Total Recall Read online

  Total Recall

  Sara Paretsky

  The bestselling V.I. Warshawski novels have dazzled readers and earned the acclaim of critics everywhere. "V.I. Warshawski rules," writes Newsweek, crowning her "the most engaging woman in detective fiction." Of V.I.'s creator, the Chicago Tribune says "Sara Paretsky has no peer."

  Now Paretsky brings her incomparable storytelling brilliance to her most powerful Warshawski novel yet. Total Recall follows the Chicago P.I. on a road that winds back more than fifty years – and into an intricate maze of wartime lies, heartbreaking secrets, and harrowing retribution.

  For V.I., the journey begins with a national conference in downtown Chicago, where angry protesters are calling for the recovery of Holocaust assets. Replayed on the evening news is the scene of a slight man who has stood up at the conference to tell an astonishing story of a childhood shattered by the Holocaust – a story that has devastating consequences for V.I.'s cherished friend and mentor, Lotty Herschel.

  Lotty was a girl of nine when she emigrated from Austria to England, one of a group of children wrenched from their parents and saved from the Nazi terror just before the war broke out. Now stunningly – impossibly – it appears that someone from that long-lost past may have returned.

  With the help of a recovered-memory therapist, Paul Radbuka has recently learned his true identity. But is he who he claims to be? Or is he a cunning impostor who has usurped someone else's history… a history Lotty has tried to forget for over fifty years?

  As a frightened V.I. watches her friend unravel, she sets out to help in the only way she can: by investigating Radbuka's past. Already working on a difficult case for a poor family cheated of their life insurance, she tries to balance Lotty's needs with her client's, only to find that both are spiraling into a whirlpool of international crime that stretches from Switzerland and Germany to Chicago 's South Side.

  As the atrocities of the past reach out to engulf the living, V.I. struggles to decide whose memories of a terrible war she can trust, and moves closer to a chilling realization of the truth – a truth that almost destroys her oldest friend.

  With fierce emotional power, Sara Paretsky has woven a gripping and morally complex novel of crime and punishment, memory and illusion. Destined to become a suspense classic, Total Recall proves once again the daring and compelling genius of Sara Paretsky.

  Sara Paretsky

  Total Recall

  The tenth book in the V.I. Warshawski series, 2001

  For Sara Krupnik and Hannah Paretsky,

  whose names I bear

  May the One who establishes

  peace in the high places

  grant us all peace

  Thanks

  Thanks to Wolfson College, Oxford, where I was a Visiting Scholar in 1997, which enabled me to pursue archival research. Thanks to Dr. Jeremy Black of Wolfson for making my time there possible.

  The archives of letters and audiotapes in the Imperial War Museum, London, are an important source about the Kindertransport, England ’s generous acceptance of ten thousand Jewish children from central Europe in the years immediately before the Second World War. As is true of librarians everywhere, those at the Imperial War Museum were extremely helpful-even allowing me into the archives on a day they were closed when I confused an appointment date.

  The Royal Free Hospital, London, gave me access to their archives, allowed me to send Lotty Herschel to school there, and were in general most helpful.

  Dr. Dulcie Reed, Dr. Lettice Bowen, Dr. Peter Scheuer, and Dr. Judith Levy, all of whom trained in medicine in Great Britain around the same time as Lotty Herschel, were generous in giving me time and information about that period in their lives.

  In the case of all archival material, as well as the reminiscences of these four doctors, I have avoided turning people’s real-life experiences into fiction-with the exception of Lotty and her roommates making lingerie out of parachute silk: Dr. Bowen and her friends did this-an amazing feat, as anyone who has ever tried to construct lingerie from scratch will appreciate.

  Professor Colin Divall of the Institute of Railway Studies, York, was helpful with information about train routes and timetables in the 1940’s.

  Because of the constraints of a novel focusing on Chicago, contemporary crime, and V I Warshawski, I was not able to make as deep a use of any of my English research as I would have wished; perhaps it will find a home in a different story on another day.

  In Chicago, Kimball Wright advised me on the guns used in the book. Forensic pathologist Dr. Robert Kirschner was helpful in making accurate the deaths and near deaths of various unfortunate characters; the events described in Chapters 38 and 43 do happen. Sandy Weiss was helpful as always on forensic engineering arcana.

  Jolynn Parker did invaluable research on a number of topics, including finding street maps of Jewish neighborhoods of Vienna in the 1930’s. More important, her astuteness as a reader helped me pick my way through some thorny problems as I developed the story line. Jonathan Paretsky helped with German, Yiddish-and star gazing.

  Special thanks to Kate Jones for her insightful discussion of this novel, both at its end and at its beginnings.

  As always, the first C-dog was there with advice, encouragement-and renewable kneecaps.

  This is a work of fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character in this novel and any real person, living or dead, whether in public office, in corporate boardrooms, on the streets, or in any other walk of life. Similarly, all the institutions involved, including Ajax Insurance, Edelweiss Re, Gargette et Cie, are phantasms of the author’s fevered brain and are not intended to resemble any actual existing body. The issues of slave reparations and Holocaust asset recovery are very real; the positions taken on them by characters in the novel do not necessarily reflect the author’s own, nor should they be taken to reflect the positions taken by people in public life who are debating them.

  Note: Anna Freud’s “An Experiment in Group Upbringing” is in Volume IV of her collected works. The adult lives of the children she describes are explored in Sarah Moskovitz’s Love Despite Hate.

  Lotty Herschel’s Story: Work Ethic

  The cold that winter ate into our bones. You can’t imagine, living where you turn a dial and as much heat as you want glows from the radiator, but everything in England then was fueled by coal and there were terrible shortages the second winter after the war. Like everyone I had little piles of six-penny bits for the electric fire in my room, but even if I’d been able to afford to run it all night it didn’t provide much warmth.

  One of the women in my lodgings got a length of parachute silk from her brother, who’d been in the RAF. We all made camisoles and knickers out of it. We all knew how to knit back then; I unraveled old sweaters to make scarves and vests-new wool cost a fortune.

  We saw newsreels of American ships and planes bringing the Germans whatever they needed. While we swathed ourselves in blankets and sweaters and ate grey bread with butter substitutes, we joked bitterly that we’d done the wrong thing, bringing the Americans in to win the war-they’d treat us better if we’d lost, the same woman who’d gotten the parachute silk said.

  Of course, I had started my medical training, so I couldn’t spend much time wrapped up in bed. Anyway, I was glad to have the hospital to go to-although the wards weren’t warm, either: patients and sisters would huddle around the big stove in the center of the ward, drinking tea and telling stories-we students used to envy their camaraderie. The sisters expected us medical students to behave professionally-frankly, they enjoyed ordering us about. We’d do rounds with two pairs of stockings on, hoping the consultants wouldn’t notice we wore gloves as we trailed after them from bed to bed, listening to symptoms that came from deprivatio
n as much as anything.

  Working sixteen or eighteen hours a day without proper food took a toll on all of us. Many of my fellow students succumbed to tuberculosis and were granted leave-the only reason the hospital would let you interrupt your training and come back, as a matter of fact, even though some took more than a year to recover. The new antibiotics were starting to come in, but they cost the earth and weren’t yet widely available. When my turn came and I went to the Registrar, explaining that a family friend had a cottage in Somerset where I could recuperate, she nodded bleakly: we were already down five in my class, but she signed the forms for me and told me to write monthly. She stressed that she would hope to see me in under a year.

  In fact, I was gone eight months. I’d wanted to return sooner, but Claire-Claire Tallmadge, who was a senior houseman by then, with a consultancy all but certain-persuaded me I wasn’t strong enough, although I was aching to get back.

  When I returned to the Royal Free it felt-oh, so good. The hospital routine, my studies, they were like a balm, healing me. The Registrar actually called me into her office to warn me to slow down; they didn’t want me to suffer a relapse.

  She didn’t understand that work was my only salvation. I suppose it had already become my second skin. It’s a narcotic, the oblivion overwork can bring you. Arbeit macht frei-that was an obscene parody the Nazis thought up, but it is possible Arbeit macht betäubt-what? Oh, sorry, I forgot you don’t speak German. They had 1984-type slogans over the entrance to all their camps, and that was what they put over Auschwitz: work will make you free. That slogan was a bestial parody, but work can numb you. If you stop working even for a moment, everything inside you starts evaporating; soon you are so shapeless you can’t move at all. At least, that was my fear.

  When I first heard about my family, I became utterly without any grounding at all. I was supposed to be preparing for my higher-school certificate-the diploma we took in those days when we finished high school-the results determined your university entrance-but the exams lost the meaning they’d had for me all during the war. Every time I sat down to read I felt as though my insides were being sucked away by a giant vacuum cleaner.

  In a perverse way, cousin Minna came to my rescue. Ever since I arrived on her doorstep she had been unsparing in her criticisms of my mother. The news of my mother’s death brought not even a respectful silence but a greater barrage. I can see now, through the prism of experience, that guilt drove her as much as anything: she had hated my mother, been jealous of her for so many years, she couldn’t admit now that she’d been unfeeling, even cruel. She was probably grief-stricken as well, because her own mother had also perished, all that family that used to spend summers talking and swimming at Kleinsee; well, never mind that. It’s old news now.

  I would come home from walking the streets, walking until I was too exhausted to feel anything, to Minna: you think you’re suffering? That you’re the only person who was ever orphaned, left alone in a strange country? And weren’t you supposed to give Victor his tea? He says he waited for over an hour for you and finally had to make it himself because you’re too much a lady-“die gnädige Frau”-Minna only ever spoke German at home-she had never really mastered English, which made her furious with shame-and she curtsied to me-to get your hands dirty doing work, housework or a real job. You’re just like Lingerl. I wonder how a princess like her lived as long as she did in such a setting, with no one to pamper her. Did she tilt her head and bat her eyes so that the guards or other inmates gave up their bread to her? Madame Butterfly is dead. It’s time you learned what real work is.

  A fury rose up in me greater than any I remember since. I smacked her in the mouth and screamed, if people took care of my mother it’s because she repaid them with love. And if they don’t care for you it’s because you’re utterly loathsome.

  She stared at me for a moment, her mouth slack with shock. She recovered quickly, though, and hit me back so hard she split my lip with her big ring. And then hissed, the only reason I let a mongrel like you accept that scholarship to high school was on the understanding that you would repay my generosity by taking care of Victor. Which I might point out you have failed utterly to do. Instead of giving him tea you’ve been flaunting yourself at the pubs and dance halls just like your mother. Max or Carl or one of those other immigrant boys is likely to give you the same present that Martin, as he liked to call himself, gave Madame Butterfly. Tomorrow morning I’m off to that precious headmistress, that Miss Skeffing you’re so fond of, to tell her you can’t continue your education. It’s time you started pulling your weight around here.

  Blood pouring down my face, I ran pell-mell across London to the youth hostel where my friends lived-you know, Max and Carl and the rest of them: when they turned sixteen the year before they hadn’t been able to stay in their foster homes. I begged them to find me a bed for the night. In the morning, when I knew Minna would be with her great love, the glove factory, I sneaked back for my books and my clothes-it was only two changes of underwear and a second dress. Victor was dozing in the living room, but he didn’t wake up enough to try to stop me.

  Miss Skeffing found a family in North London who gave me a room in exchange for doing their cooking. And I began to study as if my mother’s life could be redeemed by my work. As soon as I finished the supper dishes I would solve chemistry and math problems, sometimes sleeping only four hours until it was time to make the family’s morning tea. And after that, I never stopped working, really.

  That was where the story ended, sitting on a hillside on a dull October day overlooking a desolate landscape, listening to Lotty until she could talk no more. It’s harder for me to figure out where it began.

  Looking back now, now that I’m calm, now that I can think, it’s still hard to say, Oh, it was because of this, or because of that. It was a time when I had a million other things on my mind. Morrell was getting ready to leave for Afghanistan. I was worrying most about that, but of course I was trying to run my business, and juggle the nonprofit work I do, and pay my bills. I suppose my own involvement began with Isaiah Sommers, or maybe the Birnbaum Foundation conference-they happened on the same day.

  I Baby-Sitters’ Club

  They wouldn’t even start the funeral service. The church was full, ladies were crying. My uncle was a deacon and he was a righteous man, he’d been a member of that church for forty-seven years when he passed. My aunt was in a state of total collapse, as you can imagine. And for them to have the nerve to say the policy had already been cashed in. When! That’s what I want to know, Ms. Warashki, when was it ever cashed in, with my uncle paying his five dollars a week for fifteen years like he did, and my aunt never hearing word one of him borrowing against the policy or converting it.”

  Isaiah Sommers was a short, square man who spoke in slow cadences as if he were himself a deacon. It was an effort to keep from drowsing off during the pauses in his delivery. We were in the living room of his South Side bungalow, at a few minutes after six on a day that had stretched on far too long already.

  I’d been in my office at 8:30, starting a round of the routine searches that make up the bulk of my business, when Lotty Herschel called with an SOS. “You know Max’s son brought Calia and Agnes with him from London, don’t you? Agnes suddenly has a chance to show her slides at a Huron Street gallery, but she needs a minder for Calia.”

  “I’m not a baby-sitter, Lotty,” I’d said impatiently; Calia was Max Loewenthal’s five-year-old granddaughter.

  Lotty swept imperiously past that protest. “Max called me when they couldn’t find anyone-it’s his housekeeper’s day off. He’s going to that conference at the Hotel Pleiades, although I’ve told him many times that all he’s doing is exposing-but that’s neither here nor there. At any rate, he’s on a panel at ten-otherwise he’d stay home himself. I tried Mrs. Coltrain at my clinic, but everyone’s tied up. Michael is rehearsing all afternoon with the symphony and this could be an important chance for Agnes. Vic-I realize it’s
an imposition, but it would be only for a few hours.”

  “Why not Carl Tisov?” I asked. “Isn’t he staying at Max’s, too?”

  “Carl as a baby-sitter? Once he picks up his clarinet the roof of the house can blow off without his noticing. I saw it happen once, during the V-1 raids. Can you tell me yes or no? I’m in the middle of surgical rounds, and I have a full schedule at the clinic.” Lotty is the chief perinatologist at Beth Israel.

  I tried a few of my own connections, including my part-time assistant who has three foster children, but no one could help out. I finally agreed with a surly lack of grace. “I have a client meeting at six on the far South Side, so someone had better be able to step in before five.”

  When I drove up to Max’s Evanston home to collect Calia, Agnes Loewenthal was breathlessly grateful. “I can’t even find my slides. Calia was playing with them and stuck them in Michael’s cello, which got him terribly cross, and now the wretched beast can’t imagine where he’s flung them.”

  Michael appeared in a T-shirt with his cello bow in one hand. “Darling, I’m sorry, but they have to be in the drawing room-that’s where I was practicing. Vic, I can’t thank you enough-can we take you and Morrell to dinner after our Sunday afternoon concert?”

  “We can’t do that, Michael!” Agnes snapped. “That’s Max’s dinner party for Carl and you.”

  Michael played cello with the Cellini Chamber Ensemble, the London group started back in the forties by Max and Lotty’s friend Carl Tisov. The Cellini was in Chicago to kick off their biannual international tour. Michael was also scheduled to play some concerts with the Chicago Symphony.