“What’s yours?”
I smiled again. “Not enough data to begin to guess.”
“So you’re a careful woman, are you? Not a risk taker, hmm?”
For some reason, the time I’d swung from a gantry and landed in the Sanitary Canal flashed through my head, and I laughed but didn’t say anything.
He eyed me narrowly, annoyed at my frivolity but smart enough not to expose himself to possible ridicule. He looked at his watch: the conversation was over. He asked perfunctorily if I was heading to the cemetery, and when I said no, he strode briskly down the street to his car. It was a BMW sedan, which looked a bit like him-expensive cut, shiny black exterior, sleek lines.
I moved slowly to my Mustang. This was its third winter in Chicago, and it didn’t look sleek at all. It looked like me, tired and even confused, since the front and rear axles seemed to be pointing in opposite directions.
11 The Mama and the Papa, in Concert
Back in my office, I found messages from Lotty and Freeman Carter. Lotty had called to say that her neurosurgeon, Dr. Rafael, had visited Chad at Cermak Hospital. Rafael had insisted on his removal to Beth Israel. Freeman’s message let me know he’d provided the court order to expedite Chad’s move-he should be at Beth Israel already.
I called Freeman to thank him, and tried to reach Lotty, both to thank her and to try to get an idea about Chad’s health. Unfortunately, she wasn’t available, and the charge nurse had a scrupulous sense of protocol: I wasn’t part of the family or one of the lawyers; I didn’t get any news. John Vishneski’s phone was turned off; that probably meant he was with his son in the ICU. I asked him to call me and opened the case file I’d started on Chad.
I added Rainier Cowles’s name to the Vishneski file, but the name sounded so bogus I did a LexisNexis check on him. He was a partner at Palmer & Statten, one of the globe’s megafirms whose Chicago presence occupied eight floors of a Wacker Drive high-rise.
Cowles had grown up in the northwest suburbs and was respectably educated, with a BA from Michigan and his JD/MBA from Penn. He’d joined Palmer & Statten right after passing the bar, and during the next twenty years had moved steadily up the path to partner. The Palmer & Statten website listed his particular expertise as corporate litigation, with a specialty in multinationals.
I didn’t find a record of a name change, but it still seemed incredible that parents had burdened their child with such a name. “Prince Rainier,” I murmured to the computer. He’d probably been called that a ton in his subdivision growing up. Maybe it’s why he’d put on the carapace of corporate success. Imposing trial presence, important car. But he must have a soft center, or he wouldn’t be involved with the hard-luck Guamans. Or maybe he’d represented them in litigation over Ernie’s injuries.
None of this speculation was helping me look at Chad’s relationship with Nadia.
“The client is the boss. His son is innocent. Get to work proving it,” I said aloud in my sternest voice and phoned Mona Vishneski.
Mona had left her mother’s as soon as she learned of her son’s arrest, and was now back in Chicago. She was staying with her ex-husband in Wrigleyville, which John hadn’t bothered to tell me. She agreed to meet me for a cup of tea at Lilith’s, a little cafe on Southport near John’s apartment, around five.
The snow had started again. Lilith’s was six blocks from my apartment. With the ice and snow packed along the curbs making street parking a challenge, it was better to put my car in my building’s alley garage and walk. I carried my laptop with me in a waterproof case.
It was already dark by the time I got to the cafe. The warmth and lights inside seemed feeble against the wind whipping snow pellets against the windows. I ordered a double macchiato and found a table as far from the door as possible.
While I waited for Mona, I started to download the reports LifeStory and the Monitor Project had given me on Olympia, Karen Buckley, and on Chad himself. I was especially curious about Karen, after her performance at Nadia’s funeral.
The most important question-who had known whom and how-wasn’t one the computer could answer reliably, although I took a stab at the question through MySpace and Facebook. Olympia had a Facebook page, but you had to have her permission to see any details, such as her cyberfriends. Chad had a MySpace page, but none of the women were among his “friends.” I couldn’t find Karen Buckley on any of the social networks.
Fishing around to see where Karen’s and Nadia’s lives might have intersected, I checked to see if they had gone to art school together. I already had looked up Nadia’s details-her training at Columbia College in the south Loop, her job at a big design firm, followed by precarious freelancing after she was laid off-but I couldn’t find any information on Karen Buckley. A quick search revealed hundreds of Karen Buckleys-singers, quilters, doctors, lawyers-across the country, but only four dozen Karen Buckleys or K. Buckleys in our four-state area. About six of those seemed to match the Body Artist’s race and age. None of them had a findable history as an artist.
Unlike most artists, who are at pains to tell you where they’ve trained, where they’ve held shows, what museums own their work, Karen’s history wasn’t just sketchy, it was missing altogether. She didn’t list her education or her shows on the embodiedart.com website. She didn’t offer any personal information at all.
I needed her Social Security number, but I couldn’t find a home address for her, let alone a credit history that might yield information on her background. I went back to embodiedart.com. If you had to pay her for her work, she must have a bank account or a credit card somewhere, but she took payment only through PayPal, which meant she could be collecting the money under another name, maybe even in another state.
I sat back in my chair. Here was a woman who was aggressive in exposing herself before audiences and yet she’d left no trail in our hyper-documented age. I could imagine a fear of stalkers might require total anonymity in her life these days, but it was strange that someone so purposefully self-exposing left no public trace of her private life.
I transferred addresses for the handful of K. Buckleys who might be the Body Artist. I could do old-fashioned legwork, see if any of them had a home studio, but I wasn’t expecting to find her.
I was so lost in thought, and files, that I didn’t notice Mona Vishneski until she appeared at my table and hesitantly said my name.
“Ms. Vishneski!” I sprang to my feet.
She was a lost-looking woman around my age, her clothes hanging on her, as if worry over her son had made her lose a dress size overnight. Close up, I could see how rough her skin was; she didn’t seem to have washed her face or combed her hair since Chad’s arrest. She took off her gloves and then looked at them puzzled, trying to figure out what they were. She was carrying a scuffed leather handbag, big enough to hold a computer and a change of clothes. She finally stuck her gloves into one of its side pockets.
“John told me he hired you to clear Chad’s name. I used to work with detectives back when I was managing a building for Mercurio. We’d hire them to find out where people had skipped off to without paying their rent, but I don’t remember we ever hired you.”
I agreed that I’d never worked for Mercurio. Companies that size tend to use big agencies, not solo ops like me.
“But, Ms. Vishneski, your husband-ex-husband-hired me to find out what happened Friday night at Club Gouge. You both need to understand, however painful it is to think about, that the evidence points to your son having shot Nadia Guaman.”
“If you think he’s guilty, then I don’t think we should be working with you.” Her eyes were bright with emotion.
I kept my voice level. “I’m committed to approaching this situation with an open mind. But I can’t ignore evidence, and the evidence is that the murder weapon was found next to Chad. Another thing: I was present myself for two extremely angry encounters between your son and Nadia Guaman. I plan to look into their relationship, to see what lay behind his rage. But if you’d be more comfortable working with one of the detectives you used to know at Mercurio, I can respect that. If Mr. Vishneski agrees, then we’ll void the contract he signed yesterday and return his retainer. I would ask you to pay the fee my lawyer is charging for providing the court order we needed to move
