6
Blood, Blood, Blood
By the time I finally finished talking to Terry Finchley, to lesser cops, saw my cousin safely into her Pathfinder, and argued with Olympia, it was almost three. None of us got much out of our night together.
I learned from Finchley that Nadia’s last name was Guaman. I learned she had been a graphic designer—hence, her skill with the paintbrush—and that she had turned twenty-eight this past fall. I learned that she had died from the massive bleeding caused by two bullets entering her chest, and that she had been shot at a range of about fifteen feet—the distance from the back door of the club to the alley, where the shooters had waited.
While I was talking to Terry, one of his team came over with a report about Chad and his friends. No one could provide a last name for any of them, but Finchley took their descriptions and put out an alert. They hadn’t been in the club tonight, but that didn’t mean Chad hadn’t been lying in wait for Nadia.
When Terry asked me what I knew about Chad and his friends, I only shrugged. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him about the heated exchange I’d heard between Chad and Nadia the previous night. Maybe it was Nadia’s vulnerability, or the fact that I’d cradled her in my arms as she died. Or the discomfort I’d felt when she accused me of spying on her. She thought someone was after her, and I’d thought she might be paranoid. Now she was dead. I didn’t feel like discussing it with the police.
I told Finchley most of the rest of what I knew, including finding the glass in the Body Artist’s paintbrush. He demanded that I retrieve it from the Cheviot labs, but he also revealed that he’d been able to pry the Body Artist’s name out of her.
“Karen Buckley. Not a very jazzy name for a stripper. Maybe that’s why she wouldn’t let anyone around here know it,” Finchley added.
“She’s not a stripper,” I said. “She’s an artist, and a fine one.”
“A woman who takes off her clothes on a stage for men to drool over is a stripper, in my book.”
“Bobby’s right,” I said. “You’ve been breathing the rare air on South Michigan way too long. You need to buy yourself a new book. What about this guy Rodney? You find anything out about him?”
“What guy Rodney?” Finchley demanded.
“Didn’t anyone here mention him? Big guy with a gut, looks like an off-duty cop, with a big old nine-millimeter under his jacket. It looked like an HK when he shoved his armpit in my face.”
“And why did he do that, Vic?” Finchley said. “You weren’t in his face, by any chance, were you?”
“I was telling him to stop sticking his hand into my cousin’s pants when she’s waiting tables. Does that constitute being in his face to you? And whether it does or not, does that mean he gets to wave a gun at me?”
Finchley pressed his lips together. He’s a good cop, and a good detective, but he’s close to a police sergeant I used to date. He still holds it against me that Conrad Rawlings got shot while he was involved with me. The human heart, or thyroid gland, or whatever it is that controls our emotions, is too tangled for me to understand. Conrad survived, but our affair didn’t, and I’ve never been sure which the Finch blames me for more—the breakup or the shooting.
Finchley sent an underling to fetch Olympia to the small stage, where the police were conducting interrogations. She looked briefly frightened, or maybe angry, when he asked her about Rodney, but then gave him her brightest smile and said, “I’m sure I know who Vic means. He’s a regular, he loves Karen’s show, but—are you sure his name is Rodney, Vic? I thought it might be Roger, or Sydney.”
I gasped at the brazenness of her lies, but before I could speak, Finchley was asking if she had had any complaints from her staff or from other customers.
“I gave one of Vic’s cousins a job here, and Vic is a mite overprotective, maybe jumps too fast to conclusions. If Petra can’t handle a little good-natured kidding with the customers, then I’m afraid she shouldn’t work in a club.”
“Is that why you comp his drinks, Olympia?” I asked. “To encourage the good-natured kidding? And why you offered Petra a bonus if she’d overlook His Gropiness?”
Olympia’s eyes seemed to glitter, but that might just have been the bright lights on the stage. “Your cousin needs to get a handle on her imagination. I don’t comp drinks here. I know she’s young, but this is a bad economy. I can take my pick of waitstaff—I don’t need Petra Warshawski.”
She turned back to Finchley, leaning so close that the white feathers of her corsage almost tickled his nose. “Detective, I’m sorry Vic is trying to involve you in her cousin’s problems when everyone knows it was that disturbed guy who must have shot poor Nadia.”
“Chad, you mean. Yes, we’ve heard about him. We’ll keep our eyes open. A last name would help.”
Olympia gave her best imitation of a silly, ignorant female, spreading her hands with a little hiccup of a laugh. “We don’t seem to go in for last names here. I only learned poor Nadia’s from you tonight. I don’t know Roger’s—or Rodney’s, if Vic insists—and I don’t know Chad’s, either.”
While Officer Milkova took Olympia back to her office, the Finch looked at me. “You may be telling the truth, Vic. Guy may be Rodney, not Roger. He may have wandering hands, and she may comp his drinks. But I don’t have the resources to check all that out unless it turns out that Nadia Guaman was shot with a nine-millimeter HK . . . She’s very good, Ms. Olympia Koilada.”
“I guess. Depending on what good means to you.” Smooth as silk lingerie—good like that, I guess. “There’s some relationship between Olympia and Rodney, more than customer and patron. I don’t know if he’s selling drugs here, or is blackmailing her, but it’s important to her that he be kept happy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Vic,” Finchley said, his voice tight. “Right now, the most likely person of interest is this guy Chad. Once we’ve found him, we’ll see if we need to look for Rodney, if your guy’s name is Rodney.”
I got to my feet. “Good night, Terry. Let me know how it all turns out.”
“You have to sign a statement, Warshawski, like everyone else.”
“When you have something for me to sign, you know where to find me.”
I climbed off the shallow stage and started toward the exit, but before I could get out the front door Olympia hustled me into a cubbyhole behind the bar that served as her office. There was just room for her computer table and a stool. She stood so close to me that I could smell the mix of sweat, cigarettes, and Opium in her body stocking.
“Why can’t you mind your own business? The cops are on the trail of this guy Chad. Why did you have to drag one of my best customers out for them to sniff at?”
“Because he’s a violent guy. Sports a weapon, isn’t afraid to show it in an effort to intimidate. Not that I really care, but what hold does he have on you?”
“You’re the one who’s a problem in my club. Ever since you started coming here, I’ve had nothing but trouble.”
“Save your femmy ignorance for Rodney. It won’t work on Terry Finchley, and it definitely won’t work on me. You’re the one who said controversy was great for your business. For all I know, you’re the person who put glass in the Artist’s paintbrush.”
“How dare you make an accusation like that against me in my own club!”
I leaned against the thin plywood wall. “Olympia,” I said. “I’m so tired I’m about to fall over. I don’t care what you’re hiding or doing as long as it’s not something criminal that might hurt my cousin. But don’t try to jack me around. I don’t have the patience or the time for it.”
I pried open the door, but Olympia grabbed my arm. “I’m sorry. I’m beside myself, I—Nadia getting shot like that—it’s so horrible.”
“Okay. Try to think clearly. Tell me what’s really on your mind. Why are you protecting Rodney but sacrificing Chad, who also seems to be a good customer, one who pays for his own drinks?”
“If I thought Rodney had killed Nadia—”
“So you agree that’s his first name. What about his last name? Or have you paid for protection you’re not willing to sacrifice?”
The color drained from her face. “What do you know about him?”
I tried to push my tired brain into sorting out what she was revealing. “Not enough, apparently. But, believe me, I have the resources to help me find out more.”
I ignored her bleating and stomped through the club to the rear exit. I picked my way across the ruts in the club’s parking lot, my path well lighted by the blue strobes on the squad cars. It was a disconcerting juxtaposition, the strobes outside the club and the strobes inside, as if there were two performance spaces. It worried me that both looked artificial, as if a woman shot at close range were no more real than a naked woman on a stool painting her body.
As soon as I got home, I ran inside to turn on the shower. While I waited for the water to heat, I inspected myself in the mirror. I did have blood in my hair.
I stripped and dropped my clothes in the tub. I didn’t know if it would ruin the sweater to get it wet like this, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel able to wear it again, anyway.
I climbed into the shower and shampooed my hair twice. I used a coarse brush to scrub my fingernails. I climbed out and put my sodden clothes onto the radiator, but I felt a trickle on my spine and shuddered. It was only water—I was sure it was only water—but I couldn’t stop myself. I climbed back under the shower. I understood Lady Macbeth’s fetish now: every time I got out, I would feel blood on my scalp again. It was only when the hot water ran out that I finally dried off and went to bed.
Nadia and Karen Buckley, the Body Artist, filled my unquiet dreams. Buckley was in the parking lot, painting the ice-packed ruts under the blue strobes of the cop cars. When I bent to see her work, the ruts filled with blood. Olympia was trying to scoop it out with her hands before I could see it, and as she paddled it between her legs, it covered my cousin. I tried to call a warning to Petra but couldn’t speak. In the next instant, Rodney had grabbed Petra and was forcing her face down in the blood.
“Alley,” Nadia cried, as she had in my arms. “Alley.”
I woke, soaked in sweat and shivering. Nadia should have had a mother or a lover with her at her end. She should have died in her great old age, surrounded by her grandchildren. Her last thought shouldn’t have been that she was dying in an alley with a stranger.
I got out of bed, pulling the comforter around me, and went into the kitchen. It was six-thirty Saturday morning, the winter sky still black as midnight. I sat cross-legged at the table, staring sightlessly out the window. The air gradually lightened to a ghostly gray-white, but I couldn’t see anything: another snowstorm was slamming the city. I went to the window, searching for signs of life but couldn’t see even across the alley to the apartments beyond. Finally, hoping Mr. Contreras would look after the dogs, I went back to bed and slept until noon.
By Sunday, the storm had passed, leaving eight inches of new snow and a bright, bitter day in its wake. After taking the dogs for a long, exhausting walk, I spent the afternoon with Jake. We watched Some Like It Hot, which inspired him to rummage through his storage closet for a ukulele. He put on one of my sunhats and a skirt and preened around like Marilyn Monroe, so effectively that I laughed away some of the horrors of Friday night.
We were walking up Racine for a late supper when Olympia called me. “Have you seen the news?”
“What, Club Gouge is doubling its space in the wake of Friday’s homicide?”
“You have a weird sense of humor, Warshawski. No, the police found Nadia’s killer. That huge tattooed guy who kept tearing up the club. They picked him up with the gun used to shoot Nadia. Such a relief. They’ll let us open on Tuesday!”
“That is a relief, Olympia. And wonderful that you could keep such a focused perspective on Nadia’s death.”
I hung up on her demand to know “Just what do you mean by that?”