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.
“Corpus Christi?” he finally said. “When I married Catherine, her family accused me of being a fortune hunter. She was an only child and that estate was worth close to fifty million. I didn’t care much about the money. Some, but not much. I met her in Panama-her father was the ambassador; I was working off my loan from Uncle Sam. She was very idealistic, was doing a lot of work in the poor community there. Xavier O’Faolin was a priest in one of those shantytowns. He interested her in Corpus Christi. I met her because I was trying to keep dysentery and a lot of other unpleasant stuff under control in that shantytown. A hopeless battle, really.”
He swallowed some more brandy. “Then we came back to Chicago. Her father built this house. When he died we moved in. Catherine turned most of the Savage fortune over to Corpus Christi. I started becoming successful as a heart surgeon.
O’Faolin moved on to the Vatican.
“Catherine was genuinely idealistic, but O’Faolin is a charlatan. He knew how to look good and do well at the same time. It was John the Twenty-third who brought him to the Vatican-thought of him as a real people’s priest. After John died, O’Faolin headed quickly to where the money and power were.”
We drank quietly for several minutes. Few things go down as easily as Cordon Bleu.
“I should have spent more time at home.” He gave a mirthless smile. “The plaint of the suburban father. At first Catherine was pleased to see me at the hospital twenty hours a day-after all, it proved I shared her lofty ideals. But after a while, she burned out on suburban living. She should have had her own career. But it didn’t go with her ideals of Catholic motherhood, By the time I saw how angry she’d become, Agnes was in college and it was too late for me to do anything. I spent the time with Phil and Barbara I should have spent with Agnes and Cecelia, but I couldn’t help Catherine.”
He held the bottle up to his desk lamp. “Enough for two more.” He divided it between us and tossed the bottle into a leather wastebasket at his feet.
“I know she blamed you for Agnes’s-life-style. I need to know. Was she so angry with you that she’d try to get someone to shoot you?”
It had taken him a quarter bottle of good brandy to get that out. “No,” I said. “Not that simple, I’m afraid. I have some evidence showing that Corpus Christi is trying to take over a local insurance company. Mrs. Paciorek is most anxious that that information not become public. I’m afraid I had reasons for thinking someone might be waiting for me out front, so I broke in through a window in your conservatory. The police didn’t search the back of the house or they would never have left.”
“I see.” He looked suddenly old and shrunken in his tailored navy suit. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to have to let the FBI and the SEC know about Corpus Christi’s involvement. I don’t plan to tell them about tonight’s ambush, if that’s any consolation.” Nor could I bring myself to tell him about Agnes’s note. If she’d been killed because of her investigation into the Ajax takeover, then in some way or other, her mother bore responsibility for her death. Dr. Paciorek didn’t need to hear that tonight.
He stared bitterly at the desk top for a long time. When he looked up, he was almost surprised to see me sitting there.
Wherever he’d been was a long way away. “Thanks, Victoria. You’ve been more generous than I had a right to expect.”
I finished my own brandy, embarrassed. “Don’t thank me. However this ends, it’s going to be bad for you and your children. While I’m really most interested in Xavier O’Faolin, your wife is heavily involved in Corpus Christi. Their money is being used in an attempt to take over Ajax insurance. When the facts come out, she’s going to be right up front on the firing line.”
“But wouldn’t it be possible to show she was just O’Faolin’s dupe?” He smiled bitterly. “Which she has been, since she first met him in Panama.”
I looked at him with genuine pity. “Dr. Paciorek, let me tell you the situation as I understand it. The Banco Ambrosiano is missing over a billion dollars, which disappeared into unknown Panamanian companies. Based on a letter from a Panamanian named Figueredo to Archbishop O’Faolin, it looks as though O’Faolin knows where that money is. He’s in sort of a bind. As long as he doesn’t use it, no one will know where it is. Once he starts to move it, the game is up.
“O’Faolin’s no dummy. If he can get some large financial institution, like an insurance company, under his control, he can launder the money and use it however he wants. Michael Sindona tried that on behalf of the mob with the Franklin National Bank, only he was stupid enough to strip the bank’s assets. So he’s languishing now in a federal prison.
“Corpus Christi in Chicago has a huge endowment, thanks to Mrs. Paciorek. O’Faolin is a member and recruited your wife. Very well. Let them put together a dummy corporation, call it Wood-Sage, and use that to acquire Ajax stock. Once the connection comes out between Corpus Christi and the Ajax takeover-and it will; the SEC is investigating like crazy-your wife’s involvement will be front-page news. Especially here in Chicago.”
“But that’s not criminal,” the doctor pointed out.
I frowned unhappily. At last I said, “Look. I didn’t want to tell you this. Particularly not tonight, when you’ve had such a shock. But there’s Agnes’s death, you see.”
“Yes?” His voice was harsh.
“She was looking into the takeover for one of the Ajax officers,.. She found out about the Corpus Christi involvement. She was killed that night while waiting to meet with someone to discuss it.”
His white, stricken face was like an open wound in the room. I could think of nothing to say to ease that pain. At last he looked up and gave a ghastly smile. “Yes. I can see. Even if Xavier is the main culprit, Catherine can’t avoid her own responsibility for her daughter’s death. No wonder she’s been so…” His voice trailed off.