Killing Orders

by Sara Paretsky

  “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 S
am. 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.”

  He held the bottle up to his desk lamp. “Enough for two more.” He divided it between us and tossed the bottle into a leather wastebasket at his feet.

  “I know she blamed you for Agnes’s-life-style. I need to know. Was she so angry with you that she’d try to get someone to shoot you?”

  It had taken him a quarter bottle of good brandy to get that out. “No,” I said. “Not that simple, I’m afraid. I have some evidence showing that Corpus Christi is trying to take over a local insurance company. Mrs. Paciorek is most anxious that that information not become public. I’m afraid I had reasons for thinking someone might be waiting for me out front, so I broke in through a window in your conservatory. The police didn’t search the back of the house or they would never have left.”

  “I see.” He looked suddenly old and shrunken in his tailored navy suit. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to have to let the FBI and the SEC know about Corpus Christi’s involvement. I don’t plan to tell them about tonight’s ambush, if that’s any consolation.” Nor could I bring myself to tell him about Agnes’s note. If she’d been killed because of her investigation into the Ajax takeover, then in some way or other, her mother bore responsibility for her death. Dr. Paciorek didn’t need to hear that tonight.

  He stared bitterly at the desk top for a long time. When he looked up, he was almost surprised to see me sitting there.

  Wherever he’d been was a long way away. “Thanks, Victoria. You’ve been more generous than I had a right to expect.”

  I finished my own brandy, embarrassed. “Don’t thank me. However this ends, it’s going to be bad for you and your children. While I’m really most interested in Xavier O’Faolin, your wife is heavily involved in Corpus Christi. Their money is being used in an attempt to take over Ajax insurance. When the facts come out, she’s going to be right up front on the firing line.”

  “But wouldn’t it be possible to show she was just O’Faolin’s dupe?” He smiled bitterly. “Which she has been, since she first met him in Panama.”

  I looked at him with genuine pity. “Dr. Paciorek, let me tell you the situation as I understand it. The Banco Ambrosiano is missing over a billion dollars, which disappeared into unknown Panamanian companies. Based on a letter from a Panamanian named Figueredo to Archbishop O’Faolin, it looks as though O’Faolin knows where that money is. He’s in sort of a bind. As long as he doesn’t use it, no one will know where it is. Once he starts to move it, the game is up.

  “O’Faolin’s no dummy. If he can get some large financial institution, like an insurance company, under his control, he can launder the money and use it however he wants. Michael Sindona tried that on behalf of the mob with the Franklin National Bank, only he was stupid enough to strip the bank’s assets. So he’s languishing now in a federal prison.

  “Corpus Christi in Chicago has a huge endowment, thanks to Mrs. Paciorek. O’Faolin is a member and recruited your wife. Very well. Let them put together a dummy corporation, call it Wood-Sage, and use that to acquire Ajax stock. Once the connection comes out between Corpus Christi and the Ajax takeover-and it will; the SEC is investigating like crazy-your wife’s involvement will be front-page news. Especially here in Chicago.”

  “But that’s not criminal,” the doctor pointed out.

  I frowned unhappily. At last I said, “Look. I didn’t want to tell you this. Particularly not tonight, when you’ve had such a shock. But there’s Agnes’s death, you see.”

  “Yes?” His voice was harsh.

  “She was looking into the takeover for one of the Ajax officers,.. She found out about the Corpus Christi involvement. She was killed that night while waiting to meet with someone to discuss it.”

  His white, stricken face was like an open wound in the room. I could think of nothing to say to ease that pain. At last he looked up and gave a ghastly smile. “Yes. I can see. Even if Xavier is the main culprit, Catherine can’t avoid her own responsibility for her daughter’s death. No wonder she’s been so…” His voice trailed off.

  I got up. “I wish I could think of some comfort for you. I can’t. But if you want my help, please call me. My answering service takes messages twenty-four hours a day.” I put my card on the desk in front of him and left.

  I was bone-weary and stiff. I’d have gladly lain down in front of the family-room fire and passed out, but I willed my aching body down the front stairs to the street. Going by road, it was only a five-minute walk to my car instead of the half hour it had taken me cross-country.

  My watch said three when I moved the stiff Toyota back onto the tollway. I found a motel at the first southbound exit, checked in, and fell asleep without bothering to undress.

  XXIV

  Baiting the Trap

  IT WAS PAST noon when I woke again. Every muscle ached. I’d remembered to put the Smith & Wesson aside before going to sleep, but not the holster. My left side was sore from where the leather had pressed into my breast all night. My clothes stank. I’d fought Walter Novick in this shirt, put in a heavy stint of cross-country hiking, and slept in it. The smell bore acute witness to these activities.

  I longed for a bath, but not if it meant redonning my repellent apparel. I picked up the Toyota and maneuvered its clumsy steering down the expressway to the Bellerophon. Mrs. Climzak gave me a darkling glance from behind the counter but forebore any criticism, so I gathered no one had tried burglarizing my apartment in the night.

  It was only after a long soak in the stained porcelain tub that

  Wherever he’d been was a long way away. “Thanks, Victoria. You’ve been more generous than I had a right to expect.”

  I finished my own brandy, embarrassed. “Don’t thank me. However this ends, it’s going to be bad for you and your children. While I’m really most interested in Xavier O’Faolin, your wife is heavily involved in Corpus Christi. Their money is being used in an attempt to take over Ajax insurance. When the facts come out, she’s going to be right up front on the firing line.”

  “But wouldn’t it be possible to show she was just O’Faolin’s dupe?” He smiled bitterly. “Which she has been, since she first met him in Panama.”

  I looked at him with genuine pity. “Dr. Paciorek, let me tell you the situation as I understand it. The Banco Ambrosiano is missing over a billion dollars, which disappeared into unknown Panamanian companies. Based on a letter from a Panamanian named Figueredo to Archbishop O’Faolin, it looks as though O’Faolin knows where tha
t money is. He’s in sort of a bind. As long as he doesn’t use it, no one will know where it is. Once he starts to move it, the game is up.

  “O’Faolin’s no dummy. If he can get some large financial institution, like an insurance company, under his control, he can launder the money and use it however he wants. Michael Sindona tried that on behalf of the mob with the Franklin National Bank, only he was stupid enough to strip the bank’s assets. So he’s languishing now in a federal prison.

  “Corpus Christi in Chicago has a huge endowment, thanks to Mrs. Paciorek. O’Faolin is a member and recruited your wife. Very well. Let them put together a dummy corporation, call it Wood-Sage, and use that to acquire Ajax stock. Once the connection comes out between Corpus Christi and the Ajax takeover-and it will; the SEC is investigating like crazy-your wife’s involvement will be front-page news. Especially here in Chicago.”

  “But that’s not criminal,” the doctor pointed out.

  I frowned unhappily. At last I said, “Look. I didn’t want to tell you this. Particularly not tonight, when you’ve had such a shock. But there’s Agnes’s death, you see.”

  “Yes?” His voice was harsh.

  “She was looking into the takeover for one of the Ajax officers,.. She found out about the Corpus Christi involvement. She was killed that night while waiting to meet with someone to discuss it.”

  His white, stricken face was like an open wound in the room. I could think of nothing to say to ease that pain. At last he looked up and gave a ghastly smile. “Yes. I can see. Even if Xavier is the main culprit, Catherine can’t avoid her own responsibility for her daughter’s death. No wonder she’s been so…” His voice trailed off.

  I got up. “I wish I could think of some comfort for you. I can’t. But if you want my help, please call me. My answering service takes messages twenty-four hours a day.” I put my card on the desk in front of him and left.