Killing Orders

XXI

ROGER POKED MOODILY at his steak. “By the way, thanks for the note you left yesterday. How was the archbishop?”

“There were two. One was fulsome, the other ugly. Tell me about this filing.”

I had met him at the Filigree and been moved by his total exhaustion. We had drinks in the bar before dinner, Roger so worn that he hadn’t felt like talking. Now he rubbed his forehead tiredly.

“I am baffled. Totally and utterly baffled. I’ve been dealing with it all day, and I still can’t understand it… It’s like this. If you own five percent or more of a company’s stock, you have to file with the SEC and tell them what you mean to do with your holding. You know you asked me a week or so ago about a Wood-Sage company? Well, they’re the ones who made the filing.

“Now they did it late yesterday, just so they wouldn’t have to answer a lot of questions or be in the Journal or anything. But of course, our lawyers got all the material. Such as it was. Wood-Sage isn’t a corporation that does anything apparently. They’re just a group of people who buy and sell stocks for their mutual benefit, figuring if they pool their investments they can do better than they would alone. It’s not that unusual. And they’re claiming they only bought so many Ajax shares because they think the company’s a good buy. The trouble is, we can’t get any kind of line on who owns Wood-Sage.” He ran his fingers through his long hair and pushed his plate away, much of the steak uneaten.

“The disclosure to the SEC should include the owners, shouldn’t it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “The owners are the shareholders. There is a board of directors, but it seems to be made up of brokers, including Tilford and Sutton.”

“The buyers must include their customers, then.” I thought back to my burglary of their offices. “I don’t have a list of all their customers. And I don’t know what it would tell you, anyway. The one strange thing about them is they do business for Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi bought several million dollars of stock last fall. It might have given them to Wood-Sage.”

Roger had never heard of Corpus Christi.

“Not surprising-it’s a group that tries to stay secret.” I told him what I’d read about them in the Journal. “Because they do everything in secret, maybe they don’t publicize their ownership of a company like Wood-Sage… Catherine Paciorek is a member-her son let that fall inadvertently

Roger fiddled with the stem of his wineglass. “There’s something I want to ask you,” he finally said abruptly. “It’s hard for me, because we’ve gotten into difficulties about your detective work and my reaction to it. But I’d like to hire you, for Scupperfield, Plouder. I’d like you to try to find out who’s behind Wood-Sage. Now this business with Corpus Christi and Mrs. Paciorek-it gives you an inside edge on the investigation.”

“Roger, the SEC and the FBI have the kind of resources you need for that sort of investigation. I don’t. By Tuesday or Wednesday they’ll have the information. It’ll be in the public domain.”

“Maybe. But that may be too late. We’re doing what we can-sending mailings to shareholders urging them to support current management. Our lawyers are working madly. But no one’s getting results.” He leaned across the table earnestly and took my hand. “Look. It’s a lot to ask. I realize that. But you know Mrs. Paciorek. Can’t you talk to her-find out if Corpus Christi is involved in this Wood-Sage thing at all?”

“Roger, the lady doesn’t talk to me. I don’t even know what I could do to get her to see me.”

He looked at me soberly. “I’m not asking you to do me a favor. I’ll hire you. Whatever your normal fee is, Scupperfield, Plouder will double it. I just cannot run the risk of omitting a course of action that might help. If we knew who the owners were, if we knew why they were trying to buy the company, it could make a big difference to our being able to hold on to Ajax.”

I thought of the three dollars in my wallet, the new furniture I was going to have to buy, the fee to the Streeter brothers for protecting Uncle Stefan. And then my shoulders sank. It was my fault Uncle Stefan was lying in the hospital needing protection. After a couple of weeks of working on the forgeries, I had done nothing but lose my apartment and my life’s possessions. Lotty, my refuge, wouldn’t speak to me. I had never felt so discouraged or incapable in all my years as an investigator. I tried, awkwardly, to explain some of my feelings.

Roger squeezed my hand. “I understand how you feel.” He grinned briefly. “I was the young hotshot coming over to manage the Ajax operation, show them how to do the job. Now our management are fighting for our lives. I know it’s not my fault-but I feel futile and embarrassed that I can’t do anything about it.”

I made a wry face, but returned his handshake. “So we’ll bolster each other’s failing vanity? I suppose… But next week you’ve got to go to the FBI and the SEC. Set up a meeting for me with them. They won’t talk to me otherwise. Just as long as you know it’s a most unlikely project, I’ll try to think of a way to get Catherine Paciorek to talk to me.”

He smiled gratefully. “You don’t know what a relief this is to me, Vic. Just the idea that someone I can trust absolutely will be involved. Can you come in Monday and meet the board? The lawyers can give you a full picture on what they know-three hours to say nothing, maybe.”

“Monday’s full. Tuesday?” He agreed. Eight A.M. I blenched slightly but wrote the time into my date book.

We left the Filigree at nine and went to a movie. I called the hospital from the theater to check on Uncle Stefan. All was well there. I wished someone cared enough for my safety to hire some huge bodyguards to protect me. Of course, a hardboiled detective is never scared. So what I was feeling couldn’t be fear. Perhaps nervous excitement at the treats in store for me. Even so, when Roger asked me, tentatively, if I wanted to go back to the Hancock with him, I assented without hesitation.

By morning the Herald-Star and the Tribune had both picked up the Wood-Sage story in their Sunday business sections. No one on the Ajax board had been available for comment. Pat Kollar, the Herald-Star’s financial analyst, explained why someone would want to acquire an insurance company. There wasn’t much else to say about Wood-Sage.

Roger read the papers gloomily. He left at two to meet his partner’s plane. “He’ll have the Financial Times and the Guardian with him and I’ll get The New York Times on my way to the car. That way we can have a real wake surrounded by all the bad news at once… Want to stay to meet him?”

I shook my head. Godfrey Anstey would be sleeping in the apartment’s second bedroom. Two’s company but three’s embarrassing.

After Roger left, I stayed for a few minutes to call my answering service. Phyllis Lording had phoned several times around noon. Somewhat surprised, I dialed the Chestnut Street apartment.

Phyllis’s high, rather squeaky voice sounded more flustered than usual. “Oh, hi, Vic. Is that you? Do you have any time this afternoon, by any chance?”

“What’s up?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Probably nothing. Only it’s hard to explain over the phone.”

I shrugged and agreed to walk over. When she met me at the door, she appeared thinner than ever. Her chestnut hair was pulled carelessly from her face, pinned on her head. Her swanlike neck seemed pitifully slender beneath the mass of hair, the fine planes in her face standing out sharply. In an oversize shirt and tight jeans she looked unbearably fragile.

She led me into the living room where the day’s papers were spread out on the floor. Like Agnes, she was a heavy smoker, and a blue haze hung in the air. I sneezed involuntarily.

She offered me coffee from an electric percolator sitting on the floor near the overflowing ashtray. When I saw how brackish it was I asked for milk.

“You can check in the refrigerator,” she said doubtfully, “but I don’t think I have any.”

The huge refrigerator held nothing except a few condiments and a bottle of beer. I went back to the living room. “Phyllis! What are you eating?”

She lit a cigarette. “I’m just not hungry, Vic. At first I kept trying to make myself meals, but I’d get sick if I ate anything. Now I’m just not hungry.”

I squatted down on the floor next to her and put a hand on her arm. “Not good, Phyl. It’s not a way to memorialize Agnes.”

She blinked a few times through the smoke. “I just feel so alone, Vic. Agnes and I didn’t have many friends in common- the people I know are all at the university and her friends were brokers and investors. Her family won’t talk to me Her voice trailed off and she hunched her thin shoulders.

“Agnes’s youngest sister would like very much to talk to you. Why don’t you give her a call? She was twenty years younger than Agnes and didn’t know her too well, but she liked and admired her. She’s too young to know how to phone you without embarrassment after the way her mother’s acted.”

She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then she gave her intense smile and a brief nod. “Okay. I’ll call her.”

“And start eating something?”

She nodded again. “I’ll try, Vic.”

We talked about her courses for a bit. I wondered if she could get someone to take them for her a week while she went south for some sunshine; she said she’d think about it. After a while, she got around to the reason behind her phone call.

“Agnes and I shared a subscription to The New York Times.” She smiled painfully and lit another cigarette-her fifth since I’d arrived forty minutes earlier. “She always went straight to the business section while I hit the book reviews. She… she teased me about it. I don’t have much of a sense of humor; Agnes did, and it always got under my skin a bit… Since she died, I’ve, I’ve”-she bit her lips and looked away, trying to hide tears trickling down the inner corners of her face-” I’ve started reading the business section. It’s.. it’s a way to feel I’m still in touch with her.”

The last sentence came out in a whisper and I had to strain to hear her. “I don’t think that’s foolish, Phyl. I have a feeling if it had been you who died, Agnes would plunge into Proust with the same spirit.”

She turned to look at me again. “You were closer to Agnes in some ways than I could ever be. You and she are a lot alike. It’s funny. I loved her, desperately, but I didn’t understand her very well… I was always a little jealous of you because you understood her.”

I nodded. “Agnes and I were good friends for a long time. I’ve had times when I was jealous of your closeness with her.”

She put her cigarette out and seemed to relax; her shoulders fell back from their hunched position. “That’s very generous of you, Vic. Thanks… Anyway, in the Times this morning I saw a story about a takeover bid for Ajax. You know, the big insurance company downtown.”

“I know. Agnes was looking at that before she died and I’ve been scratching around at it, too.”

“Alicia Vargas-Agnes’s secretary-sent me all her personal papers. Things she’d kept notes on, anything that was handwritten and didn’t relate to company business. I went through them all. Her latest notebook especially. She kept them-like Jonathan Edwards-or Proust.”

She stood up and went to the coffee table where I could see some spiral college notebooks among stacks of Harper’s and The New York Review of Books. I’d assumed they belonged to Phyllis.

She took the top one and riffled through it quickly, then folded it back to show me the page. Agnes’s sprawling hand was difficult to read. She’d written in “1/12,” followed by “R.F., Ajax.” That wasn’t too difficult to follow-she’d first talked to Ferrant about Ajax on January 12. Other cryptic entries that week apparently referred to various things she was thinking about or working on. One was a note to go to Phyllis’s poetry reading, for example. Then, on the eighteenth, the day she died, was a heavily scored entry: “$12 million, C-C for Wood-Sage.”

Phyllis was looking at me intently. “You see, Wood-Sage didn’t mean anything to me by itself. But after I read the paper this morning… And the C-C. Agnes told me about Corpus Christi. I couldn’t help but think..

“Neither can I. Where the hell did she get that information?”

Phyllis shrugged. “She knew a lot of brokers and lawyers.”

“Can I use your phone?” I asked Phyllis abruptly.

She led me to a porcelain-gold replica of the early telephones; I dialed the Paciorek number. Barbara answered. She was glad to talk to me; she’d be really happy to hear from Phyllis; and yes, her mother was home. She came back a few minutes later to say in considerable confusion that Mrs. Paciorek refused to talk to me.

“Tell her I just called to let her know that Corpus Christi’s ownership of Wood-Sage will be in the Herald-Star next week.”

“Corpus Christi?” she repeated doubtfully.

“You got it.”

Five minutes passed. I read the Times story on Ajax-more words to say less than had been in the Chicago papers. I scanned more verbiage on the AT &T divestiture. I looked at help wanted ads. Maybe I could find a better line of work. “Seasoned professional not afraid of challenges.” That meant someone to work hard for low pay. What do you season professionals with, anyway?

Finally Mrs. Paciorek came on the line. “Barbara gave me some garbled message.” Her voice was tight.

“It’s like this, Mrs. Paciorek: The SEC knows, of course, that Wood-Sage has bought a five-percent position in Ajax. What they don’t know is that most of the money was put up by Corpus Christi. And that most of Corpus Christi’s money comes from you, the Savage fortune you turned over to them. Securities law is not my specialty, but if Corpus Christi is putting up the money for Wood-Sage to buy Ajax stock, the SEC is not going to be happy that it wasn’t mentioned in your filing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve got to work on your answers. When the papers get hold of you, they’re not going to believe that for one minute.”

“If something called Corpus Christi is buying Ajax stock, I know nothing about it.”

“That’s marginally better,” I conceded. “The problem is, when Agnes-your daughter, you know-died, she left behind some notes showing a connection between Corpus Christi and Wood-Sage. If I turn the FBI’s attention to your lawyers, I’m sure it would be able to get the name of the broker who handles the Corpus Christi portfolio. That is presumably where Agnes got her information. In addition, on a smaller scale, it will be interested in the block transfers Preston Tilford handled.”

There was silence at the other end while Mrs. Paciorek marshaled her defenses. I shouldn’t have expected to force such a controlled woman into blurting out anything indiscreet. At last she said, “My attorneys will doubtless know how to handle any investigation, however harassing. That isn’t my concern.”

“We’ll see about that. But the police may want to ask you some questions, too. They may want to know to what lengths you would go to keep Agnes from publishing Corpus Christi’s attempted takeover of Ajax.”

After a long pause, she replied, “Victoria, you are obviously hysterical. If you think you know something about the death of my daughter, perhaps I will see you.”

I started to say something, then thought better of it. The woman was going to talk to me-what more did I need right now? She wasn’t free today, but she could see me at her home tomorrow night at eight.

With my nerves in their current jangled state, I didn’t feel like going back to the Bellerophon. I explained the fire and my predicament to Phyllis, who instantly offered me her spare bedroom. She drove with me to visit Uncle Stefan, now feeling well enough to be bored in the hospital. To my relief, the doctors wanted to hold him a few more days-once he got home he would be impossible to keep an eye on.

Robert Streeter, the youngest brother, was with him when we arrived. Apparently someone had tried to get into the room around midnight. Jim, then on duty, sensibly didn’t try to chase him since that would have left the room unguarded. By the time he’d roused hospital security, the intruder was long gone.

I shook my head helplessly. One more problem I couldn’t handle. Lotty arrived as we were leaving. At the sight of Phyllis, her heavy black brows went up. “So! Vic is roping you into her masquerade as well?”

“Lotty! You and I need to talk,” I said sharply.

She gave me a measuring look. “Yes. I think that would be a good thing… Are these thugs with Stefan your idea or his?”

“Call me when you’ve climbed off your cross!” I snapped and walked away.

Phyllis was too polite to ask about the incident. We didn’t speak much, but had a pleasant meal at a little restaurant on Irving Park Road before heading back to Chestnut Street.

Cigarette smoke had permeated the bedclothes in the guest room. The smell, combined with my nervous tension, made sleep difficult. At three, I got up to read, and found Phyllis sitting in the living room with a biography of Margaret Fuller. W6 talked companionably for several hours. After that I slept until Phyllis stopped in to say good-bye before going to her eight-thirty class. She invited me to come back at night. Despite the stale air, I accepted gratefully.

I thought I might be safer with a rental car than my own, which was by now well known to any hoodlum in Chicago trying to find me. On my way over to the police station I stopped at a rental agency and got a Toyota whose steering must have been used by the U.S. weightlifting team while they trained for the Olympics. They told me they didn’t have anything else that size and to take it or leave it. Snarling, I took it-I didn’t have time to shop for cars.

Lieutenant Mallory wasn’t in when I got to Roosevelt Road. I gave my statement to Detective Finchley. Not having Bobby’s history with me, he accepted what I had to say and returned the Smith & Wesson. Freeman Carter, who accompanied me, told me we’d have a formal hearing in the morning, but that my character was once more unblemished-not even a moving violation in the last three years.

It was afternoon when I reached my ancient tailor on Montrose. He had finished the robe for me; it fit perfectly, right hem length, right sleeve length. I thanked him profusely, but he responded with more harsh words on young ladies who couldn’t plan ahead-he’d had to work all day Sunday for me.

I had to make a stop at the Bellerophon to pick up the rest of my disguise. Mrs. Climzak came out breathlessly from behind the counter with my shoes. She’d never have taken them if she’d known she’d have to be responsible for them for two days. If I was going to turn out to be the thoughtless type of tenant, she didn’t know if they could keep me. And certainly not if I entertained men in the middle of the night.

I was turning to go upstairs, but this seemed like a specific, not a generic accusation. “What men in the middle of the night?”

“Oh, don’t try to act so innocent, Miss Warshawski. The neighbors heard him and called the night clerk. He got the police and your friend left. Don’t pretend you don’t remember that.”

I left her midsentence and galloped up the stairs to the fourth floor. I hadn’t had time to make a mess of my shabby little room. Someone else had done it for me. Fortunately, there wasn’t too much to toss around-no books, except a Gideon Bible. No food. Just my clothes, the Murphy bed mattress, and the pots and pans in the kitchen. I held my breath while I inspected the Venetian glasses. Whoever had been here wasn’t totally vindictive: They stood unharmed on the little card table.

“Oh, damn!” I shouted. “Leave me alone!” I shuffled things together as best I could, but didn’t really have time to clean up. Didn’t feel like cleaning up, come to that. What I felt like was taking to my bed for a week. Except I didn’t have a bed anymore, not my own anyway.

I lugged the heavy mattressback onto the bed and lay on it. The cracks in the ceiling made a fine mesh. They resembled my own incoherent thoughts. I stared at them morosely for a quarter of an hour before forcing myself to abandon self-pity and start thinking. The likeliest reason someone was searching my room was to find the evidence I’d told Catherine Paciorek about yesterday. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to see me last night. She was getting someone to find me and find whatever document Agnes had left behind. Very well. That would make it easier to get her to talk when I saw her tonight.

I put Catherine and the ransacking to one side. Now that I was thinking again, I could cope. Changing into jeans and boots, I put the robe into a paper bag with the rest of my disguise, digging the component pieces out of the mess in the room.

My shoulder holster was wedged under the chest of drawers in the closet. It took close to half an hour to find. I looked nervously at my watch, not sure what my deadline was, but fearing that time was running very short indeed. I still had to stop for some bullets, but that delay was essential. I wasn’t going to the bathroom unarmed until this mess was straightened out.