Body Work (38 page)

Petra and the other two men crowded around my shoulders as Tim enlarged various parts of Nadia’s drawings. The last one she’d painted had shown her sister with flames sprouting out of her head.

“She was killed by an IED,” I said. “I suppose the fire symbolizes that.”

“Could well be, ma’am,” Jepson said, his voice very dry. “Where was this incident?”

“On the way to the Baghdad airport, her boss told me. Tim, are there any other files in here that we can look at?”

“What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Anything.” I flung my hands open in frustration. “Where the Artist might have gone to earth. What she knew about Olympia and Rodney’s business. What she thought of Alexandra Guaman—the two had a brief affair the summer before Alexandra deployed.”

Tim did some more keyboard work and brought up a list of all Karen’s folders. She had virtually no documents except drafts of scripts for the commentary she made during her shows and outlines for possible future shows. Any financial records, or letters, or even e-mails, didn’t reside on this machine. We should all be so careful about our privacy, I suppose, but it felt eerily like walking through an empty house—like walking through Karen Buckley’s, or Frannie Pindero’s, empty apartment. She might carry a vast burden of emotional baggage, but physically she traveled light across the landscape.

“Her videos, then?” I said. “What’s in those folders that you didn’t see on her DVDs?”

That folder bulged, of course. Movies are very byte hungry, and something only five minutes long might use a megabyte of memory.

Tim got up so that I could sit at the controls. At first, he and the others watched as I browsed through Karen’s junk footage, early shots of herself painting her own body, done with mirrors, in what I assumed was the darkened front room Petra and I had found yesterday afternoon.

After a bit, though, the two vets wandered off to join Mr. Contreras and Petra in my kitchen. The dog walker rang my bell. I sent Petra downstairs, with Staff Sergeant Jepson as protection. I kept watching videos as they came back up with the animals.

I saw footage of Leander Marvelle and Kevin Piuma dancing without their burkas. They moved beautifully—a marvel, a feather; they’d named themselves well—in a bare space that I guessed was the Columbia College rehearsal room.

Karen had taped herself with Vesta. They were in bed together. Vesta murmured something, low-voiced, out of mike range, and then sprang to her feet and ordered Karen to leave.

“Take your camera with you, Karen. And your clothes, your toothbrush—all those things. I don’t want you back here.”

And Karen hadn’t argued. She sat up in bed, her face as impassive a mask as when it was covered with paint. I saw her naked torso, her hand stretched out. She wasn’t beseeching Vesta but holding a small remote control and turning off the camera.

I looked for footage during the weeks Nadia had been visiting Club Gouge. I found a scene in Rivka’s bedroom with Rivka demanding to know what Nadia meant to Karen.

A chance to explore the world of art. She’s a tormented soul, little Rivulet. Don’t torment your own soul over her. And certainly not over me.

I moved on to other files. And came upon a crucifix with a doll’s head, black plastic hair tied around Jesus’ hands. That was the cross Nadia had kept over her bed.

Karen said,
You’ve never done this before, have you?
Her voice held cool amusement, no tenderness.

Wherever she’d placed her camera, it wasn’t quite close enough for good focus. I could tell Nadia was naked, but not what her face was registering. Her response to Karen was so soft that the mike didn’t pick it up.

Why did you hustle me so hard after the show, then?
Karen said.
Just out of curiosity
.

A long tick of silence, except for the rustling of the bedclothes, and then Nadia said,
You knew my sister. Alexandra.

I meet a lot of people, Nadia.

In Michigan, at a music festival. Maybe she told you to call her Allie; that’s her pet name at home.

Oh, yes. Beautiful girl, totally ashamed of herself. Are you the go-between? Is she ready to come out? Or did she tell you to use me for your own sexual experiments? If so, try this.

It wasn’t clear what Karen did next, but it hurt. Nadia gave a sharp yelp and sat up, wrapping a sheet around her shoulders.

Alexandra is dead
.
She was killed in Iraq.

Do you want me to stand at attention and play the “Star-Spangled Banner”?
Karen’s cool tone didn’t change.

Do you have any feelings at all, for anyone besides yourself?

I figure chicks like you, emoting all over the place, have so many exhausting feelings that there isn’t room for mine.
Karen was being sarcastic, but I thought there was an undercurrent in her tone—anger? bitterness?

If you had a sister like Allie and she was murdered, you might not be so cold.

Karen sat up in bed so fast that the camera recorded only a blur. I heard the slap, hand on face.
Fuck you, bitch
.
I
had
someone like Allie who was murdered. So stop bleating at me like a sentimental sheep.

I hit PAUSE, startled. Did she mean Anton’s daughter, Zina? Was that a person Karen/Frannie had felt close to? If that was the case, then maybe Zina’s overdose had been someone else’s deliberate work. Or maybe Karen/Frannie just thought an OD was an act of murder. Impossible to know.

I clicked PLAY, and the recording began again. Nadia was apologizing.
But my sister was tormented, she was hounded, she wrote it in her journal. All because someone where she worked in Baghdad found out that she liked, she preferred—that women—

That she was a dyke
.
Why can’t you just say it?

Don’t use that word about Allie! Who told them? Was it you? Because you were so angry with her for not returning your calls?

Karen sat up and began pulling on clothes—sweater, jeans, boots.

Nadia, you want someone to be at fault because the sister you adored so much is dead. But if she was a lesbian, people in Baghdad would have known. Believe me, I did not say one word to one person about my week with her. She was of no interest to me once she made it clear that I was of no interest to her.

For once, Karen spoke in a real voice, someone who was feeling the words she was saying. Or at least someone who acted as though she felt them.

The clip ended there, abruptly, as had the segment with Vesta. There was no way of knowing whether Nadia, like Vesta, had realized Karen/ Frannie was recording her.

41

A Clutch of Apartment Raiders, Plus Dogs

D
inner was a success, at least for my guests. Petra had recovered from last night’s trauma, aided by her military escort, and they, in turn, seemed to be thawing in her ebullience. My neighbor was beaming happily. Mr. Contreras wanted to see Petra settle down with “some nice boy,” and Marty Jepson and Tim Radke both fit the bill.

I sat at the end of the table, smiling, nodding, wondering where Alexandra Guaman’s journal was. I had played the video the Body Artist had recorded with Nadia three times. Alexandra felt so hounded and tormented that she wrote about it in her journal. Nadia had said that. Which meant Nadia had seen the journal. Which meant that whoever ransacked Nadia’s apartment might have been looking for it.

“Julian Urbanke,” I suddenly said out loud.

Everyone at the table stared at me, until Petra said, “Vic, there’s no one with a name like that in my family, unless it’s someone on the Warshawski side. Marty was asking who in my mom’s family had been in the service.”

My aunt’s ancestors had mostly been in the Confederate Army. I wondered how the veterans would react to that.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to remember the name of the man who lived across the hall from Nadia Guaman. Her apartment was ripped apart, the pictures even taken down from the walls. A couple of days after she died, someone took her computer and all her discs. Urbanke had a key to her apartment. He seemed to have had a crush on Nadia—maybe he helped himself to Alexandra’s journal, thinking it was Nadia’s, before the home-wrecking crew arrived.”

“What would you like us to do, ma’am?” Jepson asked.

“Marty, it’s so funny to hear you call Vic ‘ma’am.’” Petra laughed. “She may be older than us, but she’s not, like, a hundred. Just call her ‘Vic,’ like everybody else does.”

“Darling, I love the staff sergeant’s impeccable manners,” I said. “Who knows, maybe some of them will rub off on you and me.”

I looked at Jepson, who was staring straight ahead, blushing.

“I’d like to go over to Urbanke’s place,” I continued, “see if he has the diary.”

Petra’s eyes sparkled. “All of us? A midnight raid—”

She stopped, remembering last night’s fight. The muscles in her face tightened. “Vic,” she said, “why don’t you just call and ask him.”

“Too easy to brush people off on the phone,” I said.

“You’re not going to beat him up, are you?” She was pleating her napkin by now.

“Of course she ain’t,” Mr. Contreras grumbled. “If she had any sense, she’d stay right here.”

He turned to me. “If it wasn’t for these boys here riding to your rescue last night, you’d be dead and in the morgue right now.”

“I’m going to bring Peppy; if Urbanke tries to attack me, he’ll trip over her and fall, and then she’ll smooch him into confessing.” I stood too quickly for my abdomen and ended up clutching the edge of the table.

“Uh, ma’am?” Jepson said. “I mean, Vic. I’d, uh, it would be a pleasure to visit this man Urbanke with you.”

Well, if he was going to put it like that, implying that the Marines had a sense of duty even if no one else understood it, then Mr. Contreras had to join in, which meant Tim Radke and Petra could hardly stay behind.

Petra bent over Mitch, hands on his jowls. “You want to come, too, don’t you, Mitch? Just in case.”

After Petra and Tim finished the washing up, we laced up our winter boots and zipped up our coats and went back into the night, dogs and all. I wondered if any other detective on the planet had ever traveled with this kind of entourage. Sam Spade, with dogs, cousin, old man, and Marines—kind of like calling on a suspect with a circus parade in tow.

My fellow performers were full of enthusiasm. Jepson took me and the dogs in his truck; Tim Radke followed in my car with Petra and Mr. Contreras.

The heater in Jepson’s pickup was as old as the shocks, and my feet turned numb as we bounced over ruts. I grabbed the edges of the seat, trying to minimize the jolts to my sore muscles.

“Sorry about that, ma’am. Vic, I mean. Kind of like the roads in Baghdad, just without the gunfire and the IEDs and so on. Although this part of town, I guess we could get some gunfire,” he added as we moved into the grimmer, gang-ridden streets west of Western.

We got to Nadia’s building ahead of the others. While we waited, we talked about ways and means.

“I don’t want all seven of us barging in on Urbanke,” I said. “Why don’t we let Mr. Contreras and Petra wait in Nadia’s apartment with the dogs while you and I talk to the guy.”

It was hard to persuade Mr. Contreras that this was a good idea—he hadn’t come along just to sit on the sidelines and cheer for me, thanks very much. In the end, Tim offered to babysit Petra and the dogs while my neighbor and the staff sergeant and I went into Urbanke’s.

A bit of good luck: he was home. A bit of bad luck: he remembered me and did not wish to see me.

“You’re not a cop,” he squawked over the intercom. “You can’t make me talk to you.”

“Right, Mr. Urbanke,” I bellowed at my end. “We don’t need to talk. We just want to ask you about Alexandra’s journal.”

Another bit of good luck: someone came out of the building just as I was debating whether to open the outer door on my own. The man looked at us suspiciously, and I grinned happily.

“We’re the new tenants in 3E. Thanks! The key they gave us for the outside door doesn’t work.”

“No dogs allowed in this building,” he said.

“They’re not moving in, just helping my friends set up housekeeping. We’ll see you.”

My parade swept past him and up the stairs to the third floor. I opened the door to Nadia’s place with my picklocks, then knocked on Urbanke’s. Petra stood in Nadia’s doorway, watching. Mitch and Peppy were behind her, trying to push between her legs. When Urbanke didn’t answer his door, Jepson began kicking it, and Mitch started to bark. In about thirty seconds, we’d drawn a crowd, people from two of the other apartments on the floor and a woman bending over the railing on the fourth floor.

“No dogs allowed in here.” “Who are they? Someone call the cops.” “Call the police and let them rob us in our beds? Call the building management.” “The building management? Don’t be insane—they still haven’t fixed my broken window.” “Because you’re three months behind on—”

“Mr. Urbanke has been really helpful in looking after my niece’s home since Nadia was murdered.” I cut into the flow. He has a key to her apartment, he took her cat. But he also took some of her other things—I’m sure for safekeeping! Security is terrible in this building, and he didn’t want anyone to steal her jewelry. But I need to get it back to give to my sister. Nadia’s mother is so overcome with grief, she can’t come herself. So she asked me to stop by and collect her jewelry.”

“That’s a lie!” Urbanke had opened his door just enough that we could see his nose and mouth. “She’s no aunt. She was going through Nadia’s apartment herself, pretending to be a detective.”

“I saw you go into the girl’s apartment the day after she died,” a woman on the upper landing said to Urbanke, fortunately not to me. “Poor Nadia, you were always looking at her like—like this dog here looking at a bone.” She pointed at Mitch, who had pushed past my cousin and was nosing around the crack in Urbanke’s door. “And then she’s barely dead, and you let yourself into her place. How you even got a key to her door, that’s what I want to know.”