Killing Orders (12 page)

The bells at the nearby Methodist Temple chimed the hour: two o’clock. I took the Corpus Christi and Mrs. Paciorek files out to the main room and hunted around for a photocopier. A large Xerox machine stood in the corner. It took a while to warm up. Using my flashlight surreptitiously, I copied the contents of the two files. To separate the pages I had to take off my gloves. I stuffed them in my back pocket.

I had just finished when the night watchman came by and looked in through the glass panel. Like a total imbecile, I had left Tilford’s office door ajar. As the watchman fumbled with his keys, I hit the off button and looked around desperately for a hiding place. The machine had a paper cupboard built in underneath. My five-feet-eight frame fit badly, but I squeezed in and pulled the door as nearly shut as I could.

The watchman turned on the overhead lights. Through a crack in the door I watched him go into Tilford’s office. He spent long enough in there to decide the place had been burglarized. His voice crackled dimly as he used his walkietalkie to call for reinforcements. He made a circuit of the outer room, shining his flashlight in corners and closets. Apparently he thought the Xerox machine held nothing but its own innards:

He walked past it, stopped directly in front of me, then returned to the inner office.

Hoping he would stay there until help arrived, I gently shoved the door open. Silently easing my cramped body onto the floor, I crawled on hands and knees to the near wall where a window overlooked a fire escape. I slid the window open as quietly as possible and climbed out into the January night.

The fire escape was covered with ice. I almost ended my career forever as I skidded across its narrow iron platform, saving myself with a grab at the burning-cold railing. I’d been holding both the originals and photocopies of Tilford’s documents, as well as my flashlight. These flew across the ice as I seized the guardrail. Cursing to myself, I crawled precariously across the platform retrieving documents, stuffing them into my jeans waistband with numbed fingers. I pulled the gloves from my back pocket and put them on while skidding my way down as quickly as possible to the floor below.

The window was locked. I hesitated only seconds, then kicked it in. Brushing glass fragments away with my sweatshirted arm, I soon had a hole big enough to climb through.

I landed on top of a desk covered with files. These scattered in my wake. I kept bumping into desks and cabinets as I tried running to the far door. How could people get to their desks in the morning with so much clutter blocking their paths? I cracked the outer door, heard nothing, and made my way down the hall. I was about to open the stairwell door when I heard feet pounding on the other side.

Turning back down the hail, I tried every door. Miraculously one opened under my hand. I stepped inside onto something squishy and was hit in the nose by someone with a stick. Fighting back, I found myself wrestling a large mop.

Outside I could hear the voices of two patrolmen agreeing in low murmurs about which parts of the floor to guard. Trying to move quietly, I edged my way to the wall of the supply closet and ran into a coatrack. Clothes were hanging from it: the regulation smocks of the cleaning women. I fumbled in the dark, pulled my jeans off, stuck my documents inside the waistband of my tights, and pulled on the nearest smock. It came barely to my knees, and was miles too large in the shoulders, but it covered me.

Hoping I was not covered with paper, glass shards, or blood, and praying that these patrolmen had not dandled me on their knees thirty years ago, I swung open the closet door.

The policemen were about twenty feet from me, their backs turned. “You!” I screamed, donning Gabriella’s thick accent. They swirled around. “What goes on here, eh? I am calling manager!” I started off in righteous indignation to the elevator.

They were on me in an instant. “Who are you?”

“Me? I am Gabriella Sforzina. I work here. I belong. But you? What you doing here, anyway?” I started shouting in Italian, trusting none of them knew the words to “Madamina” from
Don Giovanni.

They looked at each other uncertainly. “Take it easy, lady. Take it easy.” The speaker was in his late forties, not far from pension time, not wanting any trouble. “Someone broke into one of the offices upstairs. We think he left by the fire escape. You haven’t seen anyone on this floor, have you?”

“What?” I shrieked, adding in Italian, “Why do I pay taxes, eh, that’s what I want to know—for bums like you to let burglars in while I’m working? So I can be raped and murdered?” I obligingly translated into English for them.

The younger one said, “Uh, look, lady. Why don’t you just go on home.” He scribbled a note on a pad and ripped off the sheet for me. “Just give that to the sergeant at the door downstairs and he’ll let you out.”

It was only then that I realized my gloves were lying with my jeans on the floor of the supply closet.

Chapter 14 - Fiery Aunts, Mourning Mothers

LOTTY WAS NOT amused. “You sound just like the CIA,” she snapped, when I stopped by the clinic to tell her my adventure. “Breaking into people’s offices, stealing their files”

“I’m not stealing the files,” I said virtuously. “I wrapped them up and mailed them back first thing this morning. What troubles me from a moral standpoint is the jacket and gloves I left there—technically their loss is a business expense. Yet will the IRS turn me in if I itemize? I should call my accountant.”

“Do that,” she retorted. Her Viennese accent was evident, as always when Lotty was angry. “Now leave. I’m busy and have no wish to talk to you in such a mood.”

The break-in had made the late editions. Police speculated that the watchman interrupted the thief before he took anything of value, since nothing of value was missing. My prints are on file at the Eleventh Street station, so I hoped none showed up that I couldn’t reasonably account for as part of my business visit to Tilford’s office.

What would they make of Derek Hatfield’s name on the Stock Exchange’s sign-in register, I wondered. I had to figure out some way of finding out if they questioned Hatfield about

Whistling through my teeth, I started the Omega and headed out to Melrose Park. Despite Lotty’s ill humor I was pleased with myself. Typical criminal failing—you carry off a coup, then have to brag about it. Sooner or later one of your bragees tells the police.

Snow was beginning to fall as I turned onto Mannheim Road. Small dry spitballs, Arctic snow, no good for snowmen. I was wearing long underwear under my navy pantsuit and hoped that would be enough protection against a minus 28 wind chill. Some time today I’d have to find an Army-Navy Surplus and get another pea jacket.

The Priory of Albertus Magnus loomed coldly through the driving pellets. I parked the car out of the wind as far as possible and fought my way to the priory entrance. The wind sliced through suit and underwear and left me gasping for air.

Inside the high-vaulted, stale hallway the sudden silence was palpable. I rubbed my arms and stamped my feet and warmed myself before asking the anemic ascetic at the reception desk to find Father Carroll for me. I hoped I was too early for evening prayers and too late for classes or confessions.

About five minutes later, as the building’s essential chill began making me shiver, Father Carroll himself came down the hall. He was moving quickly, yet not hurrying, a man in control of his life and so at peace.

“Miss Warshawski. How nice to see you. Have you come about your aunt? She’s back today, as she probably told you.”

I blinked a few times. “Back? Back here, you mean? No, she hadn’t told me. I came . . . I came to see if you could give me any information about a Catholic lay organization called Corpus Christi.”

“Hmm.” Father Carroll took my arm. “You’re shivering—let’s get to my office and have a cup of tea. You can have a nice chat with your aunt. Father Pelly and Father Jablonski are there, too.”

I followed him meekly down the hall. Jablonski, Pelly, and Rosa were sitting at a deal table in Pelly’s outer office, drinking tea. Rosa’s steel-colored hair was as stiffly waved as though made, in fact, from cast iron. She wore a plain black dress with a silver cross at the throat. She was listening attentively to Pelly as Carroll and I came in. At the sight of me her face changed. “Victoria! What are you doing here?”

The hostility was so obvious that Carroll looked astounded. Rosa must have noticed this, but her hatred was too fierce for her to care about externals; she continued to glare at me, her thin bosom heaving. I walked around the table to her and kissed the air by her cheek. “Hello, Rosa. Father Carroll says they’ve brought you back—as the treasurer, I hope? How splendid. I know Albert must be ecstatic, too.”

She looked at me malevolently. “I know well I cannot make you be quiet, or stop you harassing me. But perhaps in the presence of these holy fathers you will at least not strike me.”

“I don’t know, Rosa. Depends on what the Holy Spirit prompts you to say to me. Don’t bet on anything, though.”

I turned to Carroll. “I’m Rosa’s brother’s only surviving granddaughter. When she sees me, it always chokes her up like this . . . Could I trouble you for that cup of tea?”

Glad of something to do to cover the tension, Carroll bustled with an electric kettle behind me. When he handed me a cup I asked, “Does this mean you’ve found who was responsible for the forgeries?”

He shook his head, his pale brown eyes troubled. “No. Father Pelly persuaded me, though, that Mrs. Vignelli really could not have been involved. We know how valuable her work is, and how much it means to her—it seemed unnecessarily cruel to make her sit at home for months or years.”

Pelly put in, “Actually, we’re not sure they will ever clear the matter up. The FBI seems to have lost interest. Do you know anything about it?” He looked questioningly at me.

I shrugged. “I get all my news from the daily papers. I haven’t seen anything in there about the FBI dropping the investigation. What has Hatfield said to you?”

Carroll answered, “Mr. Hatfield hasn’t told us anything. But since the real stocks turned up, they don’t seem to be as interested in the investigation.”

“Could be. Derek doesn’t talk too much to me.” I sipped some of the pale green tea. It was warming; that was the best that could be said for it. “I really came out here for a different reason. A friend of mine was shot last week. Saturday I learned Father Pelly was a friend of hers, too. Perhaps the rest of you knew her—Agnes Paciorek?”

Carroll shook his head. “Of course, we’ve all been praying for her this week. But Augustine was the only person out here who knew her personally. I don’t think we can tell you much about her.”

“I didn’t come about her. Or not directly about her. She was shot while tracking down some information for an Englishman I introduced her to. That would make me feel responsible even if we hadn’t been good friends. I think she was looking at something connected with a Catholic lay organization called Corpus Christi. I wanted to know if you could tell me anything about it.”

Carroll smiled gently. “I’ve heard of it, but I couldn’t tell you much about it. They like to operate secretly—so even if I were a member I couldn’t tell you anything.”

Rosa said venomously, “And why do you want to know, Victoria? To sling mud at the Church?”

“More mud? Sorry, Rosa. Just because I’m not a Catholic doesn’t mean I go around persecuting the Church.”

“No? Then why do you involve yourself in protest meetings on abortion? I saw you at that demonstration last year outside the diocesan offices.”

“Rosa! Don’t tell me you were out there with the fetus worshippers! Were you the old woman who spat at a girl in a wheelchair?”

Rosa’s teacup clattered from the deal table to the uncarpeted linoleum floor. The institutional mug was too heavy to break, but tea spilled everywhere. She leaped to her feet, ignoring the tea dripping down the front of her black dress.
“Figlia di puttana!”
she shouted. “Mind your own business. Leave the business of good Catholics alone.”

Carroll looked shocked, whether from the unexpected outburst or because he understood Italian I couldn’t tell. He took Rosa’s arm. “Mrs. Vignelli. You’re letting yourself get overexcited. Maybe the strain of this terrible suspicion has been too much for you. I’m going to call your son and ask him to come pick you up.”

He told Jablonski to get some towels and sat Rosa down in the room’s one armchair. Pelly squatted on the floor next to her. He smiled chidingly. “Mrs. Vignelli. The Church admires and supports those who support her, but even ardor can be a sin if not held in check and used properly. A good Catholic welcomes all questions about the Church and the faith. Even if you suspect your niece of scoffing at you and your faith, treat her with charity. If you turn the other cheek long enough, that’s how you’ll win her. If you abuse her, you’ll only drive her away.”

Rosa folded thin lips into an invisible line. “You’re right, Father. I spoke without thinking. You will forgive me, Victoria:

I am old and small things affect me too much.”

The charade of piety made me faintly ill. I smiled sardonically and told her that was fine; I could make allowances for her enfeebled state.

A young brother came in with an armful of towels. Rosa took these from him and cleaned herself, floor, and table with her usual angry efficiency. She smiled bleakly at Father Carroll. “Now. If you will let me use the phone I will call my son.”

Pelly and Carroll ushered her into the inner office; I sat in one of the folding chairs at the table. Jablonski was eyeing me with lively curiosity.

“Do you usually rub your aunt the wrong way?”

I smiled. “She’s old. Little things get to her.”

“She’s extremely difficult to work with,” he said abruptly. “We’ve lost a lot of part-time people over the years because of her—no one can do anything perfectly enough for her. For some reason she listens to Gus, but he’s the only one who can make her see reason. She even snaps at Boniface, and you have to be pretty thin-skinned not to get along with him.”

“Why keep her then? What’s all the anxiety to bring her back?”

“She’s one of those indispensable battle-axes,” he grimaced.

“She knows our books, she works hard, she’s efficient—and we pay her very little. We’d never get anyone with her skill or dedication for what we can afford to give her.”

I grinned to myself: served Rosa right for all her anti-feminist attacks to be the victim of wage discrimination herself.

She came out with Pelly, backbone as straight as ever, ignoring me pointedly as she said good-bye to Jablonski. She was going to wait for Albert in the entrance hall, she announced. Pelly took her elbow solicitously and escorted her out the door. The only man who could get along with Rosa. What a distinction. For a fleeting moment I wondered what her life had been like when Uncle Carl was alive.

Carroll came back into the outer office a few seconds later. He sat down and looked at me for a while without talking. I wished I hadn’t let myself get caught up in Rosa’s anger.

When he spoke, it wasn’t about my aunt. “Do you want to tell me why you’re asking about Corpus Christi and Agnes Paciorek?”

I chose my words carefully. “The Ajax Insurance Company is one of the country’s largest property-casualty insurers. One of their officers came to me a couple of weeks ago concerned that a covert takeover bid might be in the offing. I talked to Agnes about it—as a broker she had ready access to trading news.

“The night she died, she called the man from Ajax to tell him she was meeting with someone who might have information about the stock. At the least, that person was the last who saw her alive. Since he—or she—hasn’t come forward, it might even be the person who killed her.”

Now came the tricky part. “The only clue I have is some notes she scribbled. Some of the words made it clear she was thinking about Ajax when she wrote them. Corpus Christi appeared on that list. It wasn’t a memo or anything like that— just the cryptic comments you make when you’re writing while you think. I have to start someplace, so I’m starting with these notes.”

Carroll said, “I really can’t tell you much about the organization. Its members guard their privacy zealously. They take literally the injunction about doing your good works in secret. They also take quasi-monastic vows, those of poverty and obedience. They have some kind of structure with the equivalent of an abbot in all the locations where they have members, and their obedience is to the abbot, who may or may not be a priest. He usually is. Even so, he’d be a secret member, carrying out his parish duties as his regular work.”

“How can they take vows of poverty? Do they live in communes, or monasteries?”

He shook his head. “But they give all their money to Corpus Christi, whether it’s their salary or inheritance or stock-market earnings or whatever. Then the order gives it back to them according to their level of need, and also the kind of life-style they need to maintain. Say you were a corporate lawyer. They’d probably let you have a hundred thousand dollars a year. You see, they don’t want any questions about why your living standard is so much lower than that of your fellow lawyers.”

Pelly came back into the room at that point. “Lawyers, Prior?”

“I was trying to explain to Miss Warshawski how Corpus Christi works. I don’t really know too much about it. Do you, Gus?”

“Just what you hear around. Why do you want to know?”

I told him what I’d told Carroll.

“I’d like to see those notes,” Pelly said. “Maybe they’d give me some idea what the connection was in her mind.”

“I don’t have them with me. But the next time I come out I’ll bring them.” If I remembered to put something down on paper.

It was nearly four-thirty when I got back to the Eisenhower and the snow was coming down as furiously as ever. It was dark now, too, and nearly impossible to see the road. Traffic moved at about five miles an hour. Every now and then, I’d pass some poor soul who’d slid off the side completely.

As I neared the Belmont exit, I debated whether to go home and leave my next errand for an easier day. Two angry ladies in one afternoon was a little hard on the system. But the sooner I talked to Catherine Paciorek the sooner I’d get her out of my life.

I continued north. It was seven by the time I reached the Half Day Road exit.

Away from the expressway arteries the roads were unplowed. I almost got stuck a few times on Sheridan Road, and came to a complete halt just after turning onto Arbor. I got out and looked thoughtfully at the car. No one in the Paciorek house was likely to give me a push. “You’d better be moving by the time I come back,” I warned the Omega, and set off to do the last half mile on foot.

I moved as quickly as possible through the deep snow, glad of earmuffs and gloves, but wishing desperately for a coat. I let myself into the garage and rang the bell at the side entrance. The garage was heated and I rubbed my hands and feet in the warmth while I waited.