Walrus Duty
At eight-thirty in the morning, traffic into the city was at a standstill. After last night, I couldn’t face another horrible commute. Don wasn’t coming back to Morrell’s until later this afternoon—I could rest there for a bit. Avoiding the expressways altogether, I entered the alternative morning rush hour—kids going to school, people arriving for jobs at the little shops and delis that dot the area. They accentuated my sense of instability: Morrell gone, a hole in the middle of my life. Why didn’t I live in one of those tidy white-sided houses, with children heading off for school while I went to some orderly job?
As I sat at the light at Golf Road I phoned in for my messages. Nick Vishnikov wanted me to call him. Tim Streeter had said he would be happy to provide some security for Calia and Agnes until they left on Saturday.
In my personal turmoil over Morrell’s departure, I’d forgotten Radbuka’s odd behavior. I stopped dawdling along with my maudlin thoughts and drove over to Max’s as fast as I could. By this time of day, he’s usually already in meetings, but when I reached his house, his LeSabre was still in the driveway. His face was heavy with worry when he answered the door.
“Victoria. Come in. Has Morrell left?” Before shutting the door he peered anxiously across the street, but only a lone jogger was visible, a silhouette moving along the lakeshore.
“I just dropped him at the airport. Did Agnes tell you I can arrange a little security for you?”
“That would be a help. If I had known what a chamber of horrors I’d open by participating in that Birnbaum conference, putting Calia at risk—”
“At risk?” I interrupted. “Has Radbuka been back? Did he make an overt threat against her?”
“No, nothing that concrete. But his obsession with being related to me—I can’t understand it. This hovering around here—”
I interrupted to ask again if Radbuka had been back.
“I don’t think so, but of course this house is so exposed, with a public park across the street— You think I’m blowing my worries out of proportion? Maybe so, maybe so, but I’m not young, and Calia is precious. Still, if you can arrange for someone reliable to be here—and of course I will pay the fee.”
Max took me back to the kitchen to use the phone. Agnes was sitting there, drinking coffee, anxiously watching Calia, who was alternating spoonfuls of cornflakes with pleas to go to the zoo.
“No, darling. We’re going to stay inside and paint pictures today,” Agnes repeated.
I took a cup of coffee to the phone with me. Tom Streeter promised to have his brother Tim at Max’s within the hour.
“With Tim on the case, you can be pretty secure going anywhere you want,” I told Agnes.
“Is he the big bad wolf?” Calia demanded.
“No, he’s a big good teddy bear,” I said. “You’ll see: you and your mama will both find him irresistible.”
Max sat next to Calia, trying not to let his anxiety shine through as obviously as Agnes’s. When I asked him what he could tell me about the Radbuka family he’d known in London, he got up again, taking me away from the eating alcove. He kept turning to look at Calia while he spoke.
“I didn’t know them. Lotty has always claimed they were an acquaintance merely, and I have acquiesced in that.”
Calia climbed down from the table, announcing she was through with breakfast, she was tired of the house, she was going outside now.
“When your grandpapa and I are through talking we’ll go across to the park with the dogs,” I said. “You hold tight for ten more minutes.” I mouthed “television” at Agnes, who made a sour face but took Calia upstairs to the universal baby-sitter.
“You think the Radbukas were relations or close friends of Lotty’s?” I said to Max.
“It’s what I said Sunday night. Lotty always made it clear that one didn’t discuss the Radbukas with her. I assume that’s why she gave me the information about them in writing, to preclude any discussion. I don’t know who they were.”
He moved Calia’s dishes to the sink and sat back down at the table. “Yesterday I went through such files as I have from that trip I made to central Europe after the war. I was looking for so many people that nothing stands out very clearly in my mind. Lotty had given me her grandparents’ address on the Renngasse—that was where she lived before the Anschluss—a very tony address which had been taken over in ’38 by people who wouldn’t talk to me. I concentrated most of my energy in Vienna on my own family, and then I wanted to get to Budapest to look for Teresz’s people. We weren’t married then, of course, we were still very young.”