to be happy, I’d be a mighty
sad detective—but this was one round where the loss stuck in my craw.