Killing Orders

by Sara Paretsky

  “You ask Hatfield what he was doing there?”

  “He says he wasn’t.”

  I shrugged. “The feds never tell you anything. You know that.”

  “Well, neither do you, and you’ve got less excuse to hold back. Why were you visiting Stefan Herschel?”

  “He invited me.”

  “Yeah. Your apartment burned down last night, so today you’ve been feeling chipper, you’ll just go to tea in Skokie. Damn it, Vicki, level with me.” Mallory was truly upset. He doesn’t hold with swearing around women. Finchley looked worried. I was worried, too; but I just couldn’t blow the whistle on Stefan Herschel. The old man had got himself killed, or close to it, on account of the forgery. I didn’t want to get him arrested, too.

  At five, Bobby charged me with concealing evidence of a crime. I was printed, photographed, and taken to the holding cells at Twenty-sixth and California with some rather disgruntled prostitutes. Most wore high-heeled boots and very short skirts-jail must at least have been a warmer place on a January night than Rush and Oak. There was a little hostility at first as they tried to make sure I wasn’t working any of their territories.

  “Sorry, ladies-I’m just here on a murder charge.” Yeah, my old man, I explained. Yeah, the bastard beat me. But the last straw was when he tried to burn me. I showed them my arms where the fire had scorched the skin.

  Lots of sympathetic clucking. “Oh, honey, you did right.

  Man touch me that way, I stick him.” “Oh, yeah, ‘member when Freddie tried to cut me, I throw boil’ water on him.”

  They quickly forgot me as each tried to outdo the other with tales of male violence and bravado in handling it. The stories made my skin crawl. At eight though, when the Freddies and Slims and JJ5 showed up to collect them, they acted glad enough to see them. Home is where they have to take you in, I guess.

  Freeman Carter came for me at nine. He’s the partner in Crawford, Meade-my ex-husband’s high-prestige firm-who does their criminal stuff. It’s a constant thorn to Dick-my ex-that Freeman does my legal work. But not only is he good, in a smooth, WASPy way, he likes me.

  “Hi, Freeman. The other pimps got their hookers out an hour ago. I guess I’m not very valuable merchandise.”

  “Hi, Vic. If you had a mirror you’d see why your street value has plummeted. You’re going to have a hearing in Women’s Court at eleven. Just a formality, and they’ll release you on an I-bond.” An I-bond, as in I-solemnly-swear-to-come-back-for-the-trial, is given to people the court knows as responsible citizens. Like me. Freeman lent me a comb and I made myself as presentable as possible.

  We went down the hall to a small meeting room. Freeman looked as elegant as ever, his pale blond hair cut close to his head, smooth-shaven, his perfectly tailored navy suit fitted to his lean body. If I looked only half as grubby as I felt, I must be pretty disgusting. Freeman glanced at his watch. “Want to talk? They booked you because they felt you were withholding on Stefan Herschel.”

  “I was,” I admitted. “How is he?”

  “I called the hospital on my way over here. He’s in intensive care, but seems to have stabilized.”

  “I see.” I felt a lot better already. “You know he had a forgery rap back in the fifties? Well, I’m afraid someone knifed him because he was playing boy detective on some stock forgeries. But I can’t tell Bobby Mallory until I’ve talked to the old man. I just don’t want to get him in trouble with the police and the feds.”

  Freeman made a sour face. “If I were your pimp, I’d beat you with a clothes hanger. Since I’m just your lawyer, could I urge you to tell Mallory all you know? He’s a good cop. He’s not going to railroad an eighty-year-old man.”

  “He might not, but Derek Hatfield would in thirty seconds. Less. And once the feds move in, there isn’t shit Bobby or I- or even you-can do.”

  Freeman remained unconvinced as I told him about the forgeries and Uncle Stefan’s role in them, but he swept me through the hearing with aplomb. He kissed me good-bye afterward when he dropped me at the Roosevelt Road L stop. “And that is proof of devotion, Vic. You are badly in need of a bath.”

  I rode the L to Howard street, caught the Skokie Swift, and walked the ten blocks from the station to my car. A bath, a nap, Roger, Lotty, and Uncle Stefan. Those were priorities in reverse order, but I needed to get clean before I could face talking to anyone else.

  The priorities got reversed a bit-Roger was waiting for me when I got back to the Hancock. He was on the phone, apparently with Ajax. I sketched a wave and headed for the bathroom. He came in ten minutes later as I was lying in the tub. Trying to lie in the tub. It was one of those nasty modern affairs where your knees come up to your chin. My apartment had a wonderful thirties bath, long enough for a tall person to lie down in it.

  Roger closed the toilet and sat on it. “The police woke me at one this morning to ask me about your acid burn. I told them everything I knew, which was damned little. I had no idea where you were, what you were doing, what danger you might be in. I begged you yesterday morning not to do anything stupid. But when I wake up at one in the morning and you’re not here, no note-goddamn it, why did you do this?”

  I sat up in the tub. “I had an eventful evening. Saved an old man’s life, then spent five hours in a Skokie jail and four in a Chicago one. I got one phone call and I needed it for my lawyer. Since he wasn’t home, only his kid, I couldn’t send messages to my friends and relations.”

  “But damn it, Vic, you know I’m worried sick about you and this whole business”-he waved an arm, indicating frustration and incoherence. “Why the hell didn’t you leave me a note?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t think I was going to be gone long. Gosh, Roger, if I’d known what I was going to find, I would have written you a novel.”

  “That’s not the point. You know it’s not. We talked about this last night, or two nights ago, whenever the hell your place burned down. You can’t just slide off and leave everyone else gasping for air.”

  I was starting to get angry, too. “You don’t own me, Ferrant. And if my staying here makes you think you do, I’ll leave at once. I’m a detective. I’m paid to detect things. If I told everyone and his dog Rover what I was up to, not only would my clients lose all confidence in me, I’d be sandbagged everywhere I went. You told the cops everything you knew. If you’d known everything I know, a poor old man would be under arrest right now as well as in intensive care.”

  Roger looked at me bleakly, his face pale. “Maybe you should leave, Vic. I don’t have the stamina for any more nights like this. But let me tell you one thing, Wonder Woman: If you’d shared what you were doing with me, I wouldn’t have had to tell the cops-I’d have known that you didn’t need their particular help. I told them not to sandbag you but to protect you.”

  Anger was tightening my vocal cords. “No one protects me, Roger. I don’t live in that kind of universe. I wouldn’t screw around with some business deal you were cutting just because there are a lot of dangerous and unscrupulous people dealing in your world. You want to talk to me about your work, I’ll listen and try to make suggestions if you want them. But I won’t try to protect you.” I got out of the tub. “Well, give me the same respect. Just because the people I deal with play with fire instead of money doesn’t mean I need or want protection. If I did, how do you think I’d have survived all these years?”

  I was clenching and unclenching my fists, trying to keep rage under control. Protection. The middle-class dream. My father protecting Gabriella in a Milwaukee Avenue bar. My mother giving him loyalty and channeling her fierce creative passions into a South Chicago tenement in gratitude.

  Roger picked up a towel and began soberly drying my back. He wrapped it around my shoulders and gave me a hug. I tried to relax, but couldn’t. “Vic. I have to go screw around in some business deals… You’re right-I glory in knowing I can come out on top in a real scrum. If you sailed in and dislocated someone’s thorax, or whatever you do, I’d be fur
ious… I don’t think I own you. But the remoter you get, the more I need something to grab hold of.”

  “I see.” I turned around. “I still think it would be easier on both of us if I found another place to stay. But I’ll-I’ll try to keep in better touch.” I stood on my toes and kissed him gently.

  The phone rang. I went to the dryer where I’d left my clothes and pulled out fresh jeans and another shirt while Roger picked up the bathroom extension. “For you, Vic.”

  I took it in the bedroom. Roger said he was leaving and hung up. The caller was Phil Paciorek. “You still want your man with the non-accent? There’s an archdiocesan dinner tonight at the Hanover House Hotel-Farber’s giving a party for O’Faolin. Because Mother shells out a million or so to the Church every year, we’re invited. Most of the people at the funeral will be there. Want to be my date?”

  An archdiocesan dinner. Thrills. That meant a dress and nylons. Which meant a trip to the shops, as anything even remotely suitable for the Hanover House was still lying smoke-filled in my suitcase. Since Phil wouldn’t be able to leave the hospital until seven, he asked if I’d mind meeting him at the hotel-he’d be there as close to seven-thirty as possible. “And I’ve called the archdiocese-if I’m not there, just give your name to the woman at the reception desk.”

  After that I tried taking a nap, but I couldn’t sleep. Lotty, Uncle Stefan, Don Pasquale were churning around in the foreground of my brain. Along with Rosa and Albert and Agnes.

  At noon I gave up on rest and tried calling Lotty. Carol Alvarado, the nurse at Lotty’s North Side clinic, answered the phone. She went to find the doctor, but came back with the message that she was too busy to talk to me right now.

  I walked across the street to Water Tower and found a severely tailored crimson wool crepe dress on sale at Lord & Taylor. In front, it had a scalloped neck; in back the neckline dropped to a V closing just above my bra strap. I could wear my mother’s diamond drops with it and be the belle of the ball.

  Back at the Hancock I tried Lotty again. She was still too busy to talk. I got the morning paper and looked through the classifieds for furnished apartments. After an hour of calling, I found a place on Racine and Montrose that offered two-month leases. I packed the suitcase again, mushing laundered clothes together with the smoke-stained ones, then left a long note to Roger, explaining where I was moving and what I was doing for dinner and could we please stay in touch, and tried Lotty one last time. Still too busy.

  The Bellerophon had seen better days, but it was well cared for. For two fifty a month, I had possession of a sitting room with a Murphy bed, a comfortable armchair, a small TV, and a respectable table. The kitchen included a minuscule refrigerator and two gas burners, no oven, while the bathroom had a real tub in it. Good enough. The room had phone jacks. If the neighborhood vandals hadn’t walked off with my phones, I ought to be able to get service switched through. I gave Mrs. Climzak a check for the first month’s rent and left.

  My old apartment looked forlorn in the winter sunlight- Manderley burned out-broken glass in the windows, the Takamokus’ print curtains sagging on their rods. I climbed past the debris on the stairs through the hole in the living-room wall. The piano was still there-too big to move-but the sofa and coffee table were gone. Charred copies of Forbes and The Wall Street Journal were scattered around the room. The living-room phone had been ripped out of the wall. In the dining room, someone had swiped all the liquor. Naturally. Most of the plates were gone. Thank God I’d never had enough money for Crown Derby.

  My bedroom extension was still there, buried under a pile of loose plaster. I unplugged it from the wall and left. Stopped at the Lincoln Park Post Office to arrange forwarding for my mail and pick up what they’d held for me since the fire. Then, gritting my teeth, I drove north on Sheffield to Lotty’s storefront clinic.

  The waiting room was full of women and small children. A din combined of Spanish, Korean, and Lebanese shrieks made the small space seem even tinier. Babies crawled on the floor with sturdy wooden blocks in their fists.

  Lotty’s receptionist was a sixty-year-old woman who’d raised seven children of her own. Her chief skills were keeping order in the waiting room and making sure that people were seen in order either of appearance or emergency. She never lost her temper, but she knew her clientele like a good bartender and kept order the same way.

  “Miss Warshawski. Nice to see you. We have a pretty full house today-lots of winters cold and flu. Is Dr. Herschel expecting you?”

  Mrs. Coltrain would not call anyone by her first name. After years of coaxing, Lotty and I had given up. “No, Mrs. Coltrain. I stopped by to see how her uncle was doing, to find out if I can visit him.”

  Mrs. Coltrain disappeared into the back of the clinic. She came back with Carol Alvarado a few minutes later. Carol told me Lotty was with a patient but would see me for a few minutes if I’d go into her office.

  Lotty’s office, like the waiting room, was furnished to set worried mothers and frightened children at ease. She didn’t need a desk, she said-after all, Mrs. Coltrain kept all the files in file cabinets. Instead, a few comfortable chairs, pictures, a thick carpet, and the ever present building blocks made the room a cheerful place. Today I didn’t find it relaxing.

  Lotty made me wait half an hour. I thumbed through the Journal of Surgical Obstetrics. I drummed my fingers on the table next to my chair, did leg lifts and a few other stretches.

  At four, Lotty came in quietly. Above her white lab coat her face was set in uncompromising lines. “I am almost too angry to speak to you, Vic. Fortunately, my uncle has survived. And I know he owes his life to you. But he almost owes his death to you, too.”

  I was too tired for another fight today. I ran my hands through my hair, trying to stimulate my brain. “Lotty, you don’t have to work to make me feel guilty: I do. I should never have involved him in such a crazy, dangerous business. All I can say is, I’ve taken my share of the knocks. If I’d known what was coming, I would have done my utmost to keep him from being attacked.” I laughed mirthlessly. “A few hours ago I had a blazing fight with Roger Ferrant-he wants to protect me from arsonists and suchlike. Now you’re fighting me because I didn’t protect your uncle.”

  Lotty didn’t smile, “He wants to talk to you. I tried to forbid this-he doesn’t need any more excitement or strain. But it seems to be more stress to keep him from you than otherwise. The police want to question him and he’s refusing until he’s seen you.”

  “Lotty, he’s an old man, but he’s a sane man. He makes his own choices. Don’t you think some of your anger comes from that? And from helping me involve him? I do my best with my clients, but I know I can’t help all of them, not a hundred percent.”

  “Dr. Metzinger is in charge of his case. I’ll call and let him know you’ll be out-when?”

  I gave up the argument and looked at my watch. I could just make it and dress for dinner if I went now. “In half an hour.”

  She nodded and left.

  XIX

  Dinner Date

  BEN GURION HOSPITAL lay close to the Edens. Visible from the expressway, it was easy to get to. It was barely five o’clock when I got out of the car in the hospital parking lot, even after stopping to buy a pea jacket at an Amvets Store. It’s always struck me as the ultimate insult to pay to park at hospitals; they incarcerate your friends and relations in rooms that cost six or seven hundred dollars a day, then put a little sting in by charging a few extra bucks to visit them. I pocketed the lot ticket with ill humor and stomped into the lobby. A woman at the information desk called the evening nurse in Intensive Care, then told me I was expected, to go on up.

  Five o’clock is a quiet time in a hospital. Surgery and therapies are over for the day; the evening visitors haven’t started arriving yet. I followed red arrows painted on deserted hallways up two flights of stairs to the intensive-care unit.

  A policeman sat outside the door to the unit. He was there to protect Uncle Stefan, the nig
ht nurse explained. Would I mind showing identification and letting him pat me down. I thoroughly approved the caution. At the back of my mind was the fear that whoever had stabbed the old man might return to finish the job.

  The policeman satisfied, medical hygiene had to be accommodated. I put on a sterile mask and disposable gown. In the changing-room mirror I looked like a stranger: gray eyes heavy with fatigue, hair wind-tangled, the mask disguising my personality. I hoped it wouldn’t terrify a weak old man.

  When I came out, Dr. Metzinger was waiting for me. He was a balding man in his late forties. He wore Gucci loafers and had a heavy gold bracelet on his left wrist. Got to spend the money somehow, I guess.

  “Mr. Herschel has insisted so hard on talking to you we thought it best for you to see him,” he said in a low voice, as though Uncle Stefan might hear and be disturbed. “I want you to be very careful, though. He’s lost a lot of blood, been through a very severe trauma. I don’t want you to say anything that might cause a relapse.”

  I couldn’t afford to antagonize anyone else today. I just nodded and told him I understood. He opened the door to the intensive-care unit and ushered me through. I felt as though I were being conducted into the presence of royalty. Uncle Stefan had been isolated from the rest of the unit in a private room. When I realized Metzinger was following me into it I stopped. “I have a feeling what Mr. Herschel has to say is confidential, Doctor. If you want to keep an eye on him, can you do it through the door?”

  He didn’t like that at all and insisted on coming in with me. Short of breaking his arm, which was a tempting idea, there wasn’t much I could do to stop him.

  The sight of Uncle Stefan lying small in a bed, attached to machines, to a couple of drips, to oxygen, made my stomach turn over. He was asleep; he looked closer to death than he had in the apartment last night.

  Dr. Metzinger shook him lightly by the shoulder. He opened his guileless brown eyes, recognized me after a few bewildered seconds, and beamed feebly. “Miss Warshawski. My dear young lady. How I have been longing to see you. Lotty has told me how you saved my life. Come here, eh, and let me kiss you-never mind these terrible machines.”