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 document 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 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
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 buttocks, 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 assuming 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-fashioned night club, one where everyone kept their clothes on. Jake knew the bass player, so we got a table up front. We stayed until the club closed at three, dancing and drinking. We spent Saturday 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 shining 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 space 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 embarrassment 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.
I thought Olympia would stick around to go down with her ship but couldn’t locate her in the crowd. I did see my cousin’s feathery halo of hair heading toward the exit and breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever was going on, I didn’t want Petra to be part of it.
While the flashlights were focused on the middle of the room, I slipped behind the curtain at the back of the stage. A door behind the stage that led to the corridor was partly open. I stood flat against the wall and peered between the door’s hinges.
