Killing Orders (24 page)

“There’s no evidence,” I said helplessly.

He put the glass down with a snap. “Don’t. When someone has a fatal heart condition, I tell them. I tell them these things are never certain and that gutsy people and lucky people beat the odds. But without a scan I know what’s happening. As one professional to another, how sure are you about Agnes’s death?”

I met his brown eyes and saw with a twinge that tears swam in them. “As one professional to another—very certain.”

“I see. That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you for coming up tonight, Victoria.”

I didn’t like to leave him in this state. He ignored my outstretched arm, picked up a journal lying on a corner of the desk, and studied it intently. I didn’t tell him it was upside down.

Chapter 26 - Loading the Gun

ROGER MET ME
at Grillon’s, an old Chicago tradition where waiters leave you alone instead of popping up every five minutes to ask if everything is to your satisfaction. They rolled a huge joint of beef up to the table and cut off rare slices for us. Stilton, flown in from Melton Mowbray just for the restaurant, went well with a ‘64 port. Despite my worries and the ugly scene I’d been through with O’Faolin, I felt good.

Roger was buoyant. “You’ve given me something to look forward to, V.I. I told the board that I had a private-inquiry agent looking into the matter and that he thought he had a way out. They were most keen, but since I didn’t have any information, I couldn’t give them any.”

I smiled tiredly and clasped his hand. It was midnight when we finished the port and the waiter brought our check. Roger asked hesitantly if he could come home with me. I shook my head regretfully.

“Not that I wouldn’t like it—the company would be most welcome. But it’s not much of a place and right now what’s there is a shambles. Someone was pawing through it looking for a document and I just don’t feel like sharing the mess.”

“Is that the way an American girl tells someone to go to hell?”

I leaned across the table and kissed him. “When I tell you to go to hell, you won’t have any doubts at all that that’s what you heard. . . . I guess what I’m telling you is that I’m homeless and don’t like it. I feel disoriented and I need to be alone with it.”

He nodded soberly. “People on my staff are always telling me, ‘I can deal with that.’ I guess that’s an Americanism. Anyway, I can deal with that.”

When he offered to drive me, I gratefully accepted, abandoning the Toyota in the underground garage. If it wasn’t still there in the morning, no big loss.

It was after one-thirty when he deposited me in front of the

Bellerophon. Courteously waiting until I was safely inside, he waved and drove off.

Mrs. Climzak had sat up for me. As soon as I came in the door she came huffing over, her face resembling an angry peony.

“You’re going to have to leave, Miss Warshawski, or whatever your name really is.”

“I want to, Mrs. Climzak. I don’t like the Bellerophon any better than it likes me. But we’ll both have to stick it out until the end of the week.”

“This isn’t funny!” She stamped her foot. I was afraid some of the petals might start falling off.
“You
have disrupted your apartment. You have strange men in at all hours of the night.”

“Not disrupted, Mrs. Climzak. You mean there’s been an irruption in the apartment. I don’t think you disrupt apartments, only meetings.”

“Don’t try to change the subject. Now, tonight, two men burst in and almost frightened my husband to death.”

“What did they do—show him a job application?”

“You get out of here by eight tomorrow morning. And take those men with you.”

“What men?” I started to say, then realized what she was talking about. My heart began beating faster. I wished I hadn’t drunk so much at dinner, but the Smith & Wesson gently pushing into my side brought some comfort. “They’re still in the apartment? You didn’t call the police?”

“Why should I?” she said in thin triumph. “I figured they were
your
problem, not mine.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Climzak. Don’t call the mayor’s office for your good-citizen medal—they’ll call you.”

Pushing my way past her I went behind the lobby desk, picked up the phone and dialed my room. She was squawking and pulling at my arm but I ignored her—I’d beaten up an archbishop today. An old lady wasn’t going to trouble me any.

After fifteen rings, a gravelly voice I knew well answered. “Ernesto. It’s V. I. Warshawski. You going to shoot me if I come up to my room?”

“Where are you, Warshawski? We’ve been waiting here since eight o’clock.”

“Sorry. I got carried away by religion.”

He asked again where I was and told me to wait for him in the lobby. When I’d hung up, Mrs. Climzak was shrieking that she was going to get her husband to call the cops if I touched that phone again.

I leaned over and kissed her. “Would you really? There are a couple of gangsters waiting to cart me off. If you call the cops, you might be in time to rescue me.”

She gazed at me in horror and dashed off to the nether regions. Ernesto, looking the picture of a corporate executive, came through the stairwell door, a seedy, thin man in an ill-fitting chauffeur’s uniform at his heels.

Surely, if they meant to shoot me, they would have hidden outside and not broadcast their faces to the world like this. Surely. Yet my hands didn’t believe me. They started sweating and I was afraid they might be trembling so I stuck them into my pockets.

“Your room’s a mess, Warshawski.”

“If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve cleaned up.”

He ignored the sarcasm. “Someone’s been searching it. Sloppy job. You know that?”

I told him I knew it and followed him into the cold night. The limousine was parked around the corner. Ernesto and I sat in the backseat, me not blindfolded this time. I lay against the comfortable upholstery, but couldn’t sleep. This has to work, I told myself. Has to. This can’t be a summons to shoot me in revenge for wounding Walter Novick. For that they’d just gun me down on the street.

Jumbled with these thoughts was O’Faolin’s contemptuous face as he left me tonight, Paciorek’s despair. And somewhere in the city, a furious Lotty, hearing that Uncle Stefan was going home with Murray, was going to play the tethered goat for me.

On North Avenue we turned into the parking lot of an enormous restaurant. No wonder they hadn’t blindfolded me— nothing secret about this place. A huge neon sign with a champagne glass bubbling over perched on top of the marquee. Underneath it, flashing lights proclaimed this as Torfino’s Restaurant, Italian food and wine.

When the limousine pulled up in front of the entrance, a doorman sprang from nowhere to open the car for Ernesto and me. The driver took off, whispering hoarsely the first sound I’d heard from him. “Call when you’re ready.”

I followed Ernesto through the restaurant, empty of customers, to a hallway behind the kitchen. Spare linoleum and green, grease-spattered walls gave it a common institutional look. A bored young man stood guard at a closed door. He moved to one side as Ernesto approached. Behind the door lay a private office where the don sat talking on a phone, gently smoking a large cigar. He nodded at Ernesto and waved a hand at me, signaling me to come in.

Like the don’s library, this office was decorated in red. Here the effect was cheap. The curtains were rayon, the seat covers vinyl, the desk a mere box on four legs.

Pasquale hung up and asked Ernesto what had taken him so long. In Italian Ernesto explained my long absence. “Further, someone else is interested in Signorina Warshawski. Her room has been carelessly searched.”

“And who would that be, Miss Warshawski?” Pasquale asked with grave courtesy.

I blinked a few times, trying to readjust myself to the imaginary world of honor. “I thought you might know, Don Pasquale. I assumed it was done by your henchman, Walter Novick, at the request of Mrs. Paciorek.”

The don looked at his cigar, measuring the ash, then turned to Ernesto. “Do we know a Walter Novick, Ernesto?”

Ernesto gave a disdainful shrug. “He has run a few errands for you, Don. He is the type who likes to grab at the coattails of the powerful.”

Pasquale nodded regally. “I regret that Novick gave the appearance of being under my protection. As Ernesto said, he had illusions above his abilities. These illusions led him to use my name in a compromising way.” Again he examined the ash. Still not ripe. “This Novick is acquainted with many petty criminals. A man like that frequently engages in foolish or dangerous exploits with such criminals in order to impress a man such as myself.” He gave a world-weary shrug. I knew, and he knew that such exploits were the acts of the childish, but—what would you? The ash now proved ready for a gentle tapping.

“Among these criminals were some forgers. Novick conceived an act of staggering folly: to engage these forgers to make fake stock certificates and put them in the safe of a religious house.”

He paused to invite my comment on this staggering folly. “How, Don, did these forgers know for which companies and in which denominations to make the fakes?”

Pasquale hunched a shoulder impatiently. “Priests are guileless men. They talk indiscreetly. Someone no doubt overheard them. Such things have happened before.”

“You would have no objection to my bringing this tale to Derek Hatfield?”

He smiled blandly. “None whatsoever. Although it is merely hearsay—I can see no benefit to my talking to Hatfield myself.”

“And you wouldn’t know the names of these forgers, would you?”

“Regrettably, no, my dear Miss Warshawski.”

“And you wouldn’t know why these forgers used the priory, would you?”

“One presumes, Miss Warshawski, because it was easy for them. It is not of great interest to me.”

I could feel sweat prickling on the palms of my hands. My mouth was dry. This was my chance; I just hoped Pasquale, student of human terror that he was, couldn’t detect my nervousness. “Unfortunately, Don, you may have to take an interest.”

Pasquale didn’t change position, nor did he alter his look of polite attention. But his expression somehow froze and the eyes glittered in a way that made cold sweat break out on my forehead. His voice, when he spoke, chilled my marrow. “Is that a threat, Miss Warshawski?”

Out of the corner of one eye, I could see Ernesto, who’d been slouching in a vinyl chair, come to attention. “Not a threat, Don Pasquale. Just for your information. Novick’s in the hospital, and he’s going to talk. And Archbishop O’Faolin’s going to say it was all your idea about the forgeries, and attacking me, and all that stuff. He isn’t going to know anything about it.”

Pasquale had relaxed slightly. I was breathing more easily.

Ernesto sank back in his chair and started looking at his pocket diary.

“As you may know, Don, the SEC will not allow anyone with known Mafia connections to own an insurance company or a bank. So O’Faolin is going to back away from Novick as fast as he can. He’ll leave on a ten o’clock flight tomorrow night and let you handle the situation as best you can.”

The don nodded with a return of his grave courtesy. “As always, your comments are fascinating, Miss Warshawski. If I knew this O’Faolin”—he spread his hands deprecatingly. “Meanwhile, I am desolated by the discomfort Walter Novick has brought into your life.” He looked at Ernesto; a red-leather checkbook materialized. The don wrote in it. “Would twenty-five thousand cover the loss to your apartment?”

I swallowed a few times. Twenty-five thousand would get me a co-op, replace my mother’s piano, or enable me to spend the rest of the winter in the Caribbean. What did I want with such things, however? “Your generosity is fabled, Don Pasquale. Yet I have done nothing to deserve it.”

He persisted, politely. Keeping my eyes on a poor reproduction of Garibaldi over the pressed-wood desk, I steadfastly resisted. Pasquale finally gave me a measuring look and told Ernesto to see that I got home safely.

Chapter 27 - Luck of the Archbishop

AT FOUR-THIRTY IN early February the sky is already turning dark. Inside the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, the candles created warming circles of light. Behind an ornately carved wooden screen, separating the friars’ choir stalls from the secular mob, the room was dim. I could barely make out Uncle Stefan’s features, but knew he was there from the comforting clasp of his hand. Murray was at my left. Beyond him was Cordelia Hull, one of his staff photographers.

As Father Carroll began to chant the introit in his high clear tenor, my depression deepened. I shouldn’t be here. After making a complete fool of myself in as many ways as possible,

I should have retired to the Bellerophon and pulled the covers over my head for a month.

The day had started badly. Lotty, enraged at the four-paragraph story in the
Herald-Star
announcing her uncle’s sudden relapse and death, was not mollified by his decision to go home with Murray. According to Murray, the argument had been brief. Uncle Stefan chuckling and calling Lotty a hotheaded girl did not amuse her and she had switched to German to give vent to her fury. Uncle Stefan told her she was interfering where it was none of her business whereat she tore off in her green Datsun to find me. I didn’t have the advantage of knowing Lotty as a headstrong little girl willfully riding her pony up the castle steps at Kleinsee. Besides, her accusations were too close to my nerve centers. Egotistical. So single-minded I would sacrifice Uncle Stefan trying to solve a problem that had the FBI and the SEC baffled.

“But, Lotty. I put my own body on the line, too. That arson at my apartment—”

She contemptuously swept away my protest. Hadn’t the police asked for full information? Hadn’t I withheld it in my usual arrogant way? And now I wanted someone to weep because I was suffering the consequences?

When I tried to suggest to Uncle Stefan—and Murray-—that we drop the project and retire quietly, Murray had been angry in his turn, not after all he’d been through to sell Gil on the project. If I was too lily-livered all of a sudden to follow through on this, he wasn’t. He’d take Uncle Stefan to the priory himself and I could go sulk in my tent and enjoy it alone.

Uncle Stefan took me to one side. “Really, Victoria. By now you should know better than to pay the least heed to Lotty when she is in such a tantrum. If you are letting her overset you it is only because you are very tired.” He patted my hand and insisted that Murray go to a bakery and buy some chocolate cake. “And none of that Sara Lee or Davidson cake. I mean a real bakery, young man. There must be one in your area.”

So Murray returned with a hazelnut chocolate cake and whipped cream. Uncle Stefan cut me a large slice, poured cream over it, and stood watching me eat it with anxious benevolence. “So,
Nichtchen,
now you are feeling better, right?”

I wasn’t, not really. Somehow I couldn’t re-create the terror I’d felt earlier dealing with O’Faolin. All I could think of was Father Carroll’s probable reaction to my antics in his chapel.

But at three-thirty I’d followed Uncle Stefan into the backseat of Murray’s Pontiac Fiero.

We reached the chapel early and were able to get seats in the front row behind the wooden screen. I was assuming that Rosa, hard at work on priory finances, would attend the service, but I didn’t want to run the risk of her recognizing me, even in the gloomy half light, by turning around and peering.

Around us people joined in the service, knowing which chants permitted group singing, which ones were solo performances. The four of us sat quietly.

When the offertory announced the beginning of the mass, my heart started beating faster. Shame, fear, anticipation all crowded together. Next to me Uncle Stefan continued to breathe calmly while my palms turned wet and my breath came in short, gasping chunks.

Through the rood screen I could see the priests forming a large semicircle around the altar. Pelly and O’Faolin stood side by side, Pelly small, intent, O’Faolin tall and self-assured, the chief executive officer at an office picnic. O’Faolin wore a black cassock instead of the white Dominican robe. He was not part of the order.

We let the congregation file past us to receive communion. When Rosa’s ramrod back and cast-iron hair marched by, I gently nudged Uncle Stefan. We stood up together and joined the procession.

Some half dozen priests were passing out wafers. At the altar the procession split as people quietly went to the man with the fewest communicants in front of him. Uncle Stefan and I moved behind Rosa to Archbishop O’Faolin.

The archbishop wasn’t looking at people’s faces. He had performed this ritual so many times that his mind was far from the benevolent superiority of his face. Rosa turned to go back to her seat. She saw me blocking her path and gave an audible gasp. It brought O’Faolin abruptly to the present. His startled gaze went from me to Uncle Stefan. The engraver grabbed my sleeve and said loudly.

“Victoria! This man helped to stab me.”

The archbishop dropped the ciborium. “You!” he hissed. His eyes glittered. “You’re dead. So help me God, you’re dead.”

A camera flashed. Cordelia Hull on the job. Murray, grinning, held up his microphone. “Any more comments for posterity, Archbishop?”

By now the mass had come to a complete halt. One of the more level-headed young brothers had leaped to retrieve the spilled communion wafers from the floor before they were stepped on. The few remaining communicants stood gaping. Carroll was at my side.

“What is the meaning of this, Miss Warshawski? This is a church, not a gladiator’s arena. Clear these newspaper people so we can finish the mass. Then I’d like to see you in my office.”

“Certainly, Prior.” My face felt red but I spoke calmly. “I’d appreciate it if you’d bring Father Pelly along, too. And Rosa will be there.” My aunt, rooted at my side, now tried to make for the door. I held her thin wiry arm in a grasp tight enough to make her wince. “We’re going to talk, Rosa. So don’t try to leave.”

O’Faolin started justifying himself to Carroll. “She’s mad, Prior. She’s dug up some old man to hurl accusations at me. She thinks I tried to kill her and she’s been persecuting me ever since I came out to the priory.”

“That’s a lie,” Uncle Stefan piped up. “Whether this man is an archbishop I couldn’t say. But that he stole my stocks and watched a hoodlum try to kill me, that I know. Listen to him now!”

The prior held up his arms. “Enough!” I hadn’t known the gentle voice could carry so much authority. “We’re here to worship the Lord. These accusations make a mockery of the Lord’s Supper. Archbishop, you will have your turn to speak. Later.”

He called the congregation to order, and gave a pithy homily on how the devil could be at our side to tempt us even at the very gates of heaven, and had everyone join in a group confession. Still holding on to Rosa, I moved away from the center of the chapel to one side. As the congregation prayed, I watched O’Faolin head toward the exit behind the altar. Pelly, standing near him, looked wretched. If he left now with O’Faolin, he made a public statement of complicity. If he stayed behind, the archbishop would never forgive him. His choices flitted across his intense, mobile face with the clarity of a stock quotation on an electronic ticker. At length, his cheeks flushed with misery, he joined his brothers in the final prayers and filed silently with them from the chapel.

As soon as Carroll was out of sight, the congregation burst into loud commentary. Above the clatter I listened for a different sound. It didn’t come.

Rosa started muttering invectives at me in a loud undertone.

“Not here, Auntie dear. Save it for the prior’s study.” With Stefan and Murray on my heels, I guided my aunt firmly through the gaping, chattering crowd to the hallway door. Cordelia stayed behind to get a few group photos.

Pelly was sitting with Carroll and Jablonski. Rosa started to say something when she saw him, but he shook his head and she shut up. Power in the word. If we were all still alive at the end of the session, I might try to hire him as her keeper.

As soon as we were seated, Carroll demanded to know who Murray and Uncle Stefan were. He told Murray that he could stay only on condition that none of the conversation was either recorded or reported. Murray shrugged. “Then there isn’t much point in my staying.”

Carroll was adamant. Murray acquiesced.

“I tried to get Xavier to join us but he is getting ready to go to the airport and refuses to say anything. I want an orderly explanation from the rest of you. Starting with Miss Warshawski.”

I took a deep breath. Rosa said, “Don’t listen to her, Father. She is nothing but a spite-filled—”

“You will have your turn, Mrs. Vignelli.” Carroll spoke with such cold authority that Rosa surprised herself by shutting up.

“This tale has its roots some thirty-five years ago in Panama,” I told Carroll. “At that time, Xavier O’Faolin was a priest working in the Barrio. He was a member of Corpus Christi and a man of deep ambition. Catherine Savage, a young

idealistic woman with a vast fortune, joined Corpus Christi under his persuasion and turned most of her money into a trust for the use of Corpus Christi.

“She met and married Thomas Paciorek, a young doctor in the service. She spent four more years in Panama and developed a lasting interest in a seminary where Dominicans could continue the work she and O’Faolin had undertaken among the poor.”

As I got well into my story, I finally started relaxing. My voice came out without a tremor and my breathing returned to normal. I kept a wary eye on Rosa.

“Toward the end of her stint in Panama, a young man came to the Priory of San Tomás who shared her passion and her idealism. Not to spin out the obvious, it was Augustine Pelly. He, too, joined Corpus Christi. He, too, fell under Xavier O’Faolin’s influence. When O’Faolin’s ambition and acuity got him a coveted promotion to Rome, Pelly followed and served as his secretary for several years—not a typical venue for a Dominican friar.

“When he rejoined his brothers, this time in Chicago, he met Mrs. Vignelli, another ardent, if very angry, soul. She, too, joined Corpus Christi. It gave some meaning to an otherwise bitter life.”

Rosa made an angry gesture. “And if it is bitter, whose fault is that?”

“We’ll get to that in a moment,” I said coldly. “The next important incident in this tale took place about three years ago when Roberto Calvi, prompted by his own internal devils, set up some Panamanian subsidiaries for the Banco Ambrosiano, using over a billion dollars in bank assets. When he died, that money had completely disappeared. We probably will never know what he meant to use it for. But we do know where much of it is now.”

As I sketched the transactions between Figueredo and O’Faolin and the effort to take over Ajax, I continued to strain for sounds in the background. I stole a look at my watch. Six o’clock. Surely. .

“That brings me to the forgeries, Prior. That they played a role in the takeover, I feel certain. For it was to stop my investigation that O’Faolin dug up a petty hoodlum named

Walter Novick. He got him to throw acid at me and to burn my apartment building down. Indeed, it was sheer luck that kept seven people from being murdered by his mania to stop my investigation into the forgeries.

“What puzzles me is Rosa’s role and that played by her son, Albert. I can only think that Rosa didn’t know the forgeries had been put in the safe by Corpus Christi until
after
she called me in to investigate. Suddenly, and with uncharacteristic humility, she tried to get me out of the case. She wouldn’t discuss it. She mouthed pieties. Yet initially she was so fearful of an FBI frame-up that she forced me to listen to repeated insults in order to clear her blameless character.”

Rosa could contain herself no longer. “Insults! Why should I ask you for help? What have I not suffered at the hands of that whore who called herself your mother!”

“Rosa.” This was Pelly. “Rosa. Calm yourself. You do the Church no favor with these accusations.”

Rosa was beyond his influence. The demon that had rocked her sanity two weeks ago was too close to her now. “I took her in. Oh, how I was betrayed. Sweet Gabriella. Beautiful Gabriella. Talented Gabriella.” Her face contorted in an angry mimicry. “Oh, yes. The darling of the family. Do you know what your precious Gabriella did? Did she ever have the courage to tell you? Not she, filthy whore.

“She came to me. I took her in from the goodness of my heart. I was forty and my belly was swollen with child. What did I want with a baby? I hated men. Hated their foul hands touching me in the night. I, who kept myself pure and childless, destroyed by the lusts of your uncle. Carrying my shame for all the world to see.

“Did she pity me? Not she! While I worked my fingers to the bone for her, she seduced my husband. If I would divorce him, he would take my child. He would support me. Only let him live with his sweet, talented Gabriella.”

Spit was flecking her lips. We all sat, unable to think of anything that might stop the flow.

“So I threw her into the street. Who would not have? I made her promise to disappear and leave no word. Yes, she had that much shame. And what did Carl do? He shot himself.

Shot himself because of a whore from the streets. Left me alone with Albert. That whore, that shameless one!”

She was screaming louder and louder, repeating herself now. I stumbled into the hallway to find a washroom. As I staggered along, catching the bile in my hands, I felt Carroll’s arm around me, guiding me to a tiny dark room with a sink. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t think. Heaving, gasping for air, choking up images of Gabriella. Her beautiful, haunted face. How could she think my father and I would not forgive her?

Carroll wiped my face with cold towels. Gradually the terrible shuddering stopped. Leading me to a small room, he sat me on a sofa. He disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with a cup of green tea. I gulped it gratefully.

“I need to finish this conversation,” he said. “I need to find out why Augustine did what he did. For it must have been he who put the forged certificates in the safe. Your aunt is fundamentally a pitiable creature. Can you be strong enough to keep that in mind and help me end this story as fast as possible?”