Body Work (51 page)

The Artist had limited interest in any life other than her own, certainly not in Tintrey, or unknown soldiers overseas. She flung the brushes down and walked over to the stairs leading up to the club.

“Not quite yet, Ms. Pindero. I need to know how Tintrey and Anton came together. Tintrey was blocking your website, I’m pretty sure of that, and Anton didn’t know it the night he came to Club Gouge to try to force you to bring the site back online. Yet two days later, Anton was providing MacLean backup at the Guaman house.”

“Anton will kill anyone for no reason,” she said. “Or break their necks just for fun, if he’s in the mood.” Her voice had gone flat again, and all expression had left her face.

“Yes,” I said, “that’s pretty much how I have him pegged, too. That’s why I figured you needed an insurance policy after you ran away. You were scared, that was obvious from the way you’d recklessly jumped through the back window of your apartment—”

“You found my home?” She came back into the main part of the room, her face white. “How?”

“I’m ignorant about a lot of stuff, Ms. Pindero,” I said, “but I’ve been tracking missing people for a long time. When I saw the frenzied way you’d come and gone, I thought you might call Anton, keep him happy by telling him that it was Tintrey blocking the site.”

She stood perfectly still, not even seeming to breathe. There was a piece I was missing, a piece she didn’t want me to figure out. I tried to relax, to let go of my anxious thinking, to recall what had happened the different times I’d seen her perform in the club. The night of the memorial for Nadia Guaman, I’d seen Vesta and Rivka. And the boys from Tintrey had been there.

“Rainier Cowles was in the club when you did your memorial,” I said slowly. “You denied knowing him.”

“I’d never seen or heard of him.” Her eyes were wary.

“No. But Vesta looked at him through the curtains, and you asked her to point him out to you. A day or two later, you went to his office. You didn’t know if he could be useful to you or not, but he was an important lawyer. And he had a connection to the Guaman sisters.”

She sucked in a breath, and I knew I’d made a lucky guess. “So what if I did?” she said. “Is that a crime?”

“I don’t know anymore what’s a crime, what’s stupid, or what’s just plain wrong,” I said. “Lazar Guaman—was he stupid to say yes to Tintrey’s money? He had a brain-damaged kid to support and no power to go up against them to fight over Alexandra’s death. Was it criminal to shoot Rainier Cowles? A jury may say so if the police make an arrest, but I’m not so sure. Was it just plain wrong of you to go to Rainier Cowles? I don’t know. You tell me.”

The Artist kneaded her fingers together. “It was wrong and stupid and criminal to sell drugs with Zina, I know that. And I didn’t go to prison, but I might as well have, the life I’ve been living the last thirteen years.”

“Maybe you’ve been a prisoner of your fears, but it still beats an orange jumpsuit and sexual assault by guards when they’re in the mood. What did you tell Cowles?”

“I said I’d call Anton for him if he needed any extra muscle for anything. Okay? Are you happy now?”

“I’m ecstatic. Is there anything else I’ve been too ignorant to know before you take off?”

She paused, one foot on the stairs. “Alexandra Guaman was incredibly beautiful and very sweet. Even I—fell for her the one week of her life that I spent with her. She made me so angry, not wanting to meet me in Chicago. I wanted to out her to her family! But she didn’t return my calls. And then she disappeared.”

“She didn’t disappear, not the way you do.”

“How was I to know that? It wasn’t until Nadia showed up that I learned what happened to Alexandra. When Nadia introduced herself to me as Allie’s sister, I hoped—I thought, maybe—she would be the same. They looked alike, and Nadia even seemed to want to go to bed with me. Then it turned out she was using me! She didn’t care about me at all. She was using me just to get answers about her sister.” Her colorless eyes turned dark again.

I smiled sourly: only Buckley, or Pindero—or whatever her name was—got to use people. Nadia had broken the rules. A modest revenge for a modest girl. I didn’t say any of this—I wouldn’t get anything more out of the Artist if she felt I was judging her.

“So she made you really angry. Did you finger her? For Anton?”

“Don’t you understand anything? Anton is poison. I try to stay out of his way. Just—when I saw those two guys hanging around the alley after my show the night Nadia was killed, I thought, Oh, let them jump her. I didn’t know they were going to kill her. But once she was dead, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t go to the cops. Not with my past, not with Anton and the drugs and everything. No one would come forward for me, none of those North Shore snots who used to come to Anton’s pill parties. They’d be glad to see me go to prison.”

She had come back into the room, her pale face flushed, animated in a way I’d never seen before. Nothing like the need for self-exculpation to get your blood pressure up.

“So those were Anton’s men who killed Nadia?” I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I’d been so wrong about Rainier Cowles and Scalia and the rest of the Tintrey gang.

“I don’t know who they were,” she said. “I just could tell they were bad news, the way they were lurking in the alley, ski masks over their faces, leaning against this old Jaguar, like they thought they were in a movie or something. At first, I thought they were after me. I was really panicking, but then I saw they’d spotted me. They looked me over, the way guys do, and shook their heads. That made me see they were after someone else, so I went onto Lake Street and got in a cab for home.”

I wanted to shake her or smack her, something that would force some kind of empathy into her. Didn’t she care that five seconds could’ve saved Nadia’s life? All she needed to do was ask the valets to call the cops—she didn’t even need to put herself on a 911 tape.

I swallowed my bitter words. Nothing I said in this cold basement tonight would change Karen Buckley, but an angry tirade would drive her away. She’d said something else that was more to the point.

The men were leaning against an old Jaguar. I’d seen an old Jaguar, a beautiful one; I’d been coveting it. Where? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think back over the past month. There had been one outside the Tintrey offices. The day I went up there and Scalia threw me out, I’d seen it in the executive parking area.

“So you let Chad Vishneski take the fall,” I said. “It looks like, after tonight’s charade, the police may pressure the state’s attorney to drop charges against Chad. But if they don’t, I’m making sure that you, my sister, are in the hot seat as a witness.”

“Not if you can’t find me.” The Artist smiled naughtily like a toddler in a game of “I dare you.”

“I’ll find you,” I said drily. “I’ve done it once; the second time won’t be nearly as hard. That car in the alley, the Jaguar. Do you know enough about cars to know the make? Could you see the color?”

“It was in an alley, it was night. I couldn’t tell the color, just in the street light I could see it said Jaguar on the trunk and then a letter, E, and I thought, oh, gross, another code. Just like what Rodney was always painting on me. And what does that have to do with anything, anyway? . . . I’m leaving now. So tell your goons not to try to stop me.”

An E-Type Jaguar. The car of my dreams. The car I’d seen at Tintrey. “Do you enjoy living on the run?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you like to get Anton off your back, take your art to a bigger stage?”

“If you think you’re stronger than Anton, you’re even dumber than I thought you were.”

I laughed. “Not possible. But the feds are hot on his trail. He’s not long for this world. If you know anything, the least thing that could tip off the FBI to—oh, I don’t know—how he killed his wife or some other murder we’ve never heard of, you wouldn’t have to come forward, you wouldn’t have to talk about your dad and the drugs and all that ancient history. Just a tip that would send an investigator in the right direction. Once Anton’s out of the picture, the rest of his goons will melt like this snow is going to one of these days. And I’d run interference. I’d leak the tip and wouldn’t reveal you as a source.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.

“You don’t. You can only go with your gut. And what you’ve seen of me. That I took a beating from Rodney and didn’t stop my investigation. That I did the best I could for Clara Guaman and Chad Vishneski.”

“You took a beating from Rodney?” She was suspicious.

Once again, I showed off my discolored abdomen, although, ten days out, the bruises had faded to a dull yellow.

“Didn’t you wonder tonight how I knew about the messages they were sending through your body? After Rodney jumped me and tried to kick me into submission, I managed to leave him unconscious on the street. And then I persuaded two of his team to talk to me.”

It sounded more impressive that way, leaving out Tim Radke’s and Marty Jepson’s help, and my pure dumb luck when Rodney slipped on my vomit.

“If you rat me out and Anton gets wind of it, I’ll send him after you,” she warned me.

“I’m not afraid of the big bad wolf,” I lied. “Any thoughts on how he might have offed his wife?”

She held her breath, shut her eyes, ready to jump off the high dive. “Acid. It’s how he made a helicopter go down when I was in high school. He put acid on wires running from the master switch to the solenoid, and it ate through the insulation about twenty minutes after the chopper took off. Anton was laughing about it on the phone one night during one of his horrid parties. Zina and I were hiding behind the couch, where his pals couldn’t see us. As soon as he left the room, we ran like hell. Even Zina didn’t want Anton to know she’d heard something like that.”

“Acid on the wire from the master switch to the solenoid? How’d you know what that was?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. I asked my dad. I didn’t tell him why I wanted to know—I let him think it was for a physics project at school. Even so, he might have guessed. He was a smart guy, my dad, but he died thinking I was selling drugs.”

“He loved you,” I ventured. “He certainly would have forgiven you.”

“I was so stupid,” she whispered. “So greedy. I wanted the stuff that all those rich brats had—their horses, their clothes, and when I started hanging around with Zina, Anton, he saw my greed. I made it so easy for him. So goddamned fucking easy. ‘Is not taking candy from baby,’ he said. ‘Is giving baby candy and giving you power.’ I loved it. I’ve always loved power. It was only later, when I was in too deep, that I saw he had all the power.”

The story was almost more than I could bear. Anton’s vileness, using his own daughter and her friend as a private brothel—Scalia and MacLean, casually murdering Nadia Guaman to keep her sister’s destruction a secret—I didn’t think I could continue living in a world with people like this in it.

And Karen, her adolescence shaped by Anton. No wonder she kept people at a distance.

My feelings must have shown in my face because she said, “Don’t go feeling sorry for me. I hate that worse than anything. Tell your cop friend about the solenoid. If Anton really goes to prison, then, yes, I’d like to come home, be Francine Pindero again. If you want to send me any news about it, e-mail [email protected].”

Vesta emerged from her crate at the back of the cellar, surprising both of us—we’d been so intent on our talk that we’d forgotten her. She put her arm around the Body Artist.

“Come on, Buckley,” she said. “Or Frannie. Maybe I’m a fool, but I’m taking you home with me.”

I turned off the space heater and followed the two of them up the stairs. When I got to the top, Tim and Marty were holding the Artist. I told them we were done—she could vanish into whatever shadows she chose.

55

There Is Some Justice in This World, Just Not Enough

M
arty Jepson and Tim Radke were heading to Plotzky’s to join their other friends for a drink or six and wanted me to join them.

“Chad’s off the hook,” Tim Radke said. “You were awesome, Vic. Wish you’d been with our squad in Iraq.”

I told them that they were pretty awesome themselves, but that I’d take a rain check for now. “Drink one for me. We’ll catch up soon.”

Marty stayed a moment to apologize for losing his cool. “Man, I watched Chad disintegrate into that kind of rage a hundred times and never thought it could happen to me. But when I saw that guy—and wearing the Iraq medal—if Chad’s dad hadn’t beat me to it, it would’ve been me with my hands around his throat.”

“You saw someone getting away with framing one of your buddies for murder. Most people would have had a brainstorm under those circumstances. I wouldn’t worry that it’ll keep happening to you.”

“I—” His voice cracked, and then he surprised us both by pulling me close and giving me a full-treatment kiss. “You take care, Vic. And if you ever need help—any help with anything—well, you know how to send for the Marines, right?”

He turned and ran across the room after Tim Radke.

Sal was waiting to close. She and Erica had swept up the debris, but a decontamination team would have to come in before she could reopen the Glow.

I took a stool next to her at the end of the bar. “You were right, Sal: I should have rented a theater. I somehow wasn’t imagining that there would be people stupid enough to fire guns in a crowded room.”

Sal poured me a slug of one of those liquid-gold single malts that I can’t afford to get used to. “The damage wasn’t as bad as it might have been. A table, some glassware, and that light fixture near the exit. Which, thank the goddess, wasn’t an original. I guess that was when that guy was trying to shoot the Body Artist. As long as Rainier Cowles and the woman who got shot instead of the Artist don’t sue, we should be okay.”

“If your insurance doesn’t cover the decon team, I’ll take care of it. And the chandelier and table.” I couldn’t bear to think about my expenses on this venture.

“I’ll make that my donation to truth, justice, and the Warshawski way,” she said drily. “You pulled it off, girl. When you came out under the spotlights, I was completely convinced. You were the Body Artist.”