Killing Orders (19 page)

Jim Streeter answered the phone. When I explained the situation to him, he agreed to send someone up in a couple of hours. “The boys are out moving someone’s furniture”—one of their sidelines. “When they get back I’ll send Tom up.”

Uncle Stefan obediently rang for the night nurse and explained his fears to her. She was inclined to be sarcastic, but I murmured a few words about hospital safety and malpractice suits and she said she would tell “Doctor.”

Uncle Stefan nodded approvingly at me. “You are a very tough young lady. Ah, if only I had known you thirty years ago, the FBI never would have caught me.”

A gift shop in the lobby yielded a pack of cards. We played gin until Tom Streeter showed up at eight-thirty. He was a big, quiet, gentle man. Seeing him, I knew I’d stopped one hole. At least temporarily.

I kissed Uncle Stefan good-night and left the hospital, checking carefully at each doorway, mixing with a large family group leaving the building. I inspected my car before opening the door. As near as I could tell, no one had wired it with dynamite.

Driving down the Edens, what puzzled me was the connection between O’Faolin and the forgeries. He hires Novick from Pasquale. How does he know Pasquale? How would a Panamanian archbishop know a Chicago mobster? Anyway, he hires Novick from Pasquale to back me off the forgeries. But why? The only connection I could think of was his longterm friendship with Pelly. But that made Pelly responsible for the forgeries and that still didn’t make sense. The answer had to be at the friary and I had to get through Sunday somehow before I could find it.

Back at the Bellerophon, I plugged my phone into the wall. It seemed to work. My answering service told me Ferrant had tried phoning me as well as Detective Finchley.

I tried Roger first. He sounded subdued. “There’s been a disturbing development in this takeover attempt. Or maybe it’s a relief. Someone has stepped forward and filed five percent ownership with the SEC.” He’d been closeted with the Ajax board all day discussing it. One of the other managing partners from Scupperfield, Plouder would be flying in tomorrow. Roger wanted to have dinner with me and get my ideas, if any.

I agreed to meet him. If nothing else, it would give me something to think about until Monday.

While I ran water in the bathtub I made my other call. Detective Finchley had left for the day, but Mallory was still at work. “Your lawyer says you’re ready to make a statement about Stefan Herschel,” he growled.

I offered to see him first thing Monday morning. “What did Detective Finchley want?”

I could get my gun back, Bobby said grudgingly. They’d gotten the Skokie police to send it down to them. They were confiscating the picklocks, though. It hurt Bobby physically to tell me about the gun. He didn’t want me carrying it, he didn’t want me in the detective business, he wanted me in Bridgeport or Melrose Park with six children and, presumably, a husband.

Chapter 21 - Deadline

ROGER POKED MOODILY at his steak. “By the way, thanks for the note you left yesterday. How was the archbishop?”

“There were two. One was fulsome, the other ugly. Tell me about this filing.”

I had met him at the Filigree and been moved by his total exhaustion. We had drinks in the bar before dinner, Roger so worn that he hadn’t felt like talking. Now he rubbed his forehead tiredly.

“I am baffled. Totally and utterly baffled. I’ve been dealing with it all day, and I still can’t understand it. . . . It’s like this. If you own five percent or more of a company’s stock, you have to file with the SEC and tell them what you mean to do with your holding. You know you asked me a week or so ago about a Wood-Sage company? Well, they’re the ones who made the filing.

“Now they did it late yesterday, just so they wouldn’t have to answer a lot of questions or be in the
Journal
or anything. But of course, our lawyers got all the material. Such as it was. Wood-Sage isn’t a corporation that
does
anything apparently. They’re just a group of people who buy and sell stocks for their mutual benefit, figuring if they pool their investments they can do better than they would alone. It’s not that unusual. And they’re claiming they only bought so many Ajax shares because they think the company’s a good buy. The trouble is, we can’t get any kind of line on who owns Wood-Sage.” He ran his fingers through his long hair and pushed his plate away, much of the steak uneaten.

“The disclosure to the SEC should include the owners, shouldn’t it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “The owners are the shareholders. There is a board of directors, but it seems to be made up of brokers, including Tilford and Sutton.”

“The buyers must include their customers, then.” I thought back to my burglary of their offices. “I don’t have a list of all their customers. And I don’t know what it would tell you, anyway. The one strange thing about them is they do business for Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi bought several million dollars of stock last fall. It might have given them to Wood-Sage.”

Roger had never heard of Corpus Christi.

“Not surprising—it’s a group that tries to stay secret.” I told him what I’d read about them in the
Journal.
“Because they do everything in secret, maybe they don’t publicize their ownership of a company like Wood-Sage. . . . Catherine Paciorek is a member—her son let that fall inadvertently   

Roger fiddled with the stem of his wineglass. “There’s something I want to ask you,” he finally said abruptly. “It’s hard for me, because we’ve gotten into difficulties about your detective work and my reaction to it. But I’d like to hire you, for Scupperfield, Plouder. I’d like you to try to find out who’s behind Wood-Sage. Now this business with Corpus Christi and Mrs. Paciorek—it gives you an inside edge on the investigation.”

“Roger, the SEC and the FBI have the kind of resources you need for that sort of investigation. I don’t. By Tuesday or Wednesday they’ll have the information. It’ll be in the public domain.”

“Maybe. But that may be too late. We’re doing what we can—sending mailings to shareholders urging them to support current management. Our lawyers are working madly. But no one’s getting results.” He leaned across the table earnestly and took my hand. “Look. It’s a lot to ask. I realize that. But you know Mrs. Paciorek. Can’t you talk to her—find out if Corpus Christi is involved in this Wood-Sage thing at all?”

“Roger, the lady doesn’t talk to me. I don’t even know what I could do to get her to see me.”

He looked at me soberly. “I’m not asking you to do me a favor. I’ll hire you. Whatever your normal fee is, Scupperfield, Plouder will double it. I just cannot run the risk of omitting a course of action that might help. If we knew who the owners were, if we knew why they were trying to buy the company, it could make a big difference to our being able to hold on to Ajax.”

I thought of the three dollars in my wallet, the new furniture I was going to have to buy, the fee to the Streeter brothers for protecting Uncle Stefan. And then my shoulders sank. It was my fault Uncle Stefan was lying in the hospital needing protection. After a couple of weeks of working on the forgeries, I had done nothing but lose my apartment and my life’s possessions. Lotty, my refuge, wouldn’t speak to me. I had never felt so discouraged or incapable in all my years as an investigator. I tried, awkwardly, to explain some of my feelings.

Roger squeezed my hand. “I understand how you feel.” He grinned briefly. “I was the young hotshot coming over to manage the Ajax operation, show them how to do the job. Now our management are fighting for our lives. I know it’s not my fault—but I feel futile and embarrassed that I can’t do anything about it.”

I made a wry face, but returned his handshake. “So we’ll bolster each other’s failing vanity? I suppose . . . But next week you’ve got to go to the FBI and the SEC. Set up a meeting for me with them. They won’t talk to me otherwise. Just as long as you know it’s a most unlikely project, I’ll try to think of a way to get Catherine Paciorek to talk to me.”

He smiled gratefully. “You don’t know what a relief this is to me, Vic. Just the idea that someone I can trust absolutely will be involved. Can you come in Monday and meet the board? The lawyers can give you a full picture on what they know—three hours to say nothing, maybe.”

“Monday’s full. Tuesday?” He agreed. Eight A.M. I blenched slightly but wrote the time into my date book.

We left the Filigree at nine and went to a movie. I called the hospital from the theater to check on Uncle Stefan. All was well there. I wished someone cared enough for my safety to hire some huge bodyguards to protect me. Of course, a hardboiled detective is never scared. So what I was feeling couldn’t be fear. Perhaps nervous excitement at the treats in store for me. Even so, when Roger asked me, tentatively, if I wanted to go back to the Hancock with him, I assented without hesitation.

By morning the
Herald-Star
and the
Tribune
had both picked up the Wood-Sage story in their Sunday business sections. No one on the Ajax board had been available for comment. Pat Kollar, the
Herald-Star’s
financial analyst, explained why someone would want to acquire an insurance company. There wasn’t much else to say about Wood-Sage.

Roger read the papers gloomily. He left at two to meet his partner’s plane. “He’ll have the
Financial Times
and the
Guardian
with him and I’ll get
The New York Times
on my way to the car. That way we can have a real wake surrounded by all the bad news at once . . . Want to stay to meet him?”

I shook my head. Godfrey Anstey would be sleeping in the apartment’s second bedroom. Two’s company but three’s embarrassing.

After Roger left, I stayed for a few minutes to call my answering service. Phyllis Lording had phoned several times around noon. Somewhat surprised, I dialed the Chestnut Street apartment.

Phyllis’s high, rather squeaky voice sounded more flustered than usual. “Oh, hi, Vic. Is that you? Do you have any time this afternoon, by any chance?”

“What’s up?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Probably nothing. Only it’s hard to explain over the phone.”

I shrugged and agreed to walk over. When she met me at the door, she appeared thinner than ever. Her chestnut hair was pulled carelessly from her face, pinned on her head. Her swanlike neck seemed pitifully slender beneath the mass of hair, the fine planes in her face standing out sharply. In an oversize shirt and tight jeans she looked unbearably fragile.

She led me into the living room where the day’s papers were spread out on the floor. Like Agnes, she was a heavy smoker, and a blue haze hung in the air. I sneezed involuntarily.

She offered me coffee from an electric percolator sitting on the floor near the overflowing ashtray. When I saw how brackish it was I asked for milk.

“You can check in the refrigerator,” she said doubtfully, “but I don’t think I have any.”

The huge refrigerator held nothing except a few condiments and a bottle of beer. I went back to the living room. “Phyllis! What are you eating?”

She lit a cigarette. “I’m just not hungry, Vic. At first I kept trying to make myself meals, but I’d get sick if I ate anything. Now I’m just not hungry.”

I squatted down on the floor next to her and put a hand on her arm. “Not good, Phyl. It’s not a
way
to memorialize Agnes.”

She blinked a few times through the smoke. “I just feel so alone, Vic. Agnes and I didn’t have many friends in common— the people I know are all at the university and her friends were brokers and investors. Her family won’t talk to me     Her voice trailed off and she hunched her thin shoulders.

“Agnes’s youngest sister would like very much to talk to you. Why don’t you give her a call? She was twenty years younger than Agnes and didn’t know her too well, but she liked and admired her. She’s too young to know how to phone you without embarrassment after the way her mother’s acted.”

She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then she gave her intense smile and a brief nod. “Okay. I’ll call her.”

“And start eating something?”

She nodded again. “I’ll try, Vic.”

We talked about her courses for a bit. I wondered if she could get someone to take them for her a week while she went south for some sunshine; she said she’d think about it. After a while, she got around to the reason behind her phone call.

“Agnes and I shared a subscription to
The New York Times.”
She smiled painfully and lit another cigarette—her fifth since I’d arrived forty minutes earlier. “She always went straight to the business section while I hit the book reviews. She . . . she teased me about it. I don’t have much of a sense of humor; Agnes did, and it always got under my skin a bit . . . Since she died, I’ve, I’ve”—she bit her lips and looked away, trying to hide tears trickling down the inner corners of her face—” I’ve started reading the business section. It’s . . it’s a way to feel I’m still in touch with her.”

The last sentence came out in a whisper and I had to strain to hear her. “I don’t think that’s foolish, Phyl. I have a feeling if it had been you who died, Agnes would plunge into Proust with the same spirit.”

She turned to look at me again. “You were closer to Agnes in some ways than I could ever be. You and she are a lot alike. It’s funny. I loved her, desperately, but I didn’t understand her very well. . . . I was always a little jealous of you because you understood her.”

I nodded. “Agnes and I were good friends for a long time. I’ve had times when I was jealous of your closeness with her.”

She put her cigarette out and seemed to relax; her shoulders fell back from their hunched position. “That’s very generous of you, Vic. Thanks . . . Anyway, in the
Times
this morning I saw a story about a takeover bid for Ajax. You know, the big insurance company downtown.”

“I know. Agnes was looking at that before she died and I’ve been scratching around at it, too.”

“Alicia Vargas—Agnes’s secretary—sent me all her personal papers. Things she’d kept notes on, anything that was handwritten and didn’t relate to company business. I went through them all. Her latest notebook especially. She kept them—like Jonathan Edwards—or Proust.”

She stood up and went to the coffee table where I could see some spiral college notebooks among stacks of
Harper’s
and
The New York Review of Books.
I’d assumed they belonged to Phyllis.

She took the top one and riffled through it quickly, then folded it back to show me the page. Agnes’s sprawling hand was difficult to read. She’d written in “1/12,” followed by “R.F., Ajax.” That wasn’t too difficult to follow—she’d first talked to Ferrant about Ajax on January 12. Other cryptic entries that week apparently referred to various things she was thinking about or working on. One was a note to go to Phyllis’s poetry reading, for example. Then, on the eighteenth, the day she died, was a heavily scored entry: “$12 million, C-C for Wood-Sage.”

Phyllis was looking at me intently. “You see, Wood-Sage didn’t mean anything to me by itself. But after I read the paper this morning. . . . And the C-C. Agnes told me about Corpus Christi. I couldn’t help but think. .

“Neither can I. Where the hell did she get that information?”

Phyllis shrugged. “She knew a lot of brokers and lawyers.”

“Can I use your phone?” I asked Phyllis abruptly.

She led me to a porcelain-gold replica of the early telephones; I dialed the Paciorek number. Barbara answered. She was glad to talk to me; she’d be really happy to hear from Phyllis; and yes, her mother was home. She came back a few minutes later to say in considerable confusion that Mrs. Paciorek refused to talk to me.

“Tell her I just called to let her know that Corpus Christi’s ownership of Wood-Sage will be in the
Herald-Star
next week.”

“Corpus Christi?” she repeated doubtfully.

“You got it.”

Five minutes passed. I read the
Times
story on Ajax—more words to say less than had been in the Chicago papers. I scanned more verbiage on the AT&T divestiture. I looked at help wanted ads. Maybe I could find a better line of work. “Seasoned professional not afraid of challenges.” That meant someone to work hard for low pay. What do you season professionals with, anyway?

Finally Mrs. Paciorek came on the line. “Barbara gave me some garbled message.” Her voice was tight.

“It’s like this, Mrs. Paciorek: The SEC knows, of course, that Wood-Sage has bought a five-percent position in Ajax. What they don’t know is that most of the money was put up by Corpus Christi. And that most of Corpus Christi’s money comes from you, the Savage fortune you turned over to them. Securities law is not my specialty, but if Corpus Christi is putting up the money for Wood-Sage to buy Ajax stock, the SEC is not going to be happy that it wasn’t mentioned in your filing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve got to work on your answers. When the papers get hold of you, they’re not going to believe that for one minute.”