Sara Paretsky - Killing Orders

I laughed softly. “Okay, Rosa! Two points for our side.”

“Goddamn it, Vic, why’d you sic me onto her?”

“I don’t know,” I said irritably. “To see if she’d be as nasty to anyone else as she is to me? To see if you could learn something she wouldn’t tell me? I don’t know. I’m sorry your poor little protégé had her feelings hurt, but she’s going to have to learn to take it if she plans to survive in your game.” I started to tell Murray that I, too, had been warned off the investigation, then held back. Maybe someone had brushed back the FBI. And maybe that someone had called me as well. If the FBI respected them, so should I. I bade Murray an absentminded good-night and hung up.

THE SNOW HELD off overnight. I got up late to do my virtuous five miles, running north and west through the neighborhood. I didn’t think anyone was watching me, but if they were, it was sensible to vary my route.

A little later I followed the same procedure in my car, looping the Omega north and west through the side streets, then hitting the Kennedy from the west at Lawrence. I seemed to be clean. Thirty miles south on the expressway, past the city limits, is the town of Hazel Crest. You cannot buy handguns in Chicago, but a number of suburbs do a flourishing legal business in them. At Riley’s, on 161st Street, I showed them my private investigator’s license and my certificate that proved I’d passed the state’s exam for private security officers. These enabled me to waive the three-day waiting period and also to register the gun in Chicago; private citizens can’t register handguns here unless they bought them before 1979.

I spent the rest of the day finishing up a few outstanding problems-serving a subpoena to a bank vice-president hiding unconvincingly in Rosemont, and showing a small jewelry store how to install a security system.

And I kept wondering who was backing off first Rosa and then the FBI. It wouldn’t help to park in front of Rosa ’s and watch her. What I really needed was a tap on her phone. And that was beyond my resources.

I tried thinking about it from the other end. Who had I talked to? That was easy: the prior, the procurator, and the student master. I’d also told Ferrant and Agnes what I was doing. None of these five seemed a likely candidate for threatening either me or the FBI.

Of course, Jablonski could be that type of antiabortion fanatic who thinks it’s a worse sin to have an abortion than to kill someone who promotes freedom of choice, but he hadn’t struck me as particularly crazy. Despite Pelly’s protests, the Catholic Church does carry a lot of clout in Chicago. But even if it could pressure the FBI out of the investigation, why would it want to? Anyway, a priory in Melrose Park was on the fringes of the Church power structure. And why would they steal their own stock certificates? Even assuming they were in touch with forgers the whole idea was too far out. I went back to my original theory-my phone call had come from a crank, and the FBI was backing out because it was understaffed and overworked.

Nothing happened to make me change my mind during the next several days. I wondered vaguely how Uncle Stefan was doing. If it weren’t for the fact that there really had been a forgery, I would have put the whole thing out of my mind.

On Wednesday I had to go to Elgin to testify in a case being tried in the state appeals court there. I stopped in Melrose Park on my way back to town, partly to see Carroll, partly to see if a visit to the priory might tickle my threatening caller back to life. If it didn’t, it would prove nothing. But if I heard from him again, it might show he was watching the priory.

It was four-thirty when I reached St. Albert ’s, and the friars were filing into the chapel for vespers and evening mass. Father Carroll came out of his office as I stood hesitating and gave me a welcoming smile, inviting me to join them for evening prayer.

I followed him into the Chapel. Two rows of raised stalls faced each other in the middle of the room. I went with him to the back row on the left side. The seats were divided by arms raised between them. I sat down and slid back in the seat. Father Carroll gave me a service book and quietly pointed out the lessons and prayers they would be using, then knelt to pray.

In the winter twilight, I felt as though I had slipped back five or six centuries in time. The brothers in their white robes, the candlelight flickering on the simple wooden altar to my left, the few people coming in from the outside to worship in the public space divided from the main chapel by a carved wooden screen-all evoked the medieval Church. I was the discordant note in my black wool suit, my high heels, my makeup.

Father Carroll led the service, singing in a clear, well-trained voice. The whole service was sung antiphonally between the two banks of stalls. It’s true, as Rosa said, that I’m no Christian, but I found the service satisfying.

Afterward, Carroll invited me back to his office for tea. Almost all tea tastes like stewed alfalfa to me, but I politely drank a cup of the pale green brew and asked him if he’d heard anything more from the FBI.

“They tested the shares for fingerprints and a lot of other things-I don’t know what. They thought there might be dust or something on them that would show where the things had been stored. I guess they didn’t find anything, so they’re going to bring them back tomorrow.” He grinned mischievously. “I’m making them give me an armed escort over to the Bank of Melrose Park. We’re getting those things into a bank vault.”

He asked me to stay for dinner, which was being served in five minutes. Memories of Kraft American cheese restrained me. On an impulse I invited him to eat with me in Melrose Park. The town has a couple of excellent Italian restaurants. Somewhat surprised, he accepted.

“I’ll just change out of my robe.” He smiled again. “The young brothers like to go out in them in public-they like people to look at them and know they’re seeing a foreign breed. But we older men lose our taste for showing off.”

He returned in ten minutes in a plaid shirt, black slacks, and a black jacket. We had a pleasant meal at one of the little restaurants on North Avenue. We talked about singing; I complimented him on his voice and learned he’d been a student at the American Conservatory before entering the priesthood. He asked me about my work and I tried to think of some interesting cases.

“I guess the payoff is you get to be your own boss. And you have the satisfaction of solving problems, even if they’re only little problems most of the time. I was just out in Elgin today, testifying at the state court there. It brought back my early days with the Chicago public defender’s office. Either we had to defend maniacs who ought to have been behind bars for the good of the world at large, or we had poor chumps who were caught in the system and couldn’t buy their way out. You’d leave court every day feeling as though you’d just helped worsen the situation. As a detective, if I can get at the truth of a problem, I feel as though I’ve made some contribution.”

“I see. Not a glamorous occupation, but it sounds very worthwhile…I’d never heard Mrs. Vignelli mention you. Until she called last week, I didn’t know she had any family besides her son. Are there other relatives?”

I shook my head. “My mother was her only Chicago relative-my grandfather and she were brother and sister. There may be some family on my uncle Carl’s side. He died years before I was born. Shot himself, actually-very sad for Rosa.” I fiddled with the stem on my wineglass, tempted to ask him if he knew what lay behind Rosa ’s dark insinuations about Gabriella. But even if he knew, he probably wouldn’t tell me. And it seemed vulgar to bring up the family emnity in public.