Sara Paretsky - Body Work

“If you saw that, then you saw her knock me away and tear off into the night. I have no idea where she is.”

“Maybe,” Konstantin said. “Maybe not. Only suddenly tonight, Anton, he calls us, saying the website isn’t important now. Only you, and the papers you are stealing, these, we need to get back.”

They had no more idea what papers Anton was hunting than I did. I asked them a dozen different ways, but they were thugs, not thinkers. Anton talked in front of them, but not about what he was looking for.

If it was Karen Buckley’s computer they wanted, I wondered why they hadn’t taken it last night when they attacked the club. But, of course, the cops had arrived, it hadn’t been possible. Maybe Anton had headed to the boarded-up club tonight. Maybe they got there just as we were leaving and followed us. But a computer wasn’t paper, and Anton had very specifically been looking for papers.

I was too tired to think clearly. I told Marty to turn around, drop the thugs near McCormick Place, and get the rest of us home for the night.

Islept around the clock that night, waking up around eleven with my abdomen so sore that I cried out when I tried to get out of bed. I gave up the effort and lay listening to the wind whip against the windows. It didn’t seem as though spring would ever come, or that I would ever care enough about anything-clients, baseball, food, sex-to want to get up again.

I wondered what Anton Kystarnik had said when his team reported in. Miserable losers, he’d cried in Ukrainian when they finally made their way back to his office. I will whip you all and send you to bed without supper. Or would his response have been vengeful? She has insulted me by embarrassing you. Bring me V. I. Warshawski’s head on a platter.

Staff Sergeant Jepson had dropped the two thugs at Thirty-first Street, a mile south of McCormick Place. If they couldn’t find a cab, it was only a mile or so to Printers Row, the Yuppie haven south of the Loop. Konstantin protested when Tim Radke yanked them from the backseat, but I told them I was doing them a favor.

“You’re getting soft because you only attack helpless targets. If any muggers are foolish enough to be out on such a bitter night, they’ll help you polish your street-fighting skills.”

When we were moving again, I asked Jepson to take me to my office so I could pick up my car. In his polite Marine voice, he told me I was in no condition to drive tonight, “ma’am.” He and Tim would take me home if I would give him the address.

After that, I dozed my way up to Racine and Belmont. When the vets woke me in front of my building, Tim said he’d get some work done on the Body Artist’s website on his lunch break the next day.

“You have the computer?” I was amazed that he’d remembered it in the middle of our street fight.

“I took it with me when Petra and I jumped ship. It’s under Jepson’s front seat.”

He and the staff sergeant helped me up the walk to my building. They made me feel old and frail, supporting my arms. I wasn’t a dried-up cougar, I was just dried up.

While I found my keys and unlocked the outer door, Tim asked, “This business tonight anything to do with Chad Vishneski?”

“It’s got something to do with it, I just don’t know what.” I remembered the mitt and sand in the trunk of my car. “I’ve got to get that out, too-I’ve got to keep it safe. If that’s what Rodney was looking for and he wakes up remembering that he didn’t get it, his master may think to look in my car.”

“We’ll take care of it, ma’am, if you give us your car keys,” Jepson said. “Tell me what you want me to do with it.”

“Drive it up to Cheviot labs in Northbrook. Take it to Sanford Rieff. I want the mitt and the contents and Chad’s duffel bag searched for-anything that may be in it. And I want a priority turnaround, which means paying a fifty percent premium. If you have time in the morning, I would be grateful if you took care of it.”

“Nothing but time, ma’am,” Jepson said. “I’m job hunting, these days.”

The dogs had been whining behind Mr. Contreras’s front door while we talked. The old man opened the door and the dogs ran to me, barking eager questions: Where had I been, What had I been doing, Was I all right, Could they trust these strangers, they seemed to ask. It was only as I extricated myself and the vets from their onslaught that I saw Petra had followed my neighbor into the hall. She’d needed petting, pulling together, and no one could do that better than her Uncle Sal.

When Petra saw me, she burst into tears. “I’ve been calling you and calling you,” she said. “When you didn’t answer, I thought you were dead.”

“Told you she had a hundred and nine lives,” my neighbor said, but he did come over to inspect me and my escort. “Why do you need to keep sticking your neck out, just so Peewee and I can break our hearts?”

I hugged him, feeling his unshaven chin against my face. “I’m as burned out as last year’s firecrackers. These are the heroes of the evening. A couple of Iraq vets, Tim Radke, Marty Jepson. Guys, Mr. Contreras fought at Anzio. Gave him a taste for grappa. Which I’m sure he’ll be glad to share with you.”

Before I left him and the young people with the dogs and the grappa, I asked Petra about her Pathfinder. As far as she knew, it was still in the middle of the street where I’d abandoned it.

“Tim, Marty, can you pull it to the curb if it’s still there when you go back to get Tim’s car? We’ll deal with towing and repairs when we have more time.”

Marty solemnly promised I could count on him, ma’am.

With that comforting thought, I staggered up the stairs to bed. I undressed only because I know that if you sleep in a bra you wake up uncomfortable. I didn’t even take time to pull on a nightshirt before falling deep into sleep.

The next day, when I’d finally forced myself out of bed, I called Terry Finchley at the Central District. He wasn’t available, so I told the receptionist that my business concerned Club Gouge. After a longish wait, Officer Milkova came to the phone.

When she said that Detective Finchley had warned her I might call about the Vishneski-Guaman case, I remembered her. She’d been one of the officers who’d responded the night Nadia Guaman was killed.

“Do you have any new information on the murder, ma’am?”

I was starting to feel embalmed, the way everyone under thirty was calling me ma’am.

“A lowlife named Rodney Treffer passed out on Lake Street last night, near the Ashland L stop. He’s been beating up people around Club Gouge. He and a team of creeps broke into the club two nights ago and attacked the owner. Last night, he attacked me. Can you find out if he’s in custody or in a hospital someplace?”

“I can’t give you confidential information about any citizen, whether they’re in our custody or not.” Milkova’s voice was severe.

“Ma’am,” I added.

“What?”

“You forgot your punctuation mark,” I explained. “Whether they’re in our custody or not, ma’am. So if my lawyer files an order of protection against Treffer, you can’t tell us whether he’s unconscious or anything?”

She was new to Finchley’s team; she didn’t know how to respond off the top of her head. “You said he passed out, then you said he attacked you. How could he do both?”

“He did them in the reverse order. First he attacked me, then he passed out. I want to know if he’s in a hospital or the morgue or even police custody.”

She thought this over. “I think I need to see you in person. Do you know where Detective Finchley’s office is?”