“I never did know which was the one leading the other into trouble, but by the time they was teenagers trouble was pretty near all they knew. The Kystarnik girl, I heard she had two abortions before she was ever even sixteen. And the drugs! Well, these rich kids with too much money and not enough to do, that’s what they do. And, what I heard, Francine and Zina were selling anyone pretty much anything.”
“Lela!” one of the other maids protested. “You don’t know that, do you?”
“Don’t I just? Noel Gordon was in school with Zina and Frannie. And when those girls came over to party, it wasn’t Pepsi, let alone beer, they had in their cute little pink makeup kits.”
The two baristas had given up any pretense of work. The man went to the door and put the CLOSED sign up.
“And then the girls OD’d?” I asked.
“It was an ugly scene,” Lela said. “Zina died, Francine came close. And the cops found all the stuff in Steve Pindero’s basement. Why they didn’t arrest Frannie as she lay in her hospital bed, I’ll never know, but she recovered. And Steve? Oh my, I guess he tried to convince the cops it was him that had bought the drugs. But you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Steve didn’t know word one about what Francine was up to. While he was trying to get himself arrested, Frannie took off. No one ever saw her again. Steve took to drink, and that’s what killed him. Drinking on the job. Fell to his death two or three years after his girl disappeared.”
We were all silent for a moment, respecting the tragedy of the Pindero story, and then I asked whether young Frannie had shown any gifts as an artist.
“Funny you should say that. I forgot all about that part of her. She could draw pretty much anything. Got the gift from her daddy, I guess. He was always drawing up these designs, these plans for stuff he was building. He was in high demand in all the big houses around here for what he could design and build.”
“Would there be anyone Frannie might seek refuge with? An art teacher? What about Noel Gordon?”
Lela shook her head. “I’d be surprised. Noel, he straightened himself out after Zina died, went on to medical school, works at some clinic in Texas, down on the Mexican border, where he treats poor immigrants. I can’t think Frannie would know where to find him, even. And I don’t know any family up here that wouldn’t turn her right over to the authorities if she showed up.”
It was my turn to sigh: one dead end after another.
“But you said you found her,” another maid ventured. “Where has she been hiding all this time?”
“The times I talked to her, I didn’t know her real name. She was calling herself Karen Buckley. And now, as I said, she’s disappeared.” I looked at the wall clock: long night ahead, with Tim Radke coming to look over the Body Artist’s computer. “Thanks for talking to me so frankly,” I said. “I’m headed back to the city. Anyone need a lift?”
The two baristas lived in Waukegan to the north, but the maids all lived in the city. They crammed into the Mustang, a tight fit for the two in my small backseat, but better than the three buses they told me they took to get from the far northern suburbs down to their homes on Chicago’s West Side.
When I finally returned to my office, Petra was still there, calling hospitals to see if anyone named Karen Buckley or Frannie Pindero had sought care for deep cuts. I was so tired that I just shook my head when she asked me if I’d found Steve Pindero. I went into my back room, where my portable bed is. My jeans and socks were wet from the snow. I took them off and flung them on a radiator and collapsed on the bed.
I was on a freight train, rocking along. The tracks were badly scarred, and the train kept bouncing, jolting me from side to side.
“Vic! Wake up, why can’t you? Mr. Vishneski’s on the phone.”
It wasn’t a train, just my cousin shaking my shoulder.
“I said he could leave a message with me, but he wouldn’t.”
I staggered upright, pulled on my jeans, and padded out to my desk in my bare feet. There was still an inch of cold cappuccino in the cup I’d bought this morning. I swallowed it, trying to clear the thickness of sleep out of my voice.
“Mr. Vishneski. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
He was too intent on his story to care. “We have good news. My boy came to for a minute. He’d been restless all night, and the docs said that was a good sign. And then he opened his eyes.”
“That’s wonderful news,” I said. “Did he seem to know you?”
“We couldn’t tell, his eyes weren’t focusing that great. He said a couple of words, then he passed out again.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“She says it’s a good sign, and maybe he’ll make a full recovery. But it could be days or a week before he really regains consciousness for good.”
So we couldn’t ask him any questions.
“What did he say? Anything about the shooting? Or if someone came home from Plotzky’s bar with him?”
“He wants a vest. Mona and me, we both agreed that that was what he was saying. The nurse, she heard it, too. But we don’t feel like we want to leave the hospital right now, so we thought-we hoped-we want you go to Mona’s place and bring it here to the hospital for him.”
“A vest?” I said blankly. “What does it look like?”
“We don’t know,” Vishneski said. “Neither Mona nor me gave him one, so we’re thinking one of his buddies, or maybe a girlfriend. If you find any vests, bring them all over, and we’ll see which one he wants. Could be he left something in a pocket, a good-luck charm or something.”
I started to say I’d come to the hospital to collect keys, but then I imagined the drive through snow-packed streets to the hospital, parking, waiting while someone fetched Mona out of the ICU, and her haphazard search through her giant bag for her keys. It would be easier for me to pick the lock, but I didn’t share that thought with the client.
Before I left, I went over Petra’s work for the hour I’d been sleeping. She’d finished checking hospitals, but no one who sounded like the Body Artist had come in to have cuts treated.
“Peewee, it’s been a long day, but I need you to stay here until I get back. Tim Radke is coming to see if he can find out who’s blocking the Embodied Art website. He’s probably not going to have a computer with him, which means he’ll use mine. There’s too much confidential data on the Mac Pro-I’ll want you to hover to see what files he looks at.”
“What should I tell him you want him to do?”
“The Artist said her hosting service told her the site was being blocked from her computer, but she claims not to know who’s doing it. I want to know if Tim can verify that one way or another.”
Petra looked doubtful, not wanting to be left in charge. “Won’t he need her computer?”
“I don’t know. If he does, I think she left it at Club Gouge last night. Which means checking at the club, if it’s open. While you wait for him, can you start viewing some of these discs I took away from Frannie Pindero’s place? I don’t know what you might see on them, but I’m curious about Rodney’s codes. Pay special attention if you find him in any of her videos.”
I hesitated. “Don’t let anyone in except Tim Radke, okay? Or the Vishneskis, if they show up for some reason.”
“You think we’re in danger?”
I bunched up my mouth. “I don’t know. But if anyone gets hurt in the line of duty, it’s me. Got that?”
Petra saluted. “Yes, ma’am! I want it to be you, too!”
32 Sand in the Pocket
On my way over to Mona’s place, I stopped at La Llorona for tortilla-chicken soup, which I ate at traffic lights. Between my bulky clothes and my sore hand, I spilled a lot of it and got to Mona’s building looking like a toddler who’d just been introduced to solid food. I dabbed at the spots with a tissue but gave up when I realized I was covering my coat with white pilling. I definitely should join the slow-food movement-this eating on the run is as hard on the wardrobe as it is on the dig
estion.
Parking on the North Side is always a challenge, and with the improvised territorial markers, as well as the ridges of ice blocking access to curbs, it was impossible. I finally left the car in front of a hydrant and hoped the police had too much else on their minds to bother with ticketing side streets.
Up on the fourth floor, Mona’s apartment looked much the same as it had on my first visit. As I worked my picks into the padlock, cumbrously because of my sore hand, a door opened at the far end of the corridor. I glanced down the hall and saw that it was the same unit where someone had peered out when I first came here with Chad’s parents. In the dim light I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Hello!” I called. “Can you come here and hold a flashlight on the lock for me?”
The figure scuttled back into its own apartment. I laughed softly, but hoped they wouldn’t feel compelled to call the cops. The lock finally clicked loose, and I went into Mona’s vestibule.
I turned on all the lights. A week had added a film of dust to the room, making the destruction look more wanton and more permanent. No wonder Mona was staying with her ex-husband. The room was so cold, so dreary, that I found myself tiptoeing through it to the bedroom.
Chad’s duffel bag was still on the floor, with clothes spilling out of the top like beer foam over the brim of a glass. When I’d been here before, I’d given the bag only a cursory look. Now I pulled everything out, laying each piece on the bed, but I didn’t see anything that resembled a vest. I looked in Mona’s closets and behind all the doors, where people sometimes drape coats or bathrobes. I found Mona’s pink flannel bathrobe, with a fuzzy rabbit stitched to one pocket, and Chad’s parka. I searched the parka but discovered only chewing gum, a business card from a tattoo parlor, and half a bagel, rock-hard by now.
I went back into the bedroom to return Chad’s clothes to his bag. I ran my hand around the bottom to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything and felt sand. I wondered if Chad had brought back part of the Iraqi desert as a souvenir.
I probably wouldn’t have looked at it, except I was frustrated by all the dead ends I’d run into recently. I hunted around the apartment for a newspaper that I could empty it onto, and finally found a roll of butcher paper in the kitchen. I laid a sheet of it on the bed and carefully emptied the bag onto it. The stuff looked like gray sand, or maybe crushed gravel. I stared at it for a long minute, then folded the butcher paper into a tidy oblong. I tucked the ends inside each other to keep the gravelly sand from spilling out, and stuck the little bundle into my red leather bag.
I took the duffel into the bathroom to shake the last grains in the tub. A black pocket fell out, too. Perhaps it had been caught in the duffel bag’s seams-I hadn’t felt it when I ran my hand through the interior.
The pocket was made of a thick black cloth, about the size of an oven mitt. There were a number of holes in the heavy fabric, which went all the way through both sides. I guess that was how the sand had leaked out. I stuck my fingers inside the mitt and felt more sand inside. THIS SIDE FACES OUT had been embossed on the outside, although the holes partially obliterated the words.
A black oblong. This was what Chad had been holding out to Nadia in the parking lot the night before she was murdered. Don’t pretend you don’t know what this is, he’d said. But what was it?
I went back to Mona’s kitchen for a clean plastic bag. It was when I was putting the black mitt in the bag that I felt the image stamped into the fabric just below one of the holes. I held the mitt under the light. The design, a kind of trefoil, looked familiar, and I frowned trying to remember where I’d seen it. As I turned the mitt sideways to fit into the resealable bag, I suddenly recognized the design-the pink-and-gray scrolls Nadia had painted on the Body Artist looked just like this.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. This was what connected Nadia to Chad. But what was it? When Chad saw the scrolls, he was sure that Nadia was making fun of him. I stared at the mitt in the plastic bag, then pulled the butcher paper from my purse and put it in the bag with the mitt.
I looked around the apartment. What else had I overlooked when I was here before? I went through the garbage in the bathroom, the bedroom, and the kitchen, but I only found a discarded razor blade, a bunch of tissues, and some fairly ripe banana skins. If I had infinite resources, I’d bag all the garbage and send it up to Cheviot for analysis, but the mitt seemed the one important item. I finally left, putting the hasp back in the padlock.
Just as the elevator doors opened, I decided I needed to be more thorough. I went down the hall to see who had come out to watch me. As nearly as I could tell, it had been the third apartment on the left. I knocked, several times, and finally a woman of eighty or so peered through a crack in the door.
“I’m V. I. Warshawski.” I flashed my ID at her. “I’m a detective working on the Vishneski case. You seem like the only observant person on this floor. Have you seen people coming in and out of the Vishneski apartment besides the family?”
“Can I see that ID of yours again, Missy? How do I know it’s not a fake?”
“You don’t, of course.” I held it up to the crack in the door.
The State of Illinois, Division of Professional Regulation, had duly certified that I had completed all required training, and was of good moral character. I could be a licensed private detective. The woman frowned from the card to my face and decided we were the same person, even though it didn’t have my picture on it.
I repeated my question. The hall was so dimly lit, I couldn’t believe she’d be able to identify anyone even if she’d noticed them.
“I haven’t seen anyone. Of course, Mona Vishneski, when she came home Monday, that was a shock for her to find her door broken in like that. I don’t know why the cops thought they had to do that. When I heard the noise, well, it woke me up-I’m sure it woke everyone up. Only, you know what people are like, don’t get involved, MYOB. That’s what gets people killed, too much MYOB-”
“Right,” I interrupted. “I could tell you’re a concerned citizen. What about the night before the police picked up Chad? When did he come home?”
Her mouth scrunched up in thought.
“I couldn’t sleep. I was watching TV in the front room and heard them going down the hall, him and his buddies. He knew they made too much noise, but he isn’t careful about it. That one time Mr. Dorrit complained, Chad swore at him in an ugly way, and it really did frighten us. He’s so big, you know, and he’s a soldier. If he shot us, he’d just tell the judge he was protecting America from terrorists and the judge’d let him go.”
I started to wonder how reliable anything she said might be, but she knew where she was heading.
“See, that night, that night he shot that woman in the nightclub, I heard them coming off the elevator. And I just peeked, you know. Turned out my light so they couldn’t see me. Like I did this afternoon when you showed up.”
“And? Who was with Chad?”
“Not his usual friends. These men, they came out of an office, not off the streets like the bums he usually brings home. They were laughing, slapping him on the back, like they were encouraging him to get louder, and I thought, that’s not very responsible of you even if you do work in an office instead of digging sewers. There’s Mrs. Lacey, with a new baby, and Mr. Dorrit, he has cancer, you got to be more considerate. But then they went into Mrs. Vishneski’s place, and, I will say this, the soundproofing in this building is good enough, once he gets inside, you don’t really hear him carrying on.”
“When did the other men leave?” I asked.
“I couldn’t tell you that, Missy. I’d gone to bed, I was asleep, I didn’t hear them. But Mr. Dorrit, he was out walking his dog, he’s got that little dachshund. He said they took out Mona Vishneski’s garbage with them, put it in the dumpster out in the alley. Those other boys would never have done such a thoughtful thing.”
No, indeed. I thanked the woman and backed away from her down the hall. She wa
s ready to keep talking all night; she believed minding your own business got people killed, and, by gum, she was going to keep her whole building safe by reporting every detail that she could.
When I was here last week, I should have followed my first impulse, to canvass the building. Damn it, why hadn’t I? It was inexcusably sloppy detective work. I’d assumed Chad came home alone. And even after the people at Cheviot labs found roofies in his beer can, I hadn’t tried to see who might have doctored the beer.
While I’d been talking to the woman, Petra had been texting me, Tim R here, don’t no wht u want him 2 do.
On my way, I texted back. I guessed she was nervous about being left in charge and didn’t want to give him instructions on her own.
Before I left, though, I knocked on Mr. Dorrit’s door. Maybe I was doing too little, too late, but he might be able to describe Chad’s companions. The dachshund barked frenziedly, hurling itself at the door.
After a moment, I heard a slow step on the other side, saw a ghastly eye magnified at the peephole, and finally the sound of locks being turned back.
“No solicitation in this building, young lady.”
I’ve never enjoyed the “young lady” greeting, and as I age I like it less and less, but I put on my best public face: confident, friendly. “No solicitation intended. I’m a detective investigating Chad Vishneski. I hear you saw the men who came home with him last week.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
I jerked my head down the hall toward his neighbor.
“Mrs. Murdstone,” he sighed. “Always minding everyone else’s business but her own.”
“What did they look like?”
“How should I know? I barely saw them. I was just trying to keep Wood-E here from going after them. He bites strangers.” He had the dachshund in his arms, but the dog was squirming, wanting to get at me.
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