Killing Orders

“Great. Looks like your firm picked a wi

He signaled for the check. “We’re not doing anything spectacular in the way of earnings. Not buying any companies or selling off any properties. What else makes a share price go up?”

“Sometimes institutional investors take a whimsical fancy to a stock. Insurance companies fared better during the last depression or recession or whatever than most businesses. Ajax is one of the biggest-maybe the funds and the other big investors are just playing it safe.. If you want, I could give you the name of a broker I know; she might have some other information.”

“Maybe so.”

We collected our coats and headed back into the wind. It was blowing harder, but fried artichokes and half a bottle of wine made it seem less penetrating. Ferrant invited me up for a brandy.

He turned the lamp by the bar on a low switch. We could see the bottles but the garish furniture was mercifully muted. I stood at the window looking down at the lake. Ice reflected the streetlights on Lake Shore Drive. By squinting I could make out the promontories farther south, which held Navy Pier and McCormick Place. In the clear winter air the South Works twelve miles away glowed red. I used to live there in an ill-built wooden row house, made distinctive by my mother’s artistry.

Ferrant put his left arm around me and handed me a snifter of Martell with the right. I leaned back against him, then turned and put both arms around him, carefully holding the snifter away from his sweater. It felt like cashmere and might not take kindly to brandy. He was thin but wiry, not just an opera-loving beanpole. He slid his hand under my silk top and stroked my back, then began fumbling for the bra strap.

“It opens in front.” I was having a hard time maintaining my balance and the snifter at the same time, so I put the brandy down on the window ledge behind me. Ferrant had found the front hook. I fumbled with the buttons on his pleated trousers. Making love standing up is not as easy as they make it look in the movies. We slid down onto the thick orange carpet together.

V

WE FINISHED THE brandy and the rest of the night in a kingsized bed with a blond Scandinavian headboard. When we woke up well after eight the next morning, Ferrant and I smiled at each other with sleepy pleasure. He looked fresh and vulnerable with his dark hair hanging down in his dark blue eyes; I put an arm around him and kissed him.

He kissed me back enthusiastically, then sat up. “ America is a country of terrible contrasts. They give you these wonderful outsize beds, which I’d give a month’s pay for back home, then they expect you to hop out of them in the middle of the night to be at work. In London I wouldn’t dream of being in the City before nine-thirty at the earliest, but here my whole staff has already been at the office for half an hour. I’d better get going.”

I lay back in bed and watched him go through the male dressing ritual, which ended when he had encased his neck meekly in a gray-and-burgundy choker. He tossed me a blue paisley robe and I got up to drink a cup of coffee with him, pleased with my foresight in changing my meeting with Hatfield to the afternoon.

After Ferrant left, muttering curses against the American work ethic, I phoned my answering service. My cousin Albert had called three times, once late last night and twice this morning. The second time he’d left his office number. My pleasure in the morning began to evaporate. I put on last night’s clothes, frowning at myself in the wide mirrors that served as closet doors. An outfit that looks sexy at night tends to appear tawdry in the morning. I was going to have to change for my meeting with Hatfield; I might as well go home and do it before calling Albert.

I paid dearly for parking the Omega at the Hancock Building for fourteen hours. That did nothing to cheer me up, and I earned a whistle and a yell from the traffic cop at Oak Street for swinging around the turning traffic onto the Lake Shore Drive underpass. I sobered up then. My father had drummed into my head at an early age the stupidity of venting anger with a moving car. He was a policeman and had taken guns and cars very seriously-he spent too much time with the wreckage of those who used such lethal weapons in anger.

I stopped for a breakfast falafel sandwich at a storefront Lebanese restaurant at Halsted and Wrightwood and ate it at the red lights the rest of the way up Halsted. The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world.

From North Avenue to Fullerton, Halsted is part of the recently renovated North Side, where young professionals pay two hundred fifty thousand or more for chic brick townhouses. Four blocks farther north, at Diversey, the rich have not yet stuck out rehabilitation tentacles. Most of the buildings, like mine, are comfortably run-down. One advantage is the cheap rents; the other is space to park on the street.

I stopped the Omega in front of my building and went inside to change back into the navy walking suit for my meeting with Hatfield. By then J had delayed calling Albert long enough. I took a cup of coffee into the living room and sat in the overstuffed armchair while I phoned. I studied my toes through my nylons. Maybe I’d paint the nails red. I can’t stand nail polish on my fingers, but it might be sexy on my toes.

A woman answered Albert’s work number. His secret lover, I thought: Rosa assumes she’s his secretary, but he secretly buys her perfume and zabiglione. I asked for Albert; she said in a nasal, uneducated voice that “Mr. Vignelli” was in conference and would I leave a message.

“This is V. I. Warshawski,” I said. “He wants to talk to me. Tell him this is the only time I’ll be available today.”

She put me on hold. I drank coffee and started an article in Fortune on chicanery at CitiCorp. I was delighted. I’ve never forgiven them for taking two years to answer a billing complaint. I was just getting into illegal currency manipulation when Albert came on the line, sounding more petulant than usual.

“Where have you been?”

I raised my eyebrows at the mouthpiece. “At an all-night sex and dope orgy. The sex was terrible but the coke was really great. Want to come next time?”

“I might have known you’d just laugh instead of taking Mama’s problems seriously.”

“I’m not laughing, Albert. If you read the paper, you know how hard it is to get good coke these days. But tell me, has Rosa ’s problem taken a turn for the worse? Just to show you I mean well, I won’t even charge you for my time waiting on hold.”

I could visualize his fat round face puckered up in a full-scale pout as he breathed heavily into my ear. At last he said angrily, “You went to St. Albert ’s Priory yesterday, didn’t you?”

I assented.

“What did you find out?”

“That this is going to be incredibly tough to sort out. Our best hope is that the securities had already been faked before the priory got them. I’m meeting with the FBI this afternoon and I’m going to see if they’re looking into that.”

“Well, Mama has changed her mind. She doesn’t want you to investigate this after all.”

I sat frozen for a few seconds while anger came to a focus inside my head. “What the hell do you mean, Albert? I’m not a vacuum cleaner that you switch on and off at will. You don’t start me on an investigation, then call up two days later to say you’ve changed your mind.”

I could hear paper rustling in the background, then Albert said smugly, “Your contract doesn’t say that. It just says ‘Termination of the case may be requested by either party, whether the requested results are obtained or not., Regardless of the state of the investigation, and regardless of whether either party disagrees with the results, the fee and expenses incurred to the time of termination shall be paid.’ If you send me a bill, Victoria, I’ll pay promptly.”