Sara Paretsky - Body Work

“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.

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.

Olympia was standing in the dressing-room doorway, hands on hips, talking through the half-open door. My hiking boots made it hard to tiptoe, but I moved as close as I could.

“Your contract requires that the audience be able to put their art on your body.” That was Olympia. “If people walk away disappointed, they won’t come back. And we’ll both suffer.”

“I’m not the person who got into debt, and I don’t care about your suffering any more than you care about mine. For once, you and your precious investor will have to appreciate real art instead of kindergarten doodles. I spent four days on these stencils. It took Rivka six hours to paint me. I’m not wiping all this off so you can titillate people with death. Or save your club.”

“Damn you, Karen, you know damned well you have to do something. And not just to save-” Olympia spun around to bare her teeth at me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

In my effort to eavesdrop, I’d kicked a screw so that it banged against the dressing-room wall. “I wanted to make sure Karen was all right.”

“She’s not. Or she won’t be if she doesn’t remember that we’re here to please our public, not ourselves,” Olympia said. “Get back to the theater, Detective, or I’ll have Mark throw you out.”

She went into the dressing room and shut the door before I could follow her. I heard a bolt snap into place. I put my ear shamelessly against the door but could only make out the angry rise and fall of Olympia’s voice.

The door to a smaller neighboring room opened, and I saw two slim young men peer into the hall. I realized with a jolt that these were the dancers who gyrated in burkas during Karen’s performance.

“Is Olympia murdering Karen?” one of them asked.

“Or Karen killing Olympia?” Both laughed.

“I’m V. I. Warshawski,” I said. “I’m a detective, and I’m investigating Nadia Guaman’s murder. What did you see the night that Nadia Guaman was killed?”

“Nothing,” the first one said. “Kevin and I were long gone.”

“We don’t do makeup for this gig. As soon as the Artist finishes, back we come, dump the rags, hit the road.”