Like the don’s library, this office was decorated in red. Here the effect was cheap. The curtains were rayon, the seat covers vinyl, the desk a mere box on four legs.
Pasquale hung up and asked Ernesto what had taken him so long. In Italian Ernesto explained my long absence. “Further, someone else is interested in Signorina Warshawski. Her room has been carelessly searched.”
“And who would that be, Miss Warshawski?” Pasquale asked with grave courtesy.
I blinked a few times, trying to readjust myself to the imaginary world of honor. “I thought you might know, Don Pasquale. I assumed it was done by your henchman, Walter Novick, at the request of Mrs. Paciorek.”
The don looked at his cigar, measuring the ash, then turned to Ernesto. “Do we know a Walter Novick, Ernesto?”
Ernesto gave a disdainful shrug. “He has run a few errands for you, Don. He is the type who likes to grab at the coattails of the powerful.”
Pasquale nodded regally. “I regret that Novick gave the appearance of being under my protection. As Ernesto said, he had illusions above his abilities. These illusions led him to use my name in a compromising way.” Again he examined the ash. Still not ripe. “This Novick is acquainted with many petty criminals. A man like that frequently engages in foolish or dangerous exploits with such criminals in order to impress a man such as myself.” He gave a world-weary shrug. I knew, and he knew that such exploits were the acts of the childish, but-what would you? The ash now proved ready for a gentle tapping.
“Among these criminals were some forgers. Novick conceived an act of staggering folly: to engage these forgers to make fake stock certificates and put them in the safe of a religious house.”
He paused to invite my comment on this staggering folly. “How, Don, did these forgers know for which companies and in which denominations to make the fakes?”
Pasquale hunched a shoulder impatiently. “Priests are guileless men. They talk indiscreetly. Someone no doubt overheard them. Such things have happened before.”
“You would have no objection to my bringing this tale to Derek Hatfield?”
He smiled blandly. “None whatsoever. Although it is merely hearsay-I can see no benefit to my talking to Hatfield myself.”
“And you wouldn’t know the names of these forgers, would you?”
“Regrettably, no, my dear Miss Warshawski.”
“And you wouldn’t know why these forgers used the priory, would you?”
“One presumes, Miss Warshawski, because it was easy for them. It is not of great interest to me.”
I could feel sweat prickling on the palms of my hands. My mouth was dry. This was my chance; I just hoped Pasquale, student of human terror that he was, couldn’t detect my nervousness. “Unfortunately, Don, you may have to take an interest.”
Pasquale didn’t change position, nor did he alter his look of polite attention. But his expression somehow froze and the eyes glittered in a way that made cold sweat break out on my forehead. His voice, when he spoke, chilled my marrow. “Is that a threat, Miss Warshawski?”
Out of the corner of one eye, I could see Ernesto, who’d been slouching in a vinyl chair, come to attention. “Not a threat, Don Pasquale. Just for your information. Novick’s in the hospital, and he’s going to talk. And Archbishop O’Faolin’s going to say it was all your idea about the forgeries, and attacking me, and all that stuff. He isn’t going to know anything about it.”
Pasquale had relaxed slightly. I was breathing more easily.
Ernesto sank back in his chair and started looking at his pocket diary.
“As you may know, Don, the SEC will not allow anyone with known Mafia connections to own an insurance company or a bank. So O’Faolin is going to back away from Novick as fast as he can. He’ll leave on a ten o’clock flight tomorrow night and let you handle the situation as best you can.”
The don nodded with a return of his grave courtesy. “As always, your comments are fascinating, Miss Warshawski. If I knew this O’Faolin”-he spread his hands deprecatingly. “Meanwhile, I am desolated by the discomfort Walter Novick has brought into your life.” He looked at Ernesto; a red-leather checkbook materialized. The don wrote in it. “Would twenty-five thousand cover the loss to your apartment?”
I swallowed a few times. Twenty-five thousand would get me a co-op, replace my mother’s piano, or enable me to spend the rest of the winter in the Caribbean. What did I want with such things, however? “Your generosity is fabled, Don Pasquale. Yet I have done nothing to deserve it.”
He persisted, politely. Keeping my eyes on a poor reproduction of Garibaldi over the pressed-wood desk, I steadfastly resisted. Pasquale finally gave me a measuring look and told Ernesto to see that I got home safely.
XXVII
AT FOUR-THIRTY IN early February the sky is already turning dark. Inside the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, the candles created warming circles of light. Behind an ornately carved wooden screen, separating the friars’ choir stalls from the secular mob, the room was dim. I could barely make out Uncle Stefan’s features, but knew he was there from the comforting clasp of his hand. Murray was at my left. Beyond him was Cordelia Hull, one of his staff photographers.
As Father Carroll began to chant the introit in his high clear tenor, my depression deepened. I shouldn’t be here. After making a complete fool of myself in as many ways as possible,
I should have retired to the Bellerophon and pulled the covers over my head for a month.
The day had started badly. Lotty, enraged at the four-paragraph story in the Herald-Star announcing her uncle’s sudden relapse and death, was not mollified by his decision to go home with Murray. According to Murray, the argument had been brief. Uncle Stefan chuckling and calling Lotty a hotheaded girl did not amuse her and she had switched to German to give vent to her fury. Uncle Stefan told her she was interfering where it was none of her business whereat she tore off in her green Datsun to find me. I didn’t have the advantage of knowing Lotty as a headstrong little girl willfully riding her pony up the castle steps at Kleinsee. Besides, her accusations were too close to my nerve centers. Egotistical. So single-minded I would sacrifice Uncle Stefan trying to solve a problem that had the FBI and the SEC baffled.
“But, Lotty. I put my own body on the line, too. That arson at my apartment-”
She contemptuously swept away my protest. Hadn’t the police asked for full information? Hadn’t I withheld it in my usual arrogant way? And now I wanted someone to weep because I was suffering the consequences?
When I tried to suggest to Uncle Stefan-and Murray-that we drop the project and retire quietly, Murray had been angry in his turn, not after all he’d been through to sell Gil on the project. If I was too lily-livered all of a sudden to follow through on this, he wasn’t. He’d take Uncle Stefan to the priory himself and I could go sulk in my tent and enjoy it alone.
Uncle Stefan took me to one side. “Really, Victoria. By now you should know better than to pay the least heed to Lotty when she is in such a tantrum. If you are letting her overset you it is only because you are very tired.” He patted my hand and insisted that Murray go to a bakery and buy some chocolate cake. “And none of that Sara Lee or Davidson cake. I mean a real bakery, young man. There must be one in your area.”
So Murray returned with a hazelnut chocolate cake and whipped cream. Uncle Stefan cut me a large slice, poured cream over it, and stood watching me eat it with anxious benevolence. “So, Nichtchen, now you are feeling better, right?”