Sara Paretsky - Killing Orders

Pockmark and Fatso gave way to some senior cops fairly early in the evening. It must have been around midnight when

Charles Nicholson came in from the DA’s office. I knew Charles. He was a figure in the Cook County court system. He liked to think he was an heir of Clarence Darrow, and resembled him superficially, at least as far as shaggy hair and a substantial stomach went. Charles was the kind of guy who liked to catch his subordinates making personal phone calls on county time. We’d never been what you might call close.

“Well, well, Warshawski. Feels like old times. You, me, a few differences, and a table between us.”

“Hello, Charlie,” I said calmly. “It does seem like old times. Even down to your shirt not quite meeting at the sixth button.”

He looked down at his stomach and tried pulling the straining fabric together, then looked at me furiously. “Still your old flippant self, I see-even on a murder-one charge.”

“If it’s murder one, they changed the booking without telling me,” I said irritably. “And that violates my Miranda rights. Better read the charge slip and double-check it.”

“No, no,” he said in his mayonnaise voice. “You’re right- just a manner of speaking. Obstruction was and is the charge. Let’s talk about what you were doing in the old man’s apartment, Warshawski.”

I shook my head. “Not until I have legal advice-in my opinion anything I say on that topic may incriminate me, and since I don’t have specific knowledge of the crime, there isn’t anything I can do to forward the police investigation.” That was the last sentence I uttered for some time.

Charlie tried a lot of different tactics-insults, camaraderie, high-flown theories about the crime to invite my comments. I started doing some squad exercises-raise the right leg, hold for a count of five, lower, raise the left. Counting gave me a way to ignore Charlie, and the exercises rattled him. I’d gotten to seventy-five with each leg when he gave up.

Things changed at two-thirty when Bobby Mallory came in. “We’re taking you downtown,” he informed me. “I have had it up to here”-he indicated his neck-”with your smartass dancing around. Telling the truth when you feel like it. How dared you-how dared you give that acid story to Ryerson and not tell us this morning? We talked to your friend Ferrant a few hours ago. I’m not so dumb I didn’t notice you cutting him off this morning when he started to ask if these were the same people who threw something. Acid. You should be in Cook County Psychiatric. And before the night’s over, you’re either going to spill what you know or we’re going to send you there and make it stick.”

That was just talk, and Bobby knew it. Half of him was furious with me for concealing evidence, and half was plain mad because I was Tony’s daughter and might have gotten myself killed or blinded.

I stood up. “Okay. You got it. Although Murray ran the acid story when it happened. Just get me out of the suburbs and away from Charlie and I’ll talk.”

“And the truth, Warshawski. You cover up anything, anything, and we’ll have you in jail. I don’t care if I run you in for dope possession.”

“I don’t do dope, Bobby. They find any in my place, it’s planted. Anyway, I don’t have a place.”

His round face turned red. “I’m not taking it, Warshawski. You’re two sentences away from Cook County. No smartassing, no lies. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Bobby got the Skokie people to drop charges and took me away. Technically I wasn’t under arrest and didn’t have to go with him. I also wasn’t under any illusions.

The driver was a likable young man who seemed willing to chat. I asked him whether he thought the Cubs were going to let Rick Sutcliffe go. One blistering remark from Bobby shut him up, however, so I discoursed alone on the topic. “My feeling is, Sutcliffe turned that team around after the All-Star break. So he wants five, six million. It’s worth it for another crack at the World Series.”

When we got to Eleventh Street, Bobby hustled me into an interrogation room. Detective Finchley, a young black cop who’d been in uniform when I first met him, joined us and took notes.

Bobby sent for coffee, shut the door, and sat behind his cluttered desk.

“No more about Sutcliffe and Gary Matthews. Just the facts.”

I gave him the facts. I told him about Rosa and the securities, and the threatening phone calls. I told him about the attack in the hallway and how Murray thought it might be Walter Novick. And I told him about the phone call this morning when I went back for my clothes. “No one is lucky forever.”

“And what about Stefan Herschel? What were you doing there the day he was stabbed?”

“Just chance. Is he all right?”

“No way, Warshawski. I’m asking the questions tonight. What were you doing at his place?”

“He’s an uncle of a friend of mine. You know Dr. Herschel He’s an interesting old man and he gets lonely; he wanted me to have tea with him.”

“Tea? So you let yourself in?”

“The door was open when I got there-that worried me.”

“I’ll bet. The girl across the hall says the door was shut and that worried her.”

“Not standing open-just not locked.”

Bobby held up my collection of picklocks. “You wouldn’t have used these, by any chance?”

I shook my head. “Don’t know how to use them-they’re a souvenir from one of my clients when I was a public defender.”

“And you carry them around for sentiment after what- eight years as a P.I.? Come on, let’s have it.”

“You got it, Bobby. You got the acid, you got Novick, you got Rosa. Talk to Derek Hatfield, why don’t you. I’d be real curious who was backing the FBI off those securities.”

“I’m talking to you. And speaking of Hatfield, you wouldn’t know why his name was on the register at the Stock Exchange, would you, the night someone broke into Tilford and Sutton’s office?”

“You ask Hatfield what he was doing there?”

“He says he wasn’t.”

I shrugged. “The feds never tell you anything. You know that.”

“Well, neither do you, and you’ve got less excuse to hold back. Why were you visiting Stefan Herschel?”

“He invited me.”

“Yeah. Your apartment burned down last night, so today you’ve been feeling chipper, you’ll just go to tea in Skokie. Damn it, Vicki, level with me.” Mallory was truly upset. He doesn’t hold with swearing around women. Finchley looked worried. I was worried, too; but I just couldn’t blow the whistle on Stefan Herschel. The old man had got himself killed, or close to it, on account of the forgery. I didn’t want to get him arrested, too.

At five, Bobby charged me with concealing evidence of a crime. I was printed, photographed, and taken to the holding cells at Twenty-sixth and California with some rather disgruntled prostitutes. Most wore high-heeled boots and very short skirts-jail must at least have been a warmer place on a January night than Rush and Oak. There was a little hostility at first as they tried to make sure I wasn’t working any of their territories.

“Sorry, ladies-I’m just here on a murder charge.” Yeah, my old man, I explained. Yeah, the bastard beat me. But the last straw was when he tried to burn me. I showed them my arms where the fire had scorched the skin.

Lots of sympathetic clucking. “Oh, honey, you did right.

Man touch me that way, I stick him.” “Oh, yeah, ‘member when Freddie tried to cut me, I throw boil’ water on him.”

They quickly forgot me as each tried to outdo the other with tales of male violence and bravado in handling it. The stories made my skin crawl. At eight though, when the Freddies and Slims and JJ 5showed up to collect them, they acted glad enough to see them. Home is where they have to take you in, I guess.