Sara Paretsky - Killing Orders

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.

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.