Part 17 (1/2)

”I'm sorry,” I smiled at her. ”I found this next to him on the floor and thought maybe he'd dropped it.”

”He wants a dog, and maybe we should get him one, but I don't want to care for a dog as well as for Ernest. Anyway, his sister is allergic.”

”He's here for therapy?” I asked.

”I don't know how much they can do for him, but we come two times every week. After all, if you give up hope, you have nothing left.”

”It's hard,” I said. ”One of my cousins was shot in the head. He can still walk and talk, but he's lost his impulse control. He behaves so wildly in public we don't know if he can ever live on his own again.”

Lies. The detective's stock-in-trade was really making me squirm today.

”With Ernie, it was a motorcycle,” she said. ”We kept him out of the gangs. He was a good boy, always, but not a scholar like his sisters, They all are brilliant students. Were Were brilliant students.” Her face creased in sorrow. ”Two of them are dead now.” brilliant students.” Her face creased in sorrow. ”Two of them are dead now.”

”I'm so sorry! Was it in the same accident where he was injured?”

It seemed disrespectful to talk about Ernest as if he wasn't there, but, in a way, he wasn't. He was crooning over the picture of the puppy. My guilt mounted.

”The oldest, she died in Iraq. These two were close. Her death hit him in the heart. I think that's why he was careless with his motorcycle. Six months after Allie's death, he ran off the expressway. Somehow, the motorcycle climbed over the railing. I don't understand how, I wasn't here. And my son couldn't explain it to me.”

”Allie!” Ernest heard his sister's name and dropped the picture. ”Allie is a dove. She flies around with Jesus! Now Nadia is a dove. Men are shooting my sisters. They'll get Clara next! Bam, bam! Poor Clara.”

”What, Allie was shot in battle?” I asked the grandmother.

”They shot Allie, bam, bam!”

”No, Ernesto, poor Allie was killed by a bomb.”

”They shot her, Nana, bam, bam! They shot Nadia, bam! Next, Clara, bam, bam!”

He was getting more and more agitated. I picked up the picture of the puppy.

”The puppy will kiss Clara and make her all better,” I suggested, holding it out to him.

”Yes! Nana, we need to get Clara a puppy. No one can shoot her if she has a puppy.”

In another minute, he was crooning happily over the picture again. I apologized to his grandmother for stirring him up.

”How could you know?” she said. ”The death of his sister, he still can't understand what really happened to her. And his mother, she won't allow us to mention Alexandra's name. So he never has a chance to talk. Maybe one day his poor brain will clear, and he will understand what happened to her.”

”The third sister isn't really in danger, is she?”

The grandmother's eyes clouded. ”I pray night and day for her safety. When you have lost two-three, really”-she nodded toward her grandson-”you are frightened all the time.”

The clerk called her by name. ”Daydreaming, Mrs. Guaman? It's your turn! Ernie, your friends are waiting for you.”

I slipped away as the grandmother began to chat in Spanish with the clerk and drove to my office in a sober mood.

26.

A Show in the Dark.

Back in my office, I wrote up my conversation with Scalia and the odd reaction of everyone I'd met at Tintrey to Alexandra's name. I left out the tampon-why include that in a doc.u.ment that might get subpoenaed for a trial?-and threw out the notebook that Scalia had damaged. The last column in my investigator spreadsheet was labeled ”Dead Ends.” Jesse Laredo, Chad's buddy from Iraq, was dead. Jesse's mother had called while I was out to say she couldn't find any trace of Chad's blogs or e-mails among her son's things. The message wasn't a surprise-it would surprise me if I learned one reliable thing in this wretched case-but it did depress me further.

I looked up [embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com again to see if there were any new postings, but the site was still down ”out of respect for the dead.” I took out my notes where I'd copied some of Rodney's code. There were several L L's but no Q Q's. I rubbed my eyes. Kystarnik had to know he was under surveillance. He had to realize he needed multiple avenues to communicate with his thugs. So it seemed reasonable to a.s.sume that Rodney's scribbles were some means of communication. Even so, the feds could also be watching the Body Artist, so it wasn't exactly a secret code. So why was he doing it?

Maybe Rodney's mission was simply to taunt Olympia about the money she owed Rest EZ. When she'd been so angry with Karen Buckley the other night for refusing to let Rodney write on her b.u.t.tocks, Olympia had told her they were in the same boat together. But Karen said it wasn't any of her business if Club Gouge went under. I turned the argument this way and that in my mind, but couldn't come up with any compelling reason Karen had for doing what Olympia and Rodney wanted.

I looked at the column I called ”Key Players” and added Gilbert Scalia. I couldn't see any place that Tintrey and Rest EZ intersected except at Olympia's club. Rodney, Rainier Cowles, Scalia, and Tintrey owner Jarvis MacLean had all been there on the same night. But what did that prove?

Olympia knew things she wasn't telling. So did the Body Artist. All I needed was for one of them to open up, and the whole house of cards would fall neatly around me.

I dug deeper into Rainier Cowles's biography and found that he had handled litigation for Tintrey. As I'd suspected, Palmer & Statten was Tintrey's outside counsel. But so what?

I flung a pencil at the wall in frustration. As if on cue, John Vishneski called to say that Mona hadn't printed out any of Chad's blog postings, either.

”The docs say he's holding his own still,” he said. ”What have you found out?”

”I'm trying to see where his life and Nadia Guaman's intersected, and I'm a.s.suming it had to be in Iraq, where Nadia's sister died, so that's the lead I'm working right now. I'll call you when I know something definite. Or if Chad regains consciousness and can talk, let me know. Meanwhile, keep playing your clarinet for him.”

I hung up before he could criticize my lack of progress or pry more deeply into what I was or wasn't doing. Because I couldn't think of anything else to do, I looked up Ernest Guaman's motorcycle accident. Of course, injuries like his are routine in a city like Chicago. Like Chad Vishneski's squad-eight men dead and only three mentioned by name-there so many accidents in Chicago that you'd have to be in a spectacular one for anyone to care.

Finally, in the Hispanic newspaper, I found a brief paragraph on Ernest Guaman. That gave me the date-seven months after Allie's death-but no details. ”He was alone on his Honda at two in the afternoon, but no one has come forward to say how the accident took place,” I translated laboriously. I guess I'd been imagining someone forcing him off the road to try to silence him. I'd wanted said the article to say, ”Ernest Guaman, crusading for justice for his sister Alexandra, was forced off the road today by ________,” and the blank would be filled in with the name of the person who'd gone on to shoot Nadia for drawing her sister's portrait on Karen Buckley's back.

It was Friday night, and I'd had a long week. Jake had decreed a moratorium on rehearsals. I declared a similar moratorium on the Vishneskis. I put on makeup and a formfitting sweater, and we went to an old-fas.h.i.+oned night club, one where everyone kept their clothes on. Jake knew the ba.s.s player, so we got a table up front. We stayed until the club closed at three, dancing and drinking. We spent Sat.u.r.day catching up on sleep, taking a lazy walk along the lakefront with the dogs, watching an old Alec Guinness movie.

On Sunday, the brief honeymoon was over. Jake's early music group came by at four for a rehearsal. I headed back to Club Gouge, in the hope of finding a way to get the Body Artist or Olympia to talk to me.

I'm not much for disguises, not like Sherlock Holmes or Aimee Leduc, but I did put on makeup using a heavy hand with the eyeliner and mascara and dug through the junk in my hall closet for a pink plastic wig I'd worn at Halloween. With that and the Smith & Wesson in my tuck holster, if I didn't fool anyone with my getup, at least I could shoot my way past Olympia's bouncer.

It was just after nine when I reached the club, and excitement was building as the Body Artist's performance time drew near. I parked down the street and attached myself to a high-spirited group waiting in line. Everyone had to show IDs to make sure the drinking age limit was met. The crowd was large enough that one of the bartenders was helping the bouncer. The two were s.h.i.+ning flashlights on the birth dates only, not bothering to check pictures against faces, so I held my driver's license out to the bartender, thumb casually covering my photo, and slipped inside.

It felt like old times. Rodney at his spot, glowering at a bottle of beer. My cousin swooping around with drinks, laughing and flirting equally with men and women. Olympia, tonight wearing skintight white leather with a trailing black scarf, behind the bar, captain on the bridge, surveying the deck.

Finally, the lights went down, then came up on Karen Buckley naked on her stool. The two figures in burkas appeared at the edge of the stage, miming longing and fear.

I couldn't take another show. I worked my way through the crowd to the edge of the room and went into the corridor where the toilets were. I'd planned on going through the door between the public s.p.a.ce and the dressing rooms to wait for Karen there, but Olympia, or perhaps Karen, had posted a guard at the door, a stocky, scowling man in black. In my role as Pink Plastic Bubble Hair, I smiled and waggled my fingers at him. He scowled even more thoroughly.

I went into the women's toilets, where I amused myself by answering e-mails, and finally heard the eruption of laughter that announced the end of the show. In a few minutes, the bathroom was full of women, laughing with embarra.s.sment or chattering excitedly about Karen's performance. I went back into the corridor, where a long line was waiting to use the facilities. A much shorter line, naturally, stood outside the men's room.

The lights suddenly went out again. People screamed, pulled out cell phones to light up the hallway, jabbered in confusion. A man's voice, heavily accented, boomed through the sound system. ”We're experiencing electrical problems. I'll have to ask everyone to leave, guests and staff. We have a crew with flashlights to help you find your coats and personal belongings. If you haven't paid your bill yet, the last round was on the house. See you Friday, and our apologies for the inconvenience.”

I flattened myself against the wall as the crowd pushed toward the exits. Panic seemed to infect people in the dark. No one seemed to wonder how the electricity could be out while the mike onstage worked perfectly.

Inside the club's main room, powerful flashlights played around. I couldn't see who was wielding them, but a man appeared next to a table where a couple was still seated and urged them to their feet-and not in any gentle way. As the lights shone on the bar, on the tables, on the exit, I saw another man in black outside Olympia's cube of an office.