Killing Orders

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 gri

He asked me to stay for di

“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.

After I took him back to the priory I swung onto the Eisenhower back to Chicago. A little light snow had begun falling. It was a few minutes before ten; I turned on WBBM, Chicago ’s news station, to catch news and a weather forecast.

I listened vaguely to reports of failed peace initiatives in Lebanon, continued high unemployment, poor retail sales in December despite Christmas shopping. Then Alan Swanson’s crisp voice continued:

Tonight’s top local story is the violent death of a Chicago stockbroker. Cleaning woman Martha Gonzales found the body of broker Agnes Paciorek in one of the conference rooms in the offices of Feldstein, Holtz and Woods, where Miss Paciorek worked. She had been shot twice in the head. Police have not ruled out suicide as a cause of death. CBS news correspondent Mark Weintraub is with Sergeant McGo

Swanson switched over to Weintraub. I almost swerved into a ditch at Cicero Avenue. My hands were shaking and I pulled the car over to the side. I turned off the engine. Semis roared past, rattling the little Omega. The car cooled, and my feet began growing numb inside their pumps. “Two shots in the head and the police still haven’t ruled out suicide,” I muttered. My voice jarred me back to myself; I turned the motor on and headed back into the city at a sober pace.

WBBM played the story at ten-minute intervals, with few new details. The bullets were from a twenty-two-caliber pistol. The police finally decided to eliminate suicide since no gun was found by the body. Miss Paciorek’s purse had been recovered from a locked drawer in her desk. I heard Sergeant McGo

On impulse I drove north to Addison and stopped in front of Lotty’s apartment. It was almost eleven: no lights showed. Lotty gets her sleep when she can-her practice involves a lot of night emergencies. My trouble would keep.