Killing Orders (10 page)

When the phone rang I jumped; my heart pounded wildly. I stood over it fearfully, my hands shaking slightly. On the sixth ring I finally answered it. It was Lotty.

“Lotty!” I gasped.

She had called because of Agnes, but demanded at once to know what the trouble was. She insisted on coming over, brusquely brushing aside my feeble protests that the attacker might still be lurking outside.

“Not on a night like this. And not if you broke his jaw.”

She was at the door twenty minutes later. “So,
Liebchen.
You’ve been in the wars again.” I clung to her for a few minutes. She stroked my hair and murmured in German and I finally began to warm up. When she saw that I’d stopped shivering she had me take off my layers of swaddling. Her strong fingers moved very gently along my neck and upper spine, cleaning off the Vaseline and applying a proper dressing.

“So, my dear. Not very serious. The shock was the worst part. And you didn’t drink, did you? Good. Worst possible thing for shock. Hot milk and honey? Very good. Not like you to be so sensible.”

Talking all the while she went out to the kitchen with me, cleaned the milk from the floor and stove, and set about making soup. She put on lentils with carrots and onions and the rich smell filled the kitchen and began reviving me.

When the phone rang again, I was ready for it. I let it ring three times, then picked it up, my recorder switched on. It was my smooth-voiced friend. “How are your eyes, Miss Warshawski? Or Vic, I should say—I feel I know you well.”

“How is your friend?”

“Oh, Walter will survive. But we’re worried about you, Vic. You might not survive the next time, you know. Now be a good girl and stay away from Rosa and St. Albert’s. You’ll feel so much better in the long run.” He hung up.

I played the tape back for Lotty. She looked at me soberly. “You don’t recognize the voice?”

I shook my head. “Someone knows I was at the priory yesterday, though. And that can only mean one thing: One of the Dominicans has to be involved.”

“Why, though?”

“I’m being warned off the priory,” I said impatiently. “Only they know I was there.” A terrible thought struck me and I began shivering again. “Only they, and Roger Ferrant.”

Chapter 12 - Funeral Rites

L0TTY INSISTED ON spending the night. She left early in the morning for her clinic, begging me to be careful. But not to drop the investigation. “You’re a Jill-the-Giant-Killer,” she said, her black eyes worried. “You are always taking on things that are too big for you, and maybe one day you will take on one big thing too many. But that is your way. If you weren’t living so, you would have a long unhappy life. Your choice is for the satisfied life, and we will hope it, too, is a long one.”

Somehow these words did not cheer me up.

After Lotty left, I went down to the basement where each tenant has a padlocked area. With aching shoulders I pulled out boxes of old papers and knelt on the damp floor sorting through them. At last I found what I wanted—a ten-year-old address book.

Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Paciorek lived on Arbor Drive in Lake Forest. Fortunately their unlisted phone number hadn’t changed since 1974. I told the person who answered that I would speak to either Dr. or Mrs. Paciorek, but was relieved to get Agnes’s father. Although he’d always struck me as a cold, self-absorbed man, he’d never shared his wife’s personal animosity toward me. He believed his daughter’s problems stemmed from her own innate willfulness.

“This is V. I. Warshawski, Dr. Paciorek. I’m very sorry about Agnes. I’d like to come to her funeral. Can you tell me when it will be?”

“We’re not making a public occasion of it, Victoria. The publicity around her death has been bad enough without turning her funeral into a media event.” He paused. “My wife thinks you might know something about who killed her. Do you?”

“If I did, you can be sure I would tell the police, Dr. Paciorek. I’m afraid I don’t. I can understand why you don’t want a lot of people or newspapers around, but Agnes and I were good friends. It matters a lot to me to pay my last respects to her.”

He hemmed and hawed, but finally told me the funeral would be Saturday at Our Lady of the Rosary in Lake Forest. I thanked him with more politeness than I felt and called Phyllis Lording to let her know. We arranged to go together in case the Knights of Columbus were posted at the church door to keep out undesirables.

I didn’t like the way I was feeling. Noises in my apartment were making me jump, and at eleven, when the phone rang, I had to force myself to pick it up. It was Ferrant, in a subdued mood. He asked if I knew where Agnes’s funeral was being held, and if I thought her parents would mind his coming.

“Probably,” I said. “They don’t want me there and I was one of her oldest friends. But come anyway.” I told him the time and place and how to find it. When he asked if he could accompany me, I told him about Phyllis. “She probably isn’t up to meeting strangers at Agnes’s funeral.”

He invited me to dinner, but I turned that down, too. I didn’t really believe Roger would hire someone to throw acid at me. But still . . . I had eaten dinner with him the same day I’d made my first trip to the priory. It was the next day that Rosa decided to back out of the case. I wanted to ask him, but it sounded too much like Thomas Paciorek asking me on my honor as a Girl Scout if I’d helped kill his daughter.

I was scared, and I didn’t like it. It was making me distrust my friends. I didn’t know where to start looking for an acid thrower. I didn’t want to be alone, but didn’t know Roger well enough to be with him.

At noon, as I walked skittishly down Halsted to get a sandwich, an idea occurred to me that might solve both my immediate problems. I phoned Murray from the sandwich shop.

“I need to talk to you,” I said abruptly when he came to the phone. “I need your help.”

He must have sensed my mood, because he didn’t offer any of his usual wisecracks, agreeing to meet me at the Golden Glow at five.

At four-thirty I changed into a navy wool pantsuit, and stuck a toothbrush, the gun, and a change of underwear in my handbag. I checked all the locks, and left by the back stairs. A look around the building told me my fears were unwarranted; no one was lying in wait for me. I also checked the Omega carefully before getting in and starting it. Today at least I was not going to be blown to bits.

I got stuck in traffic on the Drive and was late to the Golden Glow. Murray was waiting for me with the early edition of the
Herald-Star
and a beer.

“Hello, V. I. What’s up?”

“Murray, who do you know who throws acid on people he doesn’t like?”

“No one. My friends don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Not a joke, Murray. Does it ring a bell?”

“Who do you know had acid thrown at them?”

“Me.” I turned around and showed him the back of my neck where Lotty had dressed the burn. “He was trying for my eyes but I was expecting it and turned away in time. The thrower’s name is probably Walter, but the man who got him to throw it—that’s who I want.”

I told him about the threats, and the fight, and described the voice of the man who had called. “Murray, I’m scared. I don’t scare easily, but—Jesus Christ! The thought of some maniac out there trying to blind me! I’d rather take a bullet in the head.”

He nodded soberly. “You’re stepping on the feet of someone with bunions, V. I., but I don’t know whose. Acid.” He shook his head. “I’d be sort of tempted to say Rodolpho Fratelli, but the voice doesn’t sound right—he’s got that heavy, grating voice. You can’t miss it.”

Fratelli was a high-ranking member of the Pasquale family. “Maybe someone who works for him?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’ll get someone to look into it. Can I do a story on your attack?”

I thought about it. “You know, I haven’t been to the police. I guess I’m too angry with Bobby Mallory.” I sketched my interview with him for Murray. “But maybe it will make my anonymous caller a little more cautious if he sees there’s a big universe out there keeping an eye open for him . . . The other thing is—I’m kind of embarrassed to ask this, but the truth is, I’m not up to a night alone. Can I crash with you?”

Murray looked at me for a few seconds, then laughed. “You know, Vic, it’s worth the earful I’ll get canceling my date just to hear you plead for help. You’re too fucking tough all the time.”

“Thanks, Murray. Glad to make your day.” I wasn’t liking myself too well when he went off to the telephone. I wondered what column this went under: taking prudent precautions, or being chicken?

We went to dinner at the Officers’ Mess, a romantic Indian restaurant on Halsted, and then dancing at Bluebeard’s. As we were climbing into bed at one, Murray told me he’d sicced a couple of reporters on digging up information about acid throwers.

I got up early Saturday and left Murray still asleep—I needed to change for Agnes’s funeral. All was still quiet at my apartment, and I began to think I was letting fear get far too much the better of me.

Changing into the navy walking suit, this time with a pale gray blouse and navy pumps, I took off to collect Lotty and Phyllis. It was only 10 degrees out, and the sky was overcast again. I was shivering with cold by the time I got back into the car—I needed to replace my mohair shawl.

Lotty was waiting in her doorway dressed in black wool, for once dignified enough to be a doctor. She didn’t say much on the drive down to Chestnut Street. When we got to the condo, she got out to fetch Phyllis, who didn’t look as if she’d slept or eaten in the two days since I’d seen her last. The skin on her pale, fine-boned face was drawn so tightly I thought it might crack, and she had bluish shadows under her eyes. She was

wearing a white wool suit with a pale yellow sweater. I had a vague idea that those were mourning colors in the Orient. Phyllis is a very literary person and she would pay tribute to a dead lover with some kind of mourning that only another scholar would understand.

She smiled at me nervously as we headed back north toward Lake Forest. “They don’t know I’m coming, do they?” she asked.

“No.”

Lotty took exception to that. Why was I acting in a secretive way, which could only precipitate a scene when Mrs. Paciorek realized who Phyllis was.

“She’s not going to do that. Graduates of Sacred Heart and St. Mary’s don’t have scenes at their daughters’ funerals. And she won’t take it out on Phyllis—she’ll know I was the real culprit. Besides, if I’d told her ahead of time who I was bringing she might have instructed the bouncer not to seat us.”

“Bouncer?” Phyllis asked.

“I guess they call them ushers in churches.” That made Phyllis laugh and we made the rest of the drive considerably more at ease.

Our Lady of the Rosary was an imposing limestone block on top of a hill overlooking Sheridan Road. I slid the Omega into a parking lot at its foot, finding a niche between an enormous black Cadillac and an outsize Mark IV. I wasn’t sure I’d ever find my car again in this sea of limos.

As we climbed a steep flight of stairs to the church’s main entrance, I wondered how the elderly and infirm made it to mass. Perhaps Lake Forest Catholics were never bed- or wheelchair-ridden, but wafted directly to heaven at the first sign of disability.

Agnes’s brother Phil was one of the ushers. When he saw me his face lit up and he came over to kiss me. “V.1.! I’m so glad you made it. Mother told me you weren’t coming.”

I gave him a quick hug and introduced him to Lotty and Phyllis. He escorted us to seats near the front of the church. Agnes’s coffin rested on a stand in front of the steps leading up to the altar. As people came in they knelt in front of the coffin for a few seconds. To my surprise, Phyllis did so before joining us in the pew. She knelt for a long time and finally crossed herself and rose as the organ began playing a voluntary. I hadn’t realized she was a Catholic.

One of the ushers, a middle-aged man with a red face and white hair, escorted Mrs. Paciorek to her place in the front row. She was wearing black, with a long black mantilla pinned to her head. She looked much as I remembered her: handsome and angry. Her glance at the coffin as she entered her pew seemed to say: “I told you so.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked up to see Ferrant, elegant in a morning coat. I wondered idly if he’d packed morning clothes just on the chance of there being a funeral in Chicago and moved over to make room for him.

The organ played Fauré for perhaps five minutes before the procession entered. It was huge and impressive. First came acolytes, one swinging a censer, one carrying a large crucifix. Then the junior clergy. Then a magnificent figure in cope and miter, carrying a crosier—the cardinal archbishop of Chicago, Jerome Farber. And behind him, the celebrant, also in cope and miter. A bishop, but not one I recognized. Not that I know many bishops by sight—Farber is in the papers fairly regularly.

I realized after the ceremony had begun that one of the junior priests was Augustine Pelly, the Dominican procurator. That was odd—how did he know the Pacioreks?

The requiem mass itself was chanted in Latin, with Farber and the strange bishop doing a very creditable job. I wondered how Agnes would have felt about this beautiful, if archaic, ritual. She was so modern in so many ways. Yet the magnificence might have appealed to her.

I made no attempt to follow the flow of the service through risings and kneelings. Nor did Lotty and Roger. Phyllis, however, participated completely, and when the bell sounded for communion I wasn’t surprised that she edged her way past us and joined the queue at the altar.

As we were leaving the church, Phil Paciorek stopped me. He was about ten years younger than Agnes and me and had had a mild crush on me in the days when I used to frequent the Lake Forest house. “We’re having something to eat at the house. I’d like it if you and your friends came along.”

I looked a question at Lotty, who shrugged as if to say it would be a mistake either way, so I accepted. I wanted to find out what Pelly was doing here.

I hadn’t been to the Paciorek house since my second year in law school. I sort of remembered it as being near the lake, but made several wrong turns before finding Arbor Road. The house looked like a Frank Lloyd Wright building with a genetic malfunction—it had kept reproducing wings and layers in all directions until someone gave it chemotherapy and stopped the process.

We left the car among a long line of others on Arbor Road and went into one of the boxes that seemed to contain the front door. When I used to visit there, Agnes and I had always come in from the side door where the garage and stables were.

We found ourselves in a black-and-white marbled foyer where a maid took Lotty’s coat and directed us to the reception. The bizarre design of the house meant going up and down several short marble staircases that led nowhere, until we had made two right turns, which took us to the conservatory. This room had been inspired by the library at Blenheim Palace. Almost as big, it contained a pipe organ as well as bookstacks and some potted trees. I wasn’t sure why they called it a conservatory instead of a music room or a library.

Phil spotted us at the door and came over to greet us. He was finishing a combined M.D-Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago. “Dad thinks I’m crazy,” he grinned. “I’m going into neurobiology as a researcher, instead of neurosurgery where the money is. I think Cecelia is the only one of his children who has turned out satisfactorily.” Cecelia, the second daughter after Agnes, was standing near the organ with Father Pelly and the strange bishop. At thirty she already looked like Mrs. Paciorek, including an imposing bosom under her expensive black suit.

I left Phil talking to Phyllis and skirted my way through the crowd to the organ. Cecelia refused to shake hands and said, “Mother told us you weren’t coming.” This was the same thing Phil had said when I met him at the church, except that he was pleased and Cecelia was angry.

“I haven’t talked to her, Cecelia. I spoke with your dad yesterday and he invited me.”

“She said she phoned you.”

I shook my head. Since she wasn’t going to introduce me, I said to the strange bishop, “I’m V. I. Warshawski, one of Agnes’s old school friends. Father Pelly and I have met out at the Friary of Albertus Magnus.” I half held out my hand, but dropped it when the bishop made no corresponding gesture. He was a lean, gray-haired man of perhaps fifty, sporting a purple episcopal shirt with a gold chain draped across it.