Sara Paretsky: Body Work

“Thanks, Olympia, but I’m way past my limit tonight.”

Over objections from both women, I put the brush into a plastic bag the Body Artist had used to hold cotton balls, wrote down the date and place I’d found it, and tucked it into a pocket of my handbag. On my way out of the club, I scanned the crowd. I didn’t see Chad or his friends, but the heavyset man who looked like a cop was there again. He was nursing a drink at a table by himself. Morose, off-duty policeman without friends, the kind who makes headlines by using his weapon in a crowded bar.

Another person, sitting close to the front, also looked familiar. I studied her for a moment and then decided she was the painter whose work had provoked Chad. Her thin shoulders were hunched up around her ears. Her hands were on the table, tensed so tightly that I could see the tendons raised across the back. She, too, seemed to be alone.

It was a week later that Petra dropped by my office on her way home from her day job. She was drooping. Even her spiky hair had collapsed, and she looked less like a radiant Valkyrie than a houseplant in need of water.

I was in the middle of a complicated transaction with an Ajax Insurance auditor, trying to unravel a fraud committed by one of their claims adjustors, but I gave my cousin an extra-bright smile to show that I loved her and was delighted to see her.

While I talked the accountant through the entries I’d made in my audit software, Petra wandered around my office. She fiddled with stacks of documents, studied her teeth in the glass over my Antonella Mason painting, and then spun a crystal paperweight, a gift from a grateful client, on its edge. She was so distracting that I finally beckoned her over and told her to go across the street for a couple of espressos. By the time she’d returned, her hair damp from the snow that was starting to fall, I’d finished my phone call with Ajax.

I sat her down in the alcove reserved for clients, the sole clutter-free place in my office. “What’s up, babe?”

“I, uh, Vic… Did you ever find out who put that piece of glass in the Body Artist’s paintbrush?”

“No, why? Has it happened again?”

Petra shook her head. “No. I just wondered.”

She had taken off her ski jacket. Underneath, she had on a big sweater topped by a fringed buckskin vest. She wasn’t taking money from her dad, but her mother had restocked her closet during their Christmas ski trip.

She started braiding and unbraiding the fringes on the vest. I tried to curb my impatience. She was troubled, and like all troubled people who come to that corner alcove it was hard for her to get to the point.

“I sent the brush up to a forensic lab I use,” I said. “The glass didn’t have any germs or poisons on it, and they couldn’t lift any fingerprints from the handle. Do you think you know who did it?”

Petra looked up. “No… No, I don’t… But I sort of wondered… The atmosphere at the club, ever since that night��really, ever since after Christmas-it’s changed. Olympia is, like… I don’t know-”

“You’re wondering if Olympia spiked the brush?” I cut into her dithering.

She made a face. “It’s nothing so concrete. But there’s this woman who comes in almost every time the Body Artist is performing-I think her name is Nadia-and she does this same picture over and over. She’s really good, compared to all the weirdos and sleazoids who want to paint their names or, you know, something gross, but-”

“Was she there when Jake and I came right after Thanksgiving? She was painting pink hats, and a woman’s face, and she got that tattooed guy all wound up.”

“That’s her. Well, Olympia and the Artist have been arguing about her. It’s almost like-well, the way they talk-it’s sort of like Olympia and the Artist are lovers, or were lovers-I don’t know-something like that. And now this Nadia is coming between them, or something.”

“It is tiresome when people bring their love life to work, but unless you feel threatened I wouldn’t worry about it. Just stay out of the middle. Or quit if it gets too rocky.”

“I’m not a baby, I don’t care who sleeps with who, although it is like being back in tenth grade when they flaunt it at you.” She leaned forward in her earnestness, her hands on her knees. “Vic, I know you and Uncle Sal both were kind of down on me working at a club, but when I started there I loved it, I loved everything about it. The energy, my coworkers, the acts. Olympia, she’s amazing. Her music is so cutting-edge, she’s so bold. She’s only a few years younger than my gran-my mom’s mom-but she’s so together! I loved working for her. Now, though, she doesn’t seem the same. And it’s not just the stuff with Nadia and the Artist.”

Her voice trailed away, and she started pulling at a loose thread in her jeans, hiding her face from me.

“What’s going on, Petra? What aren’t you telling me? Drugs?” I added sharply when she didn’t answer.

She looked up at me, her mascaraed lashes brushing her brows. “I don’t know. I mean, I know people there are using-you’re running around, waiting tables, you see who’s putting stuff up their noses or into their drinks or whatever-but I never saw any sign that Olympia was using or even dealing. I did ask Mark-Mark Alexander, her bouncer-and he says Olympia doesn’t tolerate drugs in the club… at least, not staff bringing them in.”

I nodded but took Mark’s assurances with a grain of salt. If people were doing drugs in the club, it was because Olympia was turning a blind eye.

“It’s really Nadia and the Artist that seem to cause-well, they don’t cause it-but whenever Nadia shows up, even though all she does is paint on the Artist, everyone is out of whack. Like those guys, the tattooed guy and his friends. The one guy, Chad, he gets so furious I think he might have a heart attack on the spot. I don’t know why he keeps coming back, but it’s, like, he can’t leave the club alone. And Olympia, she’s, like, Let him come in, as long as he isn’t violent, because his gang runs up these huge tabs.”

She grinned briefly. “And then his buddies leave these humungous tips because they feel embarrassed. So, of course, in a way we all welcome them on the nights they show up.”

She started tearing pieces from her coffee cup. “The problem is, this guy has been hitting on me, and when I put him down, Olympia behaved really oddly.”

“What guy?” I demanded. “Chad?”

“No. Chad only cares about Nadia. I mean, she’s the person who winds him up, or maybe it’s the Artist-it’s hard to be sure. This older guy, he’s kind of crude, and he can’t keep his hands to himself. So first I kidded him, you know, going, ‘Whoa, buster, seems like your fingers kind of forgot curfew. Better tell ’em to stay home where they belong.’ Well, that was like slapping a whale with a goldfish-totally useless. So next time I kicked him good on the shin, and he talked to Olympia, and she came to me and said I couldn’t go around kicking customers. So I explained what happened, and she said, Are you sure? And I said, I know what a hand feels like when it’s inside my pants, and she said, If I overlooked it, there’d be something extra in my pay envelope. But-”

“Quit.” I said flatly. “If Olympia is running drugs-and a bar is a perfect Laundromat for drug money-you don’t want to be there when the cops shut her down. And if she’s pimping for some sleazoid, you need to run for the exit.”

“I will if I have to. But, Vic, it’s almost four hundred a week in tips I’m getting there, pretty much tax-free. And my day job, I don’t know how much longer they’ll keep me on. Would you-I know it’s a lot to ask-but could you-”