Blacksin had been hovering behind the cops with the ubiquitous camera crews at the clinic. I’d answered as many questions then as I could so I wouldn’t have to face them later. I told them about the Rossys, about the Holocaust claims and Ulrich’s notebooks.
I didn’t know what Don was planning to do with his book, but I didn’t feel any special desire to protect him. I told the cameras about Paul Hoffman, about the Anna Freud material, about Paul’s chamber of secrets. When Beth’s eyes lit up at the thought of getting that scene on tape, I remembered Lotty’s fury at the way in which books and movies titillate us over the horrors of the past. Don, wanting to put it all in a book for Envision Press. Beth, knowing her contract was coming due, seeing her show’s ratings zoom if she filmed Paul’s private horrors. I told Murray I’d walked out on them mid-sentence.
“I don’t blame you. Getting the news doesn’t mean we have to carry on like jackals at suppertime.”
He opened the car door for me—an unusual act of gallantry. “Let’s go downtown to the Glow, V I. You and I have a lot of catching up to do—on life, not just life insurance.”
I shook my head. “I need to go up to Evanston to see Max Loewenthal. I’ll take a rain check, though.”
Murray leaned down and kissed me full on the lips, then quickly closed my car door. In my rearview mirror I watched him standing there, watching me, until my car had turned down the exit ramp.
LII
The Face in the Picture
Beth Israel was near enough to the expressway that I took it up to Evanston. It was past ten now, but Max had wanted to talk things over. He was feeling deeply lonely tonight, since Calia and Agnes had left for London and Michael and Carl had flown west to rejoin the Cellini in San Francisco.
Max fed me cold roast chicken and a glass of St. Emilion, something warm and red for comfort. I told him what I knew, what I was guessing, what I thought the fallout would be. He was more philosophical than I about Alderman Durham, but he was disappointed that Posner hadn’t been implicated in any of the scandal.
“You’re sure he wasn’t playing a role somehow? Something that you could expose that would force him away from the hospital?”
“He’s just a fanatic,” I said, accepting another glass of wine. “Although they’re actually more dangerous than people like Durham, who are playing the game—well, as a game—for power or position or money. But if we catch up with Lotty and find those books of Ulrich’s, then we can publicize those life-insurance policies that Edelweiss or Nesthorn sold during the thirties. We can force the Illinois legislature to revisit the Holocaust Asset Recovery Act. And Posner and his Maccabees will go back downtown to Ajax or the State of Illinois building, which will get him out of your hair.”
“Lotty and the notebooks,” Max repeated, turning his wineglass round and round in his hands. “Victoria, while Calia was here and I was concerned about her safety, I wasn’t worrying so intensely about Lotty. Also, I see now, now that he’s gone back to the tour, I was protecting myself from Carl’s scorn. Lotty’s high flair for drama, he keeps calling her recent behavior. The way she disappeared on Thursday—Carl says it’s the same thing she did all those years ago in London. Turning her back, walking away without a word. It’s what she did to him, you know, and he says I am a fool if I think that isn’t what she’s doing to me. She leaves, she says nothing for weeks or months, and then perhaps she returns, or perhaps not, but there’s never an explanation.”
“And you think?” I prodded, when he was quiet.
“I think she’s disappeared now for the same reason she disappeared then, whatever that was,” he burst out. “If I was twenty, as Carl was then, I might be as hurt in my own sense of self and less worried about her: one’s passions run higher at twenty. But I am very worried about her. I want to know where she is. I called her brother Hugo in Montreal, but they’ve never been close; he hasn’t heard from her in months and has no idea what’s going through her head, or where she might have run to. Victoria, I know you are worn, I see it in the fine lines around your mouth and eyes. But can you do anything to find her?”