Sara Paretsky - Body Work

Do you want me to stand at attention and play the “Star-Spangled Banner”? Karen’s cool tone didn’t change.

Do you have any feelings at all, for anyone besides yourself?

I figure chicks like you, emoting all over the place, have so many exhausting feelings that there isn’t room for mine. Karen was being sarcastic, but I thought there was an undercurrent in her tone-anger? bitterness?

If you had a sister like Allie and she was murdered, you might not be so cold.

Karen sat up in bed so fast that the camera recorded only a blur. I heard the slap, hand on face. Fuck you, bitch . I had someone like Allie who was murdered. So stop bleating at me like a sentimental sheep.

I hit PAUSE, startled. Did she mean Anton’s daughter, Zina? Was that a person Karen/Frannie had felt close to? If that was the case, then maybe Zina’s overdose had been someone else’s deliberate work. Or maybe Karen/Frannie just thought an OD was an act of murder. Impossible to know.

I clicked PLAY, and the recording began again. Nadia was apologizing. But my sister was tormented, she was hounded, she wrote it in her journal. All because someone where she worked in Baghdad found out that she liked, she preferred-that women-

That she was a dyke . Why can’t you just say it?

Don’t use that word about Allie! Who told them? Was it you? Because you were so angry with her for not returning your calls?

Karen sat up and began pulling on clothes-sweater, jeans, boots.

Nadia, you want someone to be at fault because the sister you adored so much is dead. But if she was a lesbian, people in Baghdad would have known. Believe me, I did not say one word to one person about my week with her. She was of no interest to me once she made it clear that I was of no interest to her.

For once, Karen spoke in a real voice, someone who was feeling the words she was saying. Or at least someone who acted as though she felt them.

The clip ended there, abruptly, as had the segment with Vesta. There was no way of knowing whether Nadia, like Vesta, had realized Karen/ Frannie was recording her.

Dinner was a success, at least for my guests. Petra had recovered from last night’s trauma, aided by her military escort, and they, in turn, seemed to be thawing in her ebullience. My neighbor was beaming happily. Mr. Contreras wanted to see Petra settle down with “some nice boy,” and Marty Jepson and Tim Radke both fit the bill.

I sat at the end of the table, smiling, nodding, wondering where Alexandra Guaman’s journal was. I had played the video the Body Artist had recorded with Nadia three times. Alexandra felt so hounded and tormented that she wrote about it in her journal. Nadia had said that. Which meant Nadia had seen the journal. Which meant that whoever ransacked Nadia’s apartment might have been looking for it.

“Julian Urbanke,” I suddenly said out loud.

Everyone at the table stared at me, until Petra said, “Vic, there’s no one with a name like that in my family, unless it’s someone on the Warshawski side. Marty was asking who in my mom’s family had been in the service.”

My aunt’s ancestors had mostly been in the Confederate Army. I wondered how the veterans would react to that.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to remember the name of the man who lived across the hall from Nadia Guaman. Her apartment was ripped apart, the pictures even taken down from the walls. A couple of days after she died, someone took her computer and all her discs. Urbanke had a key to her apartment. He seemed to have had a crush on Nadia-maybe he helped himself to Alexandra’s journal, thinking it was Nadia’s, before the home-wrecking crew arrived.”

“What would you like us to do, ma’am?” Jepson asked.

“Marty, it’s so funny to hear you call Vic ‘ma’am.’” Petra laughed. “She may be older than us, but she’s not, like, a hundred. Just call her ‘Vic,’ like everybody else does.”

“Darling, I love the staff sergeant’s impeccable manners,” I said. “Who knows, maybe some of them will rub off on you and me.”

I looked at Jepson, who was staring straight ahead, blushing.

“I’d like to go over to Urbanke’s place,” I continued, “see if he has the diary.”

Petra’s eyes sparkled. “All of us? A midnight raid-”

She stopped, remembering last night’s fight. The muscles in her face tightened. “Vic,” she said, “why don’t you just call and ask him.”

“Too easy to brush people off on the phone,” I said.

“You’re not going to beat him up, are you?” She was pleating her napkin by now.

“Of course she ain’t,” Mr. Contreras grumbled. “If she had any sense, she’d stay right here.”

He turned to me. “If it wasn’t for these boys here riding to your rescue last night, you’d be dead and in the morgue right now.”

“I’m going to bring Peppy; if Urbanke tries to attack me, he’ll trip over her and fall, and then she’ll smooch him into confessing.” I stood too quickly for my abdomen and ended up clutching the edge of the table.

“Uh, ma’am?” Jepson said. “I mean, Vic. I’d, uh, it would be a pleasure to visit this man Urbanke with you.”

Well, if he was going to put it like that, implying that the Marines had a sense of duty even if no one else understood it, then Mr. Contreras had to join in, which meant Tim Radke and Petra could hardly stay behind.

Petra bent over Mitch, hands on his jowls. “You want to come, too, don’t you, Mitch? Just in case.”

After Petra and Tim finished the washing up, we laced up our winter boots and zipped up our coats and went back into the night, dogs and all. I wondered if any other detective on the planet had ever traveled with this kind of entourage. Sam Spade, with dogs, cousin, old man, and Marines-kind of like calling on a suspect with a circus parade in tow.

My fellow performers were full of enthusiasm. Jepson took me and the dogs in his truck; Tim Radke followed in my car with Petra and Mr. Contreras.

The heater in Jepson’s pickup was as old as the shocks, and my feet turned numb as we bounced over ruts. I grabbed the edges of the seat, trying to minimize the jolts to my sore muscles.

“Sorry about that, ma’am. Vic, I mean. Kind of like the roads in Baghdad, just without the gunfire and the IEDs and so on. Although this part of town, I guess we could get some gunfire,” he added as we moved into the grimmer, gang-ridden streets west of Western.

We got to Nadia’s building ahead of the others. While we waited, we talked about ways and means.

“I don’t want all seven of us barging in on Urbanke,” I said. “Why don’t we let Mr. Contreras and Petra wait in Nadia’s apartment with the dogs while you and I talk to the guy.”

It was hard to persuade Mr. Contreras that this was a good idea-he hadn’t come along just to sit on the sidelines and cheer for me, thanks very much. In the end, Tim offered to babysit Petra and the dogs while my neighbor and the staff sergeant and I went into Urbanke’s.

A bit of good luck: he was home. A bit of bad luck: he remembered me and did not wish to see me.

“You’re not a cop,” he squawked over the intercom. “You can’t make me talk to you.”

“Right, Mr. Urbanke,” I bellowed at my end. “We don’t need to talk. We just want to ask you about Alexandra’s journal.”

Another bit of good luck: someone came out of the building just as I was debating whether to open the outer door on my own. The man looked at us suspiciously, and I grinned happily.

“We’re the new tenants in 3E. Thanks! The key they gave us for the outside door doesn’t work.”