“She’s not a fraud, Vic,” Beth said sharply.
“I know she’s not. She’s not a fraud and she’s not a con artist. But she believes in herself so intensely that—I don’t know, I can’t explain it,” I finished helplessly, struggling to articulate why her look of ecstasy when she discussed Paul Radbuka had unnerved me so much. “I agree—it doesn’t seem possible that someone as experienced as Wiell could be conned. But—well, I guess I won’t have an opinion until I meet Radbuka,” I finished lamely.
“When you do, you’ll really believe in him,” Beth promised.
She left a minute later to edit my remarks for the ten o’clock news. Murray tried to talk me into a drink. “You know, Warshawski, we work together so well, it’d be a shame not to get back in the habit.”
“Oh, Murray, you sweet-talker, you, I can see how badly you need your own private angle on this stuff. I can’t stay tonight—it’s vital that I get to Lotty Herschel’s place in the next half hour.”
He followed me down the hall to the security station while I handed in my pass. “What’s the real story for you here, Warshawski? Radbuka and Wiell? Or Durham and the Sommers family?”
I frowned up at him. “They both are. That’s the problem. I can’t quite focus on either of them.”
“Durham is about the slickest politico in town these days next to the mayor. Be careful how you tangle with him. Say hey to the doc for me, okay?” He squeezed my shoulder affectionately and turned back up the hall.
I’ve known Lotty Herschel since I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. I was a blue-collar girl on an upscale campus, feeling rawly out of place, when I met her—she was providing medical advice to an abortion underground where I volunteered. She took me under her wing, giving me the kind of social skills I’d lost when I lost my mother, keeping me from losing my way in those days of drugs and violent protest, taking time from a dense-packed schedule to cheer my successes and condole over failures. She’d even gone to some college basketball games to see me play—true friendship, since sports of all kind bore her. But it was my athletic scholarship that made my education possible, so she supported my doing my best at it. If she was collapsing now, if something terrible was wrong with her—I couldn’t even finish the thought, it was so frightening to me.
She’d recently moved to a high-rise on the lakefront, to one of the beautiful old buildings where you can watch the sun rise with nothing between you and water but Lake Shore Drive and a strip of park. She used to live in a two-flat a short walk from her storefront clinic, but her one concession to aging was to give up on being a landlady in a neighborhood full of drug-dealing housebreakers. Max and I had both been relieved to see her in a building with an indoor garage.
When I left my car with her doorman, it was only eight o’clock. The day seemed to have been spinning on so long I was sure we must have come round the other side of dark to begin a new one.
Lotty was waiting in the hall for me when I got off the elevator, making a valiant effort at composure. Even though I held the envelope of stills and video out to her, she didn’t snatch it from me but invited me in to her living room, offering me a drink. When I said I only wanted water, she still ignored the envelope, trying to make a joke that I must be ill if I wanted water instead of whisky. I smiled, but the deep circles under her dark eyes disturbed me. I didn’t comment on her appearance, just asking as she turned to go to the kitchen if she would bring me a piece of fruit or cheese.
She seemed to really look at me for the first time. “You haven’t eaten? I can see from the lines on your face that you’re exhausted. Stay in here; I’ll fix you something.”
This was more like her usual brisk manner. I was slightly reassured, slumping against her couch and dozing until she returned with a tray. Cold chicken, carrot sticks, a small salad, and slices of the thick bread a Ukrainian nurse at the hospital bakes for her. I tried not to spring on the food as if I were one of my own dogs.
While I ate, Lotty watched me, as if keeping her eyes from the envelope by an act of will. She kept up a flow of random chatter—had I decided to go away with Morrell for the weekend, would we make it back for Sunday afternoon’s concert, Max was expecting forty or fifty people at his house for dinner afterward, but he—and especially Calia—would miss me if I didn’t come.
I finally interrupted the flow. “Lotty, are you afraid to look at the pictures because of what you will see or because of what you may not see?”