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

She was on the premises, editing a segment for the evening news. She ran
out to the lobby in the sloppy jeans she can’t wear on-air, greeting me like a
long-lost friend—or, anyway, a valuable source.
    “I was riveted by your interview yesterday with that
guy Radbuka,” I said. “How’d you find him?”
    “Warshawski!” Her expressive face came alive with
excitement. “Don’t tell me he’s been murdered. I’m getting to a live mike.”
    “Calm down, my little newshound. As far as I know he’s
still on the planet. What can you tell me about him?”
    “You’ve found out who the mysterious Miriam is, then.”
    I took her by the shoulders. “Blacksin, calm down—if
you’re able. I’m purely on a fishing expedition right now. Do you have an
address you’d be willing to give out? For him, or for the therapist?”
    She took me with her past the security station to a
warren of cubicles where the news staff had desks. She went through a stack of
papers next to her computer and found the standard waiver sheet people sign
when they give interviews. Radbuka had listed a suite number at an address on
North Michigan, which I copied down. His signature was large and untidy, kind
of the way he’d looked in his too-big suit. Rhea Wiell, by contrast, wrote in a
square, almost printlike hand. I copied out the spelling of her name. And then
noticed that Radbuka’s address was the same as hers. Her office at Water Tower.
    “Could you get me a copy of the tape? Your interview, and
the discussion between the therapist and the guy from the antihypnosis place?
That was good work, pulling them together at the last minute.”
    She grinned. “My agent’s happy—my contract’s coming up
in six weeks. Praeger has a real bee in his bonnet about Wiell. They’ve been
adversaries on a bunch of cases, not just in Chicago but all around the
country. He thinks she’s the devil incarnate and she thinks he’s the next thing
to a child molester himself. They’ve both had media training—they looked
civilized on camera, but you should have heard them when the camera wasn’t
rolling.”
    “What did you think of Radbuka?” I asked. “Up close
and personal, did you believe his story?”
    “Do you have proof he’s a fraud? Is that what this is
really about?”
    I groaned. “I don’t know anything about him. Zippo.
Niente. Nada. I can’t say it in any more languages. What was your take on him?”
    Her eyes opened wide. “Oh, Vic, I believed him
completely. It was one of the most harrowing interviews I’ve ever done—and I
talked to people after Lockerbie. Can you imagine growing up the way he did and
then finding the man who claimed to be your father was like your worst enemy?”
    “What was his father—foster father’s name?”
    She scrolled through the text on her screen. “Ulrich.
Whenever Paul referred to him, he always used the man’s German name, instead of
‘Daddy’ or ‘Father’ or something.”
    “Do you know what he found in Ulrich’s papers that
made him realize his lost identity? In the interview he said they were in
code.”
    She shook her head, still looking at the screen. “He
talked about working it through with Rhea and getting the correct
interpretation. He said they proved to him that Ulrich had really been a Nazi
collaborator. He talked a lot about how brutal Ulrich had been to him, beating
him for acting like a sissy, locking him in a closet when he was away at work,
sending him to bed without food.”
    “There wasn’t a woman on the scene? Or was she a
participant in the abuse?” I asked.
    “Paul says Ulrich told him that his mother—or Mrs.
Ulrich, anyway—had died in the bombing of Vienna as the war was ending. I don’t
think Mr. Ulrich ever married here, or even had women to the house. Ulrich and
Paul seemed to have been a real pair of loners. Papa went to work, came home,
beat Paul. Paul was supposed to be a doctor, but he couldn’t handle pressure,
so he ended up as an X-ray