Body Work (33 page)

“I’ve got friends,” Vishneski interrupted. “Construction’s slow, and I know plenty of guys who’d be glad to look after my boy.”

“You should clear it with the head of the ICU. She’ll be more sympathetic if it comes from you than from me. But I’d suggest instead of saying you’re bringing in a bodyguard that you tell her you want a friend with Chad at all hours in case he wakes up when you’re not around.”

“I’ll talk to her, but, man, I wish you knew what was going on. This is so frustrating, you not knowing if my boy’s in danger or not, or who from. How could he survive Iraq and get caught in some conspiracy here at home? Do you think it’s al-Qaeda, stalking an American soldier out of revenge?”

“I don’t think Arabs were with your son the night he was drugged.” Mona Vishneski’s nosy neighbor would have noticed Arabs. “And if al-Qaeda was at work here, the Justice Department or Homeland Security would be tripping over me in this investigation. Does Chad know any older guys who served in Desert Storm, maybe, or even Vietnam?”

“God, I don’t know. Maybe he met some guys at the VA, but he never said anything about them to me.”

I looked across the room at Tim Radke and Petra and remembered that chunks of Chad’s blog had been blocked or deleted.

“I’ve got to go, Mr. Vishneski. But if you were going to guess at a password your son might have used on his blog, what would it be?”

“Password? What are you talking about now?”

“Some way to try to get at his missing posts. Do you have a hunch about a password for him?”

Vishneski thought a moment, then said, “Probably he’d have the number 54 in it, on account of he’s a big Brian Urlacher fan. Maybe something about the Black Hawks. I’d try those.”

34

Night Work

W
e drove down to Club Gouge in Petra’s Pathfinder, Tim in the front seat with my cousin, me drowsing in the back. I’d collected my picklocks from my car’s glove compartment and locked my handbag, with Chad’s black armor mitt, in my trunk. I planned to drive straight to the Cheviot labs in the morning.

“So is this, like, your first break-in?” Petra asked Tim. “It’s my—I don’t know—do I count the time you broke into my apartment when I forgot my keys, Vic?” She looked over her shoulder at me as she spoke, and the Pathfinder fishtailed.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” I squawked. “I don’t want it to be my last.”

Petra managed to straighten out, narrowly avoiding a collision with an oncoming bus.

“Do you two gals think because I was a soldier I’m some sort of outlaw?” Tim Radke asked. “I mean, Vic here thinks I’m a hacker. And you, you think I’m a break-in artist.”

“I’m the outlaw in this party,” I said just as Petra started to say,
Oh, gosh, me and my motormouth
. “Unless you have skills you’re keeping to yourself, I’m the one who can pick a padlock in thirty seconds using the lip of a sardine can. Petra, darling Petra, put your damned phone away or let Tim or me drive, okay?”

“Gosh, Vic, I was just—”

Tim took the phone from her. “I didn’t survive five years in Iraq to die in a Chicago car crash.”

“Okay, okay, you two bullies,” Petra said. “I’ll get back at you, see if I don’t.”

Without seeing her face, I knew she was giving her exaggerated pout, the look she assumed when she knew she’d been caught in the wrong. We were taking her car because neither my Mustang nor Tim’s old truck handled well on these slush-filled streets, but I was beginning to realize that a good car isn’t as important as a focused driver.

When we got to Club Gouge, I had Petra drive slowly past so I could see if Olympia had any security in place. The fire had been confined to the interior, so no boarding alerted you to the damage. Only the empty parking lot told passersby the club was closed. That and a message in the box by the front door used to announce upcoming acts. Tonight it read “Club Gouge is closed for repairs. Stay tuned for our grand reopening next week.” Which was clever, because no matter when the repairs were complete, the grand reopening would always be next week.

No one seemed to be watching the club, either from the alley or the L platform. I told Petra to park up the street and stay in the car with Tim while I worked the lock. If I holler, take off, and leave me on my own.”

Tim got out of the car with me. “I learned a thing or two about keeping a lookout when I was in the Army. If you’re going to become an outlaw to help Chad, at least I can keep watch.”

Petra decided that meant she should join us as well. She thought she needed to skulk, lurking behind L girders, then dashing across the open spaces between them. It was Radke who told her she was attracting attention.

“Act normal,” he told her. “Act like you’ve got a right to be here. It’s the only way to be if a patrol—a cop, I mean—rides by.”

A keypad worked the front lock, but Petra had never been given the combo. The side door, which opened onto the parking lot, had a keyhole that sat flat against the panel. It was tricky but not impossible, although my sore palm enhanced the challenge.

While I worked the lock, Tim disappeared into the shadows behind us. I trusted him.
Of course
I trusted him. Even if he had a combat medal, he didn’t own expensive clothes—he wore a faded Army parka, not a “soft overcoat.” Still, I was relieved when the tongue of the lock slipped back, and he reappeared, a shadow sliding up to the door.

While I held the tongue flat, he slid a metal strip along the edge of the door and pried it open. When I tried to turn on the hall lights, nothing happened. The building was bitterly cold. Olympia, or perhaps the city, had shut off the power to lessen the risk of the fire restarting—or maybe to save money until reconstruction started.

As we moved deeper into the dark building, the acrid stench of charring began to choke us. Charred and frozen at the same time, what a gruesome end. I pulled my muffler over my nose and mouth. I didn’t want to think about what poisons the fire had released—the synthetic fabric in the curtains, the varnish on the stage floor, the polymers in the wire casings—all no doubt Grade A carcinogens when they burn. I imagined my lungs coated with some kind of black grease that would never go away.

“Not all the perfumes of Arabia,” I muttered.

“Say, what, Vic?” Petra demanded.

I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. Bad sign. I shone my flashlight up and down the corridor. The shadows made ghastly shapes—the wires looked like the tentacles of a giant praying mantis. I shuddered but moved forward. Even Petra was subdued, clutching Tim’s arm as we edged our way to the back of the stage.

The Body Artist’s computer was still there, still attached to the webcams and the plasma screens. I held the flashlight while Tim unplugged the connectors. We were out of the club and back in Petra’s Pathfinder within ten minutes.

Petra turned north onto Ashland, moving at a fast clip, talking in disjoint sentences. The adrenaline rush made her higher than a fistful of speed.

“Stop!” Tim shouted.

“I’m just saying—”

He grabbed the wheel from her and shoved his foot on the brake. We stopped inches from a green SUV that was blocking the intersection at Carroll. I twisted to look behind us and saw a Mercedes sedan pull up. As I looked, Rodney began to work his bulky figure out of the car’s passenger side.

“On three, you two get out and run as fast and far as you can. I’m getting into the front seat. No argument. Just go!”

My gun was in my left hand as I spoke, and Tim was already opening his door. On my count, he jumped from the passenger seat while I slid out of the backseat. Petra sat frozen in the driver’s seat. I yanked her door open. Tim ran around the back of the Pathfinder and pulled her out.

Men were climbing out of the SUV and heading toward us. I fired over their heads, and Tim and Petra took off down a side street, away from us. Someone shot back at me, but I was crouching behind the Pathfinder’s open door. I climbed into driver’s seat, put the car into gear, twisted the wheel, and floored the accelerator.

The wheels spun on ice, then grabbed. I crashed into the green SUV’s left headlight. The impact knocked me against the steering wheel, but I backed up, gears whining. Someone was firing at my windshield. The glass splintered. I bore down on the shooter, and he fell backwards, away from my mad driving.

I wrenched the wheel around again and managed a U-turn away from the shooter and toward Rodney and his Mercedes sedan. I slithered around him, but just as I thought I was home free, he shot out the Pathfinder’s rear tires. I bumped down the road on rims. In the rearview mirror, I saw him get back into the Mercedes and come after me.

Oncoming traffic honked at me or at the sedan blocking the right lane, but no one stopped to see what was going on. Too much MYOB, just like Mrs. Murdstone had said this afternoon.

I jumped from the car at Lake and sprinted toward the L steps. I’d almost made it when a figure in black outran me and pulled me down. I rolled over and away, got in a crouch, gun out, but someone else came from behind and hit me on the side of the head.

35

Send in the Marines

I
never really lost consciousness. Someone pinned my arms behind me. I tried to fight free, but I was woozy, moving slowly, a dream figure. Another someone stuck his hands inside my sweater, feeling my skin. I kicked backward, connected with a boot, not a leg, and the groping hand pinched me hard, then flung me to the ground. I twisted to the side, trying to scrabble away.

“Where is it?” Rodney Treffer was looming over me in the dark. His breath stank of too many beers.

“What?” I kicked at his kneecap.

I was sluggish, and he moved away easily, kicking me in the stomach as he came back at me.

“Don’t get cute with me, girlie, I know you have it.”

Someone came up and seized my feet. Called to another thug. Two or three others were in the background, I couldn’t see.

Rodney bent close to my head, grabbed my hair. “Where is it?”

The Body Artist’s computer. I couldn’t remember if it had still been in the front seat when I got into the Pathfinder.

“AIDS, you mean?” I said. “Swine flu? Is that what you think I have?”

He let go of my hair and punched at my face, but I moved my head in time, and he hit my coat shoulder. Good job, V.I. Not dead yet.

“We know you took it, bitch! Where is it?”

He kicked me in the stomach, and I threw up. The hold on my feet eased, and I bucked and twisted away from Rodney’s oncoming boot. He lost his footing, slipped in my vomit, fell hard, head bouncing against the ice.

I rolled over to the L steps, clutched the rail, and tried to hoist myself upright. The thugs grabbed me before I could get to my feet. I dropped to the stairs and kicked out hard with my right leg, smacking one in the midriff. His motorcycle jacket took most of the impact, but he couldn’t punch without exposing his stomach to another kick. His companion tried to circle around me from the other side, but the stairwell kept him at bay. I prayed for a train.

“Your kneecaps,” a cold voice spoke from behind my attackers. “My gun is trained on them. Get up, come with me, or forget about ever walking again.”

It was the rumbly-voiced man who’d been in command at Club Gouge last night. I got up.

“Ludwig, Konstantin, bring her to me.”

The two grabbed me and shoved me toward the voice. The gun barrel looked cold and gray under the thin light of the streetlamp. The man holding it was tall, with a fur hat adding another few inches. When he smiled at me, the streetlamp glinted on his gold teeth.

The roar of an oncoming train drowned whatever he started to say. He gestured with his head, and the men holding me shoved me forward into the backseat of the Mercedes sedan. They sat on either side of me, pinning me to the seat, while the commander got into the front next to the driver. Nobody paid any attention to Rodney, who was still lying on the sidewalk near the stairs.

“Tell me where you are hiding it.” The rumbler’s voice filled the car.

I shook my head. “It’s Anton Kystarnik, isn’t it? If I knew what you were looking for, it would be easier for me to tell you where it was.”

“Don’t play games with me, Warshawska. I can make you talk.”

The softness of his voice was more frightening than Rodney’s loud shouts. “I’m sure you can. Torture can make anyone talk. It just can’t make you tell the truth about stuff you never heard of.”

“Maybe it can help you remember, though.”

I didn’t say anything. A third-degree street fighter? I’d been flattering myself. The train pulled in, and four people climbed down the L stairs. I looked at them helplessly through the Mercedes’ smoky windows. They stepped around Rodney—I suppose he looked like a drunk they couldn’t bear to touch, lying there in my vomit and all.

“What were you doing at Olympia’s club tonight?” Anton asked.

“Looking for the Body Artist. Karen Buckley. You know her? She’s disappeared.”

Anton laughed, an ugly sound. “Don’t worry yourself about little Karen. She knows how to look after herself, first and last. Don’t imagine her as the scared little girl she pretends to be.”

“Yes,” I said, “I know you and she go way back, back to when Zina was still alive. Why did she change her name?”

“She was thinking she could hide from me, but no one is that smart or that lucky. When I want to find them, they get found.”

“So you know where she is now?”

“I don’t care where she is now.”

“What about her website? You don’t care about that anymore?”

Anton laughed again, this time more loudly, almost like an operatic stage laugh. “I fixed that problem. Now you are my new problem. Why are you caring about these people?”

In the warmth of the car, I was starting to feel the place in my abdomen where Rodney had kicked me.

“Which people?” I tried to sound alert, but I could tell that my voice was thick with fatigue. I tried to imagine how Anton would react if I simply fell asleep. He wouldn’t like it, I decided.

“These stupid Mexican girls who get themselves killed, in Iraq, in Chicago.”