Killing Orders (21 page)

My fingers were thick with cold. It took agonizing minutes to unbutton the pea jacket and take it off. I held it over the glass next to the window latch. With a numb hand, I pulled the Smith & Wesson clumsily from its holster, tapped the jacket lightly but firmly with the butt, and felt the glass give underneath. I paused for a minute. No alarms sounded. Holding my breath, I gently knocked glass away from the frame, stuck an arm through the opening, and unlatched the window.

Once inside the house I found a radiator. Pulling off boots and gloves, I warmed my frozen extremities. Ate the rest of the Hershey bar. Squinted at phosphorescent hands on my watch—past nine o’clock. Mrs. Paciorek must be getting impatient.

After a quarter of an hour, I felt recovered enough to meet my hostess. Pulling the damp boots back on my toes was unpleasant, but the cold revived my mind, slightly torpid from the hike and the warmth.

Once outside the conservatory I could see lights coming from the front of the house. I followed them through long marble passages until I came to the family room where I’d talked to Mrs. Paciorek a couple of weeks ago. As I’d hoped, she was sitting there in front of the fire, the needlepoint project in her lap but her hands still. Standing at an angle in the hail, I watched her. Her handsome angry face was strained. She was waiting for the sound that would tell her I had been shot.

Chapter 23 - Lake Forest Party

I’D BEEN HOLDING the Smith & Wesson in one hand, but she was clearly alone. I put the gun back in the holster and walked into the room.

“Good evening, Catherine. None of the servants seemed to be here, so I let myself in.”

She stared at me, frozen. For a moment I wondered if she really were having a stroke. Then she found her voice. “What are you doing here?”

I sat down facing her in front of the fire. “You invited me, remember? I tried getting here at eight, but I got lost in the dark—sorry to be so late.”

“Who?—how?—” she broke off and looked suspiciously at the hallway.

“Let me help you out,” I said kindly. “You want to know how I got past Walter Novick—or whoever you have waiting for me out front, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said fiercely.

“Then we’ll go and find out!” I stood up again. Walking behind her, I grabbed her under the armpits and pulled her to her feet. She wasn’t much heavier than I and had no fighting skills whatsoever. She tried struggling with me, but it wasn’t an equal contest. I frog-marched her to the front door.

“Now. You are going to call whoever is out there to come in. My right hand is now holding my Smith and Wesson revolver, which is loaded and ready to shoot.”

She opened the door angrily. Casting me a look of loathing, she went to the shallow porch. Two figures broke away from the shadows near the driveway and came toward her. “Leave!” she yelled. “Leave! She came in through the back.”

The two men stood still for a minute. I aimed the gun at the one nearer my right hand. “Drop your weapons,” I shouted. “Drop your weapons and come into the light.”

At my voice they both shot at us. I pushed Mrs. Paciorek into the snow and fired. The man on the right staggered, tripped, sprawled in the snow. The other fled. I heard a car door slam and the sound of tires trying to grab hold.

“You’d better come with me, Catherine, while we see what kind of shape he’s in, I don’t trust you alone in there with a phone.”

She didn’t say anything as I dragged her pump-clad feet through the snow. When we came to the sprawled figure, he pointed a gun at us. “Don’t shoot again, you lunatic,” I cried. “You’ll hit your employer!”

When he didn’t put the gun down, I let go of Mrs. Paciorek and jumped on his arm. The gun went off, but the bullet sailed harmlessly into the night. I kicked the weapon from his hand and knelt to look at him.

In the lights marking the driveway I made out his heavy Slavic jawline. “Walter Novick!” I hissed. I couldn’t keep my voice quite steady. “We can’t keep meeting in the dark like this.”

As nearly as I could tell, I’d hit his right leg just above the knee. It should have been a bad enough wound to keep him from moving, but he was strong and he was scared. He tried scrabbling away from me in the snow. I grabbed his right arm and yanked it up behind him.

Mrs. Paciorek turned on her heel and headed for the front door. “Catherine!” I yelled. “Better call an ambulance for your friend. I’m not sure O’Faolin can get reinforcements out here in time to shoot me if you phone him first anyway.”

She must have heard me, but gave no sign. A few seconds later the front door slammed shut behind her. Novick was cursing loudly if unimaginatively, his voice slightly muffled by

the wiring holding his jaw together. I didn’t want to leave him, but I didn’t want Mrs. Paciorek summoning help, either. Gathering the hit man by the armpits, I started dragging him toward the house. He screamed with pain as his right leg bumped along the ground.

I dropped him and knelt again, this time looking him in the face. “We need to talk, Walter,” I panted. “I’m not leaving you here on the chance you can make it to the road for your buddy to find you. Not that he’s likely to—he’s probably in DuPage County by now.”

He tried to hit me, but the cold and blood loss were getting to him. The blow landed ineffectually on my shoulder.

“Your working days are over, Walter. Even if they patch that leg up, you’re going to spend a long, long time in Joliet. So we’ll talk. When you feel at a loss for words, I’ll help you out.”    -

“I don’t have anything to say,” he gasped hoarsely. “They haven’t made—a—charge stick yet. They won’t—won’t do it now.”

“Wrong, Walter. Stefan Herschel is going to be your downfall. You’re slipping. You didn’t kill him. He’s alive. He’s already ID’d you from your photo.”

He managed a contemptuous shrug. “My—my friends—will prove—he’s wrong.”

Fury, compounded of fatigue, of Lotty’s accusations, of the attempt on my eyes, rose in me. I shook him, enough to jar the injured leg, and was glad when he yelped.

“Your friends!” I shouted at him. “Don Pasquale, you mean. The don didn’t send you here, did he? Did he?” When Novick didn’t say anything, I picked him up by the shoulders and started dragging him toward the house again.

“Stop!” he yelled. “No. No, it wasn’t the don. It—it was someone else.”

I leaned over him in the snow. “Who, Novick?”

“I don’t know.”

I grabbed his armpits. “All right!” he screamed. “Put me down. I don’t know his name. He’s—he’s someone who called me.”

“Have you ever met him in person?”

In the floodlights, I saw him nod weakly. A middle-aged man. He had met him once. The day he stabbed Uncle Stefan. This man had come with him to the apartment. No, Uncle Stefan might not have seen him—he’d waited in the hail until after the stabbing. Then gone in to collect the forged stocks. He was fifty-five or sixty. Green eyes. Gray hair. But the voice Novick especially remembered—a voice you’d recognize in hell, he called it.

O’Faolin. I sat back on my heels and looked at the hit man. Sour bile filled my mouth. I swallowed a handful of snow, gagged, swallowed again, trying to force down the desire to kill Novick where he lay.

“Walter, you’re a lucky man. Pasquale doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die. Neither do I. But you’re going to live. Isn’t that nice? And if you swear in court that the man who ordered you out here tonight was behind the stabbing of Stefan Herschel, I’ll see you get a good plea bargain. We’ll-forget the acid. We’ll even forget the fire. How about it?”

“The don won’t forget me.” This was in a thread of a voice. I had to stick my ear close to his revolting face to hear it.

“Yes, he will, Walter. He can’t afford to be tied to the forgeries. He can’t afford the FBI and the SEC subpoenaing his accounts. He isn’t going to know you.”

He still didn’t say anything. I pulled the Smith & Wesson from my jeans belt. “If I shoot your left kneecap, you’ll never be able to prove it didn’t happen when you attacked me at the door.”

“You wouldn’t,” he gasped.

He was probably right; my stomach was churning as it was. What kind of person kneels in the snow threatening to destroy the leg of an injured man? Not anyone I wanted to know. I pulled the hammer back with a loud click and pointed the gun at his left leg.

“No,” he cried. “No, don’t. I’ll do it. Whatever you say. But you get me a doctor. Get me a doctor.” He was sobbing pitifully. Toughest man in the Mafia.

I put the gun away. “Good boy, Walter. You won’t regret it. Now, just a few more questions and we’ll get you an ambulance—Kitty Paciorek seems to have forgotten you.”

Novick eagerly told the little he knew. He’d never seen Mrs. Paciorek before. The Man with the Voice had called yesterday and told him to get out here at seven tonight, to make sure no one saw him, to shoot me as I walked up to the house from my car. Yes, it was the Man with the Voice who hired him to throw acid at me.

“How did he know you, Walter? How did he know to get in touch with you?”

He didn’t know. “The don must have given him my number. That’s all I can figure. He told the don he needed a good man and the don gave him my number.”

“You are a good man, Walter. Pasquale must be proud of you. You came for me three times and all you got out of it was a broken jaw and a smashed up leg….I’m going to get you an ambulance. You’d best be praying your godfather forgets all about you, because from what I hear he doesn’t like failures too much.”

I covered him with my coat and headed for the front door. As I reached the steps a car pulled into the driveway. Not an ambulance. I froze, then jumped from the shallow porch to shelter in some evergreens running from the house to the garage. The same place, I saw from the trampled snow, where Novick had waited for me.

The garage doors opened electronically; the car pulled in and stopped. I peered around the edge of a tree. A dark blue Mercedes. Dr. Paciorek. How much did he know about tonight’s escapade? Now was as good a time as any to find out. I stepped into the garage.

He looked up in surprise as he locked the car door. “Victoria! What are you doing here?”

“I came out to see your wife—I had some papers of Agnes’s she wanted to see. Someone was lying in wait out front here and took a shot at her. I’ve hit him in the leg and I need to get an ambulance for him.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Victoria. This isn’t your idea of a joke, is it?”

“Come and see for yourself.” He followed me to the front. Novick was dragging himself toward the road as fast as he could, a feeble activity that had moved him ten feet or so. “You!” Paciorek yelled. “Stop!”

Novick continued to move. We trotted over to him. Dr. Paciorek handed me the briefcase he was carrying and knelt to

look at the hit man. Novick tried to fight with him, but Paciorek didn’t need my help to hold him down. After a few minutes’ feeling of the leg, during which Novick cursed more loudly than ever, Paciorek said briefly, “The bone is broken but there isn’t much else the matter except cold. I’ll get an ambulance and call the police. You don’t mind staying with him, do you?”

I was starting to shiver. “I guess not. Can you lend me your coat? I gave him mine.”

He gave me a surprised glance, then took off his cashmere Coat and draped it around my shoulders. After the doctor’s bulky body vanished into the house, I squatted down next to Novick. “Before you pass out, let’s get our stories straight.” By the time the Lake Forest police arrived, we had agreed that he’d gotten lost and come to the door looking for help. Mrs. Paciorek, terrified, had screamed. That brought me to the scene with my gun out. Walter had taken fright at that and fired at me. I shot him. Not very believable, but I was damned sure Mrs. Paciorek wouldn’t contradict it.

The sirens sounded in the distance. Novick had fainted finally, and I stood back to let the officials take over. I was dizzy and close to fainting myself. Fatigue. Nausea at the depths of my own rage. How like a mobster I had behaved— torture, threats. I don’t believe the end justifies the means. I’d just been plain raving angry.

As wave on wave of policemen interviewed me, I kept dozing off, waking up, keeping my wits together enough to tell the same story each time, then dozing again. It was one o’clock when they finished and left.

Dr. Paciorek had refused to let his wife talk. I don’t know what she told him, but he sent her to bed; the locals didn’t argue that decision. Not with that much money behind it.

Dr. Paciorek had let the police use his study as an interrogation room. After they left, he came in and sat in the leather swivel chair behind his desk. I was sprawled in a leather armchair, three parts asleep.

“Would you like a drink?”

I rubbed my eyes and sat up a little straighter. “Brandy would be nice.”

He reached into a cabinet behind the desk for a bottle of

Cordon Bleu and poured two hefty servings.

“What were you doing here tonight?” he asked abruptly.

“Mrs. Paciorek wanted to see me. She asked me to come out around eight.”

“She says you showed up unexpectedly.” His tone wasn’t accusatory. “Monday nights are when the Lake County Medical Society gets together. I usually don’t go. Catherine asked me to leave her alone tonight because she was having a meeting with a religious group she belongs to; she knows that isn’t of much interest to me. She says you showed up threatening her and brought that man along with you; that she was struggling with you when your gun went off and hit him.”

“Where did her religious friends go?”

“She says they had left before you showed up.”

“Do you know much about this Corpus Christi outfit she belongs to?”

He stared at his brandy for a while, then finished it with one swallow and poured himself another shot. I held out my snifter; he filled it recklessly.

“Corpus Christi?” he finally said. “When I married Catherine, her family accused me of being a fortune hunter. She was an only child and that estate was worth close to fifty million. I didn’t care much about the money. Some, but not much. I met her in Panama—her father was the ambassador; I was working off my loan from Uncle Sam. She was very idealistic, was doing a lot of work in the poor community there. Xavier O’Faolin was a priest in one of those shantytowns. He interested her in Corpus Christi. I met her because I was trying to keep dysentery and a lot of other unpleasant stuff under control in that shantytown. A hopeless battle, really.”

He swallowed some more brandy. “Then we came back to Chicago. Her father built this house. When he died we moved in. Catherine turned most of the Savage fortune over to Corpus Christi. I started becoming successful as a heart surgeon.

O’Faolin moved on to the Vatican.

“Catherine was genuinely idealistic, but O’Faolin is a charlatan. He knew how to look good and do well at the same time. It was John the Twenty-third who brought him to the Vatican—thought of him as a real people’s priest. After John died, O’Faolin headed quickly to where the money and power were.”

We drank quietly for several minutes. Few things go down as easily as Cordon Bleu.

“I should have spent more time at home.” He gave a mirthless smile. “The plaint of the suburban father. At first Catherine was pleased to see me at the hospital twenty hours a day—after all, it proved I shared her lofty ideals. But after a while, she burned out on suburban living. She should have had her own career. But it didn’t go with her ideals of Catholic motherhood, By the time I saw how angry she’d become, Agnes was in college and it was too late for me to do anything. I spent the time with Phil and Barbara I should have spent with Agnes and Cecelia, but I couldn’t help Catherine.”