“Some emergencies are more obscure than others.”
I took my parcel of fabric and went into the little store. The tailoring part of the shop was a jumbled array of old spools of thread, a Singer that must have dated to the turn of the century, and scraps and snippets of cloth. The man huddled crosslegged on a chair in the corner, hunched over a length of brown suiting, might have gone back to 1900 as well.
Although he jerked a sideways glance at me, he continued to sew, When he’d finished whatever he was doing, he folded the fabric tidily, put it on a heaped table to his left, and looked at me. “Yes?” He spoke with a heavy accent.
“Could you sew something for me without a pattern?”
“Oh, yes, young lady. No question about it. When I was a young man, I cut for Marshall Field, for Charles Stevens. Those were the days before you were born, when they made clothes right there in the store. I cut all day long, and made, with no patterns. What is it you want?”
I showed him my sketch and pulled the wool from its brown wrapping. He studied the picture for a moment, and then me. “Oh, that would be no problem. No problem at all.”
“And-could I have it by Monday?”
“Monday? Oh, the young lady is in a hurry.” He waved an arm in the direction of several heaps of cloth. “Look at all these orders. They thought in advance. They bring their work in many weeks ahead of you. Monday, my dear young lady!”
I sat down on a footstool and negotiated in earnest. At last he agreed to do it for double his normal fee, payable in advance. “Forty dollars. I cannot do it for a penny less.”
I tried to appear incredulous, as if I thought I was being gouged. The fabric alone had cost double that. Finally I pulled two twenties from my wallet. He told me to stop in at noon on Monday. “But next time, no rushes.”
Murray had left a note under my windshield wiper, informing me that he’d caught a cab downtown and that I owed him sixteen dollars. I tossed the paper in the trashcan and headed for Skokie.
Uncle Stefan had been moved to a regular room that afternoon. That meant I didn’t have to go through a routine with nurses and Metzinger just to see him. However, the police guard had also been removed-if his attackers were ordinary B & E men, he wasn’t in any danger, according to the cops. I bit my lip. Caught by my own story, damn it. Unless I told the truth about the forgeries and the Mob, there was no way to convince the police that Uncle Stefan needed protection.
The old man was delighted to see me. Lotty had been by in the morning, but no one else was visiting him. I pulled out the photographs and showed them to him. He nodded calmly, “Just like Hill Street Blues. Do I recognize the mug shots?”
He selected Novick from the pile without hesitation.
“Oh, yes. That face is not easy to forget. Even though this picture is not totally clear, I have no doubt, no question. That is the man with the knife.”
I stayed and talked with him for a while, turning over in the back of my mind various possibilities for his protection. If I just gave Novick’s picture to the police… but if Pasquale wasn’t willing to let him go, then he’d get both me and Uncle Stefan without any compunction or difficulty.
I abruptly interrupted a reminiscence of Fort Leavenworth. “Excuse me. I can’t leave you here without a guard. And while I can stay until the end of visiting hours tonight, it’s just too easy for someone to get in and out of a hospital. If I call a security service I trust and get someone over here, will you tell Dr. Metzinger it’s your idea? He may think you’re a paranoid old man, but he won’t turn your guard out the way he will if I put it to him.”
Uncle Stefan was disposed to be heroic and fought the idea, until I told him the same hoods were gunning for me: “If they kill me, and you’re dead, there isn’t a soul on earth who can go to the police for me. And our detective agency will vanish.” Put as an appeal to his chivalry, the idea was palatable.
The service I used was called All Night-All Right. In a way, its employees were as amateurish as their name. Three enormous brothers and two of their friends made up the entire staff, and they only took jobs that appealed to them. No North Shore weddings, for example. I’d used them once when I had a load of rare coins I was returning to an Afghani refugee.
Jim Streeter answered the phone. When I explained the situation to him, he agreed to send someone up in a couple of hours. “The boys are out moving someone’s furniture”-one of their sidelines. “When they get back I’ll send Tom up.”
Uncle Stefan obediently rang for the night nurse and explained his fears to her. She was inclined to be sarcastic, but I murmured a few words about hospital safety and malpractice suits and she said she would tell “Doctor.”
Uncle Stefan nodded approvingly at me. “You are a very tough young lady. Ah, if only I had known you thirty years ago, the FBI never would have caught me.”
A gift shop in the lobby yielded a pack of cards. We played gin until Tom Streeter showed up at eight-thirty. He was a big, quiet, gentle man. Seeing him, I knew I’d stopped one hole. At least temporarily.
I kissed Uncle Stefan good-night and left the hospital, checking carefully at each doorway, mixing with a large family group leaving the building. I inspected my car before opening the door. As near as I could tell, no one had wired it with dynamite.
Driving down the Edens, what puzzled me was the connection between O’Faolin and the forgeries. He hires Novick from Pasquale. How does he know Pasquale? How would a Panamanian archbishop know a Chicago mobster? Anyway, he hires Novick from Pasquale to back me off the forgeries. But why? The only connection I could think of was his longterm friendship with Pelly. But that made Pelly responsible for the forgeries and that still didn’t make sense. The answer had to be at the friary and I had to get through Sunday somehow before I could find it.
Back at the Bellerophon, I plugged my phone into the wall. It seemed to work. My answering service told me Ferrant had tried phoning me as well as Detective Finchley.
I tried Roger first. He sounded subdued. “There’s been a disturbing development in this takeover attempt. Or maybe it’s a relief. Someone has stepped forward and filed five percent ownership with the SEC.” He’d been closeted with the Ajax board all day discussing it. One of the other managing partners from Scupperfield, Plouder would be flying in tomorrow. Roger wanted to have dinner with me and get my ideas, if any.
I agreed to meet him. If nothing else, it would give me something to think about until Monday.
While I ran water in the bathtub I made my other call. Detective Finchley had left for the day, but Mallory was still at work. “Your lawyer says you’re ready to make a statement about Stefan Herschel,” he growled.
I offered to see him first thing Monday morning. “What did Detective Finchley want?”
I could get my gun back, Bobby said grudgingly. They’d gotten the Skokie police to send it down to them. They were confiscating the picklocks, though. It hurt Bobby physically to tell me about the gun. He didn’t want me carrying it, he didn’t want me in the detective business, he wanted me in Bridgeport or Melrose Park with six children and, presumably, a husband.
XXI
ROGER POKED MOODILY at his steak. “By the way, thanks for the note you left yesterday. How was the archbishop?”
“There were two. One was fulsome, the other ugly. Tell me about this filing.”
I had met him at the Filigree and been moved by his total exhaustion. We had drinks in the bar before dinner, Roger so worn that he hadn’t felt like talking. Now he rubbed his forehead tiredly.
“I am baffled. Totally and utterly baffled. I’ve been dealing with it all day, and I still can’t understand it… It’s like this. If you own five percent or more of a company’s stock, you have to file with the SEC and tell them what you mean to do with your holding. You know you asked me a week or so ago about a Wood-Sage company? Well, they’re the ones who made the filing.