Killing Orders

by Sara Paretsky

  A wave of bittersweet memory swept over me and I closed my eyes tightly to keep tears at bay. “Then the dream started falling apart. We had Watergate and drugs and the deteriorating economy, and racism and sexual discrimination continued despite our enthusiasm. So we all settled down to deal with reality and earn a living. You know my story. I guess my ideals died the hardest. It’s often that way with the children of immigrants. We need to buy the dream so bad we sometimes can’t wake up.

  “Well, Agnes’s story was a little different. You met the parents. First of all, her father is a successful cardiac surgeon, pulls in a good half million a year at a conservative guess. But more important, her mother is one of the Savages. You know, old Catholic money. Convent of the Sacred Heart for prep school, then the deb balls and all the other stuff. I don’t know exactly how the very rich live, just differently from you and me.

  “Anyway, Agnes was born fighting it. She fought it through twelve years at Sacred Heart, and came to the U of C against their harshest opposition. She borrowed the money because they wouldn’t pay to send her to a Jewish commie school. So it wasn’t too surprising that she got swept up in all the causes of the sixties. And for both of us, feminism was the most important, because it was central to us.”

  I was talking more to myself than to Bobby; I wasn’t sure how much he could really hear of what I was saying.

  “Well, after Tony died, Agnes used to invite me up to Lake Forest for Christmas and I got to know the Pacioreks. And Mrs. Paciorek decided to hang all Agnes’s weird behavior on me. It took her off the hook, you see-she wasn’t a failure as a parent. Agnes, who figured as sweet and impressionable in this scenario, had fallen under my evil influence.

  “Well, buy that or not as you choose, but keep in mind that sweet impressionable people don’t build up the kind of brokerage business Agnes did.

  “Anyway, Agnes and I were good friends at the University. And we stayed good friends. And in its way that was a small miracle. When our rap group followed the national trend and split between radical lesbians and, well, straights, she became a lesbian and I didn’t. But we remained very good friends-an achievement for that era, when politics divided marriages and friends alike. It seems pointless now, but it was very real then.”

  Like a lot of my friends, I’d resented suddenly being labeled straight because of my sexual preferences. After all, we’d been fighting the straights-the prowar, antiabortion, racist world. Now overnight we were straights, too? It all seems senseless now. The older I get, the less politics means to me. The only thing that seems to matter is friendship. And Agnes and I had been good friends for a longtime. I could feel tears behind my eyes and squeezed them tightly again. When I looked up at Bobby he was frowning at the desk top, drawing circles on it with the back of a ballpoint pen.

  “Well, I’ve told you my story, Bobby. Now explain why you needed to hear it.”

  He continued to stare at the desk. “Where were you last night?”

  My temper began rising again. “Goddamn it, if you want to charge me with murder, come out and do it. I’m not accounting for my movements otherwise.”

  “From the way the body looked, we believe she was seeing someone she expected, not a chance intruder.” He pulled a leather-covered date book from the middle desk drawer. He flipped it open and tossed it to me. For Wednesday, January 18, Agnes had written: “V.I.W.,” heavily underscored, followed by several exclamation points.

  “Looks like a date, doesn’t it.” I tossed the book back to him. “Have you established that I’m her only acquaintance with those initials?”

  “There aren’t too many people in the metropolitan area with those initials.”

  “So the current theory reads that she and I were lovers and we had a falling-out? Now she’s been living with Phyllis Lording for three years and I’ve been involved with God-knows-who-all since we left school, besides being married once-oh, yeah, I guess the theory would say I divorced Dick to keep Agnes happy. But despite all that, suddenly we decided to have a grand lovers’ quarrel and because I’m trained in self-defense and carry a gun at times, I won by putting a couple of bullets through her head. You said hearing about me from Mrs. Paciorek made you want to puke; frankly, Bobby, listening to what goes on in the alleged minds of the police makes me feel like I’ve wandered into a really low-grade porn shop. Talk about puking… Anything else you want to know?” I stood up again.

  “Well, you tell me why she wanted to see you. And were you there last night?”

  I stayed on my feet. “You should have started with your last question. I was in Melrose Park last night with the Reverend

  Boniface Carroll, OP., Prior of St. Albert’s Dominican Priory, from about four-thirty to about ten. And I don’t know why Agnes wanted to talk to me-assuming I’m the one she wanted to talk to. Try Vincent Ignatius Williams.”

  “Who’s he?” Bobby demanded, startled.

  “I don’t know. But his initials are V.I.W.” I turned and left, ignoring Bobby’s voice as it came bellowing down the corridor after me. I was furious; my hands were shaking with rage. I stood by the door of the Omega taking in deep gulps of icy air, slowly expelling it, trying to calm myself.

  Finally I climbed into the car. The dashboard clock read eleven. I headed the Omega north into the Loop, parking at a public lot not too far from the Pulteney. From there I walked three blocks to Ajax ’s headquarters.

  Their glass-and-steel skyscraper occupies sixty of the ugliest stories in Chicago. Located at the northwestern corner of Michigan and Adams, it overwhelms the Art Institute opposite. I’ve often wondered why the Blairs and the McCormicks allowed a monster like Ajax so near their favorite charity.

  Uniformed security guards patrol Ajax ’s gray lobby. Their job is to keep miscreants like me from attacking officers like Roger Ferrant. Even after they’d checked with him and found he was willing to see me, they made me fill out a form for a visitor’s pass. By that time my temper was so brittle that I scribbled a note under my signature promising not to mug any of their executives in the hallway.

  Ferrant’s office lay on the lake side of the fifty-eighth floor, which proved the importance of his temporary position.

  An angular secretary in a large antechamber informed me that Mr. Ferrant was engaged and would see me shortly. Her desk, facing the open door, kept her from seeing Lake Michigan. I wondered if that was her own idea, or if Ajax management didn’t think secretaries could be trusted to work if they saw the outside world.

  I sat in a large, green-covered plush armchair and flicked through the morning’s Wall Street Journal while I waited. The headline in “Heard on the Street” caught my eye. The Journal had picked up the rumor of a potential takeover for Ajax. The Tisch brothers and other likely insurance-company owners had been interviewed, but all of them professed total ignorance. Ajax chairman Gordon Firth was quoted as saying:

  Naturally we’re watching the share price with interest, but no one has approached our shareholders with a friendly offer.

  And that seemed to be all they knew in New York.

  At a quarter to twelve the door to the inner office opened. A group of middle-aged men, mostly overweight, came out talking in a subdued hubbub. Ferrant followed, straightening his tie with one hand and pushing his hair out of his eyes with the other. He smiled, but his thin face was troubled.

  “Have you eaten? Good. We’ll go to the executive dining room on sixty.”

  I told him that was fine and waited while he put on his suit jacket. We rode in silence to the top of the building.

  In the executive dining and meeting rooms, Ajax compensated for the stark unfriendliness of the lobby. Brocade drapes were looped back over gauze hangings at the windows. Walls were paneled in dark wood, possibly mahogany, and the recessed lighting picked up strategically placed bits of modern sculpture and painting.

  Ferrant had his own table near a window, with plenty of space between him and any eavesdropping neighbors. As soon as we were seated,
a black-uniformed waiter popped out of the ground to waft luncheon menus in front of us and ask for our drink orders. Last night’s scotch was adding to the discomfort of my morning with Mallory. I ordered orange juice. I flipped indifferently through the menu. When the waiter came back with our drinks, I found I didn’t have any appetite.

  “Nothing for me now.”

  Ferrant looked at his watch and said apologetically that he was on a short timetable and would have to eat.

  Once the waiter was gone, I said abruptly, “I spent the morning with the police. They think Agnes was expecting someone last night. You said the same thing. Did she tell you anything-anything at all that would help identify the one she was waiting for?”

  “Barrett sent me the names of brokers here in Chicago who’ve been trading in Ajax. It came in Monday’s mail and I met Agnes for lunch on Tuesday and gave it to her then, along with the list of those the shares had been registered to. She said she knew a partner in one of the firms pretty well and would call him. But she didn’t tell me who.”

  “Did you keep a copy of the names?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve kicked myself a hundred times over for that. But I don’t have the American photocopy habit. I always thought it was stupid, generated mounds of useless paper. Now I’m changing my mind. I can get Barrett to send me another copy, but I won’t get it today.”

  I drummed my fingers on the table. Useless to be irritated about that. “Maybe her secretary can dig it up for me

  When she talked to you yesterday, did she mention my name at all?”

  He shook his head. “Should she have?”

  “She had my initials in her date book. With Agnes, that means-meant-a reminder to herself. She didn’t write down her appointments; she relied on her secretary to keep track of them. So my initials meant she wanted to talk to me.” I’d been too angry with Mallory to explain that to him, too angry, as well, to tell him about Ferrant and Ajax.

  “The police came up with an extraterrestrial theory about Agnes and me being lovers and my shooting her out of spite or revenge or something. It didn’t make me too confiding. But I can’t help wondering… You saw the story in this morning’s Journal?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, here you’ve got a possible takeover bid. None of the principals-if there are any-step into the open. Agnes starts prying. She wants to talk to me, but before she does that she ends up dead.”

  He looked startled. “You don’t really think her death has anything to do with Ajax, do you?”

  The waiter brought him a club sandwich and he began eating automatically. “It really troubles me to think my questions might have sent that poor girl to her death. You pooh-poohed me last night for feeling responsible. Christ! I feel ten times as responsible now.” He put his sandwich down and leaned across the table. “Vic, no company takeover is more valuable than a person’s life. Leave it be. If there is a connection-if you stir up the same people-I just couldn’t bear it. It’s bad enough to feel responsible for Agnes. I scarcely knew her. But I just don’t want to worry about that with you, too.”

  You can’t touch someone in the executive dining room; every corporate officer I ever met was a born-again gossip. Word would spread through all sixty floors by nightfall that Roger Ferrant had brought his girlfriend to lunch and held hands with her.

  “Thanks, Roger. Agnes and I-we’re grown women. We make our own mistakes. No one else has to take responsibility for them. I’m always careful. I think you owe taking care of yourself to the friends who love you, and I don’t want to cause my friends any grief… I’m not sure I believe in immortality or heaven or any of those things. But I do believe, with Roger Fox, that we all have to listen to the voice within us, and how easily you can look at yourself in the mirror depends on whether you obey that voice or not. Everyone’s voice gives different counsel, but you can only interpret the one you hear.”

  He finished his drink before answering. “Well, Vic, add me to the list of friends who don’t want to grieve over you.” He got up abruptly and headed for the exit, leaving his sandwich half eaten on the table.

  XI

  Acid Test

  THE FORT DEARBORN Trust, Chicago ’s largest bank, has buildings on each of the four corners of Monroe and LaSalle. The Tower, their most recent construction, is a seventy-fivestory building on the southwest side of the intersection, Its curved, aqua-tinted glass sides represent the newest trend in Chicago architecture. The elevator banks are built around a small jungle. I skirted trees and creeping vines until I found the elevators to the sixtieth floor, where Feldstein, Holtz and Woods, the firm in which Agnes had been a partner, occupied the north half. I’d first been there when the firm moved in three years ago. Agnes had just been made a partner and

  Phyllis Lording and I were helping her hang pictures in her enormous new office.

  Phyllis taught English at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. I’d called her from the Ajax dining room before coming over to the Fort Dearborn Tower. It was a painful conversation, Phyllis trying unsuccessfully not to cry. Mrs. Paciorek was refusing to tell her anything about the funeral arrangements.

  “If you’re not married, you don’t have any rights when your lover dies,” she said bitterly.

  I promised to come see her that evening and asked if Agnes had said anything, either about Ajax or why she wanted to see me.

  “She told me she’d had lunch with you last Friday, you and some Englishman… I know she said he’d brought up an interesting problem.. I just can’t remember anything else now.’

  If Phyllis didn’t know, Agnes’s secretary might. I hadn’t bothered phoning ahead to Feldstein, Holtz and Woods, and I arrived on a scene of extraordinary chaos. The inside of a brokerage firm always looks like a hurricane’s just been through; brokers carve perilous perches for themselves inside mountains of documents-prospectuses, research reports, annual reports. The wonder is that they ever work through enough paper to know anything about the companies they trade in.

  A murder investigation superimposed on this fire hazard was unbearable, even for someone with my housekeeping standards. Gray dusting powder covered the few surfaces not crowded with paper. Desks and terminals were jammed into the already overflowing space so work could go on while police cordoned off parts of the floor they thought might yield clues.

  As I walked through the open area towards Agnes’s office, a young patrolman stopped me, demanding my business. “I have an account here. I’m going to see my broker.” He tried to stop me with further questions, but someone barked an order at him from the other side of the room and he turned his back on me.

  Agnes’s office was roped off, even though the murder had taken place on the other side of the floor. A couple of detectives were going through every piece of paper. I figured they might finish by Easter.

  Alicia Vargas, Agnes’s young secretary, was huddled miserably in a corner with three word-processor operators; the police had commandeered her rosewood desk as well. She saw me coming and jumped to her feet.

  “Miss Warshawski! You heard the news. This is terrible, terrible. Who would do a thing like that?”

  The word-processor operators all sat with their hands in their laps, green cursors blinking importunately on blank screens in front of them. “Could we go someplace to talk?” I asked, jerking my head toward the eavesdroppers.

  She collected her purse and jacket and followed me at once. We rode the elevator back down to the coffee shop tucked into one corner of the lobby jungle. My appetite had come back. I ordered corned beef on rye-extra calories to make up for skipping lunch at the executive dining room.

  Miss Vargas’s plump brown face was swollen from crying. Agnes had picked her out of the typing pool five years ago when Miss Vargas was eighteen and on her first job. When Agnes was made partner, Miss Vargas became her personal secretary. The tears marked genuine grief, but probably also concern for her uncertain future. I asked her whether any of the senior partners had talked to her
about her job.

  She shook her head sadly. “I will have to talk to Mr. Holtz, I know. They will not think of it until then. I am supposed to be working for Mr. Hampton and Mr. Janville”-two of the junior partners-”until things are straightened out.” She scowled fiercely, keeping back further tears. “If I must go back to the pool, or working for many men, I-I, well I will have to find a job elsewhere.”

  Privately I thought that was the best thing for her to do, but being in a state of shock is not the best time to plan. I set my energies instead to calming her down and asking her about Agnes’s interest in the putative Ajax takeover.

  She didn’t know anything about Ajax. And the brokers’ names given Agnes by Ferrant? She shook her head. If they hadn’t come in the mail, she wouldn’t have seen them in the normal course of things. I sighed in exasperation. I’d have to get Roger to ask Barrett for a duplicate list if it didn’t turn up in the office.

  I explained the situation to Miss Vargas. “There’s a strong possibility that one of the people on the list might have been coming to see Agnes last night. If so, that would be the last person to see her alive. It might even be the murderer. I can get another copy of the list, but it’ll take time. If you can look through her papers and find it, it’d be a help. I’m not sure what will identify it. It should be on letterhead from Andy Barrett, the Ajax specialist. May even be part of a letter to Roger Ferrant.”

  She agreed readily enough to look for the list, although she didn’t hold out much hope of finding it in the mass of papers in Agnes’s office.

  I settled the bill and we went back to the disaster area. The police pounced on Miss Vargas suspiciously: Where had she been? They needed to go over some material with her. She looked at me helplessly; I told her I’d wait.

  While she talked to the police I nosed out Feldstein, Holtz’s research director, Frank Bugatti. He was a young, hard-hitting MBA. I told him I’d been a client of Miss Paciorek. She’d been looking into insurance stocks for me.