“This looks like the same paper stock and the same handwriting I found on a sheet of paper in the bag of a dead insurance agent on the South Side, which is why I’m assuming these are insurance documents. The old agent was named Rick Hoffman, and I’m betting he’s Paul’s father—stepfather or whatever. Would Rick be a nickname for Ulrich?”
“It could be.” Max smiled wryly. “If he wanted to fit into America, he would have picked a name everyone could pronounce instead of something alien like Ulrich.”
“If he sold insurance, he would have felt a special incentive to fit in,” I said.
“Ah, yes, I do believe this is an insurance journal.” Carl turned to a page that was filled with names and dates with check marks, like the fragment in Fepple’s office. “Didn’t your family buy insurance like this, Loewenthal? The agent came into the ghetto every Friday on his bicycle; my father and all the other men would pay their twenty or thirty korunas and the agent marked them off in his book. You don’t remember such a thing? Oh, well, you and Lotty came from the haute bourgeoisie. These weekly payments, they were for people on small incomes. My father found the whole process humiliating, that he couldn’t afford to go to an office, pay his money up front, like an important man—he used to send me down with the coins tightly wrapped in a twist of newspaper.” He started looking through the pages of tiny ornate writing.
“My father bought his policy through an Italian company. In 1959 it occurred to me that I should claim that life insurance. Not that it was so much money, but why should the company get to keep it? I went through a long rigmarole. But they were adamant that without the death certificate, and without the policy number, they would do nothing for me.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “I hired someone—I was in a position to hire someone—who went back through the company’s records and found the policy number for me, but even so, they never would pay it because I couldn’t present the death certificate. They are incredible thieves, in their glass skyscrapers with their black ties and tails. I make it an absolute policy that the Cellini accepts no money from any insurance companies. The management is livid over it, but I think: it could be my father’s coins wrapped in a scrap of newspaper that they’re using to buy their way onto artistic boards. They won’t sit on mine.”
Max nodded in sympathy; Lotty murmured, “All money has someone’s blood on it, I suppose.”
“Do you think these numbers are insurance sales, then?” I asked, after a respectful pause. “And the crosses, that means the person died? He put a check against those he could confirm, perhaps.” In my bag on the floor my cell phone started to ring. It was Rhonda Fepple, speaking in the drugged, half-dead voice of the newly bereaved. Had there been an arrest? The police didn’t tell her anything.
I took the phone out to the kitchen with me and told her the progress of the investigation, if such it could be called, before asking her if Rick Hoffman had been German.
“German?” she repeated, as if I had asked if he were from Pluto. “I don’t remember. I guess he was foreign, now that you mention it—I remember Mr. Fepple swearing out some legal forms for him when Mr. Hoffman wanted to become a citizen.”
“And his son, was his name Paul?”
“Paul? I think so. That could be right, Paul Hoffman. Yes, that’s right. What? Did Paul come around and kill my boy? Was he jealous because Howie inherited the agency?”
Could Paul Hoffman-Radbuka be a murderer? He was such a confused person, but—murderer? Still, maybe he had thought Howard Fepple was part of some Einsatzgruppen conspiracy—if he knew Fepple had one of Ulrich’s old ledger books, he might be crazy enough to think he had to destroy Fepple. It seemed absurd, but everything involving Paul Radbuka-Hoffman defied reason.
“Wouldn’t your son have mentioned it, if he’d seen Paul Hoffman recently?”
“He might not have, if he had some secret plan in mind,” Rhonda said listlessly. “He liked to keep secrets to himself; they made him feel important.”
That seemed too sad an epitaph. More to brace myself than her, I asked if she had anyone to talk to, to help her through this time—a sister or a minister, perhaps.
“Everything seems so unreal since Howie died, I can’t make myself feel anything. Even getting the house broken into didn’t upset me like you’d think it would.”
“When did that happen?” Her tone was as apathetic as if she were reciting a grocery list, but the information jolted me.
“I think it was the day after—after they found him. Yes, because it wasn’t yesterday. What day would that be?”
“Tuesday. Did they take anything?”
“There’s nothing here to take, really, but they stole my boy’s computer. I guess gangs from the city come out here looking for things to steal to sell for drugs. The police didn’t do anything. Not that I care, really. None of it matters now—I wasn’t ever going to use a home computer, that’s for sure.”
XLII