Killing Orders

by Sara Paretsky

  I hugged him briefly. “All I care about right now is getting some sleep. Don’t worry about me, Roger. Thanks for the place to stay.”

  I was too tired to bathe, too tired to undress. I just managed to pull my boots off before falling into bed.

  It was past four when I woke again, stiff and foggy but ready to start moving again. I realized with distaste that I stank and my clothes stank, too. A small utility room next to the bathroom held a washing machine. I piled in jeans, underwear, and everything in the suitcases that didn’t require dry cleaning. A long soak in the bathtub and I felt somewhat more human.

  As I waited for my jeans to dry I called my answering service. No message from Don Pasquale, but Phil Paciorek had phoned and left his on-call number, I tried it, but he apparently was handling some emergency surgery. I gave Ferrant’s number to the hospital and tried Torfino’s restaurant again. The same gritty voice I’d talked to the day before continued to disclaim all knowledge of Don Pasquale.

  The early evening editions had arrived in the downstairs lobby. I stopped in the coffee shop to read them over a cappuccino and a cheese sandwich. The fire had made the Herald Star’s front page-ARSON ON THE NORTH SIDE- in the lower left corner. Interview with the De Paul students. Interview with the Takamokus’ worried daughter. Then, in a separate paragraph with its own subhead: “V. I. Warshawski, whose apartment was the focal point of the fire, has been investigating a problem involving forged securities at the Priory of Albertus Magnus in Melrose Park. Ms. Warshawski, the victim of an acid-throwing mugger two weeks ago, was not available for comment on a connection between her investigation and the fire.”

  I ground my teeth. Thanks a bunch, Murray. The Herald-Star had already run the acid story, but now the police were bound to read it and see the connection. I drank some more cappuccino, then flipped to the personal section of the classifieds. A small message was waiting for me: “The oak has sprouted.” Uncle Stefan and I had agreed on this since he’d been working with my certificates of Acorn stock. I had last looked at the personals on Sunday; today was Thursday. How long had the ad been running?

  Roger was home when I got back to the apartment. He told me apologetically that he was all done in; could I manage dinner alone while he went to bed?

  “No problem. I slept all day.” I helped him into bed and gave him a backrub. He was asleep by the time I left the room.

  I pulled on long underwear and as many sweatshirts as I could manage, then walked back to Lake Shore Drive to retrieve my car. A wind blowing across the lake cut through my pullovers and long underwear. Tomorrow I’d definitely stop at Army-Navy Surplus for a new pea jacket.

  I wondered about the tail Bobby claimed he was going to slap on me. No one had followed me to my car. Looking in the rearview mirror, I didn’t see any waiting cars. And no one would loiter on the street in this wind. I decided it must have been bravado-or someone had countermanded Bobby.

  The Omega started only after severe grumbling. We sat and shivered together, the car refusing to produce any heat. A five-minute warm-up finally persuaded the transmission to groan into gear.

  While side streets were still piled with snow, Lake Shore Drive was clear. After a few turgid blocks, the car moved north briskly. At Montrose the heater finally kicked grudgingly into life. At the Evanston border I had stopped shivering and was able to pay more attention to traffic and road conditions.

  The night was clear; on Dempster the heavy rush-hour traffic was moving well. I spun off onto Crawford Avenue and made it to Uncle Stefan’s a few minutes before seven. Before leaving the car, I jammed the Smith & Wesson into the front of my jeans where the butt dug into my abdomen-the pullovers made a shoulder holster impractical.

  Whistling through my teeth, I rang Uncle Stefan’s bell. No answer. I shivered in the entryway a few minutes, and rang again. It hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t be home. I could wait in the car, but the heater wasn’t very efficient. I rang the other bells until someone buzzed me in-one in every building, letting the muggers and buggers in.

  Uncle Stefan’s apartment was on the fourth floor. On my way up, I passed a pretty young woman coming down with a baby and a stroller. She looked at me curiously. “Are you going to visit Mr. Herschel? I’ve been wondering whether I should look in on him-I’m Ruth Silverstein-I live across the hall. When I take Mark for a walk at four, he usually comes out to give us cookies. I didn’t see him this afternoon.”

  “He could have gone out.”

  I could see her flush in the stairway light. “I’m home alone with the baby, so maybe I pay more attention to my neighbors than I should. I usually hear him leave-he walks with a cane, you know, and it makes a particular kind of noise on the stairs.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Silverstein.” I trotted up the last flight of stairs, frowning. Uncle Stefan was in good health, but eighty-two years old. Did I have any right to break in on him? Did I have a duty to do so? What would Lotty say?

  I pounded loudly on the heavy apartment door. Put an ear to the panel and heard nothing. No, a faint buzz of noise. The TV or radio. Shit.

  I went back down the stairs two at a time, propped open the outer door with a glove, and jogged across the slippery sidewalk to the Omega. My picklocks were in the glove compartment.

  As I dashed back into the building, I watched Mrs. Silverstein and Mark disappear into a small grocery store up the block. I might have ten minutes to get the door open.

  The trick about prying open other people’s doors is to relax and go by feel. Uncle Stefan had two locks, a deadbolt and a regular Yale. I worked the deadbolt first. It clicked and I realized with dismay that it had been open when I started on it; I’d just double-locked the door. Trying to breathe loosely I chivvied it the other way. It had just slid back when I heard Mrs. Silverstein come into the building. At least, judging from the sounds, that’s who it was; someone talking briskly to a baby about the nice chicken Daddy would have when he got back from his late meeting. The stroller bumped its way to the fourth-floor landing. The lower lock clicked back and I was inside.

  I picked my way past an Imari umbrella stand into the ornately decorated living room. In the light of a brass lamp I could see Uncle Stefan lying across the leather desk, its green dyed red-brown by a large congealing pool of blood. “Oh, Christ!” I muttered. While I felt the old man’s wrist, all I could think of was how furious Lotty would be. Unbelievably, a faint pulse still fluttered. I leaped over chairs and footstools and pounded on the Silverstein door. Mrs. Silverstein opened it at once-she’d just come home, coat still on, baby still in stroller.

  “Get an ambulance as fast as you can-he’s seriously injured.”

  She nodded matter-of-factly and bustled into the interior of her apartment. I went back to Uncle Stefan. Grabbing blankets from a tidy bed in a room off the kitchen, wrapping him, lowering him gently on the floor, raising his feet onto an intricately cut leather footstool, and then waiting. Waiting.

  Mrs. Silverstein had sensibly asked for paramedics. When they heard about shock and blood loss, they set up a couple of drips-plasma and glucose. They were taking him to Ben Gurion Memorial Hospital, they told me, adding that they would make a police report and could I wait in the apartment, please.

  As soon as they were gone, I phoned Lotty.

  “Where are you?” she demanded. “I read about the fire and tried phoning you.”

  “Yes, well, that can wait. It’s Uncle Stefan. He’s been seriously wounded. I don’t know if he’ll live. They’re taking him to Ben Gurion.”

  A long silence at the other end, then Lotty said very quietly, “Wounded? Shot?”

  “Stabbed, I think. He lost a lot of blood, but they missed the heart. It had clotted by the time I found him.”

  “And that was when?”

  “About ten minutes ago… I waited to call until I knew what hospital he’d be going to.”

  “I see. We’ll talk later.”

  She hung up, leaving me staring at the phone. I prowled
around the living room, waiting for the police, trying not to touch anything. As the minutes passed, my patience ran out. I found a pair of gloves in a drawer in the tidy bedroom. They were several sizes too large, but they kept me from leaving prints on the papers on the desk. I couldn’t find any stock certificates at all-not forged, not my Acorn shares.

  The room, while crowded with furniture, held few real hiding places. A quick search revealed nothing. Suddenly it occurred to me that if Uncle Stefan had made a forged stock certificate, he’d have to have tools lying around, tools the police would be just as happy not seeing. I sped up my search and found parchment, blocks, and tools in the oven. I bundled them up into a paper bag and went to find Mrs. Silverstein.

  She came to the door, cheeks red, hair frizzled from heat; she must have been cooking. “Sorry to bother you again. I’ve got to wait here for the police and I’ll probably have to go to the station with them. Mr. Herschel’s niece will be by later for some things. Would you mind if I told her to ring your bell and pick this bag up from you?”

  She was happy to help. “How is he? What happened?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. The paramedics didn’t say anything. But his pulse was steady, even though it was weak. We’ll hope for the best.”

  She invited me in for a drink but I thought it best not to give the police any ideas connecting the two of us and waited for them across the way. Two middle-aged men finally arrived, both in uniform. They came in with guns drawn. When they saw me, they told me to put my hands on the wall and not to move.

  “I’m the person who called you. I’m just as surprised by all this as you are.”

  “We’ll ask the questions, honey.” The speaker had a paunch that obscured his gunbelt. He patted me down clumsily, but found the Smith & Wesson without any trouble. “You got a license for this, girlie?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Let’s see it.”

  “Mind if I take my hands off the wall? Hampers any movements.”

  “Don’t be a wiseass. Get the license and get it fast.” This was the second cop, leaner, with a pockmarked face.

  My purse was on the floor near the door-I’d dropped it without thinking when I saw Uncle Stefan and hadn’t bothered to pick it up. I pulled out by billfold and took out my P.I. license and my permit for the gun.

  The stout cop looked them over. “Oh, a private eye. What are you doing here in Skokie, girlie?”

  I shook my head. I hate. suburban police. “The bagels in Chicago aren’t as good as the ones they make out here.”

  Fat cop rolled his eyes. “We picked up Joan Rivers, Stu

  Listen, Joan. This ain’t Chicago. We want to put you away, we can, won’t worry us none. Now just tell us what you were doing here.”

  “Waiting for you guys. Clearly a mistake.”

  The lean cop slapped my face. I knew better than to react- up here resisting arrest could stick and I’d lose my license. “Come on, girlie. My partner asked you a question. You going to answer it?”

  “You guys want to charge me? If so, I’ll call my lawyer. If not, no questions.”

  The two looked at each other. “Better call your lawyer, girlie. And we’ll be hanging onto the gun. Not really a lady’s weapon.”

  XVIII

  In the Slammer

  THE D. A. WAS mad at me. That didn’t bother me too much. Mallory was furious-he’d read about the acid in the Herald-Star. I was used to Mallory’s rage. When Roger learned I’d spent the night in a Skokie lockup, his worry turned to frustrated anger. I thought I could handle that. But Lotty. Lotty wouldn’t speak to me. That hurt.

  It had been a confused night. Pockmark and Fatso booked me around nine-thirty. I called my lawyer, Freeman Carter, who wasn’t home. His thirteen-year-old daughter answered. She sounded like a poised and competent child, but there wasn’t any way of telling when she’d remember to give her father the message.

  After that we settled down for some serious questioning. I decided not to say anything, since I really didn’t have much of a story I wanted to tell. I couldn’t tell the truth, and with the mood Lotty was in, she’d be bound to screw up any embroidery I came up with.

  Pockmark and Fatso gave way to some senior cops fairly early in the evening. It must have been around midnight when

  Charles Nicholson came in from the DA’s office. I knew Charles. He was a figure in the Cook County court system. He liked to think he was an heir of Clarence Darrow, and resembled him superficially, at least as far as shaggy hair and a substantial stomach went. Charles was the kind of guy who liked to catch his subordinates making personal phone calls on county time. We’d never been what you might call close.

  “Well, well, Warshawski. Feels like old times. You, me, a few differences, and a table between us.”

  “Hello, Charlie,” I said calmly. “It does seem like old times. Even down to your shirt not quite meeting at the sixth button.”

  He looked down at his stomach and tried pulling the straining fabric together, then looked at me furiously. “Still your old flippant self, I see-even on a murder-one charge.”

  “If it’s murder one, they changed the booking without telling me,” I said irritably. “And that violates my Miranda rights. Better read the charge slip and double-check it.”

  “No, no,” he said in his mayonnaise voice. “You’re right- just a manner of speaking. Obstruction was and is the charge. Let’s talk about what you were doing in the old man’s apartment, Warshawski.”

  I shook my head. “Not until I have legal advice-in my opinion anything I say on that topic may incriminate me, and since I don’t have specific knowledge of the crime, there isn’t anything I can do to forward the police investigation.” That was the last sentence I uttered for some time.

  Charlie tried a lot of different tactics-insults, camaraderie, high-flown theories about the crime to invite my comments. I started doing some squad exercises-raise the right leg, hold for a count of five, lower, raise the left. Counting gave me a way to ignore Charlie, and the exercises rattled him. I’d gotten to seventy-five with each leg when he gave up.

  Things changed at two-thirty when Bobby Mallory came in. “We’re taking you downtown,” he informed me. “I have had it up to here”-he indicated his neck-”with your smartass dancing around. Telling the truth when you feel like it. How dared you-how dared you give that acid story to Ryerson and not tell us this morning? We talked to your friend Ferrant a few hours ago. I’m not so dumb I didn’t notice you cutting him off this morning when he started to ask if these were the same people who threw something. Acid. You should be in Cook County Psychiatric. And before the night’s over, you’re either going to spill what you know or we’re going to send you there and make it stick.”

  That was just talk, and Bobby knew it. Half of him was furious with me for concealing evidence, and half was plain mad because I was Tony’s daughter and might have gotten myself killed or blinded.

  I stood up. “Okay. You got it. Although Murray ran the acid story when it happened. Just get me out of the suburbs and away from Charlie and I’ll talk.”

  “And the truth, Warshawski. You cover up anything, anything, and we’ll have you in jail. I don’t care if I run you in for dope possession.”

  “I don’t do dope, Bobby. They find any in my place, it’s planted. Anyway, I don’t have a place.”

  His round face turned red. “I’m not taking it, Warshawski. You’re two sentences away from Cook County. No smartassing, no lies. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Bobby got the Skokie people to drop charges and took me away. Technically I wasn’t under arrest and didn’t have to go with him. I also wasn’t under any illusions.

  The driver was a likable young man who seemed willing to chat. I asked him whether he thought the Cubs were going to let Rick Sutcliffe go. One blistering remark from Bobby shut him up, however, so I discoursed alone on the topic. “My feeling is, Sutcliffe turned that team around after the All-Star break. So
he wants five, six million. It’s worth it for another crack at the World Series.”

  When we got to Eleventh Street, Bobby hustled me into an interrogation room. Detective Finchley, a young black cop who’d been in uniform when I first met him, joined us and took notes.

  Bobby sent for coffee, shut the door, and sat behind his cluttered desk.

  “No more about Sutcliffe and Gary Matthews. Just the facts.”

  I gave him the facts. I told him about Rosa and the securities, and the threatening phone calls. I told him about the attack in the hallway and how Murray thought it might be Walter Novick. And I told him about the phone call this morning when I went back for my clothes. “No one is lucky forever.”

  “And what about Stefan Herschel? What were you doing there the day he was stabbed?”

  “Just chance. Is he all right?”

  “No way, Warshawski. I’m asking the questions tonight. What were you doing at his place?”

  “He’s an uncle of a friend of mine. You know Dr. Herschel He’s an interesting old man and he gets lonely; he wanted me to have tea with him.”

  “Tea? So you let yourself in?”

  “The door was open when I got there-that worried me.”

  “I’ll bet. The girl across the hall says the door was shut and that worried her.”

  “Not standing open-just not locked.”

  Bobby held up my collection of picklocks. “You wouldn’t have used these, by any chance?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know how to use them-they’re a souvenir from one of my clients when I was a public defender.”

  “And you carry them around for sentiment after what- eight years as a P.I.? Come on, let’s have it.”

  “You got it, Bobby. You got the acid, you got Novick, you got Rosa. Talk to Derek Hatfield, why don’t you. I’d be real curious who was backing the FBI off those securities.”

  “I’m talking to you. And speaking of Hatfield, you wouldn’t know why his name was on the register at the Stock Exchange, would you, the night someone broke into Tilford and Sutton’s office?”