He had never betrayed such a confidence in the past. “Off the record, I don’t know what it means, but Posner and Durham both had private audiences with Bertrand Rossy, the managing director of Edelweiss Re, who’s in Chicago overseeing their takeover of Ajax. I was wondering if Rossy had offered Posner something to get him to stop protesting at Ajax and move on to Beth Israel, but I didn’t get anywhere with asking Posner. He might talk to you—women scare him.”
“Maybe it’s just you, V I—you scare me and I’m twice Posner’s size. Durham, though—no one’s ever pinned anything on him, even though the mayor has the cops sticking to him like his underwear. Guy’s one smooth operator. But if I learn something splendid about either of them I promise I’ll share.”
I felt a little better when I’d hung up: it was good to have some kind of ally. I took the L downtown to meet with clients who actually were paying me to do sophisticated work on their behalf and got back to my office a little before two. The phone was ringing as I unlocked the door. I got to it just as the answering service did. It was Tim Streeter; in the background I could hear Calia howling.
“Tim—what’s going on?”
“We have a small situation here, Vic. I’ve been trying to call you for the last few hours, but you didn’t have your phone on. Our pal was back this morning. I have to admit, my guard was down; I assumed he was concentrating on Posner these days. Anyway, you know he goes everywhere by bicycle? Calia and I were in the park on the swings, when he came roaring across the grass on his bike. He grabbed at Calia. Of course I had her in my arms before he touched her, but he got that Nibusher, you know, that little blue dog she takes everywhere.”
Behind him I could hear Calia scream, “Not Nibusher, he’s Ninshubur the faithful hound. He misses me, he needs me right now, I want him now, Tim!”
“Oh, hell,” I said. “Max needs to get a restraining order on this guy—he’s like a disintegrating Roman candle these days. And that damned therapist is zero help—not to mention Strzepek. I should have been following Paul, made sure I got his home address. Will you call your brother and tell him I want him ready to tail Radbuka home from Posner’s office or Rhea Wiell’s, or wherever he next pops up?”
“Will do. I couldn’t follow him out of the park, of course, because I needed to stay with the kid. This is not a good situation.”
“Max and Agnes know? Okay, let me talk to Calia for a minute.”
At first Calia refused to talk to “Aunt Vicory.” She was tired, she was scared, and she was reacting the way kids do, digging her heels in, but when Tim said I had a message about Nebbisher she reluctantly came to the phone.
“Tim is very naughty. He let the bad man take Ninshubur and now he says his name wrong.”
“Tim feels bad that he didn’t look after Ninshubur for you, sugar. But before you go to bed tonight, I’ll try to have your doggy back to you. I’m leaving my office right now to start looking, okay?”
“Okay, Aunt Vicory,” she said in a resigned voice.
When Tim came back on the line, he thanked me for drying up the tears—he’d been starting to feel desperate. He’d reached Agnes at her gallery appointment; she was on her way home, but he’d rather protect the Israeli prime minister in Syria than look after another five-year-old.
I drummed my fingers on the desktop. I called Rhea Wiell, who was fortunately between appointments. When I explained the situation and said it would be really helpful if we could get the dog back today, she said she would bring it up with Paul when she saw him Friday morning.
“Of course, Vic, all he wants it for is as a talisman of the family that he sees as denying his ties to them. In the early days of his treatment with me, he would take little things from my office, thinking I didn’t see him doing it: cups from the waiting room, or one of my scarves. As he became stronger, he stopped doing that.”
“You know him better than I do, Rhea, but poor Calia is only five. I think her needs come first here. Could you call him now and urge him to return it? Or let me have his phone number so I can call him?”
“I hope you’re not making up this whole episode in an effort to try to get his home number from me, Vic. Under the circumstances, I doubt you, of all people, could persuade him to see you. He has an appointment with me in the morning; I’ll talk to him about it then. I know Don is convinced that Max Loewenthal is not related to Paul, but Max certainly holds the key to Paul’s door to his European relatives. If you could get Max to agree to see him—”
“Max offered to see him when Paul crashed the party on Sunday. He doesn’t want to see Max—he wants Max to embrace him as a family member. If you could get Paul to let us look at his family papers—”
“No,” she said sharply. “I thought as soon as you called that you’d come up with some other way of trying to wheedle me into letting you see those, and I was right. I will not violate Paul’s privacy. He endured too many violations as a child for me to do that to him.”
She hung up on me. Why couldn’t she see her prize exhibit belonged in the locked ward at Menard? Or on heavy doses of antipsychotics.