Sara Paretsky - Body Work

I felt sweat drip between my shoulder blades. Whatever dire outcome I’d been fearing, it wasn’t going to happen tonight.

Even though Sal raised a dozen objections, about everything from not having a dressing room to where to set up the Body Artist’s webcams, she was on board. When I held my strategy meeting at Darraugh’s the next day, Sal helped me push the project forward.

Looking back, that meeting with Sal in her bar seemed to be the only time I sat still for a week. Organizing the performance, keeping Clara and her family safe, watching my own back, trying to stay in touch with my regular clients while doing business on the fly at Internet cafés, I felt like a hamster on a jet-propelled treadmill.

For our initial meeting, Darraugh’s assistant, Caroline, supplied us with food and drink and sat in for several long stretches to help move us along when we got bogged down. Darraugh himself wisely steered clear. He was going out on a very long limb letting us use his corporate headquarters. If his directors learned about it, they might have a few words with him.

Petra thought it was all a great game. Staying at Tim Radke’s place made her feel safe and therefore cocky.

“Don’t worry, Vic,” she assured me. “Me and Tim, we’ll take care of publicity. We’ll Tweet and network and get this all over town. I still have some media contacts left over from when I worked on the campaign last summer.”

“Let’s take this a step at a time,” I said. “We need to figure out who we want to reach out to. We aren’t selling Wheaties here, hoping everyone in the world gets our message.”

“The Glow holds a hundred thirty-seven, tops,” Sal added. “And I need serious crowd-management help if it gets up to that many.”

Tim Radke assured me that his and Marty’s friends would turn up in good numbers to make sure no one got too violent.

“We don’t want a free-for-all,” I said, “with arrests and broken heads. The whole purpose of getting the Body Artist back onstage is to stop the torment of the Guaman and Vishneski families.”

“How can you be sure she’ll come?” Rivka said. “You haven’t been able to find her. I don’t think you’ve even been looking.”

“I’ve been searching like mad,” I assured Rivka. “I even found her apartment.”

Rivka’s face lit up. “What did she say?”

“She’d fled before I got there, but she’ll show up Sunday night. No artist wants to be plagiarized or have her work attributed to someone else.”

I spoke with a confidence that I was far from feeling, but the whole scheme wouldn’t work without someone like Rivka, who was both talented enough and experienced enough to re-create the Artist’s images.

Most anxious was John Vishneski, who felt I was giving his son short shrift. “I’m the client here, the one paying your bills. And it’s my boy who’s still on the critical list at the hospital-my boy, who someone tried to kill two days ago. But this seems to be all about that gal who died in Iraq.”

I nodded sympathetically. “There are two halves to the story, your son and Nadia Guaman. I need the real killer to make a move in public, and focusing on the Guamans seems to me the best way to force the murderer out into the open. But if you have a better plan, please, let’s hear it now. No Monday-morning quarterbacking. Too much is at stake.”

Mona patted her ex-husband’s arm. “John, you know you don’t mean to be selfish. That poor family, losing two daughters. And who knows what will happen to the third girl!”

The Guamans’ situation had me badly worried. The day of our first meeting in Darraugh’s offices, Tom Streeter had called to say that Lazar Guaman had come to St. Teresa’s and insisted that his daughter and wife return home.

I took a cab to the school and found Lazar in the principal’s office with Clara. Dr. Hausman seemed worried, even frightened, when she introduced us.

“Perhaps you mean well, Ms. Detective-I can’t say,” Lazar Guaman said. “Clara seems to think that you do. We won’t try to stop you. But we do belong under our own roof.”

“Why not let her be safe with your wife and mother?” I suggested. “For just a few days. All this should end on Sunday.”

“We are a broken family,” he said, “I know that. My girls have been killed, I could not protect Clara when those men beat her up. But I won’t cower in my cousin’s home while she’s in danger here in the city.”

I tried to argue with him, but his mind was made up. He insisted that Clara call the unlisted number at Arcadia House so he could speak with his wife, and the family returned home. My one hope was that Rainier Cowles would leave the family alone now that he knew they didn’t have Alexandra’s autopsy report. Caroline told me at the meeting that Darraugh’s agent in Beirut had duly delivered the message. Still, I had to take Vesta off bodyguard duty. It was just too much to ask of an amateur in case Cowles-or, even worse, Kystarnik-wanted to attack the family.

I bought several disposable phones for my outgoing calls while my answering service was fielding all incoming ones. As long as no one could find me, they couldn’t deliver threats. Turn over the report or we will hurt Petra- or Clara- or Lotty- or Mr. Contreras- or the dogs. I was a Swiss cheese of vulnerability, thankful that Jake was on the other side of the world.

Although I didn’t hear from the Body Artist, I knew word about the performance was getting out around town. For one thing, we had a lot of hits on our website. For another, I got a call from Olympia. Actually, I got many calls from her. After her third, and most emphatic, message, I called her back, sitting in a window seat in Darraugh’s Hancock Center apartment.

“What are you doing?” she said. “Advertising the Body Artist’s final Chicago appearance?”

“Olympia! How are you? How are repairs to Club Gouge coming along?”

“Never mind the club. What the hell is the meaning of this announcement I saw?”

“I don’t know what you see or where you look,” I said, “so you’d better give me a hint.”

I thought I could hear her teeth grinding on the other side of the ether.

“I’ve seen the advertisements that the Body Artist is going to be at Sal Barthele’s joint on Sunday. What is the meaning of this?”

“Gosh, let me look at some tea leaves. Yep, here it is. It means that the Body Artist is going to be at the Golden Glow on Sunday.”

“Buckley is under contract with me,” she said, “and any bookings she makes-”

“Talk to the Artist or her agent. Don’t talk to me. If she has to wait for you to fix up Club Gouge before she can perform in public again, it seems like a mighty poor contract, but, not my business.”

“It’s your business if you put Sal Barthele up to it. I’ve been asking around, and everybody who knows Sal says you two are really tight.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you and I need to talk about it,” I said.

Olympia was silent. A field of gray-white clouds floated around Darraugh’s sixty-seventh-story apartment so that the city, with all its art and music and corruption and gang wars, seemed as silent and distant as if it existed only in a child’s pop-up book. Open the cover, and the characters and their world spring to life. Shut it, and you float off into your own private space.

When Olympia still didn’t say anything, I added, “By the way, I drove by the club last night, and it didn’t look to me as though anyone was doing any work. Did you know that? Or has Kystarnik cut off all your cash until you jump through some big hoops for him?”