Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only (V.I. Warshawski Series - Book 01)

Indemnity Only

V.I. Warshawski Book 1

By Sara Paretsky

A NOTE FROM THEAUTHOR

On New Years Eve, flushedwith champagne, I made a secret resolution to write a novel in 1979 or sendthat fantasy packing along with my daydreams of singing at La Scala or dancingwith Nureyev. The next day I began:

I looked hopefully in mywallet, but found only the two greasy singles which had been there in themorning. I could get a sandwich, or a pack of cigarettes and a cheap shot ofscotch. I sighed and looked down at the Wabash Avenue el tracks.

Nine months later, Id addedabout fifty pages to this unpromising opening and thought I should resignmyself to a life of selling computers to insurance agents. At that point aco-worker named Mary Hogan, who knew about my efforts, showed me theNorthwestern University fall extension catalog. Stuart Kaminsky was teaching anevening course called Writing Detective Fiction for Publication. I felt likeAlice finding the mushroomjust what I needed to get to be the right size.

Stuart read my puny story withgreat care. He gave me essential advice for thinking about my character and mystory. In the process, V. I. stopped smoking and took up my whiskey, BlackLabel. Most important, Stuart became the voice I needed to hear, the voice thatsaid, You can write. You can do this thing. Without Stuart I would not havehad the confidence to push the story through to the end. That is why IndemnityOnly is dedicated to him.

Whenever I read the memoirs ofa writer like Sartre, who says he knew from childhood he was destined forwords, or Bellow, who knew he was born to be a performing or interpretivecreature, I wonder what unacknowledged voice spoke to them as children. Sartreactually tells us it was his mother and his grandfather who bound his childisheffusions as novels and passed them with much outspoken pride around theneighborhood. Without his family creating in him that vision of himself, youngJean-Paul could not have grown up with such a sense of destiny. His cousins,told at the same age they were fated to be engineers, became engineers.

I wrote from my earliestchildhood, but for myself only. Like the heroine of Dream Girl, I spentvast amounts of my waking hours imagining myself inside different stories; whenthey acquired some kind of shape, I wrote them down. But I thought my storieswere a sign of the sickness afflicting the woman in the play, and that truelove would cure me as it did her, for I grew up in a time and place wherelittle girls were destined to be wives and mothers.

I did find true love, but myhusband, Courtenay Wright, convinced me that my stories were worth telling,that my dreams signaled not sickness but a lively mind. His support has notwavered from that cold New Years Day to the present hot June in which Istruggle with my seventh V. I. novel. I have had some years of terrible painand disability in between; Courtenay has held on to me and kept me from losingthat essential core from which my stories come. In a way, every word I write isdedicated to Courtenay.

When I finished the manuscriptin May 1980, with the first weak paragraph and limp chapter exchanged for thecurrent one, Stuart Kaminsky sent it to his agent, Dominick Abel, in New York.Dominick took on V. I. and me and has stuck with us ever since. I dont want toturn this introduction into a volume of the Talmud, so Ill only say ofDominick, in the old Chinese words, that I would send him for horses.

It took him a year to find apublisher for Indemnity Only. Indeed, when Im getting too conceitedwith myself, I pull out the file of rejection letters from that year and readthat Im too talky; have wooden characters; wrote a derivative story; andthat Indemnity Only was a marginal book which we cant afford to takeon. The file is a nice fat one and a good antidote for vanity. In the face ofso much negativism, Im especially grateful to Nancy van Itallie and the DialPress for taking the gamble on publishing me.

The Dial Press is no more, andthat is sad. Butafter almost a decade of wandering Ive found my proper home at Delacorte.Jackie Farber and Carole Baron provide the kind of editorial and publishingsupport most writers only dream about.

Indemnity Only came to life so precariously that itremains very precious to me. Sometimes I look at it with amazementamazed thatI did find the strength to write a book, amazed that someone actually publishedit. And now that Delacorte is bringing out a new edition I look at it with alot of pride. I was tempted to go through and polish up the writing, changethose flaws I wasnt alert enough to see in 1979. But I decided it would beunethical to tamper with the text. With the exception of two very smallcorrections this is the same book I sent Dominick Abel ten years ago.

SaraParetsky
Chicago
June 1990

The Dial Press was indeedrevived in 1993, and flourishes. Ed.

The night air was thick anddamp. As I drove south along Lake Michigan, I could smell rotting alewives likea faint perfume on the heavy air. Little fires shone here and there fromlate-night barbecues in the park. On the water a host of green and red runninglights showed people seeking relief from the sultry air. On shore traffic washeavy, the city moving restlessly, trying to breathe. It was July in Chicago.

I got off Lake Shore Drive atRandolph Street and swung down Wabash under the iron arches of the elevatedtracks, At Monroe I stopped the car and got out.

Away from the lake the citywas quieter. The South Loop, with no entertainment beyond a few peep-shows andthe city lockup, was deserteda drunk weaving uncertainly down the street wasmy only companion. I crossed Wabash and went into the Pulteney Building next tothe Monroe Street Tobacco Store. At night it looked like a terrible place tohave an office. The halls mosaic-tiled walls were chipped and dirty. Iwondered if anyone ever washed the scuffed linoleum floor. The lobby mustcreate a reassuring impression on potential clients.

I pushed the elevator button.No response. I tried again. Again no response. I shoved open the heavystairwell door, climbing slowly to the fourth floor. It was cool in thestairwell and I lingered there a few minutes before moving on down the badlylit hallway to the east end, the end where rents are cheaper because all theoffices look out on the Wabash el. In the dim light I could read theinscription on the door: V. I. Warshawski. Private Investigator.

I had called my answeringservice from a filling station on the North Side, just a routine check on myway home to a shower, air conditioning, and a late supper. I was surprised whenthey told me I had a caller, and unhappy when they said hed refused to give aname. Anonymous callers are a pain. They usually have something to hide, oftensomething criminal, and they dont leave their names just so you cant find outwhat theyre hiding ahead of time.

This guy was coming at 9:15,which didnt even give me time to eat. Id spent a frustrating afternoon in theozone-laden heat trying to track down a printer who owed me fifteen hundreddollars. Id saved his firm from being muscled out by a national chain lastspring and now I was sorry Id done it. If my checking account hadnt been sodamned anemic, Id have ignored this phone call. As it was, I squared myshoulders and unlocked the door.

With the lights on my officelooked Spartan but not unpleasant and I cheered up slightly. Unlike myapartment, which is always in mild disarray, my office is usually tidy. Idbought the big wooden desk at a police auction. The little Olivetti portablehad been my mothers, as well as a reproduction of the Ufizzi hanging over mygreen filing cabinet. That was supposed to make visitors realize that mine wasa high-class operation. Two straight-backed chairs for clients completed thefurniture. I didnt spend much time here and didnt need any other amenities.