A STORE IN Lincolnwood sold me three dozen bullets for twenty-five dollars. Despite what the gun haters may think, it isn’t cheap killing people. Not only is it not cheap, it’s timeconsuming. It was nearly three. I didn’t have time for lunch if I wanted to get to the priory on schedule. Stopping at a corner grocery I picked up an apple and ate it as I drove.
A bright winter sun reflected against the snow, breaking into diamonds of glinting, blinding color. My dark glasses, I suddenly remembered, had been in a dresser drawer in the old apartment. No doubt they were a lump of plastic now. I shielded my eyes as best I could with the visor and my left hand.
Once in Melrose Park, I toured the streets looking for a park. Pulling in from the roadway, I took off my pea jacket and pulled the white wool robe on over jeans and shirt. The black leather belt tightened the gown at the middle. The rosary I attached to the right side of the belt. It wasn’t exactly the real thing, but in dim light I ought to be able to pass for a Dominican friar.
By the time I got back to the priory and parked behind the main building it was almost four-thirty, time for evening prayers and mass. I waited until four-thirty-five, and went into the main hallway.
The ascetic youth sat hunched over a devotional work. He glanced up at me briefly. When I headed for the stairs instead of the chapel, he said, “You’re late for vespers, Brother,” but went back to his reading.
My heart was pounding as I reached the wide landing where the marble staircase turned back on itself up into the private upper reaches of the friary. The area was cloistered, not open to the public, male or female, and I couldn’t suppress a feeling of dread, as though I were committing some kind of sacrilege.
I’d been expecting a long, open ward like a nineteenth century hospital. Instead, I came on a quiet corridor with doors opening onto it, rather like a hotel. The doors were
shut, but not locked. Next to each, making my task infinitely easier, were little placards with the monks’ names printed in a neat scroll. Each man had a room to himself.
I squinted at each in turn until I came to one that had no name on it. Cautiously, I knocked, then opened the door. The room contained only a bare single bed and a crucifix. At the far end of the hall, I came to a second nameless room, which I opened in turn. This was O’Faolin’s temporary quarters.
Besides the bed and crucifix, the room held a small dresser and a little table with a drawer in the middle. O’Faolin’s Panamanian passport and his airline ticket were in the drawer. He was on a ten P.M. Alitalia flight on Wednesday. Forty-eight hours to-to what?
The dresser was filled with stacks of beautiful linen, hand-tailored shirts, and a fine collection of silk socks. The Vatican’s poverty didn’t force her employees to live in squalor.
Finally, under the bed, I found a locked attaché case. I mourned my picklocks. Using the barrel of the Smith & Wesson, I smashed the hinges. I hated doing anything so blatant, but time was short.
The case was stacked with papers, most in Italian, some in Spanish. I looked at my watch. Five o’clock. Thirty minutes more. I shuffled through the stack. A number of papers with the Vatican seal-the keys to the kingdom-dealt with O’Faolin’s fund-raising tour of the States. However, Ajax’s name caught my eye and I looked slowly through the papers until I found three or four referring to the insurance company. I don’t read Italian as fast as I do English, but these seemed to be technical documents from a financial house, detailing the assets, outstanding debt, number of shares of common stock, and names and expiration dates of the terms of the current board of directors.
The most interesting document in the collection was clipped to the inside cover of Ajax’s 1983 annual report. It was a letter, in Spanish, to O’Faolin from someone named Raül Diaz Figueredo. The letterhead, embossed with an intricate logo, and Figueredo’s name as Presidente, was for the Italo-Panama Import-Export Company. Spanish is enough like Italian that I could work out the gist: After reviewing many U.S. financial institutions, Figueredo wished to bring Ajax to O’Faolin’s attention, the easiest object-target?-for a plan of acquisition. The Banco Ambrosiano assets resided happily-no, safely-in Panamanian and Bahamian banks. Yet for these assets to be-fecund, no, productive-as His Excellency wisely understands, they must be usable in public works.
I sat back on my heels and looked soberly at the document. Here was evidence of what lay behind the Ajax takeover. And the connection with Wood-Sage and Corpus Christi? I looked nervously at my watch. Time enough to sort that out later. I slipped the letter from the paper clip, folded it, and put it in my jeans pocket under the robe. Stacking the papers together as neatly as I could, I put them back in the attaché case and slid the case under the bed.
The hallway was still deserted. I had one more stop. Given the Figueredo letter, it was worth the significant risk of being caught.
Father Pelly’s room was at the other end of the hall, near the stairs. I cocked an ear. No voices below. The service must still be in progress. I pushed open his door.
As spartan as the other rooms, Pelly’s nonetheless had the personal stamp of a place that’s been inhabited for a long time by one person. Some family photographs stood on the little deal table, and a bookcase was filled several layers deep.
I found what I was looking for in the bottom drawer of the dresser. A list of Chicago area members of Corpus Christi with their addresses and phone numbers. I went through it quickly, keeping one nervous ear strained for voices. If worse came to worst, I might be able to leave from the window. It was narrow, but we were only on the second floor and I thought I could squeeze through.
Cecelia Paciorek Gleason was listed, and Catherine Paciorek of course. And near the bottom of the list, Rosa Vignelli. Don Pasquale was not a member. One secret society was enough for the man, I supposed.
As I stuck the list in the drawer and got up to leave, I heard voices in the hallway outside, and then a hand on the door. It was too late to try the window. I looked around desperately and slid under the bed, the rosary making a faint clicking noise as I pulled my robes in around me.
My heart was pounding so hard that my body vibrated. I took deep, silent breaths, trying to still the movement. Black shoes appeared near my left eye. Then Pelly kicked them off and climbed onto the bed. The mattress and springs were old and not in the best of shape. The springs sagging under his weight almost touched my nose.
We lay like that for a good quarter of an hour, me stifling a sneeze prompted by the cold steel, Pelly breathing gently. Someone knocked at the door. Pelly sat up. “Come in.”
“Gus. Someone’s been in my room and broken into my attaché case.”
O’Faolin. I’d know his voice anywhere for the rest of my life. Silence. Then Pelly: “When did you last look at it?”
“This morning. I needed to write a letter to an address I had in there. It’s hard to believe one of your brothers would do a thing like this. But who? It couldn’t possibly be Warshawski.”
No indeed.
Pelly asked him sharply if anything was missing.
“Not as far as I can tell. And there wasn’t anything that would prove anything, anyway… Except for a letter Figueredo wrote me.”
“If Warshawski broke in-” Pelly began.
“If Warshawski broke in, it doesn’t really matter,” O’Faolin interrupted. “She isn’t going to be a problem after tonight. But if she shows the letter to someone in the meantime, I’ll have to start all over again. I should never have left you on your own to handle this business. Forging those securities was a lunatic idea, and now…“ He broke off. “No point rehashing all that. Let’s just see if the letter’s missing.”
He turned abruptly and left. Pelly pulled his shoes back on and followed him. I got up quickly. Pulled the hood well around my face and cracked the door to watch Pelly disappear into O’Faolin’s room. Then, trying to remain calm, I went down the stairs with my head tucked into my chin. A couple of brothers greeted me en route, and I mumbled in response. At the bottom, Carroll said good evening. I mumbled and took off for the front door. Carroll said sharply, “Brother!” Then to someone else, “Who is that? I don’t recognize him.”
Outside, I hitched up my habit and ran to the back of the building, started the Toyota, and drove it bumpily down the drive back to Melrose Park. There I quickly divested myself of the robe at a dry cleaner, telling them it was for Augustine Pelly.
In the car I sat laughing for a few minutes, then soberly considered what I’d found and what it meant. The letter from Figueredo seemed to imply that they wanted to acquire Ajax in order to launder Banco Ambrosiano money. Bizarre. Or maybe not. A bank, or an insurance company, made a highly respectable cover for moving questionable capital into circulation. If you could do it so the multitude of auditors didn’t notice… I thought of Michael Sindona and the Franklin National Bank. Some people thought the Vatican had been involved in that escapade. With the Banco Ambrosiano, the connection was documented, if not understood: The Vatican was part owner of Ambrosiano’s Panamanian subsidiaries. So was it strange that the head of the Vatican’s finance committee would take an interest in the disposition of the ‘Ambrosiano assets?
O’Faolin was an old friend of Kitty Paciorek. Mrs. Paciorek’s sizable fortune was tied up with Corpus Christi. Ergo… She was expecting me in a couple of hours. I had some evidence, evidence she wanted badly enough to get someone to search the Bellerophon. But did it link her to the Wood-Sage/Corpus Christi connection strongly enough to make her talk? I didn’t think so.
Thoughts of Mrs. Paciorek reminded me of O’Faolin’s last remark: I wasn’t going to be a problem after tonight. The queasiness, which seemed to be more and more a permanent resident, returned to my stomach. He might have meant they’d have Ajax sewn up by tonight. But I didn’t think so. It seemed more likely that Walter Novick would be waiting for me in Lake Forest. Mrs. Paciorek presumably had no scruples about doing such a favor for her old friend, although she probably wouldn’t have me killed while her husband and Barbara were watching. What would she try? An ambush on the grounds?
Between Melrose and Elmwood Park, North Avenue forms a continuous strip of fast-food restaurants, factories, used-car lots, and cheap, small shopping malls. I selected one of these at random and found a public phone. Mrs. Paciorek answered. Using the nasal twang of the South Side, I asked for Barbara. She was spending the night with friends, Mrs. Paciorek said, demanding in a sharp voice to know who was calling. “Lucy van Pelt,” I answered, hanging up. I couldn’t think of a way to find out where the doctor and the servants were.
A Jewel/Osco had a public photocopier, which yielded a greasy gray copy of Figueredo’s letter to O’Faolin. I bought a packet of cheap envelopes and a stamp from a stamp machine and mailed the original to my office. I thought for a minute, then scribbled a note to Murray on one of the envelopes, telling him to look at my office mail if I turned into a Chicago floatfish. Folded in three, it fit into another envelope, which I mailed to the Herald-Star. As for Lotty and Roger, what I wanted to tell them was too complicated to fit onto an envelope.
By now it was close to seven, too late for me to have a proper sit-down meal. The apple I’d had at three had been my only meal since breakfast, though, and I needed something to brace me for a possible fight at Mrs. Paciorek’s. ‘I bought a large Hershey bar with almonds at the Jewel and stopped at Wendy’s for a taco salad. Not the ideal thing to eat in a moving car, I realized as I joined the traffic on the tollway, and the salad dribbled down the front of my shirt. If Mrs. Paciorek was planning to sic German shepherds on me they’d know where I was by the chili.
As I exited onto Half Day Road, I went over what I knew of the Paciorek estate. If an ambush was attempted, it would be laid either by the front door or at the garage entrance. In back of the house were the remains of a wood. Agnes and I had sometimes taken sandwiches out there to eat sitting on logs by a stream feeding Lake Michigan.
The property ended a half mile or so back of the house at a bluff overlooking the lake. In the summer, in broad daylight, it might be possible to climb that bluff, but not on a winter’s night with waves roaring underneath. I’d have to come at the house from the side, across neighboring lots, and hope for the best.
I left the Toyota on a side street next to Arbor Road. Lake Forest was dark. There were no street lights, and I had no flashlight. Fortunately the night was relatively clear-a snowstorm would have made the job impossible.
Hunching down in my navy-surplus pea jacket, I made my way quietly past the house on the corner. Once in the backyard, the snow muffled any sound of my feet; it also made walking laborious. As I reached the fence dividing the yard from its neighbor, a dog started barking to my left. Soon it sounded as though all the dogs in suburbia were yapping at me. I climbed over the fence and moved east, away from the baying, hoping to get deep enough to hit the Paciorek house from behind.
The third lot was comparable in size to the Pacioreks’. As I moved into the wooded area, the dogs finally quieted down. Now I could hear the sullen roar of Lake Michigan in front of me. The regular, angry slapping of wave against cliff made me shiver violently with a cold deeper than that of freezing toes and ears.
Totally disoriented in the dark, I kept bumping into trees, stumbling over rotting logs, falling into unexpected holes. Suddenly I skidded down a small bank and landed with a jolt on my butt on some rocky ice. After picking myself up and slipping again. I realized I must be at the stream. If I walked away from the roaring lake, I should, with luck, be at the back of the Paciorek house.
In a few minutes I had fought my way clear of the trees. The house loomed as a blacker hole in the dark in front of me. Agnes and I had usually come out through the kitchen, which was on the far left along with rooms for the servants. No lights shone there now. If the servants were in, they were not giving any sign of it. In front of me were French windows leading into the conservatory-library-organ room.
My fingers were thick with cold. It took agonizing minutes to unbutton the pea jacket and take it off. I held it over the glass next to the window latch. With a numb hand, I pulled the Smith & Wesson clumsily from its holster, tapped the jacket lightly but firmly with the butt, and felt the glass give underneath. I paused for a minute. No alarms sounded. Holding my breath, I gently knocked glass away from the frame, stuck an arm through the opening, and unlatched the window.
Once inside the house I found a radiator. Pulling off boots and gloves, I warmed my frozen extremities. Ate the rest of the Hershey bar. Squinted at phosphorescent hands on my watch-past nine o’clock. Mrs. Paciorek must be getting impatient.
After a quarter of an hour, I felt recovered enough to meet my hostess. Pulling the damp boots back on my toes was unpleasant, but the cold revived my mind, slightly torpid from the hike and the warmth.
Once outside the conservatory I could see lights coming from the front of the house. I followed them through long marble passages until I came to the family room where I’d talked to Mrs. Paciorek a couple of weeks ago. As I’d hoped, she was sitting there in front of the fire, the needlepoint project in her lap but her hands still. Standing at an angle in the hail, I watched her. Her handsome angry face was strained. She was waiting for the sound that would tell her I had been shot.