Killing Orders (15 page)

Roger helped me pack what seemed restorable into two suitcases, prying open their frozen locks.

“What we don’t take now I might as well kiss good-bye—-the neighborhood will be poking through the remains before too long.”

I waited until we were ready to leave before looking in the cupboard at the back of my closet. I was too afraid of what I’d find. Fingers shaking, I pried the door off its sagging hinges. The glasses were wrapped carefully in pieces of old sheet. I unrolled these slowly. The first one I picked had a jagged piece broken from it. I bit my lower lip again to keep it in order and unwrapped the other four. They seemed to be all right. I held them up to the dim morning light and twirled them. No cracks or bubbles.

Roger had been standing silently. Now he picked his way across the debris. “All well?”

“One’s broken. Maybe someone could glue it, though—it’s just one big piece.” The only other valuables in the cupboard were Gabriella’s diamond drop earrings and a necklace. I put these in my pocket, rewrapped the glasses and placed them in one suitcase, and put on the shoulder holster with my Smith & Wesson in it. I couldn’t think of anything else I desperately needed to keep. Unlike Peter Wimsey, I collect no first editions. Such kitchen gadgets as I owned could be replaced without too much grief.

As I started lugging the suitcases to the hole in the living-room wall, the phone rang. Roger and I looked at each other, startled. It never occurred to us that Ma Bell could keep the wires humming after a fire. I managed to find the living-room extension buried under some plaster.

“Yes?”

“Miss Warshawski?” It was my smooth-voiced friend. “You were lucky, Miss Warshawski. But no one is lucky forever.”

Chapter 17 - The Fallen Knight

WE DROVE DOWN to the Hancock in the Omega. I let Roger out with my baggage and went to find Street parking. By the time I staggered back to his apartment I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do anything until I got some sleep. Pasquale, Rosa, Albert, and Ajax whirled muzzily through my brain, but walking was so difficult that thinking was impossible.

Roger let me in and gave me a set of keys. He had showered. His face was gray with fatigue, but he didn’t think he could take the day off with so many rumors flying around about the takeover—management was meeting daily, mapping strategy.

He held me tightly for a few minutes. “I didn’t say much at the hospital because I was afraid I might ruin your story. But please, Vic, please don’t run off into anything stupid today. I like you better in one piece.”

I hugged him briefly. “All I care about right now is getting some sleep. Don’t worry about me, Roger. Thanks for the place to stay.”

I was too tired to bathe, too tired to undress. I just managed to pull my boots off before falling into bed.

It was past four when I woke again, stiff and foggy but ready to start moving again. I realized with distaste that I stank and my clothes stank, too. A small utility room next to the bathroom held a washing machine. I piled in jeans, underwear, and everything in the suitcases that didn’t require dry cleaning. A long soak in the bathtub and I felt somewhat more human.

As I waited for my jeans to dry I called my answering service. No message from Don Pasquale, but Phil Paciorek had phoned and left his on-call number, I tried it, but he apparently was handling some emergency surgery. I gave Ferrant’s number to the hospital and tried Torfino’s restaurant again. The same gritty voice I’d talked to the day before continued to disclaim all knowledge of Don Pasquale.

The early evening editions had arrived in the downstairs lobby. I stopped in the coffee shop to read them over a cappuccino and a cheese sandwich. The fire had made the
Herald Star’s
front page—ARSON ON THE NORTH SIDE— in the lower left corner. Interview with the De Paul students. Interview with the Takamokus’ worried daughter. Then, in a separate paragraph with its own subhead: “V. I. Warshawski, whose apartment was the focal point of the fire, has been investigating a problem involving forged securities at the Priory of Albertus Magnus in Melrose Park. Ms. Warshawski, the victim of an acid-throwing mugger two weeks ago, was not available for comment on a connection between her investigation and the fire.”

I ground my teeth. Thanks a bunch, Murray. The
Herald-Star
had already run the acid story, but now the police were bound to read it and see the connection. I drank some more cappuccino, then flipped to the personal section of the classifieds. A small message was waiting for me: “The oak has sprouted.” Uncle Stefan and I had agreed on this since he’d been working with my certificates of Acorn stock. I had last looked at the personals on Sunday; today was Thursday. How long had the ad been running?

Roger was home when I got back to the apartment. He told me apologetically that he was all done in; could I manage dinner alone while he went to bed?

“No problem. I slept all day.” I helped him into bed and gave him a backrub. He was asleep by the time I left the room.

I pulled on long underwear and as many sweatshirts as I could manage, then walked back to Lake Shore Drive to retrieve my car. A wind blowing across the lake cut through my pullovers and long underwear. Tomorrow I’d definitely stop at Army-Navy Surplus for a new pea jacket.

I wondered about the tail Bobby claimed he was going to slap on me. No one had followed me to my car. Looking in the rearview mirror, I didn’t see any waiting cars. And no one would loiter on the street in this wind. I decided it must have been bravado—or someone had countermanded Bobby.

The Omega started only after severe grumbling. We sat and shivered together, the car refusing to produce any heat. A five-minute warm-up finally persuaded the transmission to groan into gear.

While side streets were still piled with snow, Lake Shore Drive was clear. After a few turgid blocks, the car moved north briskly. At Montrose the heater finally kicked grudgingly into life. At the Evanston border I had stopped shivering and was able to pay more attention to traffic and road conditions.

The night was clear; on Dempster the heavy rush-hour traffic was moving well. I spun off onto Crawford Avenue and made it to Uncle Stefan’s a few minutes before seven. Before leaving the car, I jammed the Smith & Wesson into the front of my jeans where the butt dug into my abdomen—the pullovers made a shoulder holster impractical.

Whistling through my teeth, I rang Uncle Stefan’s bell. No answer. I shivered in the entryway a few minutes, and rang again. It hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t be home. I could wait in the car, but the heater wasn’t very efficient. I rang the other bells until someone buzzed me in—one in every building, letting the muggers and buggers in.

Uncle Stefan’s apartment was on the fourth floor. On my way up, I passed a pretty young woman coming down with a baby and a stroller. She looked at me curiously. “Are you going to visit Mr. Herschel? I’ve been wondering whether I should look in on him—I’m Ruth Silverstein—I live across the hall. When I take Mark for a walk at four, he usually comes out to give us cookies. I didn’t see him this afternoon.”

“He could have gone out.”

I could see her flush in the stairway light. “I’m home alone with the baby, so maybe I pay more attention to my neighbors than I should. I usually hear him leave—he walks with a cane, you know, and it makes a particular kind of noise on the stairs.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Silverstein.” I trotted up the last flight of stairs, frowning. Uncle Stefan was in good health, but eighty-two years old. Did I have any right to break in on him? Did I have a duty to do so? What would Lotty say?

I pounded loudly on the heavy apartment door. Put an ear to the panel and heard nothing. No, a faint buzz of noise. The TV or radio. Shit.

I went back down the stairs two at a time, propped open the outer door with a glove, and jogged across the slippery sidewalk to the Omega. My picklocks were in the glove compartment.

As I dashed back into the building, I watched Mrs. Silverstein and Mark disappear into a small grocery store up the block. I might have ten minutes to get the door open.

The trick about prying open other people’s doors is to relax and go by feel. Uncle Stefan had two locks, a deadbolt and a regular Yale. I worked the deadbolt first. It clicked and I realized with dismay that it had been open when I started on it; I’d just double-locked the door. Trying to breathe loosely I chivvied it the other way. It had just slid back when I heard Mrs. Silverstein come into the building. At least, judging from the sounds, that’s who it was; someone talking briskly to a baby about the nice chicken Daddy would have when he got back from his late meeting. The stroller bumped its way to the fourth-floor landing. The lower lock clicked back and I was inside.

I picked my way past an Imari umbrella stand into the ornately decorated living room. In the light of a brass lamp I could see Uncle Stefan lying across the leather desk, its green dyed red-brown by a large congealing pool of blood. “Oh, Christ!” I muttered. While I felt the old man’s wrist, all I could think of was how furious Lotty would be. Unbelievably, a faint pulse still fluttered. I leaped over chairs and footstools and pounded on the Silverstein door. Mrs. Silverstein opened it at once—she’d just come home, coat still on, baby still in stroller.

“Get an ambulance as fast as you can—he’s seriously injured.”

She nodded matter-of-factly and bustled into the interior of her apartment. I went back to Uncle Stefan. Grabbing blankets from a tidy bed in a room off the kitchen, wrapping him, lowering him gently on the floor, raising his feet onto an intricately cut leather footstool, and then waiting. Waiting.

Mrs. Silverstein had sensibly asked for paramedics. When they heard about shock and blood loss, they set up a couple of drips—plasma and glucose. They were taking him to Ben Gurion Memorial Hospital, they told me, adding that they would make a police report and could I wait in the apartment, please.

As soon as they were gone, I phoned Lotty.

“Where are you?” she demanded. “I read about the fire and tried phoning you.”

“Yes, well, that can wait. It’s Uncle Stefan. He’s been seriously wounded. I don’t know if he’ll live. They’re taking him to Ben Gurion.”

A long silence at the other end, then Lotty said very quietly, “Wounded? Shot?”

“Stabbed, I think. He lost a lot of blood, but they missed the heart. It had clotted by the time I found him.”

“And that was when?”

“About ten minutes ago ... I waited to call until I knew what hospital he’d be going to.”

“I see. We’ll talk later.”

She hung up, leaving me staring at the phone. I prowled around the living room, waiting for the police, trying not to touch anything. As the minutes passed, my patience ran out. I found a pair of gloves in a drawer in the tidy bedroom. They were several sizes too large, but they kept me from leaving prints on the papers on the desk. I couldn’t find any stock certificates at all—not forged, not my Acorn shares.

The room, while crowded with furniture, held few real hiding places. A quick search revealed nothing. Suddenly it occurred to me that if Uncle Stefan had made a forged stock certificate, he’d have to have tools lying around, tools the police would be just as happy not seeing. I sped up my search and found parchment, blocks, and tools in the oven. I bundled them up into a paper bag and went to find Mrs. Silverstein.

She came to the door, cheeks red, hair frizzled from heat; she must have been cooking. “Sorry to bother you again. I’ve got to wait here for the police and I’ll probably have to go to the station with them. Mr. Herschel’s niece will be by later for some things. Would you mind if I told her to ring your bell and pick this bag up from you?”

She was happy to help. “How is he? What happened?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. The paramedics didn’t say anything. But his pulse was steady, even though it was weak. We’ll hope for the best.”

She invited me in for a drink but I thought it best not to give the police any ideas connecting the two of us and waited for them across the way. Two middle-aged men finally arrived, both in uniform. They came in with guns drawn. When they saw me, they told me to put my hands on the wall and not to move.

“I’m the person who called you. I’m just as surprised by all this as you are.”

“We’ll ask the questions, honey.” The speaker had a paunch that obscured his gunbelt. He patted me down clumsily, but found the Smith & Wesson without any trouble. “You got a license for this, girlie?”

“Yup,” I said.

“Let’s see it.”

“Mind if I take my hands off the wall? Hampers any movements.”

“Don’t be a wiseass. Get the license and get it fast.” This was the second cop, leaner, with a pockmarked face.

My purse was on the floor near the door—I’d dropped it without thinking when I saw Uncle Stefan and hadn’t bothered to pick it up. I pulled out by billfold and took out my P.I. license and my permit for the gun.

The stout cop looked them over. “Oh, a private eye. What are you doing here in Skokie, girlie?”

I shook my head. I hate. suburban police. “The bagels in Chicago aren’t as good as the ones they make out here.”

Fat cop rolled his eyes. “We picked up Joan Rivers, Stu

Listen, Joan. This ain’t Chicago. We want to put you away, we can, won’t worry us none. Now just tell us what you were doing here.”

“Waiting for you guys. Clearly a mistake.”

The lean cop slapped my face. I knew better than to react— up here resisting arrest could stick and I’d lose my license. “Come on, girlie. My partner asked you a question. You going to answer it?”

“You guys want to charge me? If so, I’ll call my lawyer. If not, no questions.”

The two looked at each other. “Better call your lawyer, girlie. And we’ll be hanging onto the gun. Not really a lady’s weapon.”

Chapter 18 - In the Slammer

THE D. A. WAS mad at me. That didn’t bother me too much. Mallory was furious—he’d read about the acid in the
Herald-Star.
I was used to Mallory’s rage. When Roger learned I’d spent the night in a Skokie lockup, his worry turned to frustrated anger. I thought I could handle that. But Lotty, Lotty wouldn’t speak to me. That hurt.

It had been a confused night. Pockmark and Fatso booked me around nine-thirty. I called my lawyer, Freeman Carter, who wasn’t home. His thirteen-year-old daughter answered. She sounded like a poised and competent child, but there wasn’t any way of telling when she’d remember to give her father the message.

After that we settled down for some serious questioning. I decided not to say anything, since I really didn’t have much of a story I wanted to tell. I couldn’t tell the truth, and with the mood Lotty was in, she’d be bound to screw up any embroidery I came up with.

Pockmark and Fatso gave way to some senior cops fairly early in the evening. It must have been around midnight when

Charles Nicholson came in from the DA’s office. I knew Charles. He was a figure in the Cook County court system. He liked to think he was an heir of Clarence Darrow, and resembled him superficially, at least as far as shaggy hair and a substantial stomach went. Charles was the kind of guy who liked to catch his subordinates making personal phone calls on county time. We’d never been what you might call close.

“Well, well, Warshawski. Feels like old times. You, me, a few differences, and a table between us.”

“Hello, Charlie,” I said calmly. “It does seem like old times. Even down to your shirt not quite meeting at the sixth button.”

He looked down at his stomach and tried pulling the straining fabric together, then looked at me furiously. “Still your old flippant self, I see—even on a murder-one charge.”

“If it’s murder one, they changed the booking without telling me,” I said irritably. “And that violates my Miranda rights. Better read the charge slip and double-check it.”

“No, no,” he said in his mayonnaise voice. “You’re right— just a manner of speaking. Obstruction was and is the charge. Let’s talk about what you were doing in the old man’s apartment, Warshawski .”

I shook my head. “Not until I have legal advice—in my opinion anything I say on that topic may incriminate me, and since I don’t have specific knowledge of the crime, there isn’t anything I can do to forward the police investigation.” That was the last sentence I uttered for some time.

Charlie tried a lot of different tactics—insults, camaraderie, high-flown theories about the crime to invite my comments. I started doing some squad exercises—raise the right leg, hold for a count of five, lower, raise the left. Counting gave me a way to ignore Charlie, and the exercises rattled him. I’d gotten to seventy-five with each leg when he gave up.

Things changed at two-thirty when Bobby Mallory came in. “We’re taking you downtown,” he informed me. “I have had it up to here”—he indicated his neck—”with your smartass dancing around. Telling the truth when you feel like it. How dared you—how
dared
you give that acid story to Ryerson and not tell us this morning? We talked to your friend Ferrant a few hours ago. I’m not so dumb I didn’t notice you cutting him off this morning when he started to ask if these were the same people who threw something. Acid. You should be in Cook County Psychiatric. And before the night’s over, you’re either going to spill what you know or we’re going to send you there and make it stick.”

That was just talk, and Bobby knew it. Half of him was furious with me for concealing evidence, and half was plain mad because I was Tony’s daughter and might have gotten myself killed or blinded.

I stood up. “Okay. You got it. Although Murray ran the acid story when it happened. Just get me out of the suburbs and away from Charlie and I’ll talk.”

“And the truth, Warshawski. You cover up anything,
anything,
and we’ll have you in jail. I don’t care if I run you in for dope possession.”

“I don’t do dope, Bobby. They find any in my place, it’s planted. Anyway, I don’t have a place.”

His round face turned red. “I’m not taking it, Warshawski. You’re two sentences away from Cook County. No smartassing, no lies. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Bobby got the Skokie people to drop charges and took me away. Technically I wasn’t under arrest and didn’t have to go with him. I also wasn’t under any illusions.

The driver was a likable young man who seemed willing to chat. I asked him whether he thought the Cubs were going to let Rick Sutcliffe go. One blistering remark from Bobby shut him up, however, so I discoursed alone on the topic. “My feeling is, Sutcliffe turned that team around after the All-Star break. So he wants five, six million. It’s worth it for another crack at the World Series.”

When we got to Eleventh Street, Bobby hustled me into an interrogation room. Detective Finchley, a young black cop who’d been in uniform when I first met him, joined us and took notes.

Bobby sent for coffee, shut the door, and sat behind his cluttered desk.

“No more about Sutcliffe and Gary Matthews. Just the facts.”

I gave him the facts. I told him about Rosa and the securities, and the threatening phone calls. I told him about the attack in the hallway and how Murray thought it might be Walter Novick. And I told him about the phone call this morning when I went back for my clothes. “No one is lucky forever.”

“And what about Stefan Herschel? What were you doing there the day he was stabbed?”

“Just chance. Is he all right?”

“No way, Warshawski. I’m asking the questions tonight. What were you doing at his place?”

“He’s an uncle of a friend of mine. You know Dr. Herschel He’s an interesting old man and he gets lonely; he wanted me to have tea with him.”

“Tea? So you let yourself in?”

“The door was open when I got there—that worried me.”

“I’ll bet. The girl across the hall says the door was shut and that worried her.”

“Not standing open—just not locked.”

Bobby held up my collection of picklocks. “You wouldn’t have used these, by any chance?”

I shook my head. “Don’t know how to use them—they’re a souvenir from one of my clients when I was a public defender.”

“And you carry them around for sentiment after what— eight years as a P.I.? Come on, let’s have it.”

“You got it, Bobby. You got the acid, you got Novick, you got Rosa. Talk to Derek Hatfield, why don’t you. I’d be real curious who was backing the FBI off those securities.”

“I’m talking to you. And speaking of Hatfield, you wouldn’t know why his name was on the register at the Stock Exchange, would you, the night someone broke into Tilford and Sutton’s office?”

“You ask Hatfield what he was doing there?”

“He says he wasn’t.”

I shrugged. “The feds never tell you anything. You know that.”

“Well, neither do you, and you’ve got less excuse to hold back. Why were you visiting Stefan Herschel?”

“He invited me.”

“Yeah. Your apartment burned down last night, so today you’ve been feeling chipper, you’ll just go to tea in Skokie.
Damn
it, Vicki,
level with me.”
Mallory was truly upset. He doesn’t hold with swearing around women. Finchley looked worried. I was worried, too; but I just couldn’t blow the whistle on Stefan Herschel. The old man had got himself killed, or close to it, on account of the forgery. I didn’t want to get him arrested, too.

At five, Bobby charged me with concealing evidence of a crime. I was printed, photographed, and taken to the holding cells at Twenty-sixth and California with some rather disgruntled prostitutes. Most wore high-heeled boots and very short skirts—jail must at least have been a warmer place on a January night than Rush and Oak. There was a little hostility at first as they tried to make sure I wasn’t working any of their territories.

“Sorry, ladies—I’m just here on a murder charge.” Yeah, my old man, I explained. Yeah, the bastard beat me. But the last straw was when he tried to burn me. I showed them my arms where the fire had scorched the skin.

Lots of sympathetic clucking. “Oh, honey, you did right .

Man touch me that way, I stick him.” “Oh, yeah, ‘member when Freddie tried to cut me, I throw boil’ water on him.”

They quickly forgot me as each tried to outdo the other with tales of male violence and bravado in handling it. The stories made my skin crawl. At eight though, when the Freddies and Slims and JJ
₅
showed up to collect them, they acted glad enough to see them. Home is where they have to take you in, I guess.

Freeman Carter came for me at nine. He’s the partner in Crawford, Meade—my ex-husband’s high-prestige firm—who does their criminal stuff. It’s a constant thorn to Dick—my ex—that Freeman does my legal work. But not only is he good, in a smooth, WASPy way, he likes me.

“Hi, Freeman. The other pimps got their hookers out an hour ago. I guess I’m not very valuable merchandise.”

“Hi, Vic. If you had a mirror you’d see why your street value has plummeted. You’re going to have a hearing in Women’s Court at eleven. Just a formality, and they’ll release you on an I-bond.” An I-bond, as in I-solemnly-swear-to-come-back-for-the-trial, is given to people the court knows as responsible citizens. Like me. Freeman lent me a comb and I made myself as presentable as possible.

We went down the hall to a small meeting room. Freeman looked as elegant as ever, his pale blond hair cut close to his head, smooth-shaven, his perfectly tailored navy suit fitted to his lean body. If I looked only half as grubby as I felt, I must be pretty disgusting. Freeman glanced at his watch. “Want to talk? They booked you because they felt you were withholding on Stefan Herschel.”

“I was,” I admitted. “How is he?”

“I called the hospital on my way over here. He’s in intensive care, but seems to have stabilized.”

“I see.” I felt a lot better already. “You know he had a forgery rap back in the fifties? Well, I’m afraid someone knifed him because he was playing boy detective on some stock forgeries. But I can’t tell Bobby Mallory until I’ve talked to the old man. I just don’t want to get him in trouble with the police and the feds.”

Freeman made a sour face. “If I were your pimp, I’d beat you with a clothes hanger. Since I’m just your lawyer, could I urge you to tell Mallory all you know? He’s a good cop. He’s not going to railroad an eighty-year-old man.”

“He might not, but Derek Hatfield would in thirty seconds. Less. And once the feds move in, there isn’t shit Bobby or I— or even you—can do.”

Freeman remained unconvinced as I told him about the forgeries and Uncle Stefan’s role in them, but he swept me through the hearing with aplomb. He kissed me good-bye afterward when he dropped me at the Roosevelt Road L stop. “And that is proof of devotion, Vic. You are badly in need of a bath.”

I rode the L to Howard street, caught the Skokie Swift, and walked the ten blocks from the station to my car. A bath, a nap, Roger, Lotty, and Uncle Stefan. Those were priorities in reverse order, but I needed to get clean before I could face talking to anyone else.

The priorities got reversed a bit—Roger was waiting for me when I got back to the Hancock. He was on the phone, apparently with Ajax. I sketched a wave and headed for the bathroom. He came in ten minutes later as I was lying in the tub. Trying to lie in the tub. It was one of those nasty modern affairs where your knees come up to your chin. My apartment had a wonderful thirties bath, long enough for a tall person to lie down in it.

Roger closed the toilet and sat on it. “The police woke me at one this morning to ask me about your acid burn. I told them everything I knew, which was damned little. I had no idea where you were, what you were doing, what danger you might be in. I begged you yesterday morning not to do anything stupid. But when I wake up at one in the morning and you’re not here, no note—goddamn it, why did you do this?”

I sat up in the tub. “I had an eventful evening. Saved an old man’s life, then spent five hours in a Skokie jail and four in a Chicago one. I got one phone call and I needed it for my lawyer. Since he wasn’t home, only his kid, I couldn’t send messages to my friends and relations.”

“But damn it, Vic, you know I’m worried sick about you and this whole business”—he waved an arm, indicating frustration and incoherence. “Why the hell didn’t you leave me a note?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t think I was going to be gone long. Gosh, Roger, if I’d known what I was going to find, I would have written you a novel.”

“That’s not the point. You know it’s not. We talked about this last night, or two nights ago, whenever the hell your place burned down. You can’t just slide off and leave everyone else gasping for air.”

I was starting to get angry, too. “You don’t own me, Ferrant. And if my staying here makes you think you do, I’ll leave at once. I’m a detective. I’m paid to detect things. If I told everyone and his dog Rover what I was up to, not only would my clients lose all confidence in me, I’d be sandbagged everywhere I went. You told the cops everything you knew. If you’d known everything I know, a poor old man would be under arrest right now as well as in intensive care.”

Roger looked at me bleakly, his face pale. “Maybe you should leave, Vic. I don’t have the stamina for any more nights like this. But let me tell you one thing, Wonder Woman: If you’d shared what you were doing with me, I wouldn’t have had to tell the cops—I’d have known that you didn’t need their particular help. I told them not to sandbag you but to protect you.”

Anger was tightening my vocal cords. “No one protects me, Roger. I don’t live in that kind of universe. I wouldn’t screw around with some business deal you were cutting just because there are a lot of dangerous and unscrupulous people dealing in your world. You want to talk to me about your work, I’ll listen and try to make suggestions if you want them. But I won’t try to protect you.” I got out of the tub. “Well, give me the same respect. Just because the people I deal with play with fire instead of money doesn’t mean I need or want protection. If I did, how do you think I’d have survived all these years?”