Another small casualty, much less important, was the romance which just might have developed between Joseph Archer and Jemima Shore. Now, in his steamingly hot office with its perpetually moving fan, they talked of quite other things than the new moon and new wishes.
“You must be happy you’ll get your museum,” said Jemima.
“But that’s not at all the way I wanted it to happen,” he replied.
Then Joseph added: “But you know, Jemima, there has been justice done. And in her heart of hearts Miss Izzy did really want us to have this National Museum. I’d have talked her round to good sense again if she had lived.”
“That’s why they acted when they did. They didn’t dare wait given Miss Izzy’s respect for you,” suggested Jemima. She stopped but her curiosity got the better of her. There was one thing she had to know before she left. “The Archer Tomb and all that. Tina being descended from Sir Valentine’s lawful second marriage. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true. Maybe. But it’s not important to most of us here.
You know something, Jemima? I, too, am descended from that well-known second marriage. Maybe. And a few others maybe. Lucie Anne had two children, don’t forget, and Bo’landers have large families. It was important to Tina Archer, not to me. That’s not what I want. That’s all past. Miss Izzy was the last of the Archers, so far as I’m concerned. Let her lie in her tomb.”
“What do you want for yourself? Or for Bow Island, if you prefer.”
Joseph smiled and there was a glimmer there of the handsome fisherman who had welcomed her to Bow Island, the cheerful dancing partner. “Come back to Bow Island one day, Jemima. Make another program about us, our history and all that, and I’ll tell you then.”
“I might just do that,” said Jemima Shore.
The Case of the Pietro Andromache
SARA PARETSKY
Sara Paretsky (b. 1947) was born in Ames, Iowa, and educated at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and the University of Chicago, where she attained a Ph.D. in history. After working as a business writer and direct-mail marketing manager for an insurance company, she turned to fiction writing with Indemnity Only, which introduced Chicago private detective V. I. Warshawski, one of two renowned female p.i.’s to debut in the watershed year of 1982. As fictional sleuths go, Warshawski is a specialist. Paretsky writes in St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers (4th edition, 1996), “Like Lew Archer before her she looks beyond the surface to ‘the far side of the dollar,’ the side where power and money corrupt people into making criminal decisions to preserve their positions. All of her cases explore some aspect of white-collar crime where senior executives preserve position or bolster their companies without regard for the ordinary people who work for them.” These guidelines provide scope for plenty of variety of background from medicine to politics to religion to law enforcement.
Along with producing her own fiction, Paretsky has done much to advance the cause of women crime writers generally, editing anthologies of their work and founding the highly successful Sisters in Crime.
Paretsky’s name is invariably bracketed with that of Sue Grafton, who also introduced her female private eye Kinsey Millhone in 1982.
The two writers are about equally capable, though V. I. Warshawski is a bit harder-edged and certainly more overtly political in her point of view than Millhone. One result of the continual comparison, Paretsky admits in a recent interview in Crime Time magazine, is that she is no longer able to read Grafton, whom she previously enjoyed, for fear of being unconsciously influenced.
Like many of the female private eyes, V. I. Warshawski has an extended family of friends that recur from book to book. Two of them, Lotty Herschel and Max Loewenthal, appear in “The Case of the Pietro Andromache,” a story that has achieved the status of a modern classic judging by the number of times it has been antholo-gized.
You only agreed to hire him because of his art collection. Of that I’m sure.” Lotty Herschel bent down to adjust her stockings.
“And don’t waggle your eyebrows like that — it makes you look like an adolescent Groucho Marx.”
Max Loewenthal obediently smoothed his eyebrows, but said,
“It’s your legs, Lotty; they remind me of my youth. You know, going into the Underground to wait out the air raids, looking at the ladies as they came down the escalators. The updraft always made their skirts billow.”
“You’re making this up, Max. I was in those Underground stations, too, and as I remember the ladies were always bundled in coats and children.”
Max moved from the doorway to put an arm around Lotty. “That’s what keeps us together, Lottchen: I am a romantic and you are severely logical. And you know we didn’t hire Caudwell because of his collection. Although I admit I am eager to see it. The board wants Beth Israel to develop a transplant program. It’s the only way we’re going to become competitive—”
“Don’t deliver your publicity lecture to me,” Lotty snapped. Her thick brows contracted to a solid black line across her forehead. “As far as I am concerned he is a cretin with the hands of a Caliban and the personality of Attila.”
Lotty’s intense commitment to medicine left no room for the mundane consideration of money. But as the hospital’s executive director, Max was on the spot with the trustees to see that Beth Israel ran at a profit. Or at least at a smaller loss than they’d achieved in recent years. They’d brought Caudwell in part to attract more paying patients — and to help screen out some of the indigent who made up 12 percent of Beth Israel’s patient load.
Max wondered how long the hospital could afford to support personalities as divergent as Lotty and Caudwell with their radically differing approaches to medicine.
He dropped his arm and smiled quizzically at her. “Why do you hate him so much, Lotty?”
“I am the person who has to justify the patients I admit to this — this troglodyte. Do you realize he tried to keep Mrs. Mendes from the operating room when he learned she had AIDS? He wasn’t even being asked to sully his hands with her blood and he didn’t want me performing surgery on her.”
Lotty drew back from Max and pointed an accusing finger at him.
“You may tell the board that if he keeps questioning my judgment they will find themselves looking for a new perinatologist. I am serious about this. You listen this afternoon, Max, you hear whether or not he calls me ‘our little baby doctor.’ I am fifty-eight years old, I am a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons besides having enough credentials in this country to support a whole hospital, and to him I am a ‘little baby doctor.’”
Max sat on the daybed and pulled Lotty down next to him. “No, no, Lottchen: don’t fight. Listen to me. Why haven’t you told me any of this before?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Max: you are the director of the hospital. I cannot use our special relationship to deal with problems I have with the staff. I said my piece when Caudwell came for his final interview. A number of the other physicians were not happy with his attitude. If you remember, we asked the board to bring him in as a cardiac surgeon first and promote him to chief of staff after a year if everyone was satisfied with his performance.”
“We talked about doing it that way,” Max admitted. “But he wouldn’t take the appointment except as chief of staff. That was the only way we could offer him the kind of money he could get at one of the university hospitals or Humana. And, Lotty, even if you don’t like his personality you must agree that he is a first-class surgeon.”