Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 by Total Recall Read Free Book Online Page A

stared at the house, as if the windows would lead me
to the secret thoughts of the men inside. What had the man on television last
night meant to Max and Carl? They had at least recognized the name, I was pretty
sure of that. Had one of their London friends been part of the Radbuka family?
But Max had made it clear last night that he wasn’t ready to talk about that. I
shouldn’t try to trespass. I shook out my legs and finished my run.
    Morrell had a semi-commercial espresso machine. Back
in his apartment, I made cappuccinos for Don and myself before showering. While
I dressed, I checked my own messages. Ralph had called from Ajax and would be
delighted to squeeze me in at a quarter of twelve. I put on the rose silk
sweater and sage skirt I’d worn yesterday. It gets complicated spending part of
my life at Morrell’s—the clothes I want are always in my own apartment when I’m
with him, or in his place when I’m home.
    Don had moved to the kitchen eating island with the Herald-Star when I came in. “If they took you for a ride on a Russian mountain in Paris,
where would you be?”
    “Russian mountain?” I mixed yogurt and granola with
orange slices. “Is this helping you get ready to ask searching comments of
Posner and Durham?”
    He grinned. “I’m sharpening my wits. If you were going
to do some fast checking on the therapist who was on television last night,
where would you start?”
    I leaned against the counter while I ate. “I’d search
the accreditation databases for therapists to see if she was licensed and what
her training was. I’d go to ProQuest—she and the guy from the memory foundation
have been mixing it up—there might be some articles about her.”
    Don scribbled a note on the corner of the
crossword-puzzle clues. “How long would it take you to do it for me? And how
much would you charge?”
    “Depends on how deep you wanted to go. The basics I
could do pretty fast, but I charge a hundred dollars an hour with a five-hour
initial minimum. How generous is Gargette’s expenses policy?”
    He tossed the pencil aside. “They have four hundred
cost accountants in their head office at Rheims just to make sure editors like
me don’t eat more than a Big Mac on the road, so they’re not too likely to
spring for a private investigator. Still, this could be a really big book. If
she is who she says she is—if the guy is who he says he is. Could you do some
checking for me on spec?”
    I was about to agree when I thought of Isaiah Sommers,
carefully counting out his twenties. I shook my head unhappily. “I can’t make
exceptions for friends. It makes it hard for me to charge strangers.”
    He pulled out a cigarette and tapped it on the paper.
“Okay. Can you do some checking and trust me for the money?”
    I grimaced. “Yeah. I guess. I’ll bring a contract back
with me tonight.”
    He returned to the porch. I finished my breakfast and
ran water over the bowl—Morrell would have a fit if he came home to find
case-hardened yogurt on it—then followed Don out the back door: my car was
parked in the alley behind the building. Don was reading the news but looked up
to say good-bye. On my way down the back stairs the word came to me from
nowhere. “Roller coaster. If it’s the same in French as Italian, a Russian
mountain is a roller coaster.”
    “You’ve already earned your fee.” He picked up his
pencil and turned back to the crossword page.
    Before going to my office, I swung by Global
Entertainment’s studios on Huron Street. When the company moved into town a
year ago, they bought a skyscraper in the hot corridor just northwest of the
river. Their Midwest regional offices, where they control everything from a
hundred seventy newspapers to a big chunk of the broadband DSL business, are on
the upper levels, with their studios on the ground floor.
    Global executives are not my biggest fans in Chicago,
but I’ve worked with Beth Blacksin since before the company took over Channel
13.