hustled me into a cubbyhole behind the bar that served as her office. There was just room for her computer table and a stool. She stood so close to me that I could smell the mix of sweat, cigarettes, and Opium in her body stocking.
“Why can’t you mind your own business? The cops are on the trail of this guy Chad. Why did you have to drag one of my best customers out for them to sniff at?”
“Because he’s a violent guy. Sports a weapon, isn’t afraid to show it in an effort to intimidate. Not that I really care, but what hold does he have on you?”
“You’re the one who’s a problem in my club. Ever since you started coming here, I’ve had nothing but trouble.”
“Save your femmy ignorance for Rodney. It won’t work on Terry Finchley, and it definitely won’t work on me. You’re the one who said controversy was great for your business. For all I know, you’re the person who put glass in the Artist’s paintbrush.”
“How dare you make an accusation like that against me in my own club!”
I leaned against the thin plywood wall. “Olympia,” I said. “I’m so tired I’m about to fall over. I don’t care what you’re hiding or doing as long as it’s not something criminal that might hurt my cousin. But don’t try to jack me around. I don’t have the patience or the time for it.”
I pried open the door, but Olympia grabbed my arm. “I’m sorry. I’m beside myself, I-Nadia getting shot like that-it’s so horrible.”
“Okay. Try to think clearly. Tell me what’s really on your mind. Why are you protecting Rodney but sacrificing Chad, who also seems to be a good customer, one who pays for his own drinks?”
“If I thought Rodney had killed Nadia-”
“So you agree that’s his first name. What about his last name? Or have you paid for protection you’re not willing to sacrifice?”
The color drained from her face. “What do you know about him?”
I tried to push my tired brain into sorting out what she was revealing. “Not enough, apparently. But, believe me, I have the resources to help me find out more.”
I ignored her bleating and stomped through the club to the rear exit. I picked my way across the ruts in the club’s parking lot, my path well lighted by the blue strobes on the squad cars. It was a disconcerting juxtaposition, the strobes outside the club and the strobes inside, as if there were two performance spaces. It worried me that both looked artificial, as if a woman shot at close range were no more real than a naked woman on a stool painting her body.
As soon as I got home, I ran inside to turn on the shower. While I waited for the water to heat, I inspected myself in the mirror. I did have blood in my hair.
I stripped and dropped my clothes in the tub. I didn’t know if it would ruin the sweater to get it wet like this, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel able to wear it again, anyway.
I climbed into the shower and shampooed my hair twice. I used a coarse brush to scrub my fingernails. I climbed out and put my sodden clothes onto the radiator, but I felt a trickle on my spine and shuddered. It was only water-I was sure it was only water-but I couldn’t stop myself. I climbed back under the shower. I understood Lady Macbeth’s fetish now: every time I got out, I would feel blood on my scalp again. It was only when the hot water ran out that I finally dried off and went to bed.
Nadia and Karen Buckley, the Body Artist, filled my unquiet dreams. Buckley was in the parking lot, painting the ice-packed ruts under the blue strobes of the cop cars. When I bent to see her work, the ruts filled with blood. Olympia was trying to scoop it out with her hands before I could see it, and as she paddled it between her legs, it covered my cousin. I tried to call a warning to Petra but couldn’t speak. In the next instant, Rodney had grabbed Petra and was forcing her face down in the blood.
“Alley,” Nadia cried, as she had in my arms. “Alley.”
I woke, soaked in sweat and shivering. Nadia should have had a mother or a lover with her at her end. She should have died in her great old age, surrounded by her grandchildren. Her last thought shouldn’t have been that she was dying in an alley with a stranger.
I got out of bed, pulling the comforter around me, and went into the kitchen. It was six-thirty Saturday morning, the winter sky still black as midnight. I sat cross-legged at the table, staring sightlessly out the window. The air gradually lightened to a ghostly gray-white, but I couldn’t see anything: another snowstorm was slamming the city. I went to the window, searching for signs of life but couldn’t see even across the alley to the apartments beyond. Finally, hoping Mr. Contreras would look after the dogs, I went back to bed and slept until noon.
By Sunday, the storm had passed, leaving eight inches of new snow and a bright, bitter day in its wake. After taking the dogs for a long, exhausting walk, I spent the afternoon with Jake. We watched
We were walking up Racine for a late supper when Olympia called me. “Have you seen the news?”
“What, Club Gouge is doubling its space in the wake of Friday’s homicide?”
“You have a weird sense of humor, Warshawski. No, the police found Nadia’s killer. That huge tattooed guy who kept tearing up the club. They picked him up with the gun used to shoot Nadia. Such a relief. They’ll let us open on Tuesday!”
“That is a relief, Olympia. And wonderful that you could keep such a focused perspective on Nadia’s death.”
I hung up on her demand to know “Just what do you mean by that?”
7 No-Smoking Zone
Olympia’s call effectually ended my brief sense of well-being. When we returned from dinner, while Jake practiced I looked up the news of Nadia’s killer. Web news sites can be as obnoxious as any tabloid-maybe more so, since it’s so easy to play with images.
“From War Hero to Club Killer” screamed the
An anonymous tip led police to an apartment on a quiet street in Lakeview, where the troubled vet who allegedly murdered Nadia Guaman was living. Chad Vishneski, awarded the Bronze Star for valor in Iraq, couldn’t take civilian life. He returned with a ferocious anger that moved him from random acts of vandalism to the sinister, when he began stalking and finally murdered a young graphic artist at Club Gouge on Friday.
The Chicago native was a Lane Tech football star, who went to Grand Valley State on a scholarship, but dropped out to join the Army, where he served four tours before his discharge last summer.
I clicked on a link to a video report and saw footage of a woman, her face swollen with fury.
“The police broke down the door,” she said.
The video showed a door with the wood splintered behind a yellow crime scene banner.
“When I heard the noise, I thought it was Chad. He was so angry all the time since he got home, so I went in the hall to look. Only it was the police come to arrest him. Mona, that’s his mother, she’s out of town. She let him sleep there, even though everyone knows how unstable he is. The condo board is going to have to take action, maybe evict her-we could all have been murdered.”
The video footage shifted to Terry Finchley, standing solemn-faced in the lobby of the police headquarters building, holding a gun in the approved fashion-suspended from a stick passed through the trigger guard.
“We found the perpetrator passed out in bed with this Baby Glock next to him on the floor. Our forensics tests prove that this was the weapon that was used to kill Nadia Guaman.”
Someone asked if it was true that Chad had been brought in drunk. Terry said Chad had apparently taken a drug overdose. He was in the intensive care ward at Cermak Hospital, on the grounds of the Cook County Jail complex, over at Twenty-sixth and California.
I skimmed the rest of the story. Childhood friends recalled Chad as a lighthearted, fun-loving guy. He hadn’t been a football standout, but he’d been big enough to get a Division II scholarship. Back then, “his life was, like, girls, beer, games. The war, it gave him a reason to quit school and serve his country,” one high school buddy said.
