Mr. Contreras was delighted to be part of the team. When we reached the building on Wacker where Darraugh had his headquarters, my neighbor gave me a rough hug and told me not to worry about Petra, he’d take good care of her.
I jogged inside, trying to comb my hair while I waited for the elevator. As I got off on the seventy-third floor, I thought it was a pity Arcadia House couldn’t lease Darraugh’s lobby. It seemed to be bigger than the entire shelter on Taylor Street.
Darraugh’s assistant ushered me into the conference room and sent a message to his office to let him know we were ready when he was. Darraugh ran through the meeting with his usual briskness. I managed to be focused enough to cover my part of the agenda, which seemed like a major achievement, given my ragged condition. While Darraugh’s vice president for overseas operations wrapped up-at such length that Darraugh cut him short with a pithy remark-I thought again about the building’s beautiful, well-guarded space.
Everyone got up to leave. The chief of operations started a private conversation with Darraugh, but I interrupted, asking if I could have five minutes alone.
Darraugh’s brows went up, but he took me into his own office and shut the door. “Well?”
“I’m working on a case that is really scaring me, and I have an extraordinary favor to ask.”
I gave him a fast précis of how Chad Vishneski and Nadia Guaman had met, and why-at least in my opinion-she’d been murdered and he’d been framed.
“Tintrey has access to America’s most sophisticated tracking systems, and I need a secure place where I can meet with my team. I’m hoping-begging you, really-that we could use one of your conference rooms…” My voice petered out under his cold blue stare.
He didn’t speak right away, looking me up and down as if assessing my competence.
“You know why I work with you when I have companies like Tintrey on retainer as well?” He finally said. “Their size-I mean, their global scope. I don’t do business with Tintrey. Don’t like Jarvis MacLean. We’re on civic committees together. He always manages to duck his pledges.”
“I assumed it’s because when you work with me, the right hand knows what the right fingers are doing.” I said stiffly. I knew I couldn’t compete with the global monsters, and that without Darraugh, I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills very easily.
He produced his wintry smile. “Right fingers, right hand-yes, I suppose that’s part of it. When I was a boy, I found a stray dog on our land. Someone had dumped him there with a broken leg, and I brought him inside. Mother’s chauffeur showed me how to set the leg. I’ve never known why Mother and my grandmother let me keep him. My grandmother despised sentimentality, hated the whole idea of pets. Unsanitary, she said, but the truth was, she hated the idea that any creature under her roof might show my mother or me affection.
“Some adult intervened,” he continued. “Don’t know who to this day. I called the dog Sergeant Rock, a comic-book hero when I was seven. Rock was small, some kind of terrier mix, but he took on anyone or any animal he thought was a threat to me. Growled whenever my grandmother came near me. Saved me once when I got cornered in the woods by some passing tramp who kicked me hard enough to break a rib. Died when I was fifteen. Broke my heart.
“You remind me of Rock. Scrappy. Sink your teeth into anyone’s calf if you see them kicking a kid.”
I felt myself flush but didn’t say anything.
“When do you want your team here?” he asked.
“Tomorrow. Maybe around noon.”
He nodded. “I’ll tell Caroline to let you have a room. She’ll clear it with security. She can get your people up here without leaving a trail. Just give her a list of names, phone numbers.”
I started to thank him, to offer him a month of free detecting, but he shook his head and took me over to his assistant.
“Vic’s going to give you a list of names and phone numbers. People we’re hosting tomorrow at noon. A number of competitors are interested in the attendance list and the agenda, so do your usual security magic for us, right?”
Caroline Griswold had been with Darraugh for nearly a decade. She spoke fluent French and serviceable Chinese, and often entertained Darraugh’s overseas clients or competitors. Two secretaries worked for her, but when Darraugh needed to be confident that security arrangements had been properly made, she handled all the clerical details of the assignment on her own.
While Darraugh went into his boardroom for a video conference, Caroline took me into his inner office and shut the door. I gave her a quick summary of the problems I was working on, then turned on my cell phone long enough to look up the names and phone numbers of everyone I hoped to see tomorrow: Petra, Murray Ryerson, Rivka and Vesta, the Vishneskis. Mr. Contreras, of course. Tim Radke and Marty Jepson. Even Sanford Rieff up at Cheviot labs. I put Sal Barthele on the list, but said I would speak to her privately ahead of the meeting.
Finally, I thought about the ultimatum the thugs had given the Guamans: Produce the autopsy report by tonight or watch your house go up in smoke.
“Do you have a way to make a call to a lawyer here in the Loop so that it’s impossible to tell what city it came from?” I asked.
Caroline’s usual face is the smooth mask of the high-stakes corporate poker player, but after a moment she smiled mischievously. “Tell me what you want to say, and I’ll send an e-mail to our agent in Beirut. He’ll be happy to place a call from his cell phone. He’s used to dodging bullets, so he knows how to talk from an untraceable line.”
“That will be especially fitting. This whole situation has its roots in our war in the Middle East. The lawyer is Rainier Cowles, a partner at Palmer and Statten. I want him to know that the Guamans do not have the material his clients are looking for. V. I. Warshawski has taken the papers with her to a remote location, and no one knows where that is. Any communication with Ms. Warshawski should go through her own attorney, Freeman Carter.”
Caroline wrote it up in an e-mail to their Beirut agent and had me read it before she sent it.
Since I was already begging so many favors, I asked to use her phone so I could try to organize the bodyguards I wanted for Clara. I started with the Streeter brothers, who I know are both skilled and reliable. Only Tom was available, and only afternoons, but I turned down his offer to find someone else for backup. I needed to know the guards I used.
I scowled in thought, then remembered the Body Artist’s friend Vesta; she was a third-degree black belt. I reached her at a law firm where she was temping.
“Have you found Karen?” she asked.
“Not yet. But I have the youngest Guaman daughter, and I’m wondering if you’d have the time or the inclination to do a little babysit-ting.” Before she could protest, I explained what had happened at the Guaman house the previous night and how I wanted Clara to be able to go to school while I tried to resolve the crisis in her family’s life.
“I have someone who can see her home from school,” I said, “but if you could get her there in the morning it would be a huge help. I pay twenty-five an hour, going rate for experienced guarding.”
“How much risk is there?” she asked. “Really. Not glossing over it to get me to do what you want.”
“I don’t know. The people trying to get at Clara work for the same outfit as Rodney Treffer. He’s the man who was always putting those crude numbers on Karen. If you are skillful at choosing your route, you should be safe. If they get a whiff of where she’s staying, it could be awful.”
“I don’t owe the Guamans, or even Karen Buckley, anything.”
“I know that.”
“And I know how to spar, how to conduct myself, under attack, but I’m not trained as a bodyguard.”
“I understand.”
“But I also know what it’s like to be powerless when someone’s beating on you. No girl should have to walk the streets in fear. Let me know where to pick her up, and I’ll do my best.”
I found I’d been holding my breath and let o
ut an audible sigh. Before we hung up, I told her about the meeting I wanted to hold in Darraugh’s office the following afternoon, and she promised to arrange her lunch break so she could attend.
I got up and thanked Caroline for her help. “Although ‘thanks’ is a pretty feeble word, for all you’ve done.”
She smiled, her brisk, corporate smile. “All in a day’s work, Vic. But if we need to reach you, where will you be?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know yet. I’ll try to get a room at the Trefoil Hotel, using my mother’s birth name, Gabriella Sestieri, but I can’t afford more than a couple of nights there.”
Caroline thought for a moment. “I’ll check with Darraugh, but we keep an efficiency apartment in the Hancock building for overseas staff who have to spend more than a few nights in Chicago. It’s free now. I can book you in as Ms. Sestieri.”
I felt my eyes grow wide. “It’s extremely generous. But, Caroline, it’s not just beyond the call, it could expose you to danger, too.”
She shook her head. “My sister’s only son was killed in Iraq, blown up in Fallujah. He was a reservist, and he had a new baby he never even saw. I can’t stand the thought that companies like Tintrey have been making money on his body.”
She looked at the console on Darraugh’s desk, saw that he’d finished his video conference, and took me into the boardroom so she could explain what she proposed. Darraugh grunted an agreement, and Caroline told me to stop back by in the morning to pick up a key and a photo ID for Gabriella Sestieri.
Darraugh escorted me to the elevator; he believes in old-fashioned etiquette and decorum. As I was getting into the car, he let out an unexpected bark of laughter and brushed a finger across my cheek.
“You are Rock to the life. I don’t know why I never thought of that before.”
50 Phew! Around the Sal Corner
I didn’t feel very Rock-like crossing the Loop. Rainier Cowles and Kystarnik had me so spooked that I stopped in my bank to cash a large check; I didn’t want to take the chance that they might be able to track my credit card or ATM transactions. That’s the trouble with the Age of Paranoia-you know people can trace you, given the resources, but you don’t know if they are actually doing so, not unless you’re a whiz like NCIS’s Abby Sciuto, who can back-trace anyone who’s looking at her records.
When I finally reached the Glow, it was half an hour after the closing bell, and the traders were packed three-deep around Sal’s famous mahogany bar. Sal saw me, nodding as she directed traffic. Within two minutes, a minion appeared with a glass of Johnnie Walker Black. I left the drink on the bar, not wanting alcohol to take the edge off my awareness. I also resisted the temptation to pull out my cell phone and reconnect to the world. I was anxious about Chad Vishneski’s safety as well as the Guaman family’s, but I couldn’t take any chances right now.
When the traders, exhausted by a day from hell in the markets, had finally drunk themselves into enough oblivion to manage a commute home, Sal came over to my perch at the end of the bar.
“I hear Olympia’s had to close the Gouge,” she said. “Bad fire in there.”
I shrugged. “Not that bad. She needs to redo her stage and her electrics, but the structure’s okay. Question is, where she’ll find the money, since she’s already in way over her botoxed forehead to Anton Kystarnik.”
Sal’s lips rounded in a soundless whistle. “So the rumors were right this time. I couldn’t believe anyone would be such a complete idiot. Still, as my mother says, a fool and her wits are soon parted.”
She paused, measuring me. “You’d probably better know there’s another story running around the club scene. Some people say you started Olympia’s fire.”
“People will say anything, won’t they? Especially Olympia Koilada. I did threaten her with legal action if she kept slandering me, but she probably knows I don’t have the time or patience for a civil suit.”
“So how did the fire start?”
“Actually, I sort of did start it.”
Sal threw up her hands. “Oh, Vic, why? I’m sure it wasn’t the kind of pedestrian reason most of us would have: she dissed your cousin, she kicked your dog, or, in my case, the last time I had a fire here some idiot had left her curling iron on a stack of towels in the women’s toilet.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. It was sort of collateral damage.”
I described the night at the Club Gouge, with Kystarnik’s thugs beating up the Body Artist and Olympia because they couldn’t run their message board on the Artist’s body.
“So where is Buckley doing her show now?” Sal asked.
I shook my head. “She hightailed it. No one knows where to find her, but she’s a woman with more than one identity. I know two of them, and wouldn’t be surprised if she had a third to use as a bolt-hole in a situation like this.”
Sal’s shaved and painted brows lifted so high they looked like cathedral arches. “You looking for her? What’s Kystarnik going to do if you find her?”
“That, my dear friend, is the question of the hour. They have history, Anton and the Artist. The Artist and Zina, Anton’s only kid, were so close, they OD’d together. Zina Kystarnik died, but the Artist pulled through and then disappeared. Where she spent the next thirteen years is a total mystery, at least to me, but Kystarnik apparently knew. At least, he knew she was doing her act at Olympia’s. He’s been using her, I just learned, but does he hate her or love her? Will he kill her or protect her? I’m betting the first, but he’s a psychopath and they are like tornadoes, you don’t know where they’ll go.”
“Kind of like you, Warshawski,” Sal said. “Is anyone paying you to look for the chick?”
“Not exactly. Someone is paying me to show that Chad Vishneski didn’t kill Nadia Guaman. Kystarnik and the Body Artist don’t connect the dots, but they sure have enough dots on them to look like a measles epidemic. Kystarnik wouldn’t have wanted a spotlight on Club Gouge and the Artist, so I don’t think he was behind Nadia’s murder. I’m convinced the killer was hired by Tintrey. Or maybe even Rainier Cowles himself.”
I stopped to count on my fingers. “So many parties to this horror show. Besides Cowles and his pals at Tintrey, there are four others: Nadia, Chad, the Body Artist, and Kystarnik. When a fifth party blocked embodiedart.com, Kystarnik was beside himself. He roughed up the Artist and slapped Olympia around. He wanted that communications network up and running.”
I brooded over my drink. “I’m sure it was Tintrey that blocked the site. Only now they seem to be happily doing business with Kystarnik. It was Anton’s thugs who were parked outside the Guaman house this afternoon, but a week ago they didn’t know each other’s names. I don’t know how it happened, although I’m wondering if Olympia brokered that marriage. And how it happened isn’t important-it’s what they’ll do next that scares me.”
“You may make sense to yourself, but it’s gibberish to me.”
Sal went over to talk to a couple of new arrivals whom she knew. Erica, Sal’s bartender, came around with the Black Label bottle.
“You okay, Vic? You haven’t touched your drink.”
“One of those days, Erica. Just not in the mood.” I’d never be able to prove I was right, not unless I found a way to make Prince Rainier speak. I laughed to myself, thinking of Darraugh calling me after his mongrel terrier. Speak, Prince Rainier! Or I will sink my teeth into your calf.
However it had come about, Kystarnik and Tintrey had joined forces. Rainier Cowles didn’t want to beat up the Guamans in person, so he hired Kystarnik’s muscle to force the family to turn over their copy of Captain Walker’s autopsy report. Cowles, or the Tintrey executives, thought this would end their problems. Apparently it never occurred to them that the Guamans might have made other copies. Or maybe they thought beating up Clara would persuade the bereft parents to keep Tintrey’s dirty secrets to themselves. Or maybe they planned to kill all the Guamans once they had the report.
When Sal finally returned to my end o
f the bar, I spoke without preamble. “Have I ever put your life or your bar at risk?”
“Nope. And you’re not about to start now, Warshawski.”
I looked around the Glow, at the Tiffany lamps on the tables and the racks of glassware hanging over the horseshoe bar. Erica was polishing the glasses methodically before putting them up in the manner of bartenders all over the world when business is slow. Each glass wiped obsessively until it reflects the light in the room.
“You’d want to put the lamps somewhere safe,” I said, “and maybe move those racks of glassware out of fighting range. You could rearrange the tables, create an open space for a performance. And if you let me cover the windows with sheets, they’d do nicely as projection screens.”
“V. I. Warshawski, I don’t care if you are on a Carry Nation mission to torch the nightspots of Chicago as long as you leave the Glow off your list.”
I tilted my glass, watching the surface of the whisky retain its flat surface while changing shape. Gravity was amazing.
“For one night, Sal, one night only, I need to resurrect the Body Artist.”
“Rent the Art Institute. They have better insurance than I do. And a real stage.”
“What’s your deadest night of the week? Sunday? If I publicize this right, with a cover charge of twenty bucks, or even thirty, you could make your week’s profit in two hours.”
“Are you listening?” Sal said. “The answer is no. Any profit would vanish in two minutes if Kystarnik came in here in an ugly mood. Which, what I know of the boy, is the only mood he’s got, the question being is it mean ugly tonight or plain vanilla.”
“Sal, let me tell you the story of three sisters. Call them Alexandra, Nadia, and Clara.”
I told her the story, as much as I knew, starting with Alexandra’s journal, her journey to Iraq, the Guamans, Chad, the Body Artist’s disappearance, ending with my own flight.
“Clara’s sixteen. She got her nose broken last night, and that was after burying her two sisters and watching her brother live in the nightmare of a badly damaged brain. I’m not asking you to do this for me, you know.”
Body Work Page 36