Body Work (45 page)

Alexandra’s murder had been a minor problem. A lawsuit by the Guamans might have made for unpleasant publicity, but it wouldn’t have threatened the future of the company. They’d dispatched their outside counsel, Cowles, to buy off the Guamans, and considered that problem solved. Indeed, other private contractors had been able to avoid both civil and criminal damages from claims of rape from their employees, which made Tintrey’s payout to the Guamans almost an act of benevolence.

But Chad’s outbursts threatened Tintrey’s very future. They had grown to a multibillion-dollar empire through their Defense Department contracts. Jarvis MacLean and Gilbert Scalia could watch their stock fall through the floor if word spread that his company had sent our overstretched troops sand-filled body armor, no more protection against a sniper than a wet sock at the beach. Even if Tintrey had finally started delivering the fullerene nanoparticle-filled shields they advertised, a persnickety member of Congress might demand an inquiry, might see that they lost DOD support.

Scalia and MacLean summoned Prince Rainier to a council of war.
Chad needs to be shut up, for keeps.
No threats or blandishments, such as they offered the Guamans, would work here.

With Rainier’s help, they thought it through and came up with a brilliant plan: dispose of two birds with one bullet. Shoot Nadia, frame Chad for her death, then make it look like he committed suicide by lacing his beer with roofies. Just another PTSD Iraqi vet who took the violent way out. The neighbor who thought there was too much of the MYOB said two men in overcoats came home with Chad. Scalia and MacLean? MacLean and Prince Rainier? Not Kystarnik’s leather-clad thugs, at any rate.

And then they’d rummaged through his things and found the Achilles vest, which they dumped in the garbage. They just hadn’t noticed the shot-up shield in the bottom of the bag. They left poor Chad full of beer and roofies, gave him six or seven hours to die, and called the cops.

Only Chad had survived. And John Vishneski had hired me.

It was seven in the morning. I could hear street noises as the neighborhood came to life. Jake would have landed in Amsterdam by now. I wished I was there, in the world of music, not here in the world of violence.

I turned off the phones and went to soak in the bath. With a hot washcloth over my eyes, I tried to imagine how I could get Rainier Cowles to tell all. Nothing came to me. I could imagine getting him to meet with me, I could imagine him ambushing and shooting me, but I couldn’t think up a wedge that would induce him to talk. He was more likely to hire Rodney to kill me, Chad, and maybe even poor young Clara.

The Body Artist had her own story, her own loss, her own cons and frauds. She was the center of this particular web. Although I was pretty sure she was, well, not an innocent bystander but an unconnected bystander, I wanted to talk to her.

As I lay in the tub, I began to try out scenarios that would flush out the Artist, get her to appear for one last melodramatic performance. As the water grew cold, one idea occurred to me. I didn’t like it; it made my flesh crawl even in my tub. But it might work.

I dried off and climbed back into the sofa bed, swaddled in a soft robe that had been Jake’s Christmas present to me. This time, I fell instantly down a hole of dreamless sleep.

48

Gimme Shelter

I
f so many lives weren’t at risk, I might have slept the clock round. But as soon as I’d slept enough to take the mind-numbing edge off my fatigue, Clara’s future, Chad’s safety, my cousin Petra—all started tumbling through my dreams. Lives lost, lives at stake, pushed me awake. I needed to be in motion.

It was noon when I woke. I had a three-thirty meeting with Darraugh Graham. Not missable, not with my bread-and-butter client. So time to be up and doing, with a heart for any fate.

I went to check on Clara, who was still asleep, but poor Peppy was pacing around restlessly, desperate to get outside. I opened the door in my nightshirt and bare feet to let her run down the stairs.

While the dog relieved herself, I roused Clara. She woke in considerable bewilderment as well as a fair amount of pain. Lotty had left some prescription-strength ibuprofen for her, but I didn’t want to give it to her until she’d eaten something.

“I hurt too much to get up,” she moaned.

“Hard to believe,” I said, “but moving will make you feel better. And we need to get you someplace safer than my apartment. It’s going to be near the top of Rainier Cowles’s list of places to look if he finds out you’re missing.”

“Can’t Peppy look after me?”

“Peppy’s a lover, not a fighter. And don’t you have allergies? I thought that’s why your granny said Ernest couldn’t get a dog.”

Clara sat up. “I’m not really allergic, at least not very—it’s just that my
abuela
doesn’t want a dog. She thinks she’ll be stuck looking after it.”

Clara’s skin was puffy, and the broken nose was radiating bruises out under her eyes. Just as well Lotty had taken care of her at the clinic. Clara would have been whisked off by Child Protective Services faster than the speed of light if a hospital social worker had seen that face.

I dug out some clean jeans and a sweater that I thought would fit her. “You need to get dressed, and get some food. Then we’ll talk to your mom and your school and figure out how to navigate the next week or so until we get this nightmare all sorted out.”

“I can’t go home! Mom is so furious with me. And those people, they’ll be watching for me.”

“That’s why you need to move. Because as soon as I have you squared away, I’m going to call Prince Rainier to tell him I have the documents. That will bring him hotfoot to my side. Where you
definitely
don’t need to be.”

“But where can I go?”

“I have an idea on that, but I need to see your mom first. Meanwhile, time’s a-wasting. We have three hours to accomplish our whole agenda. You get dressed while I organize some food. Come on, up and at ’em. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog, and all that good stuff.”

Between a laugh and a snarl, Clara finally hoisted herself out of bed and shuffled off to the bathroom. I phoned down to Mr. Contreras, who was vociferous in relief at hearing from me—
Didn’t want to call up in case you was sleeping in, but I been worrying about the kid. She okay?
As I’d shamelessly assumed, he was glad to provide breakfast—French toast, his specialty—and the kid wasn’t one of those teens who starved herself, was she, whatever for, healthy girls thinking they had to act like they lived in Darfur?

“Give us half an hour.”

Clara was spending a teenage eternity in the bathroom. I put on coffee and got dressed for my meeting with Darraugh. The current pride of my wardrobe was a burgundy Carolina Herrera pantsuit that I’d found in Mexico City at Christmas, cut on the bias so that the wool jacket fell in a flattering line from the high-standing collar to the hips. My gun made an unsightly bulge at the waist, so I dug an ankle holster out of my closet.

I rapped on the bathroom door.

“Come on, Clara. I need to get in there to put on makeup.”

“I can’t come out, I look like I’ve been attacked by gangbangers. What will the kids say when they see me?”

“I already know what you look like, so your face isn’t going to shock me. We’ll figure out the rest after breakfast.”

There was silence for a few more seconds on the other side of the door, and then Clara switched on my hair dryer. I packed a suitcase with enough clothes for a few days away from home. A box of shells and a spare clip for the Smith & Wesson. My laptop and my backup drive. By the time I’d done all that, turned down the heat, and parked my mother’s Venetian glasses and my personal financial documents in Jake’s front room, Clara finally emerged.

She’d used my foundation with a lavish hand, covering the spidery network of broken blood vessels so thoroughly that her face looked startling, like a Kabuki mask.

“Well done,” I said briskly, collecting what was left of my makeup and sticking it in my bag. I’d finish my own face later.

Before she could come up with any more delaying tactics, I picked up her French book and ushered her down the stairs toward Mr. Contreras. My neighbor had breakfast laid out on his kitchen table. It wasn’t until we were facing each other across his wife’s old checked red tablecloth that I remembered her name had also been Clara. This would add to his already strong interest in the youngest Guaman sister’s welfare, and it would make it harder for him to let her go back into the world.

“We are going to have a long day,” I told him. “We’re going to Clara’s school to explain why she’s tardy and see if it’s a secure enough campus. Then we’re going to see her mother and find a safe place for them to sleep.”

Mr. Contreras said there wasn’t any place safer than his apartment, and I had to go through a longer version of the litany I’d just covered with Clara, including the fact that I was going to announce myself as the tethered goat.

He didn’t like any of it, sending Clara away, letting her go to school, or even me using myself as bait, although that was at the bottom of his list of objections. I finally suggested he accompany us to her school.

“I’ll go get the car and meet you in the alley in twenty minutes. Clara can finish her breakfast and say good-bye to Peppy.”

I went out the back way and down the alley to the side street, where I’d parked early this morning. The car didn’t blow up when I unlocked it or even when I turned over the engine. Good signs. And, even better, Mr. Contreras and Clara arrived within a minute of my pulling up behind our building.

We had a quick run down Ashland to St. Teresa of Avila. It was after one-thirty now, and I was starting to worry about the clock. Clara’s principal, Dr. Hausman, turned out to be a sharp, intelligent woman who quickly took in the details of what had happened. Hausman was cautious at first about talking to me, which made Mr. Contreras bristle. As soon as I put her in touch with Lotty, though, the principal became briskly professional.

“We did call your mother when you didn’t appear this morning,” Hausman said to Clara, “and she was quite upset but didn’t give me any details. I can see why now. We’ll give you a pass for today, but I’m going to send you off to your counselor to work out how to make up your missing assignments for today. Ms. Warshawski and I will figure out the best way to keep you in school and keep you safe.”

Dr. Hausman had the happy notion of sending Mr. Contreras with Clara. As soon as they had gone down the hall to the counselor’s office, she said, “I’ve been here long enough that I knew both Alexandra and Nadia. Their deaths have been a heavy burden on Clara, and she’s taken refuge in sarcasm and hostility, but, mercifully, she’s also taken refuge in her studies. I don’t want her class attendance to suffer, yet I also don’t want her in the kind of danger that cost her sisters their lives.”

“I’m going to try to persuade her mother to go to Arcadia House,” I said. “It’s a shelter for domestic-violence victims, and I’m on the board. If I can line up someone to act as a bodyguard to and from the shelter to the school, will Clara be safe here during the day or should I try to have someone sit with her?”

The principal thought it over. “How secure did you think we were when you got in just now?”

“It wasn’t bad, as far as it went—we came in through the main door, and we had to show some ID. I don’t know what the rest of your campus is like, how many open doors there are, and I don’t have time to look around this afternoon.”

Hausman nodded. “I’ll talk to my security staff and arrange for someone to be outside any classroom where Clara is for the next week. If it goes on longer than that, then you’ll have to hire guards. It’s not fair to the school as a whole to divert resources to one student. We had an Israeli diplomat’s child here for a semester, and he’d brought in his own guards. The kids took it in stride, once the initial excitement died down, so I don’t think they’ll overreact to anyone you bring in for Clara.”

She walked with me down to the counselor’s office, where we collected Clara and Mr. Contreras. As we walked through the high limestone gates separating the school from the street, I put my gun into my coat pocket and kept my hand on it, but the only people on the street were waiting at the bus stop at the corner, and none of them paid us any attention.

If our meeting at the school went more easily than I’d feared, our conversation with Clara’s mother was more difficult. When we got to Twenty-first Place, it was clear that someone was watching the house and not making any secret of it. A late-model black Lexus was parked in front, engine running, with either Konstantin or Ludwig at the wheel.

I didn’t slow, just went straight on to Ashland, where I parked near a busy coffee shop.

“That car in front of the house,” Clara said, “that was one of the men who hit me last night.” Her eyes were big in her Kabuki face.

“Yes,” I said, “I know who he is. I need you to call your mother, see if she’s home or at work, and get her to meet us here.” I put the battery in my cell phone and handed it to Clara.

After a moment’s hesitation, looking from me to Mr. Contreras, she typed in the number. “Ma, it’s me . . . I’m fine, just sore. Dr. Herschel, she did a great job fixing my nose. She says I shouldn’t even need surgery . . . No, I can’t come home! . . . No, he’s in front of the house, waiting for me . . . No, Ma, if I come home, he’ll kill me. You want all your children gone? . . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . Please, Ma, come to me. I’m at Julia’s Café con Leche on Ashland . . . No, now. Please, Mamá!”

The incipient hysteria in her voice was genuine and apparently got through to her mother. Clara handed me back the phone, saying Cristina was coming. I removed the battery again and hustled our little group into Julia’s to buy coffee and sandwiches. I insisted that we eat in the car. I didn’t want a row of sitting ducklings inside the coffee shop if someone trailed Clara’s mother here.

We had an agonizing half hour before Cristina appeared. As soon as Clara saw her mother, she jumped out of the car and ran to embrace her. I hurried after, anxious to get the Guamans off the streets.