Sara Paretsky - Body Work

She tried again and got the same message.

The man giving the orders nodded and the thug holding Karen slugged her jaw. I couldn’t stand and watch, and I couldn’t take them all on, either. I knelt and gouged at the insulation around the thickest of the wires snaking through my feet, peeled it back. My hands were trembling in my panicky haste. I finally loosened a strip, pulled it away from the wires, and stuck the palette knife in between them.

A crack like thunder, an arc of lightning, and the theater went dark again. The knife blade splintered in my hand, and the shock knocked me backward. Sparks sizzled and spat from the exposed wires. I scrambled under the curtains onto the stage on my hands and knees.

The room was briefly quiet: no one knew what had happened. Then shouting and cursing began, in Russian or perhaps Ukrainian. People crashed across the room, scattering tables, falling. Someone fired a shot, and I could see the spurt of flame. The master voice bellowed in Russian or Ukrainian, and no one else fired. I ran onto the stage and tried to grab Karen, but she swung a fist at me and started kicking.

“It’s V. I. Warshawski,” I panted. “Come along, damn it!”

She flailed at me even harder. I pulled her from the stool, tried to orient myself to the back of the stage. One of the thugs had found a flashlight and pointed it at the stage. Another gun went off, this time aiming at us. I let go of Karen’s arm and dropped to the floor. I rolled over and fired back, but my shot went wide.

“Karen! Karen, where are you? We need to get out of here!”

The curtain dropped against the fused wires. I could smell charring. If the curtain caught, the wooden floor and chairs would feed a fire in no time.

I pushed through the curtains, looked down the corridor, saw movement in the dressing room. Karen had put on her coat and boots and had her jeans in her hand. I slung my left arm under her armpits and hefted her over my shoulder before she realized what I was doing.

“Put me down, damn you!”

She drubbed on my back as I jogged down the hall to the back exit. Pushed open the door while she kicked at me. I was panting now from the load and from her fighting me, and I still had to circle the building to get to my car out on Lake Street. Before I’d gone more than a few steps, she managed to break free.

She ran to an SUV parked near us and opened the door. She was in luck: the keys were in the ignition. She got the engine going as I ran to her side. I yanked the door wide, but she punched at my head.

“You interfering, ignorant, stupid bitch, now you’ve really fucked me over. Get out of my way or I’ll run you down!”

She roared out of the lot, the still-open door swinging on its hinges. I just had time to read the plate number before she turned onto Lake Street.

Idon’t know who was angrier, me or Finchley. We were sitting on stools at the Club Gouge bar, and Olympia, her cheeks pale but her lips smiling, was telling Terry that nothing had happened.

“It’s a club, we do performance art. I don’t think Ms. Warshawski understood that we had a special rehearsal tonight after the club closed. She took it too seriously. Really, Ms. Warshawski, you need to get out more, see what’s happening in theater these days.”

“And the fire?” Terry asked.

When he and his team arrived, the back curtains were in flames. The cops had pulled them down and managed to stamp out the fire, but the stage was a mess. Parts of the floor were scorched, and the whole surface was covered in paint from the cans the Body Artist had hurled at her assailants.

Five squad cars pulled up as I was getting into my Mustang to follow the Artist. The cops pinned me in. They wouldn’t listen to my frantic cries about going after the SUV-“I’m the one who sent for you. A key witness is taking off!”-and forced me to come back into the club with them. Most of the thugs had fled, but the patrol units grabbed the few who’d stayed behind, including Rodney, and cuffed them.

The fire department showed up a few minutes after the cops. A middle-aged firefighter dealt with the wires I’d fused. He had sad eyes and a drooping mustache, but his thick fingers moved skillfully among the wires, and he restored power to the building-a mercy, because the furnace had shut down in the outage.

Finchley walked in a moment or two later. “You know, Vic, I’m going to suggest to the captain that we pay to relocate you to New York, because I swear Chicago’s crime rate would drop fifty percent if you weren’t here. Conrad relayed your message. Now, tell me why we’ve all left our beds to do your bidding.”

“It’s not that I’m not grateful,” I said, “because, believe me, I am. These goons are the remnant of a whole swarm of creeps who took over the club and started beating up the Body Artist and Olympia. But the Body Artist took off in a borrowed SUV, and I was hoping to follow her when your crew hustled me back in here, not listening to my suggestion that they go after the Artist.”

Terry sighed, exasperated either with me or his crew, I couldn’t tell which, but he asked me for the plate number and phoned in a bulletin asking patrol units to look out for the SUV.

That was when Olympia started her little-girl act, pretending that it was all just a “giant but unfortunately truly dangerous” misunderstanding on my part. The thugs whom the cops had cuffed began to smirk. Even Rodney, who’d been trying to start Owen Widermayer’s Mercedes when the police pulled him out of it, looked as though he might break into song. I wanted to shoot holes in all of them just to wipe the smiles off their faces. They knew they were going to beat any rap I might be able to hand out.

The fire crew chief joined us in the front of the club.

“You the owner, miss?” he asked me. “You were way over code there with the load you were carrying. This was an accident waiting to happen.”

“Thank you, Officer,” Olympia surged between him and me. “This is my building. I’ll get this taken care of first thing tomorrow-today, really, isn’t it? But you know what I mean-when the rest of the world is awake and going to work, you and I are in bed.”

She blinked from the fire chief and his drooping mustache to Terry in what was meant to be a helpless, appealing way. “I’m sorry the Warshawski woman was such an alarmist that she roused everyone, but we’re grateful for the quick response. Let me give you gift vouchers. You and your friends are welcome to come here on your nights off as my guests.” She reached over the bar and fumbled in a drawer for the vouchers.

“No.” Terry’s quiet voice carried authority, and both his team and the fire crew looked stolidly ahead. “Tell me about the fire.”

“The fire on the stage, you mean?”

“Was there another?” A pulse was starting to throb on Terry’s forehead.

“Sorry to be so silly, Detective, but this Warshawski woman’s wild behavior has me so rattled that I-”

“Vic, tell me about the fire.”

I repeated what I’d said earlier, about thugs taking over the theater. “Going by the voices, at least one was a woman, maybe more. They forced the staff and customers to leave, but I hid under the stage. The whole point of the attack seemed to be connected with the Artist’s website-it’s been down for several days, and they wanted her to bring it back up. When she either wouldn’t or couldn’t, they started beating up Olympia and the Body Artist both. I couldn’t take on the whole lot-I wanted to create a diversion while I hustled the Artist off the stage. I didn’t know my intervention would produce such drastic results.”

“So you set the fire?” Finchley said.