Sara Paretsky - Body Work

Finally, I thought about the ultimatum the thugs had given the Guamans: Produce the autopsy report by tonight or watch your house go up in smoke.

“Do you have a way to make a call to a lawyer here in the Loop so that it’s impossible to tell what city it came from?” I asked.

Caroline’s usual face is the smooth mask of the high-stakes corporate poker player, but after a moment she smiled mischievously. “Tell me what you want to say, and I’ll send an e-mail to our agent in Beirut. He’ll be happy to place a call from his cell phone. He’s used to dodging bullets, so he knows how to talk from an untraceable line.”

“That will be especially fitting. This whole situation has its roots in our war in the Middle East. The lawyer is Rainier Cowles, a partner at Palmer and Statten. I want him to know that the Guamans do not have the material his clients are looking for. V. I. Warshawski has taken the papers with her to a remote location, and no one knows where that is. Any communication with Ms. Warshawski should go through her own attorney, Freeman Carter.”

Caroline wrote it up in an e-mail to their Beirut agent and had me read it before she sent it.

Since I was already begging so many favors, I asked to use her phone so I could try to organize the bodyguards I wanted for Clara. I started with the Streeter brothers, who I know are both skilled and reliable. Only Tom was available, and only afternoons, but I turned down his offer to find someone else for backup. I needed to know the guards I used.

I scowled in thought, then remembered the Body Artist’s friend Vesta; she was a third-degree black belt. I reached her at a law firm where she was temping.

“Have you found Karen?” she asked.

“Not yet. But I have the youngest Guaman daughter, and I’m wondering if you’d have the time or the inclination to do a little babysit-ting.” Before she could protest, I explained what had happened at the Guaman house the previous night and how I wanted Clara to be able to go to school while I tried to resolve the crisis in her family’s life.

“I have someone who can see her home from school,” I said, “but if you could get her there in the morning it would be a huge help. I pay twenty-five an hour, going rate for experienced guarding.”

“How much risk is there?” she asked. “Really. Not glossing over it to get me to do what you want.”

“I don’t know. The people trying to get at Clara work for the same outfit as Rodney Treffer. He’s the man who was always putting those crude numbers on Karen. If you are skillful at choosing your route, you should be safe. If they get a whiff of where she’s staying, it could be awful.”

“I don’t owe the Guamans, or even Karen Buckley, anything.”

“I know that.”

“And I know how to spar, how to conduct myself, under attack, but I’m not trained as a bodyguard.”

“I understand.”

“But I also know what it’s like to be powerless when someone’s beating on you. No girl should have to walk the streets in fear. Let me know where to pick her up, and I’ll do my best.”

I found I’d been holding my breath and let out an audible sigh. Before we hung up, I told her about the meeting I wanted to hold in Darraugh’s office the following afternoon, and she promised to arrange her lunch break so she could attend.

I got up and thanked Caroline for her help. “Although ‘thanks’ is a pretty feeble word, for all you’ve done.”

She smiled, her brisk, corporate smile. “All in a day’s work, Vic. But if we need to reach you, where will you be?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know yet. I’ll try to get a room at the Trefoil Hotel, using my mother’s birth name, Gabriella Sestieri, but I can’t afford more than a couple of nights there.”

Caroline thought for a moment. “I’ll check with Darraugh, but we keep an efficiency apartment in the Hancock building for overseas staff who have to spend more than a few nights in Chicago. It’s free now. I can book you in as Ms. Sestieri.”

I felt my eyes grow wide. “It’s extremely generous. But, Caroline, it’s not just beyond the call, it could expose you to danger, too.”

She shook her head. “My sister’s only son was killed in Iraq, blown up in Fallujah. He was a reservist, and he had a new baby he never even saw. I can’t stand the thought that companies like Tintrey have been making money on his body.”

She looked at the console on Darraugh’s desk, saw that he’d finished his video conference, and took me into the boardroom so she could explain what she proposed. Darraugh grunted an agreement, and Caroline told me to stop back by in the morning to pick up a key and a photo ID for Gabriella Sestieri.

Darraugh escorted me to the elevator; he believes in old-fashioned etiquette and decorum. As I was getting into the car, he let out an unexpected bark of laughter and brushed a finger across my cheek.

“You are Rock to the life. I don’t know why I never thought of that before.”

Ididn’t feel very Rock-like crossing the Loop. Rainier Cowles and Kystarnik had me so spooked that I stopped in my bank to cash a large check; I didn’t want to take the chance that they might be able to track my credit card or ATM transactions. That’s the trouble with the Age of Paranoia-you know people can trace you, given the resources, but you don’t know if they are actually doing so, not unless you’re a whiz like NCIS’s Abby Sciuto, who can back-trace anyone who’s looking at her records.

When I finally reached the Glow, it was half an hour after the closing bell, and the traders were packed three-deep around Sal’s famous mahogany bar. Sal saw me, nodding as she directed traffic. Within two minutes, a minion appeared with a glass of Johnnie Walker Black. I left the drink on the bar, not wanting alcohol to take the edge off my awareness. I also resisted the temptation to pull out my cell phone and reconnect to the world. I was anxious about Chad Vishneski’s safety as well as the Guaman family’s, but I couldn’t take any chances right now.

When the traders, exhausted by a day from hell in the markets, had finally drunk themselves into enough oblivion to manage a commute home, Sal came over to my perch at the end of the bar.

“I hear Olympia’s had to close the Gouge,” she said. “Bad fire in there.”

I shrugged. “Not that bad. She needs to redo her stage and her electrics, but the structure’s okay. Question is, where she’ll find the money, since she’s already in way over her botoxed forehead to Anton Kystarnik.”

Sal’s lips rounded in a soundless whistle. “So the rumors were right this time. I couldn’t believe anyone would be such a complete idiot. Still, as my mother says, a fool and her wits are soon parted.”

She paused, measuring me. “You’d probably better know there’s another story running around the club scene. Some people say you started Olympia’s fire.”

“People will say anything, won’t they? Especially Olympia Koilada. I did threaten her with legal action if she kept slandering me, but she probably knows I don’t have the time or patience for a civil suit.”

“So how did the fire start?”

“Actually, I sort of did start it.”

Sal threw up her hands. “Oh, Vic, why? I’m sure it wasn’t the kind of pedestrian reason most of us would have: she dissed your cousin, she kicked your dog, or, in my case, the last time I had a fire here some idiot had left her curling iron on a stack of towels in the women’s toilet.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. It was sort of collateral damage.”

I described the night at the Club Gouge, with Kystarnik’s thugs beating up the Body Artist and Olympia because they couldn’t run their message board on the Artist’s body.