Killing Orders

by Sara Paretsky

  I could feel tension tightening the cords in the back of my neck as I oozed forward. I was on an errand I did not wish to make to talk to a person I had no desire to see about the troubles of an aunt I loathed. To do so I had to spend hours stalled in traffic. And my feet were cold inside their open-toed pumps. I turned up the heat further but the little Omega didn’t respond. I curled and uncurled my toes to get the blood moving but they remained obstinately frozen.

  At First Avenue the traffic eased up as the offices there sucked up most of the outbound drivers. I exited north at Mannheim and meandered through the streets, trying to follow Albert’s roughly sketched directions. It was five after ten when I finally found the priory entrance. Being late did nothing to improve my humor.

  The Priory of St. Albertus Magnus included a large block of neo-Gothic buildings set to one side of a beautiful park. The architect apparently believed he had to compensate for the beauties of nature: In the misty snow the gray stone buildings loomed as ungainly shapes.

  A small lettered sign identified the nearest concrete block as the House of Studies. As I drove past, a few men in long white robes were scuttling into it, hoods pulled over their faces so that they looked like medieval monks. They paid no attention to me.

  As I crept slowly up the circular drive I saw a number of cars parked to one side. I left the Omega there and quickly ran to the nearest entrance. This was labelled simply ST. ALBERT ’S PRIORY.

  Inside, the building had the half-eerie, half-tired atmosphere you often find in religious institutions. You can tell people spend a lot of time praying there, but perhaps they also spend too much time feeling depressed or bored. The entryway had a vaulted concrete ceiling that disappeared in the gloomy light several stores up. Marble flagstones added to the coldness.

  A corridor ran at right angles to the entrance. I crossed to it, my heels echoing in the vaulted chamber, and looked doubtfully around. A scarred wooden desk had been stuck in a corner formed by the entry hall and a stairwell. A thin young man in civvies sat behind it reading The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams. He put it down reluctantly after I’d spoken several times. His face was extremely thin; he seemed to burn with a nervous asceticism, but perhaps he was merely hyperthyroid. At any rate, he directed me to the prior’s office in a hurried whisper, not waiting to see if I followed his directions before returning to the book.

  At least I was in the right building, a relief since I was now fifteen minutes late. I turned left down the corridor, passing icons and shut doors. A couple of men in white robes passed me, arguing vigorously but in subdued voices. At the end of the hall I turned right. On one side of me was a chapel and across from it, as the youth had promised, the prior’s office.

  The Reverend Boniface Carroll was on the phone when I came in. He smiled when he saw me and motioned me to a chair in front of his desk, but continued his conversation in a series of grunts. He was a frail man of perhaps fifty. His white woolen robe had turned faintly yellow with age. He looked very tired; as he listened to his caller he kept rubbing his eyes.

  The office itself was sparsely furnished. A crucifix over one wall was the only decoration, and the wide desk was scuffed with age. The floor was covered with institutional linoleum, only partly hidden by a threadbare carpet.

  “Well, actually she’s here right now, Mr. Hatfield… No, no, I think I should talk to her.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that. The only Hatfield I knew worked on fraud for the FBI. He was a competent young man, but his sense of humor left something to be desired. When our paths crossed, it was usually to our mutual irritation, since he tried to overcome my flippancy with threats of the might of the FBI.

  Carroll terminated the conversation and turned to me. “You are Miss Warshawski, aren’t you?” He had a light, pleasant voice with a trace of an eastern accent.

  “Yes.” I handed him one of my cards. “Was that Derek Hatfield?”

  “The FBI man. Yes, he’s been out here with Ted Dartmouth from the Securities Exchange Commission. I don’t know how he learned we were going to meet, but he was asking me not to talk to you.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He thinks this is a matter for the FBI and the SEC. He told me an amateur such as yourself might muddy the waters, make the investigation more difficult.”

  I rubbed my upper lip thoughtfully. I’d forgotten the lipstick until I saw the smear on my forefinger. Cool, Vic. If I were being logical, I’d smile politely at Father Carroll and leave; after all, I’d been cursing him, Rosa, and my mission all the way from Chicago. However, there’s nothing like a little opposition to make me change my mind, especially when the opposition comes from Derek Hatfield.

  “That’s sort of what I said to my aunt when I talked to her yesterday. The FBI and the SEC are trained to handle this kind of investigation. But she’s old and she’s scared and she wants someone from the family in her corner.

  “I’ve been a private investigator for almost ten years. I’ve done a lot of financial crime and I’ve got a good reputation-I could give you the names of some people in the city to call so you don’t have to take just my word for it.”

  Carroll smiled. “Relax, Miss Warshawski. You don’t have to sell me. I told your aunt I would talk to you and I feel we owe her something here, if only a conversation with you. She’s worked for St. Albert ’s very faithfully for a long time. It really hurt her when we asked her to take a leave of absence. I hated doing it, but I’ve made the same request to everyone with access to the safe. As soon as we get this business cleared up, she knows we want her back. She’s extremely competent.”

  I nodded. I could see Rosa as a competent treasurer. It flashed through my mind that she might have been less angry if she had channeled her energy into a career: She would have made a good corporate financial officer.

  “I don’t really know what happened,” I said to Carroll. “Why don’t you tell me the story-where the safe is, how you came to find the fakes, how much money is involved, who could have gotten at them, who knew about them-and I’ll butt in when I don’t understand.”

  He smiled again, a shy sweet smile, and got up to show me the safe. It was in a storeroom behind his office, one of those old cast-iron models with a combination lock. It was stuck in a corner amid stacks of paper, an ancient mimeo machine, and piles of extra prayer books.

  I knelt to look at it. Of course, the priory had used the same combination for years, which meant anyone who’d been there a while could have found out what it was. Neither the FBI nor the Melrose Park police had discovered any signs that the lock had been forced.

  “How many people do you have here at the priory?”

  “There are twenty-one students at the House of Studies and eleven priests on the teaching faculty. But then there are people like your aunt who come in and work during the day. We have a kitchen crew, for example; the brothers do all the washing up and waiting at table, but we have three women who come in to do the cooking. We have two receptionists- the young man who probably directed you to my office and a woman who handles the afternoon shift. And of course there are a lot of neighborhood people who worship with us in the chapel.” He smiled again. “We Dominicans are preachers and scholars. We don’t usually run parish churches, but a lot of people do treat this as their parish.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve got too many people around here to make sorting this out easy. Who actually had official access to the safe?”

  “Well, Mrs. Vignelli, of course.” That was Rosa. “I do. The procurator-he handles the financial affairs. The student master. We have an audit once a year, and our accountants always examine the stocks, along with the other assets, but I don’t think they know the combination to the safe.”

  “Why’d you keep the things here instead of in a bank vault?” He shrugged. “I wondered the same thing. I was just elected last May.” The smile crept back into his eyes. “Not a post I wanted-I’m like John Roncalli-the safe candidate who doesn’t belong to any of the fa
ctions here. Anyway, I’d never been at all involved in running this-or any other-priory. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know we kept five million dollars’ worth of stock certificates on the premises. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know we owned them.”

  I shuddered. Five million dollars sitting around for any casual passerby to take. The wonder was that they hadn’t simply been stolen years before.

  Father Carroll was explaining the history of the stocks in his gentle, efficient voice. They were all blue-chip shares-AT &T, IBM, and Standard of Indiana primarily. They had been left to the priory ten years ago by a wealthy man in Melrose Park.

  The priory buildings were close to eighty years old and needed a lot of repairs. He pointed to some cracks in the plaster on the wall and I followed the line of damage to a wide brown stain on the ceiling.

  “The most urgent problems are the roof and the furnace. It seemed reasonable to sell some shares and use the money to repair the plant, which is, after all, our main asset. Even though it’s ugly and uncomfortable we couldn’t begin to replace it today. So I brought up the matter at chapter meeting and got an agreement. The next Monday I went into the Loop and met with a broker. He agreed to sell eighty thousand dollars’ worth of shares. He took them from us then.”

  That had been the last of the matter for a week. Then the broker had called back. The Fort Dearborn Trust, the company’s stock-transfer agent, had examined the shares and found they were counterfeits.

  “Is there a possibility the broker or the banker made an exchange?”

  He shook his head unhappily. “That’s the first thing we thought of. But we had all the remaining certificates looked at. They’re all fakes.”

  We sat silently for a bit. What a dispiriting prospect.

  “When was the last time the shares were authenticated?” I asked at last.

  “I don’t know. I called the accountants, but all they do is verify that the shares are there. According to the FBI man, these certificates are extremely good forgeries. They were found out only because the serial numbers had not been used by the issuing companies. They’d fool any ordinary observer.”

  I sighed. I probably should talk to the former prior, and to the student master and procurator. I asked Carroll about them. His predecessor was in Pakistan for a year, running a Dominican school there. But the student master and procurator were both in the building and would be at lunch.

  “You’re welcome to join us if you like. Ordinarily the refectory in a convent is cloistered-that means only friars can use the room,” he explained in answer to my puzzled look. “And yes. We friars call this a convent. Or a friary. Anyway, we’ve lifted the cloister here at the school so that the young men can eat with their families when they come to visit.

  The food isn’t very interesting, but it’s an easier way to meet Pelly and Jablonski than trying to track them down afterward.” He pulled back a yellowed sleeve to reveal a thin wrist with a heavy leather watchband on it. “It’s almost noon. People will be gathering outside the refectory now.”

  I looked at my own watch. It was almost twenty of twelve, Duty had driven me to worse things than undistinguished cuisine. I accepted. The prior locked the storeroom carefully behind him. “Another example of locking the barn door,” he said. “There was no lock on that storeroom until we discovered the fake securities.”

  We joined a throng of white-robed men walking down the corridor past Carroll’s office. Most of them said hello to him, eyeing me covertly. At the end of the hall were two swinging doors. Through their glass top halves I could see the refectory, looking like a high-school gym converted to a lunch room: long deal tables, metal folding chairs, no linens, hospital-green walls.

  Carroll took me by the arm and led me through the huddle to a pudgy middle-aged man whose head emerged from a fringe of gray hair, like a soft-boiled egg from an egg cup. “Stephen, I’d like you to meet Miss Warshawski. She’s Rosa Vignelli’s niece, but she’s also a private investigator. She’s looking into our crime as an amica familiae.” He turned to me. “This is Father Jablonski, who’s been the student master for seven years… Stephen, why don’t you dig up Augustine and introduce him to Miss Warshawski. She needs to talk to him, too.”

  I was about to murmur a social inanity when Carroll turned to the crowd and said something in Latin. They answered and he rattled off what I assumed was a blessing; everyone crossed himself.

  Lunch was definitely uninteresting: bowls of Campbell ’s tomato soup, which I loathe, and toasted cheese sandwiches. I put pickles and onions inside my sandwich and accepted coffee from an eager young Dominican.

  Jablonski introduced me to Augustine Pelly, the procurator, and to some half dozen other men at our table. These were all “brothers,” not “fathers.” Since they tended to look alike in their fresh white robes I promptly forgot their names.

  “Miss Warshawski thinks she can succeed where the FBI and the SEC are baffled,” Jablonski said jovially, his nasal midwestern accent blaring above the dining room cacophony.

  Pelly gave me a measuring look, then smiled. He was almost as thin as Father Carroll, and very tanned, which surprised me-where did a monk go sunbathing in mid-winter? His blue eyes were sharp and alert in his dark face. “I’m sorry, Miss Warshawski-I know Stephen well enough to tell he’s joking, but I’m afraid I don’t get the joke.”

  “I’m a private investigator,” I explained.

  Pelly raised his eyebrows. “And you’re going to look into our missing securities?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t really have the resources to match the FBI on that type of thing. But I’m also Rosa Vignelli’s niece; she wants someone from the family on her side in the investigation. A lot of people have had access to that safe over the years; I’m here to remind Derek Hatfield of that if he starts breathing down Rosa ’s neck too hard.”

  Pelly smiled again. “Mrs. Vignelli doesn’t strike one as the type of woman to need protection.”

  I grinned back at him. “She certainly doesn’t, Father Pelly. But I keep reminding myself that Rosa ’s been aging just like any other human being. At any rate, she seems a little frightened, especially that she won’t be able to work here anymore.” I ate some of my sandwich. Kraft American. Next to Stilton and Brie my favorite cheese.

  Jablonski said, “I hope she knows that Augustine and I are also forbidden access to the priory’s finances until this matter is cleared up. She’s not being singled out in any way that we aren’t.”

  “Maybe one of you could call her,” I suggested. “That might make her feel better I’m sure you know her well enough to realize she’s not a woman with a lot of friends. She’s centered a good part of her life around this church.”

  “Yes,” Pelly agreed. “I didn’t realize she had any family besides her son. She’s never mentioned you, Miss Warshawski. Nor that she had any Polish relatives.”

  “Her brother’s daughter was my mother, who married a Chicago policeman named Warshawski. I’ve never understood the laws of kinship too well. Does that mean that she has Polish relatives because I’m half Polish? You don’t think I’m posing as Rosa ’s niece just to get inside the priory, do you?”

  Jablonski gave his sardonic smile. “Now that the securities are gone, there’s nothing worth worming your way into the priory for. Unless you have some secret fetish for friars.”

  I laughed, but Pelly said seriously, “I assume the prior looked into your credentials.”

  “There wasn’t any reason for him to; he wasn’t hiring me. I do have a copy of my P.I. license on me, but I don’t carry any identification that proves I’m Rosa Vignelli’s niece. You could call her, of course.”

  Pelly held up a hand. “I’m not doubting you. I’m just concerned for the priory. We’re getting some publicity which none of us relishes and which is really detrimental to the studies of these young men.” He indicated the intently eavesdropping young brothers at our table. One of them blushed in embarrassment. “1 really don’t
want anyone, even if she’s the pope’s niece, stirring things up here further.”

  “I can understand that. But I can also see Rosa ’s point-it’s just too convenient to have her on the outside of the priory taking the fall. She doesn’t have a big organization with lots of political connections behind her. You do.”

  Pelly gave me a freezing stare, “I won’t attempt to untangle that one, Miss Warshawski. You obviously are referring to the popular myth about the political power of the Catholic Church, the direct line from the Vatican that was going to control John Kennedy, that sort of thing. It’s beneath discussion.”

  “I think we could have a pretty lively discussion about it,” I objected. “We could talk about the politics of abortion, for example. How local pastors try to influence their congregations to vote for anti-choice candidates regardless of how terrible their qualifications may be otherwise. Or maybe you’d like to discuss the relations between Archbishop Farber and Police Superintendent Bellamy. Or even between him and the mayor.”

  Jablonski turned to me. “I think pastors would be gravely lax in their moral duty if they didn’t try to oppose abortion in any way possible, even urging their parishioners to vote for pro-life candidates.”

  I felt the blood rush to my head, but smiled. “We’re never going to agree on whether abortion is a moral issue or a private matter between a woman and her physician. But one thing is clear-it is a highly political issue. There are a lot of people scrutinizing the Catholic Church’s involvement in this area.

  “Now the tax code spells out pretty specifically how clear of politics you have to stay to keep your tax-exempt status. So when bishops and priests are using their offices to push political candidates, they’re walking a pretty thin line on tax-exempt status. So far, no tax-court judge has been willing to take on the Catholic Church-which in itself argues some hefty clout.”