Killing Orders

“Your friends!” I shouted at him. “Don Pasquale, you mean. The don didn’t send you here, did he? Did he?” When Novick didn’t say anything, I picked him up by the shoulders and started dragging him toward the house again.

“Stop!” he yelled. “No. No, it wasn’t the don. It-it was someone else.”

I leaned over him in the snow. “Who, Novick?”

“I don’t know.”

I grabbed his armpits. “All right!” he screamed. “Put me down. I don’t know his name. He’s-he’s someone who called me.”

“Have you ever met him in person?”

In the floodlights, I saw him nod weakly. A middle-aged man. He had met him once. The day he stabbed Uncle Stefan. This man had come with him to the apartment. No, Uncle Stefan might not have seen him-he’d waited in the hail until after the stabbing. Then gone in to collect the forged stocks. He was fifty-five or sixty. Green eyes. Gray hair. But the voice Novick especially remembered-a voice you’d recognize in hell, he called it.

O’Faolin. I sat back on my heels and looked at the hit man. Sour bile filled my mouth. I swallowed a handful of snow, gagged, swallowed again, trying to force down the desire to kill Novick where he lay.

“Walter, you’re a lucky man. Pasquale doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die. Neither do I. But you’re going to live. Isn’t that nice? And if you swear in court that the man who ordered you out here tonight was behind the stabbing of Stefan Herschel, I’ll see you get a good plea bargain. We’ll-forget the acid. We’ll even forget the fire. How about it?”

“The don won’t forget me.” This was in a thread of a voice. I had to stick my ear close to his revolting face to hear it.

“Yes, he will, Walter. He can’t afford to be tied to the forgeries. He can’t afford the FBI and the SEC subpoenaing his accounts. He isn’t going to know you.”

He still didn’t say anything. I pulled the Smith & Wesson from my jeans belt. “If I shoot your left kneecap, you’ll never be able to prove it didn’t happen when you attacked me at the door.”

“You wouldn’t,” he gasped.

He was probably right; my stomach was churning as it was. What kind of person kneels in the snow threatening to destroy the leg of an injured man? Not anyone I wanted to know. I pulled the hammer back with a loud click and pointed the gun at his left leg.

“No,” he cried. “No, don’t. I’ll do it. Whatever you say. But you get me a doctor. Get me a doctor.” He was sobbing pitifully. Toughest man in the Mafia.

I put the gun away. “Good boy, Walter. You won’t regret it. Now, just a few more questions and we’ll get you an ambulance-Kitty Paciorek seems to have forgotten you.”

Novick eagerly told the little he knew. He’d never seen Mrs. Paciorek before. The Man with the Voice had called yesterday and told him to get out here at seven tonight, to make sure no one saw him, to shoot me as I walked up to the house from my car. Yes, it was the Man with the Voice who hired him to throw acid at me.

“How did he know you, Walter? How did he know to get in touch with you?”

He didn’t know. “The don must have given him my number. That’s all I can figure. He told the don he needed a good man and the don gave him my number.”

“You are a good man, Walter. Pasquale must be proud of you. You came for me three times and all you got out of it was a broken jaw and a smashed up leg…I’m going to get you an ambulance. You’d best be praying your godfather forgets all about you, because from what I hear he doesn’t like failures too much.”

I covered him with my coat and headed for the front door. As I reached the steps a car pulled into the driveway. Not an ambulance. I froze, then jumped from the shallow porch to shelter in some evergreens ru

The garage doors opened electronically; the car pulled in and stopped. I peered around the edge of a tree. A dark blue Mercedes. Dr. Paciorek. How much did he know about tonight’s escapade? Now was as good a time as any to find out. I stepped into the garage.

He looked up in surprise as he locked the car door. “Victoria! What are you doing here?”

“I came out to see your wife-I had some papers of Agnes’s she wanted to see. Someone was lying in wait out front here and took a shot at her. I’ve hit him in the leg and I need to get an ambulance for him.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Victoria. This isn’t your idea of a joke, is it?”

“Come and see for yourself.” He followed me to the front. Novick was dragging himself toward the road as fast as he could, a feeble activity that had moved him ten feet or so. “You!” Paciorek yelled. “Stop!”

Novick continued to move. We trotted over to him. Dr. Paciorek handed me the briefcase he was carrying and knelt to look at the hit man. Novick tried to fight with him, but Paciorek didn’t need my help to hold him down. After a few minutes’ feeling of the leg, during which Novick cursed more loudly than ever, Paciorek said briefly, “The bone is broken but there isn’t much else the matter except cold. I’ll get an ambulance and call the police. You don’t mind staying with him, do you?”

I was starting to shiver. “I guess not. Can you lend me your coat? I gave him mine.”

He gave me a surprised glance, then took off his cashmere Coat and draped it around my shoulders. After the doctor’s bulky body vanished into the house, I squatted down next to Novick. “Before you pass out, let’s get our stories straight.” By the time the Lake Forest police arrived, we had agreed that he’d gotten lost and come to the door looking for help. Mrs. Paciorek, terrified, had screamed. That brought me to the scene with my gun out. Walter had taken fright at that and fired at me. I shot him. Not very believable, but I was damned sure Mrs. Paciorek wouldn’t contradict it.

The sirens sounded in the distance. Novick had fainted finally, and I stood back to let the officials take over. I was dizzy and close to fainting myself. Fatigue. Nausea at the depths of my own rage. How like a mobster I had behaved- torture, threats. I don’t believe the end justifies the means. I’d just been plain raving angry.

As wave on wave of policemen interviewed me, I kept dozing off, waking up, keeping my wits together enough to tell the same story each time, then dozing again. It was one o’clock when they finished and left.

Dr. Paciorek had refused to let his wife talk. I don’t know what she told him, but he sent her to bed; the locals didn’t argue that decision. Not with that much money behind it.

Dr. Paciorek had let the police use his study as an interrogation room. After they left, he came in and sat in the leather swivel chair behind his desk. I was sprawled in a leather armchair, three parts asleep.

“Would you like a drink?”

I rubbed my eyes and sat up a little straighter. “Brandy would be nice.”

He reached into a cabinet behind the desk for a bottle of

Cordon Bleu and poured two hefty servings.

“What were you doing here tonight?” he asked abruptly.

“Mrs. Paciorek wanted to see me. She asked me to come out around eight.”

“She says you showed up unexpectedly.” His tone wasn’t accusatory. “Monday nights are when the Lake County Medical Society gets together. I usually don’t go. Catherine asked me to leave her alone tonight because she was having a meeting with a religious group she belongs to; she knows that isn’t of much interest to me. She says you showed up threatening her and brought that man along with you; that she was struggling with you when your gun went off and hit him.”

“Where did her religious friends go?”

“She says they had left before you showed up.”

“Do you know much about this Corpus Christi outfit she belongs to?”

He stared at his brandy for a while, then finished it with one swallow and poured himself another shot. I held out my snifter; he filled it recklessly.