Sara Paretsky - Body Work

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.

Karen’s dressing room was directly across the hall. A man in black, wearing a black ski mask, stood there making sure everyone moved down the corridor to the rear exit. And making sure no one could leave Karen’s dressing room.

I dropped to the floor so that my silhouette wouldn’t show. I felt a draft and realized that the stage back here was raised, that there was a gap of about a foot between it and the floor. I wriggled underneath, dislodging my pink wig. Any noise I was making was masked by the tromping of feet toward the exit. That wouldn’t go on for long. I took my gun out of its holster and felt for the safety. I didn’t want to shoot it by mistake in the dark.

In a surprisingly short time, the room was cleared. Voices called to each other, male and female, affirming that everyone had left. The lights came back up.

“Bring them out.” It was the sound of authority, a man speaking with the rumbling r of a Slavic accent.

I heard someone open the dressing room door. I couldn’t see anything, only heard a cry of pain suppressed and footfalls overhead. One set was heavy, boots, the other almost noiseless, perhaps the Body Artist’s bare feet.

From the other end of the room, I heard Olympia snap, “Let go of me, damn you!” Then the horrible sound of hand on skin, a noisy slap, and a woman, also with a rumbling Slavic accent, saying, “You speak when we ask questions. Otherwise, you are quiet.”

“You’ve no right-”

Slap. “This is not an American courtroom. You are not having rights. You are having only responsibilities, and these you are not meeting.”

I fumbled in my pocket for my cell phone and typed a text to Petra, begging her to call the police and get them to the club. I didn’t know Terry Finchley’s number by heart, so I put in the number for his friend Conrad Rawlings, who works now in South Chicago. tell Conrad 2 call Terry. thugs r beating Olympia.

Above me, I heard another slap, and a man’s voice saying, “Go to the computer, bitch, and turn your gallery back on.”

That was Rodney.

The Body Artist said, “I didn’t shut the site down. I thought you did. I can’t get access to it.” Her voice was a little wobbly, but she was maintaining an admirable level of control.

The thugs hit her again, and then I heard a crash, cascading metal, amplified by the wooden floorboards. Loud cursing in a language not English. A paint can rolled across the stage and bounced to the floor near me. A scuffle, more metal flying about, and then another smack of hand on flesh and a high-pitched yelp.

“Hold that stupid bitch.” The master voice, maybe even Anton Kystarnik himself. “You know our agreement, Olympia. I don’t want to burn your pretty little club down. So no more little-girl lies. And you, you no-good whore, no more little-girl tricks from you, either. Fix your website. Then we all can go home happy.”

“But I don’t know why my site is-”

Again someone hit her, harder this time.

I slid out from my hiding place. The man who’d been guarding the door to the corridor was gone-they figured they had control of the premises. I moved to his spot behind the curtain and peered through the gap.

The thick wires connecting the plasma screens to the mains came through here and went under the door to a wall outlet in the corridor. I stepped carefully so I wouldn’t trip and betray myself.

The stage was covered with paint. I saw now what the noise had been: Karen had hurled the contents of her cart at her attackers. Brushes and palette knives were scattered wholesale. One knife had landed near me. I slid a hand through the gap in the curtain and picked it up. Its blade was too pliable for use as a weapon.

The thugs all had on those black ski masks so popular with bullies. I thought I could tell Rodney by his beer belly, but the others were indistinguishable. One figure had a gun trained on Olympia, another on the Body Artist, who was still covered in her performance paint. Someone with red paint all down the front of his jacket forced Karen to sit, smacking her hard, and brought the laptop she used with her slide show over to her.

“Open the website,” he growled.

Karen, her fingers shaking, typed in the URL. Lights shifted and flicked in the house, and I realized the computer was still attached to the plasma screens on the stage. By craning my neck, I could see the same message I’d been getting: Out of respect for the dead, we have temporarily taken the site off-line.

“Now you put online,” he said.

“Someone got into my system and changed the password,” Karen said. “I can’t open it.”

“Liar,” the head man growled. “Log on.”

Karen typed something, and, on the screen, we could all see the message come back.

“Invalid password. Try again.”