Body Work

no trouble accessing the content of either.

I heard Mona’s nervous murmuring as she came back to the room and slipped the athletic blondes back into Fortune, then put the magazines into my briefcase. Chad’s mother didn’t need to see his reading material.

“I thought I saw his phone yesterday, but it’s not there now.”

“You probably just thought you saw it.” John had appeared behind her, holding a couple of black plastic bags. “You were tired and flustered, you know how you get. I’ve looked all over your living room, and it’s not there.”

“It was on the kitchen counter,” she fussed. “I saw it when I got my glass of water.”

I put all my specimens into the bags, conscientiously writing down labels on some scrap paper from Mona’s desk, and sealed them with her packing tape.

“If Chad’s phone turns up, give me a call. I’ve seen everything I need for now. It’s late, we all need some rest. If you want to talk to a criminal defense lawyer, Freeman Carter is good. He’s the person who got the court order that let you move Chad this morning. He has a new associate in his office who seems very capable to me, a woman named Deb Steppe whose fees won’t be as steep as Freeman’s.”

I wrote Freeman’s details down for them while Mona took the chicken dinner her son had left in the bedroom to the garbage. When she’d turned out the lights, she couldn’t find her keys. While she hunted through her purse, I picked them up from the chair where she’d dropped them on her way into the apartment. I had a feeling Chad’s phone was in that big shoulder bag of hers, but I was getting impatient to take off. If I couldn’t find a phone number for Tim Radke, the one friend whose name John and Mona knew, maybe I’d mug her and search her bag.

The door at the far end of the hall opened again as we waited for the elevator. If I’d actually believed in Chad’s innocence at this point, I would have talked to the watchful neighbor. The trouble was, I thought he was guilty. I was sloppy. It came back later to haunt me.

The storm had stopped when we finally got back downstairs. The building super was running a snowblower around the walks, and strewing salt, but beyond the building perimeter the snow was ankle-deep. I didn’t want to trudge through it carrying all the souvenirs I’d collected-Chad’s guns, his beer cans, his porn collection-so I waited at the curb while John and Mona went off to fetch the car.

When they dropped me at home, it was past eight. I knew I had to do something about the dogs. And now that I was away from the mess and tension in Mona’s apartment, I realized I was hungry as well. I was about to call Jake, to see if he wanted to walk up to Belmont for a snack, when my cousin phoned.

“Vic! Didn’t you get my messages?”

I’d turned my phone off when I was meeting with Mona and had forgotten to turn it back on. Petra had been trying to call all afternoon to say that Olympia was reopening the club tonight. Karen Buckley was going to do a special tribute performance in Nadia’s honor.

“I thought-I know they arrested that guy, that vet-but do you think you could come? Everyone’s so totally on edge, and Olympia is behaving strangely. It’s, like, something else is going to happen. I’d like you to be there-if you can, of course.”

I looked wistfully at my cozy living room and my dogs, who were panting hopefully in the doorway. “Petra, darling, on Friday I gave you my best advice and you ignored it. But let me repeat: You don’t have to keep working at Club Gouge.”

“Oh, Vic, I know, I know. I’m a pest. But you will come tonight, won’t you?”

Maybe I could talk to Karen Buckley. Maybe she would be more forthcoming after her performance than she had been at Nadia Guaman’s funeral this afternoon. I wasn’t too hopeful, but I told Petra I’d come down to the club after I’d run the dogs and eaten something.

“Oh, Vic, thank you, thank you. You’re the best!”

The best chump, she meant. I was more annoyed with myself than Petra. Why did I cave so easily to her demands?

I was worn out. When I finished taking care of the dogs, I lay down for almost an hour before heading back out into the cold.

13 A Show for the Dead

Despite the storm, the Club Gouge parking lot was crowded. Olympia’s marquee announced that the Body Artist was back for a special memorial performance in honor of Nadia Guaman, killed so tragically five days earlier. Olympia had put it out on Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, wherever the Millennium Gen gathers, and they’d responded in force. Oh, the dead do us so much good from the other side of the grave!

The room was almost full when I got inside. Rodney was planted in his usual spot, two-thirds of the way back from the stage. I squeezed into a spare seat at a crowded table near the back of the room where I could watch people as they came in. I didn’t see any of Chad’s Army buddies, which was a pity. I’d hoped they might show up to save me the trouble of trying to find them online.

Tonight, perhaps because of the short notice, there wasn’t a live act as a warm-up. The sound system was turned up loud, but we were listening to Enya’s Shepherd Moons, whose haunting melodies conveyed a suitable sense of mourning.

My cousin, working the far side of the room, caught sight of me. She hurried over with a glass of whisky. “Johnnie Walker Black, Vic, it’s on me. Thank you so much for coming.”

Olympia, standing next to the bar like a captain on the bridge of a ship, saw me then and swept over to my table. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought the object of a club was to invite customers, not drive them away.”

“You’re not a customer. You’re a detective, and detectives are bad for business.”

“Now, that very much depends on the kind of business you’re conducting, doesn’t it?” I watched her face, but she played poker with bigger gamblers than me; she showed no signs of any emotion besides impatience, so I added, “I went to Nadia’s funeral this afternoon. Karen came, but I guess you were too busy setting up here.”

“Karen went to the funeral?” Olympia lost some of her commanding poise. “Why?”

“Better ask her. I was trying to figure out why she kissed Nadia on the lips in front of the altar. I couldn’t decide if they had been lovers or if Karen was asking forgiveness of the dead.”

“What would she need forgiveness for?”

“Creating the situation in which Nadia became the target for a shooter. Or maybe someone shot Nadia by mistake. Maybe the person who put glass in Karen’s paintbrush a few weeks back was trying to do the job right this time and missed a second time. You got any security in place here besides your bouncer? And that guy?” I nodded toward Rodney.

“My insecurity, you mean.” Olympia gave a laugh with an edge to it. “Besides, the police caught Nadia’s murderer, as you know very well.”

“The police made an arrest,” I acknowledged, “but that isn’t the same thing as catching Nadia’s murderer.”

“Are you saying that the vet isn’t guilty?” Her eyes widened with alarm, dismay, or even pretense-hard to read in the dimly lit room.

“The setup calls for further exploration,” I said primly. “Chad Vishneski was asleep in his mother’s apartment with the murder weapon-the alleged murder weapon-on the pillow next to his head when the cops picked him up. Who phoned them? Why was the gun there? If it was, in fact, his gun, why didn’t he stow it with his other weapons? How did he know Nadia? That’s a raftful of unanswered questions. Come to think of it, Olympia, that wasn’t you or Rodney here who phoned the cops, was it?”

She sucked in a sharp, harsh breath and looked involuntarily at Rodney. In another moment, she’d taken off. She stopped at the bar to check on her staff, paused at Rodney’s table with a glance at me, and then worked her way through the crowd, stopping to banter with regulars or to check on people’s orders, just the good host, making sure her guests were happy.

I sipped my whisky and pretended not to be watching her. In a moment, she slipped across the small stage and disappeared behind the curtain that led to the changing rooms. I waited thirty seconds, then snaked my own way through the crowd to the back of the stage.