Body Work

by Sara Paretsky

  Above me, I heard another slap, and a man’s voice saying, “Go to the computer, bitch, and turn your gallery back on.”

  That was Rodney.

  The Body Artist said, “I didn’t shut the site down. I thought you did. I can’t get access to it.” Her voice was a little wobbly, but she was maintaining an admirable level of control.

  The thugs hit her again, and then I heard a crash, cascading metal, amplified by the wooden floorboards. Loud cursing in a language not English. A paint can rolled across the stage and bounced to the floor near me. A scuffle, more metal flying about, and then another smack of hand on flesh and a high-pitched yelp.

  “Hold that stupid bitch.” The master voice, maybe even Anton Kystarnik himself. “You know our agreement, Olympia. I don’t want to burn your pretty little club down. So no more little-girl lies. And you, you no-good whore, no more little-girl tricks from you, either. Fix your website. Then we all can go home happy.”

  “But I don’t know why my site is-”

  Again someone hit her, harder this time.

  I slid out from my hiding place. The man who’d been guarding the door to the corridor was gone-they figured they had control of the premises. I moved to his spot behind the curtain and peered through the gap.

  The thick wires connecting the plasma screens to the mains came through here and went under the door to a wall outlet in the corridor. I stepped carefully so I wouldn’t trip and betray myself.

  The stage was covered with paint. I saw now what the noise had been: Karen had hurled the contents of her cart at her attackers. Brushes and palette knives were scattered wholesale. One knife had landed near me. I slid a hand through the gap in the curtain and picked it up. Its blade was too pliable for use as a weapon.

  The thugs all had on those black ski masks so popular with bullies. I thought I could tell Rodney by his beer belly, but the others were indistinguishable. One figure had a gun trained on Olympia, another on the Body Artist, who was still covered in her performance paint. Someone with red paint all down the front of his jacket forced Karen to sit, smacking her hard, and brought the laptop she used with her slide show over to her.

  “Open the website,” he growled.

  Karen, her fingers shaking, typed in the URL. Lights shifted and flicked in the house, and I realized the computer was still attached to the plasma screens on the stage. By craning my neck, I could see the same message I’d been getting: Out of respect for the dead, we have temporarily taken the site off-line.

  “Now you put online,” he said.

  “Someone got into my system and changed the password,” Karen said. “I can’t open it.”

  “Liar,” the head man growled. “Log on.”

  Karen typed something, and, on the screen, we could all see the message come back.

  “Invalid password. Try again.”

  She tried again and got the same message.

  The man giving the orders nodded and the thug holding Karen slugged her jaw. I couldn’t stand and watch, and I couldn’t take them all on, either. I knelt and gouged at the insulation around the thickest of the wires snaking through my feet, peeled it back. My hands were trembling in my panicky haste. I finally loosened a strip, pulled it away from the wires, and stuck the palette knife in between them.

  A crack like thunder, an arc of lightning, and the theater went dark again. The knife blade splintered in my hand, and the shock knocked me backward. Sparks sizzled and spat from the exposed wires. I scrambled under the curtains onto the stage on my hands and knees.

  The room was briefly quiet: no one knew what had happened. Then shouting and cursing began, in Russian or perhaps Ukrainian. People crashed across the room, scattering tables, falling. Someone fired a shot, and I could see the spurt of flame. The master voice bellowed in Russian or Ukrainian, and no one else fired. I ran onto the stage and tried to grab Karen, but she swung a fist at me and started kicking.

  “It’s V. I. Warshawski,” I panted. “Come along, damn it!”

  She flailed at me even harder. I pulled her from the stool, tried to orient myself to the back of the stage. One of the thugs had found a flashlight and pointed it at the stage. Another gun went off, this time aiming at us. I let go of Karen’s arm and dropped to the floor. I rolled over and fired back, but my shot went wide.

  “Karen! Karen, where are you? We need to get out of here!”

  The curtain dropped against the fused wires. I could smell charring. If the curtain caught, the wooden floor and chairs would feed a fire in no time.

  I pushed through the curtains, looked down the corridor, saw movement in the dressing room. Karen had put on her coat and boots and had her jeans in her hand. I slung my left arm under her armpits and hefted her over my shoulder before she realized what I was doing.

  “Put me down, damn you!”

  She drubbed on my back as I jogged down the hall to the back exit. Pushed open the door while she kicked at me. I was panting now from the load and from her fighting me, and I still had to circle the building to get to my car out on Lake Street. Before I’d gone more than a few steps, she managed to break free.

  She ran to an SUV parked near us and opened the door. She was in luck: the keys were in the ignition. She got the engine going as I ran to her side. I yanked the door wide, but she punched at my head.

  “You interfering, ignorant, stupid bitch, now you’ve really fucked me over. Get out of my way or I’ll run you down!”

  She roared out of the lot, the still-open door swinging on its hinges. I just had time to read the plate number before she turned onto Lake Street.

  27 Thank God for the Boys in Blue!

  I don’t know who was angrier, me or Finchley. We were sitting on stools at the Club Gouge bar, and Olympia, her cheeks pale but her lips smiling, was telling Terry that nothing had happened.

  “It’s a club, we do performance art. I don’t think Ms. Warshawski understood that we had a special rehearsal tonight after the club closed. She took it too seriously. Really, Ms. Warshawski, you need to get out more, see what’s happening in theater these days.”

  “And the fire?” Terry asked.

  When he and his team arrived, the back curtains were in flames. The cops had pulled them down and managed to stamp out the fire, but the stage was a mess. Parts of the floor were scorched, and the whole surface was covered in paint from the cans the Body Artist had hurled at her assailants.

  Five squad cars pulled up as I was getting into my Mustang to follow the Artist. The cops pinned me in. They wouldn’t listen to my frantic cries about going after the SUV-“I’m the one who sent for you. A key witness is taking off!”-and forced me to come back into the club with them. Most of the thugs had fled, but the patrol units grabbed the few who’d stayed behind, including Rodney, and cuffed them.

  The fire department showed up a few minutes after the cops. A middle-aged firefighter dealt with the wires I’d fused. He had sad eyes and a drooping mustache, but his thick fingers moved skillfully among the wires, and he restored power to the building-a mercy, because the furnace had shut down in the outage.

  Finchley walked in a moment or two later. “You know, Vic, I’m going to suggest to the captain that we pay to relocate you to New York, because I swear Chicago’s crime rate would drop fifty percent if you weren’t here. Conrad relayed your message. Now, tell me why we’ve all left our beds to do your bidding.”

  “It’s not that I’m not grateful,” I said, “because, believe me, I am. These goons are the remnant of a whole swarm of creeps who took over the club and started beating up the Body Artist and Olympia. But the Body Artist took off in a borrowed SUV, and I was hoping to follow her when your crew hustled me back in here, not listening to my suggestion that they go after the Artist.”

  Terry sighed, exasperated either with me or his crew, I couldn’t tell which, but he asked me for the plate number and phoned in a bulletin asking patrol units to look out for the SUV.

  That was when Olympia started her litt
le-girl act, pretending that it was all just a “giant but unfortunately truly dangerous” misunderstanding on my part. The thugs whom the cops had cuffed began to smirk. Even Rodney, who’d been trying to start Owen Widermayer’s Mercedes when the police pulled him out of it, looked as though he might break into song. I wanted to shoot holes in all of them just to wipe the smiles off their faces. They knew they were going to beat any rap I might be able to hand out.

  The fire crew chief joined us in the front of the club.

  “You the owner, miss?” he asked me. “You were way over code there with the load you were carrying. This was an accident waiting to happen.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” Olympia surged between him and me. “This is my building. I’ll get this taken care of first thing tomorrow-today, really, isn’t it? But you know what I mean-when the rest of the world is awake and going to work, you and I are in bed.”

  She blinked from the fire chief and his drooping mustache to Terry in what was meant to be a helpless, appealing way. “I’m sorry the Warshawski woman was such an alarmist that she roused everyone, but we’re grateful for the quick response. Let me give you gift vouchers. You and your friends are welcome to come here on your nights off as my guests.” She reached over the bar and fumbled in a drawer for the vouchers.

  “No.” Terry’s quiet voice carried authority, and both his team and the fire crew looked stolidly ahead. “Tell me about the fire.”

  “The fire on the stage, you mean?”

  “Was there another?” A pulse was starting to throb on Terry’s forehead.

  “Sorry to be so silly, Detective, but this Warshawski woman’s wild behavior has me so rattled that I-”

  “Vic, tell me about the fire.”

  I repeated what I’d said earlier, about thugs taking over the theater. “Going by the voices, at least one was a woman, maybe more. They forced the staff and customers to leave, but I hid under the stage. The whole point of the attack seemed to be connected with the Artist’s website-it’s been down for several days, and they wanted her to bring it back up. When she either wouldn’t or couldn’t, they started beating up Olympia and the Body Artist both. I couldn’t take on the whole lot-I wanted to create a diversion while I hustled the Artist off the stage. I didn’t know my intervention would produce such drastic results.”

  “So you set the fire?” Finchley said.

  “I fused the wires. The open wire set the curtains on fire.”

  “Ms. Warshawski, I expect you to pay for the damage you caused here,” Olympia said.

  “Were you born stupid, or did you work hard to get like this?” It was all I could do not to grab her and shake her. “You take this to a court of law and you will-”

  “I will have witnesses that you did malicious damage to my building.” Olympia’s triumphant tone was startling. “Karen won’t testify for you, and neither will these men here.” She waved an arm toward the handcuffed thugs.

  My mouth opened and shut several times, but I couldn’t get any words out.

  “Where does this Body Artist live?” Terry asked. “We looked in the dressing room. She’d left her keys, but we didn’t find any ID. We need to talk to her, get her version of what happened here tonight.”

  Olympia bit her lips in momentary indecision, then told Terry she’d get it from her computer. I tagged along with them to her tiny office. She tried to keep us from looking at the screen, but Terry pushed her aside and scribbled the address into his notebook. Back in the main room of the club, he ordered one of his squad cars over to the address on Superior that Olympia had given him and ordered another unit to take the thugs to the station for booking.

  “You can’t arrest them just on Warshawski’s say-so.” Olympia had given up her little-girl act. “I’m not pressing charges.”

  One of the men in cuffs winked at her and said, “Not to be worrying like this, Olympia. Lawyer will come. All will be well.”

  There were a few minutes of bustle, with Terry’s minions shoving the punks out the door, followed by the fire crew and the rest of the cops.

  “You need to go, too, Warshawski.” Olympia’s smile disappeared with the disappearing lawmen. “I warned you to stay away from my club, but you came back, you set a fire-”

  “If you keep saying that, Koilada, you are going to be facing such a big lawsuit that even your sugar daddy won’t bail you out.”

  Olympia gave an exaggerated yawn. “Good night, Vic. Get out and don’t come back, not unless you’re bringing a check to cover the damages. And tell Petra she’s got to find a new job.”

  “No, Olympia, darling. I’m not your manager. You want to fire one of your staff, you spit it out in person, to her face. And if you think you can do a deal with Anton Kystarnik, in or out of bed, do remember that his wife died in a plane crash so well orchestrated that everyone agreed it was an accident.”

  “It was an accident.”

  I gave a tight parody of a smile. “And so was the fire on your stage. Good night, Olympia. Angels guide you to your rest, and all that.”

  An unmarked car, bristling with antennas, was in the lot. I felt for my gun, but it was Terry, waiting for a private word with me. He got out of the backseat and followed me to my car.

  “Vic, you know there’s not a lot we can do if Koilada insists on her story. Not unless the-uh-Artist backs up your statement. But just for my own curiosity, what was going on in there?”

  “I don’t know, Terry. Olympia owes a bundle to someone. It could be as much as a million dollars, and it could be to Anton Kystarnik. Rodney Treffer, the heavy you picked up tonight, works for Kystarnik, and the boys and girls who took over the place tonight were speaking some Slavic language. Connect the dots your own way, but to me it looks as though Olympia lets them use the club as some kind of way of getting information to each other without going through any wires. That’s why they’re so furious that they can’t get access to the pictures on her site. My opinion only, of course.”

  I started my engine.

  “What were you doing here tonight?”

  For a moment I couldn’t remember, the evening had been so full of drama.

  “Nadia Guaman’s older sister died in Iraq,” I finally said. “I’m thinking Nadia’s murder is connected to that, to the fact that Chad Vishneski was over there when Alexandra Guaman died.”

  Terry slapped the roof of my car in frustration.

  “I don’t know who gets my goat more: that piece of work in there”-he gestured toward the club-“pretending a bunch of lowlifes were rehearsing a show, or you, thinking you can skate right over evidence of murder because it doesn’t fit some damned theory of yours.”

  “Listen to me… Oh, forget it. Do what you want.” I fumbled in my bag for a dollar bill. “This picture of Washington bets that when your team gets to the address Olympia gave you, you’ll find a vacant lot. Or maybe an abandoned warehouse. You won’t find Karen Buckley.”

  He was starting to answer me when his phone rang. He had a short, biting conversation with someone and then squatted to look me in the eye.

  “How did you know?” he asked. “Have you been over there?”

  “That was your officer out on West Superior?”

  “It’s a warehouse, but it’s empty. How did you know, Warshawski? Are you involved in some con of your own?”

  “It was a guess. I’ve been around these women awhile now and they are the original shell shufflers.”

  “Oh, hell!” he swore uncharacteristically. “That explains-”

  “What?” I asked, when he bit off the sentence.

  “Just that an alert squad car found the SUV your Artist boosted. She’d dumped it on Irving near the Blue Line, which means she could have jumped the L to anywhere in town or even the airport. We put an alert out at O’Hare, but TSA can’t find the bathroom with both hands most days. If you know where the Buckley woman lives and you’re not saying-”

  “Terry, on my mother’s name, I do not know word one about the Body Artist
-not even whether Karen Buckley is her real name or not.”

  He shut my door, none too gently, and stomped to his waiting car.

  As I drove down Lake Street, my right hand hurt so badly I couldn’t hold the steering wheel. I stopped at the light on Ashland and took off my glove. A fragment of the palette knife was lodged in my index finger near the palm. I hadn’t noticed it during the heat of battle.

  I wasn’t about to go to an emergency room and sit for the rest of the night. Nursing my hand in my lap, I went north to Ukrainian Village, to Rivka Darling’s home. If Karen Buckley had ridden the L back down here, Kystarnik would have found her easily.

  A Hummer was parked in front of Rivka’s building, engine running. The driver flicked up the brights as I went passed, looking to see who was on the street. I pretended not to notice, although they probably had my license plate in their files.

  I called Rivka on my cell phone. We had a short, annoying conversation. She wouldn’t say one way or another if Karen was there, even when I said that the Artist’s life was at risk.

  “You weren’t in the club tonight,” I said, “but a gang of serious thugs attacked her at the end of the performance. She managed to get away, but if she’s with you, you need to call the cops. One of the creeps is in front of your building, so if she’s there, don’t let her leave without a police escort. If she doesn’t want the cops, call me. Do you hear?”

  “Karen can look after herself. She doesn’t need you.”

  I guessed from the quiver in Rivka’s voice that the Artist hadn’t shown up. I drove to my own home, where I looked at my right hand under my piano light. The fragment was just visible below the skin. I found a bottle of peroxide in my pantry cupboard and poured it into a mixing bowl. Tweezers and a needle, which took a little more finding-I don’t often mend clothes or dig out splinters. When I had my kit assembled, I went back to the living room and stuck my hand in the peroxide.