CHICAGO
ALBANY PARK NEIGHBORHOOD
FEBRUARY 1966
There was an urgent knock on the apartment door, and a puzzled Ruth Gold rushed to answer it. “Good morning, Mr. Rosen. You’re up early,” she said.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Gold. Did Mimi leave for work yet?”
“I’m still here, Eli,” Mimi called, walking out of the kitchen holding a mug of coffee. “Would you care for a cup?”
“No, thank you. I found something that might be of great interest to you, maybe for a feature article. I wonder if you might have a few minutes to stop by before you leave for work?”
As she suspected, Ryan and Mooney were waiting for her in Eli’s apartment. “Feature article?” she said with a grin.
But Eli was serious. “The accountant’s room is empty, Mimi. It’s been cleaned out. Empty shelves, empty desk, empty cabinets.”
“When did that happen?”
“We don’t know. Maybe after the murders, maybe more recently, but when we went in last night, there wasn’t a single paper, not a single file, nothing in the back room.”
“I thought you didn’t want to get a warrant.”
Eli quickly glanced at his comrades. “Um, we didn’t exactly have a warrant.”
“According to Preston, the ledgers were there last fall. A lot of them.”
“I don’t doubt it, but they’re not there now,” Ryan said. “The room is vacant, and the door isn’t even locked.”
Colonel Mooney drummed his fingers on the table. “Mimi, are you sure that’s where the congressman kept his records?”
“Obviously, I’ve never seen them, but I was present at the wedding when Preston described the room and the ledger books in great detail.”
Eli interjected. “I’m sure the records were there, Colonel. Ryan and I have been surveilling the office for months, charting the comings and goings of the conspirators. It would make sense if the books and records were available for their use.”
“So now they have all come back into town and the books are somewhere else,” Mooney said. “Where are they?”
Eli nodded. “The books will be where the meetings are taking place, and it surely won’t be at the congressional office.”
Mimi was puzzled. “Mr. Ryan, I appreciate being asked to attend this meeting, but I don’t know how much help I can be. I have no idea where they’ve moved the records or where the men are meeting. Maybe they discussed their plans at the Palmer House dinner.”
Ryan shook his head. “They didn’t. We were listening.”
Eli added, “Mimi, we’ve decided that the only safe place for Vittie to hold his private meetings would be in his home. In fact, Rupert Grainger was seen entering the house last night. Michael Stanley is staying at the house all this week. The man you describe as the accountant has also been seen entering and leaving the house.”
“So the ledger books are in the house?”
Ryan shrugged. “That would be the logical place.”
Now Mimi understood why she had been brought into the discussion, and a chill shot through her body. “You want me to go into the house and search for the books?”
“Would you have any legitimate reason to enter the Zielinski home without arousing suspicion? We need to know if the records are there, and precisely where they’re stored.”
Mimi took a breath. “I haven’t been there in three months. You’re the FBI. Why don’t you just go in there and get them?”
Mimi’s response drew a smattering of chuckles. “That’s an illegal search and seizure, Mimi. Federal law requires the issuance and execution of a search warrant before entering the house. It would be different if we had evidence a crime was in progress, but just to enter to search for records, we’d need a sworn affidavit from an informant. Remember, we’d be asking for authority to raid a sitting congressman’s house—a congressman whose daughter was recently murdered. Any slipup and the books will disappear.”
Mimi stared straight ahead—a deer in the headlights. “You want me to be the informant? You want me to swear out the affidavit? Me?”
“Can you think of any pretense to visit Mrs. Zielinski?” Eli asked.
Mimi shook her head. “Pretense? No, not offhand. Why Mrs. Zielinski?”
“Well, it would get you into the house without arousing suspicion. If you visited Mrs. Zielinski, found an excuse to walk around and located the ledger books, well, you’d have the basis for an affidavit, and we’d get a warrant. There should be a lot of records. They wouldn’t be easy to conceal. Perhaps Vittie has an office in the home.”
Mimi nodded. “He does. They call it the library, but it’s really Vittie’s office, right off the front foyer.”
“Perfect.”
Mimi swallowed hard. “So you want me to sneak into Vittie’s office, dig though his desk and find the ledger books? Vittie’s private office? Seriously?”
“Exactly,” Mooney said. “That’s all.”
Mimi smiled. “That’s all? Are you kidding me?”
“Well, that’s not entirely all,” Ryan said, with a slight grimace. “If possible, we’d like you to plant a listening device. If the military contractors are meeting in Vittie’s office, and if we could get them on tape, that would be the jackpot.”
“Oh my Lord, what am I getting into?” Mimi said, with her hand on her forehead. “What would I have to do?”
“You said he called it the library? Bookshelves with lots of books?”
“Of course.”
“Just set the device behind some books on a shelf. Simple as that. If you had a good reason to visit Mrs. Zielinski, maybe to return something that Christine left at your apartment, then a simple in and out would do the trick.”
Mimi exhaled. “A simple in and out? Vittie’s always in his office. That would be pretty tough to do.”
“He has an event tomorrow night at McCormick Place,” Eli said. “He’s the featured speaker. He won’t be home all evening, and Stanley will be with him. We think Mrs. Zielinski will be at home alone. If anyone else is there, abort the plan, have a nice visit and go back home. What do you say? Do you want to give it a try?”
Mimi drew a deep breath. “I must be crazy, but all right, I’ll do it. I have a sweater that Chrissie left at my apartment. I’ll bring it to Vera and take a look around. If the office is open, I’ll plant the device.”
Ryan pumped his fist. “Fabulous! I’ll set it up and bring the device to you tomorrow afternoon.” He left the room to make a phone call. Eli handed a cup of coffee to Mimi and said, “Now who’s the spy?”
She laughed. “You’re just the person my mom and I always thought you were.”
“How were you so sure I was working with the FBI?”
“The very first day, when you were looking for an apartment, you told my mom you were working for the government. Some boring desk job, I think you said. She told me you looked like James Bond. When I came into your apartment, I saw a suitcase with a Washington Dulles baggage tag. Mom keeps an eye on what goes on in our building. She said that you’re absent for several days at a time each month. She’s also observed businessmen coming in and out of your apartment at odd times. I assume she meant Mr. Ryan and Colonel Rooney.”
Eli chuckled. “I like the way you two secretly keep track of me. How do you know I wasn’t simply traveling to Washington to visit my family?”
“I guess I don’t. Do you have family in Washington?”
“Yes, I do. My wife and I have a home in Chevy Chase, and my son and his wife live in Silver Spring.”
“You’ve never mentioned your family, other than the couple of photographs in your apartment: your father, your wife Esther and your son Izaak.”
Eli paused for a moment before he answered. “I brought those particular pictures with me for a reason. I made promises to those people, Mimi. Solemn promises. And each and every time I made one of those promises, it was a sacred oath. I believed that when I gave my promise, Eli’s promise, it was solid, as good as gold and I would keep it. But I didn’t.” Mimi watched him pause to reflect, as though he were turning pages in his memory. With discernible sadness, he slowly shook his head from side to side. “I failed to keep those promises to those people, Mimi.”
“Failed or prevented?” she said quietly.
“That’s very charitable of you. But I’ve made some bad decisions. Were they otherwise, would it have been any different?” He shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve come to realize that I can only see the ground in front of my feet. There’s no way to know what Providence has in store for me down the road. Nevertheless, one more promise remains, and I intend to keep it.” He pointed at the pictures. “I’d like them to be here, at least vicariously, when I do.”
Their conversation was interrupted by Ryan, who reentered the room and said, “It’s all set. Mimi, you’ll visit Mrs. Zielinski tomorrow night. I think you should just pop in, unexpected like. Don’t call in advance. We’ll have the device ready for you, and we’ll give you thorough instructions.”