“Who was even more electrified by my questions than young Joiner. I couldn’t help wondering if he had a personal agenda of his own. Some transactions of his youth that weigh on his old-age conscience.”
Humboldt held his snifter so that he could look through it toward the fire. “How people rush to protect you when you are old and they want you to know they care about your interests.” He spoke to the glass. “And what problems they needlessly cause. It’s a constant issue with my daughter, one of nature’s worriers.”
He turned back to me. “We had a problem with these men, with Pankowski and Ferraro. Enough of a problem that I even know their names, you see, out of fifty-some thousand employees worldwide. They engaged in an attempted sabotage of the plant. Of the product, actually. Changing the balance in the mixture so that we had highly unstable vapor and a residue that stopped up the flow pipes. We had to shut the plant down three times in 1979 to clean everything. It took a year of investigation to find out who lay behind it. They and two other men were fired, and they then sued us for wrongful dismissal. The whole thing was a nightmare. A terrible nightmare.”
He grimaced and drained his glass. “So when you came around my people naturally assumed you were egged on by some unscrupulous lawyer trying to open these old wounds. But I knew from my friend Gordon Firth that that could not be so. So I have taken a risk. Invited you here. Explained the whole story to you. And I hope I am right, that you are not going to run back to some lawyer saying I tried to suborn you or whatever the expression is.”
“Suborn will do admirably,” I said, finishing my own glass and shaking my head at the proffered decanter. “And I can safely assure you that my inquiries have nothing to do with any suit these men might have been involved in. It is a purely personal matter.”
“Well, if it involves Xerxes employees, I can see that you get whatever assistance you need.”
I don’t like revealing my clients’ business. Especially not to strangers. But in the end I decided to tell him—it was the easiest way to get help. Not the whole story, of course. Not Gabriella and the baby-sitting and Caroline’s insistent manipulativeness and the angry Djiaks. But Louisa dying and Caroline wanting to find out who her father was and Louisa not wanting to tell.
“I’m European and old-fashioned,” he said when I finished. “I don’t like the girl not wanting to respect her mother’s wishes. But if you are committed, you are committed. And you think she might have said something to Chigwell because he was the plant doctor? I’ll call and ask him. He probably won’t want to talk to you himself But my secretary will phone you in a few days with the information.”
That was a dismissal. I slid forward to the edge of the chair so that I could stand without bracing my arms on the sides and was pleased to find that I moved smoothly, without the brandy affecting me. If I could make it out the front door without bumping into a priceless art object, I could easily handle the drive home.
I thanked Humboldt for the brandy and his help. He turned it aside with another chuckle.
“It’s a pleasure for me, Ms. Warshawski, to talk to an attractive young woman, and one who is brave enough to stand her ground with an old lion. You must come again when you are in the neighborhood.”
Anton was hovering outside the library to escort me to the door.
“I’m sorry,” I said when we reached the entryway. “I promised not to tell.”
He stiffly pretended not to hear me and summoned the elevator with frigid aloofness. I wasn’t sure what to do about the doorman and my car, but when I tentatively displayed a five-dollar bill he caused it to vanish while tenderly helping me into the Chevy.
I devoted the drive home to thinking of reasons why I was better off as a PI than a billionaire chemist. The list was much shorter than the drive.
10
Fire When Ready
I was drowning in a sea of thick gray Xerxine. I was choking while Gustav Humboldt and Caroline stood talking earnestly on the shore, ignoring my cries for help. I woke up at four-thirty, sweaty and panting, too roused by the dream to go back to sleep.
I finally got out of bed when it started to get light. It wasn’t cold in the bedroom, but I was shivering. I pulled a sweatshirt from the pile next to my bed and wandered around the apartment, trying to find something to turn my mind to. I picked out a scale on the piano, but stopped after one: it would be unfair to the neighbors to work on my rusty voice at this hour of the morning. I moved to the kitchen to make coffee, but lost interest after washing out the pot.
My four rooms normally seem open and spacious to me, but now they were making me feel cramped. The jumble of books, papers, and clothes, which usually looks homelike, began to appear shameful and squalid.