Killing Orders (14 page)

We spent several agreeable hours there and fell asleep around ten o’clock. If we hadn’t gone to bed so early, my deepest sleep wouldn’t have been over by three-thirty. I might have been sleeping too heavily for the smoke to wake me.

I sat up in bed, irritated, momentarily thinking I was back with my husband, one of whose less endearing habits was smoking in bed. However, the acrid smell in no way resembled a cigarette.

“Roger!” I shook him as I started scrambling around in the dark for a pair of pants. “Roger! Wake up. The place is on fire!”

I must have left a burner on in the kitchen, I thought, and headed toward it with some vague determination to extinguish the blaze myself.

The kitchen was in flames. That’s what they say in the newspapers. Now I knew what they meant. Living flames enveloped the walls and snaked long orange tongues along the floor toward the dining room. They crackled and sang and sent out ribbons of smoke. Party ribbons, wrapping the floor and the hallway.

Roger was behind me. “No way, V.!.!” he shouted above the crackling. He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me toward the front door. I seized the knob to turn it and drew back, scorched. Felt the panels. They were hot. I shook my head, trying to keep panic at bay. “It’s on fire, too!” I screamed. “Fire escape in the bedroom. Let’s go!”

Back down the hail, now purple and white with smoke. No air. Crawl on the ground. On the ground past the dining room. Past the remains of the feast. Past my mother’s red Venetian glasses, wrapped with care and taken from Italy and the Fascists to the precarious South Side of Chicago. I dashed into the dining room and felt for them through the smog, knocking over plates, the rest of the champagne, finding the glasses while Roger yelled in anguish from the doorway.

Into the bedroom, wrapping ourselves in blankets. Shutting the bedroom door so opening the window wouldn’t feed the hungry flames, the flames that devoured the air. Roger was having trouble with the window. It hadn’t been opened in years and the locks were painted shut. He fumbled for agonizing seconds while the room grew hotter and finally smashed the glass with a blanketed arm. I followed him through the glass shards out into the January, night.

We stood for a moment gulping in air, clinging to each other. Roger had found his pants and was pulling them on. He had bundled up all the clothes he could find at the side of the bed and we sorted out the leavings. I had my jeans on. No shirt. No shoes. One of my wool socks and a pair of bedroom slippers had come up in the bundle. The freezing iron cut into my feet and seemed to burn them. The slippers were moth-eaten, but the leather was lined with old rabbit fur and cut out the worst of the cold. I wrapped my naked top in a blanket and started down the slippery, snow-covered steps, clutching the glasses in one hand and the icy railing in the other.

Roger, wearing untied shoes, trousers, and a shirt, came hard on my heels. His teeth were chattering. “Take my shirt, Vie.”

“Keep it,” I called over my shoulder. “You’re cold enough as it is. I’ve got the blanket . . . We need to wake up the kids in the second-floor apartment. Your legs are so long, you can probably hang over the edge of the ladder and reach the ground—it ends at the second floor. If you’ll take my mother’s goblets and carry them down, I’ll break in and get the students.”

He started to argue, chivalry and all that, but saw there wasn’t time. I wasn’t going to lose those glasses and that was that. Grabbing the snow-covered rung at the end of the escape with his bare hands, he swung over the edge. He was about four feet from the ground. He dropped off and stretched up a long arm for the goblets. I hooked my legs over one of the rungs and leaned over. Our fingertips just met.

“I’m giving you three minutes in there, Vic. Then I’m coming after you.”

I nodded gravely and went to the bedroom window on the second story. While I pounded and roused two terrified youths from a mattress on the floor, half my mind was working out a puzzle. Fire at the front door, fire in the kitchen. I might have started a kitchen fire by mistake, but not one at the front door. So why was the bottom half of the building not on fire while the top half was?

The students—a boy and a girl in the bedroom, another girl on a mattress in the living room—were confused and wanted to pack their course notes. I ordered them roughly just to get dressed and move. I took a sweatshirt from a stack of clothes in the bedroom and put it on and bullied and harassed them out the window and down the fire escape.

The fire engines were pulling up as we half slid, half jumped, into the snow below. For once I was grateful to our building super for not shoveling better—the snow made a terrific cushion.

I found Roger in front of the building with my first-floor neighbors, an old Japanese couple named Takamoku. He’d gone in for them through a ground-floor window. The fire engines were drawing an excited crowd. What fun! A midnight fire. In the flashing red lights of the engines and the blue of the police cars, I watched avid faces gloating while my little stake in life burned.

Roger handed me my mother’s wineglasses and I cradled them, shivering, while he put an arm around me. I thought of the other five, locked in my bedroom, in the heat and flames. “Oh, Gabriella,” I muttered, “I’m so sorry.”

Chapter 16 - No One is Lucky Forever

THE PARAMEDICS HUSTLED us off to St. Vincent’s hospital in a couple of ambulances. A young intern, curly-haired and exhausted, went through some medical rituals. No one was badly hurt, although Ferrant and I both were surprised to find burns and cuts on our hands—we’d been too keyed up during our getaway to notice.

The Takamokus were badly shocked by the fire. They had lived quietly in Chicago after being interned during World War II, and the destruction of their tiny island of security was a harsh blow. The intern decided to admit them for a day or two until their daughter could fly from Los Angeles to make housing arrangements for them.

The students were excited, almost unbearably so. They couldn’t stop talking and yelling. Nervous reaction, but difficult to bear. When the authorities came in at six to question us, they kept shouting and interrupting each other in their eagerness to tell their tale.

Dominic Assuevo was with the fire department’s arson unit. He was a hull-shaped man—square head, short thick neck, body tapering down to surprisingly narrow hips. Perhaps an ex-boxer or ex-football player. With him were a uniformed fireman and Bobby Mallory.

I’d been sitting in a torpor, anguished at the wreck of my apartment, unwilling to think. Or move. Looking at Bobby, I knew I’d need to pull my wits together. I took a deep breath. It almost didn’t seem worth the effort.

The weary intern gave exhausted consent for the police to question us—except for the Takamokus, who had already been wafted into the hospital’s interior. We moved into a tiny office near the emergency room, the hospital security-staff room, obligingly vacated by two drowsing security guards. The eight of us made a tight fit, the investigators and one of the students standing, the rest in the room’s few chairs.

Mallory looked at me in disgust and said, “If you knew what you looked like, Warshawski. Half naked and your boyfriend no better. I never thought I’d see the day I’d be glad Tony was dead, but I’m thankful he can’t see you now.”

His words acted like a tonic. The dying war horse staggers to its feet when it hears a bugle. Police accusations usually rouse me.

“Thank you, Bobby. I appreciate your concern.”

Assuevo intervened quickly. “I want the full story on what happened tonight. How you became aware of the fire, what you were doing.”

“I was asleep,” I explained. “The smoke woke me up. Mr. Ferrant was with me; we realized the kitchen was on fire, tried the front door and found it was on fire, too. We got out by the fire escape—I roused these kids, he got Mr. and Mrs. Takamoku. That’s all I know.”

Roger confirmed my story. We both vowed that the people we’d gotten up had been sound asleep at the time. Could they have been faking it? Assuevo wanted to know.

Ferrant shrugged. “They could have been, but they seemed pretty deep in sleep to me. I wasn’t concerned about that kind of thing, Mr. Assuevo. Just to get them up and out.”

After thrashing that out, Assuevo went on to explore our feelings about the landlord—did any of us bear a grudge, what kind of problems had we had with the apartment, how had the landlord responded. To my relief, even the overwrought students sensed where those questions were going.

“He was a landlord,” one of the girls said, the thin, longhaired one who’d been in the living room. The other two chimed in their agreement. “You know, the place was clean and the rent was cheap. We didn’t care about anything else.”

After a few more minutes of that, Assuevo murmured with Bobby near the door. He came back and told the students they could leave.

“Why don’t you go, too?” I said to Roger. “It’s time you were getting down to Ajax, isn’t it?”

Ferrant gripped my shoulder. “Don’t be an ass, V.!. I’ll call my secretary in a bit—it’s only seven o’clock. We’ll see this out together.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ferrant,” Assuevo said swiftly. “Since you were in the apartment at the time of the fire, we would have to ask you to stay, anyway.”

Bobby said, “Why don’t you explain how you two know each other and why.”

I looked coldly at Mallory. “I can see where this is headed, and I don’t like it one bit. If you are going to imply in any way that either Mr. Ferrant or I knew anything about the fire, we are going to insist on charges being brought before we answer any questions. And my attorney will have to be present.”

Roger scratched his chin. “I’ll answer any questions that’ll help solve this problem—I assume everyone agrees the apartment was set on fire by an arsonist—but if you’re charging me with breaking any laws, I’d better call the British consul.”

“Oh, get off your high horse, both of you. I just want to know what you were doing tonight.”

I grinned at him. “No, you don’t, Bobby: It’d make you blush.”

Assuevo stepped in again. “Someone tried to kill you, Ms. Warshawski. They broke the lock on the front door to get into the building. They poured kerosene on your apartment door and set fire to it. You want my opinion, you’re lucky to be alive. Now the lieutenant and I gotta make sure, Ms. Warshawski, that there aren’t some bad guys”—his eyebrows punctuated the remark to let me know that “bad guys” was facetious— “out there who are trying for you personally. Maybe it’s just someone with a grudge against the landlord, and he goes after you as a sideline. But maybe it’s against you, okay? And so maybe Mr. Ferrant here”—sketching a gesture at Roger—”is assigned to make sure you stay in the apartment tonight. So don’t be such an angry lady. The lieutenant and I, we’re just doing our job. Trying to protect you. Unless maybe you set the fire yourself, huh?”

I looked at Roger. He pushed the hair out of his eyes and tried straightening a nonexistent tie before speaking. “I can see you have to look into that, Mr. Assuevo. I’ve done my share of fire-claim investigations and I assure you, I know you have to explore every possibility. While you’re doing that, though, maybe we can try to find out who actually set that fire.” He turned to me. “Miss Warshawski, you don’t think it could be the same person who threw—”

“No,” I interrupted him firmly, before he could complete the sentence. “Not at all.”

“Then who? If it was personally directed—no, not the people who shot Agnes?” Roger looked at Mallory. “You know, Miss Paciorek was murdered recently while looking into a takeover attempt for me. Now Miss Warshawski’s trying to pick up that investigation. This is something you really need to look into.”

Roger, you goon, I thought. Did that just occur to you?

Mallory and Assuevo were talking in unison. “Threw what?”

Bobby was demanding, while Assuevo said, “Who’s Miss Paciorek?”

When they quieted down, I said to Bobby, “Do you want to explain Agnes Paciorek to Mr. Assuevo, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t ride me, Warshawski,” he warned. “We’ve had our discussion on that. If you or Mr. Ferrant has some hard evidence to show she was killed because she was looking into those Ajax buyers, give it to me and I’ll follow it to the end. But what you’ve told me so far doesn’t add up to more than the kind of guilt we always find with friends and relations—she was killed because I didn’t do this or that or because I asked her to stay late or whatever. You have anything to add to that, Mr. Ferrant?”

Roger shook his head. “But she told me she was staying late to talk to someone about the sales.”

Bobby sighed with exaggerated patience. “That’s just what I mean. You’re the college-educated one, Vicki. You explain to him about logic and moving from one argument to the other. She was working late on Ajax and she got shot. Where’s the connection?”

“Ah,” Assuevo said. “That stockbroker who was killed. My sister’s husband’s niece is a cousin of her secretary . . . Do you think there’s a connection with the fire, Ms. Warshawski?”

I shrugged. “Tell me something about the arson. Does it have a signature you recognize?”

“It could be the work of any professional. Quick, clean, minimum fuel, no prints—not that we expect prints in the middle of January. No evidence left behind. It was
organized,
Ms. Warshawski. Organized. So we want to know who is organizing against you. Maybe the enemies of Ms. Paciorek?”

Mallory looked at me thoughtfully. “I know you, Vicki. You’re just arrogant enough to go stirring that pot without telling me. What have you found?”

“It’s not arrogance, Bobby. You made some really disgusting accusations the morning after Agnes died. I figure I don’t owe you one thing. Not one name, not one idea,”

His round face turned red. “You don’t talk to me that way, young lady. If you obstruct the police in the performance of their duties, you can be arrested. Now what have you found out?”

“Nothing. I know who the Chicago brokers were for the big blocks of Ajax sales the last six-seven weeks. You can get those from Mr. Ferrant here. That’s what I know.”

His eyes narrowed. “You know the firm of Tilford and Sutton?’

“Stockbrokers? Yeah, they’re on Mr. Ferrant’s list.”

“You ever been to their offices?”

“I don’t have anything to invest.”

“You wouldn’t have been there two nights ago, would you,
investigating
their Ajax sales?”

“At night? Stockbrokers do business during the day. Even I know that . .

“Yeah, clown. Someone broke into their offices. I want to know if it was you.”

“There were eight or nine brokers on Mr. Ferrant’s list. Were they all broken into?”

He smashed his fist on the table to avoid swearing. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Why, Bobby? You keep telling me there’s nothing to investigate there. So why would I break in to investigate something that doesn’t exist?”

“Because you’re pigheaded, arrogant, spoiled. I always told Tony and Gabriella they should have more children—they spoiled you rotten.”

“Well, too late to cry about that now ... Look, I’ve had a rough night. I want to find some place to crash and then try to get my life going again. Can I go back to the apartment and see if any of my clothes are salvageable?”

Assuevo shook his head. “We got a lot more to discuss here, Ms. Warshawski. I need to know what you’re working on.”

“Oh, yeah,” Bobby put in. “Ferrant here started to ask if it was the same person who threw something, and you cut him off. Who threw what?”

“Oh, some kids on Halsted threw a rock at the car the other night—random urban violence. I don’t think they’d set fire to my apartment just because they missed the car.”

“You chase them?” Assuevo demanded. “You hurt them in some way?”

“Forget it,” Bobby told him. “It didn’t happen. She doesn’t chase kids. She thinks she’s Paladin or the Lone Ranger. She’s stirred up something big enough to hire a professional torch,

and now she’s going to be a heroine and not say anything about it.” He looked at me, his gray eyes serious, his mouth set in a tight line. “You know, Tony Warshawski was one of my best friends. Anything happens to you, his and Gabriella’s ghosts will haunt me the rest of my life. But no one can talk to you. Since Gabriella died, there isn’t a person on this planet can get you to do something you don’t want to do.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything I could say.

“C’mon, Dominic. Let’s go. I’m putting a tail on Joan of Arc here; that’s the best we can do right now.”

After he left, the exhaustion swept over me again. I felt that if I didn’t leave now I’d pass out in the chair. Still wrapped in the blanket, I forced myself to my feet, accepting Roger’s helping hand gratefully. In the hallway, Assuevo lingered a moment to talk to me. “Ms. Warshawski. If you know
anything
about this arson attempt, and do not tell us, you are liable for criminal prosecution.” He stabbed my chest with his finger as he talked. I was too tired even to become angry. I stood holding my glasses and watched him trot to catch up with Bobby.

Roger put an arm around me. “You’re all done in, old girl. Come back to the Hancock with me and take a hot bath.”

As we reached the outer door, he felt in his pockets. “I left my wallet on your dresser. No money for a cab. You have any?”

I shook my head. He ran across the parking lot to where Bobby and Assuevo were climbing into Bobby’s police car. I staggered drunkenly after him. Roger demanded a lift back to my apartment so he could try to rummage for some money. And possibly some clothes.

The ride back down Halsted was strained and quiet. When we got to the charred remains of my building, Assuevo said, “I just want you to be very clear that that building may not be safe. Any accidents, you’re on your own.”

“Thanks,” I said wearily. “You guys are a big help.”

Roger and I picked our way across ice mountains formed by the frozen jets of water from the fire trucks. It was like walking through a nightmare—everything was familiar, yet distorted. The front door, broken open by the firefighters, hung crazily on its hinges. The stairs were almost impassable, covered with ice and grime and bits of walls that had fallen in.

At the second-floor landing, we decided to separate. The stairs and floor might take the weight of one person, but not two. Locked in my stubborn desire to cling to my mother’s two surviving wineglasses, I allowed Roger to go ahead and stood holding them, shivering in my slippers, wrapped in the blanket.

He picked his way cautiously up to the third floor. I could hear him going into my apartment, heard the occasional thud of a brick or piece of wood falling, but no crashes or loud cries. After a few minutes he came back to the hallway. “I think you can come up, Vic.”

I clutched the wall with one hand and stepped around the ice. The last few stairs I had to do on hands and knees, moving the glasses up a step, then myself, and so to the landing.

The front of my apartment had essentially been destroyed. Standing in the hail, you could look directly into the living room through holes in the walls. The area around the front door had been incinerated, but by stepping through a hole in the living-room wall you could stand on supporting beams.

Such furniture as I owned was destroyed. Blackened by fire and soaked with water, it was irrecoverable. I tried picking out a note on the piano and got a deadened twang. I bit my lip and resolutely moved past it toward the bedroom. Because bedroom and dining room were on either side of the main hall and the main path of the fire, the damage there was less. I’d never sleep in that bed again, but it was possible, by sorting carefully, to find some wearable clothes. I pulled on a pair of boots, donned a smoke-filled sweater, and rummaged for an outfit that would carry me through the morning.