Sara Paretsky - Killing Orders

“I don’t really think that’s you. But I don’t know where it’s coming from, and that makes me draw away from people. I know it’s bitchy, or I’m bitchy, but I can’t help it. And then Agnes’s being shot… I do feel kind of responsible, because she was working on your problem, and I sent you to her. Even if her being shot doesn’t have anything to do with Ajax, which maybe it doesn’t, I still feel responsible. She was working late, and probably meeting someone involved in the takeover. I know that’s not very clear, but do you understand?”

He rubbed a hand through his long forelock. “But, Vic, why couldn’t you say any of this to me? Why did you just draw back?”

“I don’t know. It’s how I operate. I can’t explain it. It’s why I’m a private eye, not a cop or a fed.”

“Well, could you at least tell me about the acid?”

“You were here the night I got the first threatening phone call. Well, they tried making good on it last week. I anticipated the attack and broke the guy’s jaw and took the acid on my neck instead of my face. Still, it was very-well, shocking. I thought I heard the man who made the phone call talking at Agnes’s funeral. But when I tried to find him, I couldn’t.” I described the voice and asked Roger if he remembered meeting anyone like that.

“His voice… it was like someone who didn’t grow up speaking English and is disguising an accent. Or someone whose natural accent would be a strong drawl or something regional that he’s trying to cover.”

Roger shook his head. “I can’t differentiate American accents too well, anyway… But, Vic, why couldn’t you tell me this? You didn’t really think I was responsible for it, did you?”

“No. Not really, of course. I just have to solve my own problems. I don’t plan to turn into a clinging female who runs to a man every time something doesn’t work out right.”

“Do you think you could find some middle way between those two extremes? Like maybe talking your problems over with someone and still solving them yourself?”

I grinned at him. “Nominating yourself, Roger?”

“It’s a possibility, yes.”

“I’ll think about it.” I drank some more champagne. He asked me what I was doing about Ajax. I didn’t think I should spread my midnight adventure at Tilford & Sutton too far-a story like that is very repeatable. So I just said I’d done a little digging. “I came across the name of a holding company, Wood-Sage. I don’t know that they’re involved in your problem, but the context was a bit unusual. Do you think you could talk to your specialist and see if he’s heard of them? Or to some of your corporate investment staff?”

Roger half bowed across the table. “Oh, wow! Legman for V. I. Warshawski. What’s the male equivalent of a gangster’s moll?”

I laughed. “I don’t know. I’ll get you fitted out with a machine gun so you can do it in the best Chicago style.”

Roger reached a long arm across the table and squeezed my free hand. “I’d like that. Something to tell them about in the box at Lloyd’s… Just don’t shut me out, V.1. Or at least tell me why you’re doing it. Otherwise I start imagining I’m being rejected and get complexes and other Freudian things.”

“Fair enough.” I disengaged my hand and moved around the table to his chair. I don’t blame men for loving long hair on women; there was something erotic and soothing about running my fingers through the long mop that kept falling into Ferrant’s eyes.

Over the years I’ve noticed that men hate secrets or ambiguities. Sometimes I even feel like pampering them about it. I kissed Roger and loosened his tie, and after a few minutes’ uncomfortable squirming on the chair, led him into the bedroom.

We spent several agreeable hours there and fell asleep around ten o’clock. If we hadn’t gone to bed so early, my deepest sleep wouldn’t have been over by three-thirty. I might have been sleeping too heavily for the smoke to wake me.

I sat up in bed, irritated, momentarily thinking I was back with my husband, one of whose less endearing habits was smoking in bed. However, the acrid smell in no way resembled a cigarette.

“Roger!” I shook him as I started scrambling around in the dark for a pair of pants. “Roger! Wake up. The place is on fire!”

I must have left a burner on in the kitchen, I thought, and headed toward it with some vague determination to extinguish the blaze myself.

The kitchen was in flames. That’s what they say in the newspapers. Now I knew what they meant. Living flames enveloped the walls and snaked long orange tongues along the floor toward the dining room. They crackled and sang and sent out ribbons of smoke. Party ribbons, wrapping the floor and the hallway.

Roger was behind me. “No way, V.!.!” he shouted above the crackling. He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me toward the front door. I seized the knob to turn it and drew back, scorched. Felt the panels. They were hot. I shook my head, trying to keep panic at bay. “It’s on fire, too!” I screamed. “Fire escape in the bedroom. Let’s go!”

Back down the hail, now purple and white with smoke. No air. Crawl on the ground. On the ground past the dining room. Past the remains of the feast. Past my mother’s red Venetian glasses, wrapped with care and taken from Italy and the Fascists to the precarious South Side of Chicago. I dashed into the dining room and felt for them through the smog, knocking over plates, the rest of the champagne, finding the glasses while Roger yelled in anguish from the doorway.

Into the bedroom, wrapping ourselves in blankets. Shutting the bedroom door so opening the window wouldn’t feed the hungry flames, the flames that devoured the air. Roger was having trouble with the window. It hadn’t been opened in years and the locks were painted shut. He fumbled for agonizing seconds while the room grew hotter and finally smashed the glass with a blanketed arm. I followed him through the glass shards out into the January, night.

We stood for a moment gulping in air, clinging to each other. Roger had found his pants and was pulling them on. He had bundled up all the clothes he could find at the side of the bed and we sorted out the leavings. I had my jeans on. No shirt. No shoes. One of my wool socks and a pair of bedroom slippers had come up in the bundle. The freezing iron cut into my feet and seemed to burn them. The slippers were moth-eaten, but the leather was lined with old rabbit fur and cut out the worst of the cold. I wrapped my naked top in a blanket and started down the slippery, snow-covered steps, clutching the glasses in one hand and the icy railing in the other.

Roger, wearing untied shoes, trousers, and a shirt, came hard on my heels. His teeth were chattering. “Take my shirt, Vie.”

“Keep it,” I called over my shoulder. “You’re cold enough as it is. I’ve got the blanket… We need to wake up the kids in the second-floor apartment. Your legs are so long, you can probably hang over the edge of the ladder and reach the ground-it ends at the second floor. If you’ll take my mother’s goblets and carry them down, I’ll break in and get the students.”

He started to argue, chivalry and all that, but saw there wasn’t time. I wasn’t going to lose those glasses and that was that. Grabbing the snow-covered rung at the end of the escape with his bare hands, he swung over the edge. He was about four feet from the ground. He dropped off and stretched up a long arm for the goblets. I hooked my legs over one of the rungs and leaned over. Our fingertips just met.

“I’m giving you three minutes in there, Vic. Then I’m coming after you.”

I nodded gravely and went to the bedroom window on the second story. While I pounded and roused two terrified youths from a mattress on the floor, half my mind was working out a puzzle. Fire at the front door, fire in the kitchen. I might have started a kitchen fire by mistake, but not one at the front door. So why was the bottom half of the building not on fire while the top half was?