Yale, or somewhere like that. If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have gone off to war. And now? With Nadia gone and Ernie hurt, I have to do something big with my life or they’ll all be dead for nothing!”
“That sounds like a terrible burden to carry around.”
“I have these dreams,” she whispered, “where Nadia and Allie push me off a cliff, and Mama and Papi are holding out their arms like they’re going to catch me, only they disappear, and I’m still falling. I wake up just before I hit the ground.”
Her shoulders began to shake, and she was suddenly sobbing-those heaving, gut-wrenching sobs that make you feel your whole body will rip apart. That’s what it means to cry your heart out. I put an arm around Clara.
“Tough road you’re on, kid, tough road,” I murmured into her hair.
People kept coming to the back of the shop to use the toilets. They stared at us, and one of them started to call Clara’s name but backed away when Clara glowered at her. Eventually, her sobs died down. I made her swallow some of my cold, overboiled coffee and handed her a napkin to blow her nose.
“What did Nadia tell you about Chad?”
“Just that he scared her. She thought first he was from Prince Rainier and that he was going to beat her up for drawing Allie’s picture. But Chad thought she was making fun of him, that’s why he was so angry. It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“None of this makes any sense. Not the insurance money. Or why a lawyer like Cowles cares. Although Chad has PTSD, and things set him off that might not seem logical.”
“I have to get to school,” Clara said. “I left before mass, but now I’m late for first period. What are you going to do?”
I made a face. “I don’t understand anything right now. But, I promise, I will act with your safety in mind. If you do start feeling scared”-I pulled out one of my cards and wrote my home address on it-“go to this address, ring the first-floor bell. An old man named Mr. Contreras will let you in and look after you. He’s my neighbor. I’ve known him for years. Believe me, there’s no one more trustworthy in this city.”
The pen pressed against my swollen palm and made it hard to write clearly, but I added CONTRERAS in block letters under my address on Racine and handed it to her along with a twenty.
“That’s for a cab if you need to run fast. Don’t spend it on eye shadow or coffee drinks. It’s your bolt-hole money.”
29 Stale Act
When I got to my office, Petra was sitting in the lot in her silver Nissan, the motor running. She climbed out as soon as she saw me pull up and started talking before I was out of my car.
“What happened last night? Olympia just called to tell me I’m fired! She said it’s because you burned down her club, and I couldn’t be trusted as long as you were in my life. You didn’t really, did you?”
“And the top of the morning to you, too, my little chickadee.”
Lack of sleep was making me dizzy. I forgot about my sore palm and picked my gun up from where I’d left it on the car seat. Cold metal on open wound made me cry out involuntarily.
“Don’t snarl at me-thanks to you, I’m unemployed.”
“Thanks to
Petra trudged down the street with me, everything in her body, from the jut of her lower lip to her hunched shoulders, designed to tell me how big a burden I was in her life. I didn’t even try to make conversation. Let her sulk.
At the diner, I thought about the healthy option-oatmeal, fruit, yogurt-but I needed protein. And I was craving grease. Fried eggs and hash browns. Petra petulantly told the waitress that she wasn’t hungry.
“What did you do to Olympia and why is she taking it out on me?”
I shut my eyes and leaned back in the booth. “Not until I get food.”
As soon as my breakfast arrived, Petra repeated her plaint. She, un-hungry cousin, also helped herself to my hash browns. I ate the eggs, trying to pretend I was alone, or with Jake, perhaps in a luxury suite at the Four Seasons. Finally, though, I told Petra what had gone on last night after the thugs had sent her and the rest of the staff away.
“Olympia is playing a very dangerous game if she’s playing with Anton Kystarnik,” I said. “Frankly, since you wouldn’t quit, I’m glad she fired you.”
Petra took a piece of my toast and spread jam on it. “But you said you weren’t sure who those guys were.”
“I’m not sure what makes the sky blue, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe it is.”
“But-”
“Rodney, the guy who stuck his hand in your pants, works for Kystarnik. Olympia gives him the run of the club. She forced Karen to let him put his cryptic messages on her butt when she was doing her mourning piece for Nadia. Look up Kystarnik. He is one scary dude.”
I glared at her and snatched the last piece of toast before she could get it. “Order your own damned breakfast.”
“So how come you set the stage on fire?”
“Collateral damage.” I explained how it happened and showed her the purple mess in my palm. Not that it was relevant, just that it hurt, and I wanted Petra to see that I’d been wounded in the line of duty.
“Olympia is scared. She’s thrashing around, she’s blaming me for her troubles, and she’s taking it out on you as a way to hurt me.”
“But what am I going to live on?” my cousin cried. “I lost my day job. Now this. Don’t tell me to beg my folks, that’s what my friends are saying, but I just can’t, not now that I know how they got their money.”
“Petra, I need help.” I wondered if I was insane or just too tired to think straight. “You can work for me for a bit. Not anything glamorous, and definitely not anything dangerous, but I’d pay you fifteen an hour to start.”
“Really?” Her face instantly lost its sullen pout and came to life. “Oh, Vic, you’re the best. I’m sorry I called you names!”
“A few provisos,” I said in my driest voice. “Everything I do is confidential. Everything. People who come to a detective have problems that they can’t solve any other way. If you text or blog or phone or communicate
She looked instinctively at her phone, which had been Tweeting at her while we talked. “Gosh, Vic, there’s no need to look like Darth Vader. I know how to keep a secret.”
“Good,” I said, although I didn’t really believe her. “The other thing is, you aren’t licensed, you don’t have the experience or the credentials for a license, so there’s a limit to the kinds of tasks you can undertake. But the state will view everything you do as happening on my orders, so don’t, under any circumstances, start imagining a better way to handle a tricky situation. If it backfires, I could lose my license, and then we’d both be in the gutter, living on Peppy’s leftover dog food.”
“This doesn’t sound like fun,” Petra grumbled.
I put twelve bucks on the check and got to my feet.
“You don’t have to do it. I can get someone from an agency.”
“I will, I will,” my cousin stood up, too. “Just don’t be a bully. I work best when I’m part of a team, not a robot.”
“There’s a certain amount of robot to the assistant job,” I warned her. “You’ll have to pretend I’m not your cousin, that this job is as important as, well, as keeping Olympia’s customers happy. There’s filing, there’s keeping track of e-mails, phone messages-a lot of all investigative work is sheer, unmitigated, boring routine.”
Petra nodded. “I will be the unbullied gofer to end all unbullied gofers, as long as you don’t hog
I smiled at her. “I promise I will let you take the next metal shard to the hand.”
As we waited at the long light on Milwaukee, I asked if the Body Artist had ever said anything that suggested
