There were some other bright spots. Of course there were. Chief among these was Chad Vishneski’s vindication. I also managed to get the Body Artist’s tip about acid in the solenoid wires up the chain. I suggested it to Murray—“Wasn’t there some story about Anton and a chopper ten or fifteen years ago? He brought it down by painting acid on the wires, which ate through the insulation when the chopper was in the air?”—and he was on that tidbit like a flea on Mitch. I had the satisfaction of reading that the FAA and TSA were taking another look at Anton’s wife’s airplane.
A smaller spot, but one that warmed me personally, came from Darraugh. He hadn’t been at the Golden Glow Sunday night, but Caroline Griswold, his personal assistant, had been there. I hadn’t noticed her in the densely packed room, but after Lazar shot Cowles, she had slipped out a side door before the cops shut off the exits. Caroline apparently had given Darraugh a comprehensive report because on Wednesday I got a giant basket of flowers with the note “Good Girl, Rock.”
In between talks with cops, sending Darraugh a handwritten note, and cleaning up my apartment, I answered e-mails and tried to pull together the threads of some of my other investigations. Clients were getting huffy. They thought I was being a media hound and not tending to their needs.
Olympia came to see me one day, hoping I would “let bygones be bygones.” The federal prosecutor for Northern Illinois was nosing around in her books, and she was getting scared. I told her I couldn’t possibly help her, but I didn’t preach at her—she’d dug herself into such a deep hole, she was lucky to be alive.
“I hear you let Buckley walk away into the night,” she said. “Why won’t you help me?”
“One of those things, Olympia.”
I didn’t say it was because Francine Pindero had taken refuge in her dead mother’s name. If I’d lost my mother at eight, the age when Frannie lost hers, my dad, working long hours, couldn’t have kept me out of trouble in the neighborhood I lived in. We needed our mothers, Frannie and I. I’d been the lucky one, getting to live under Gabriella’s fierce protective wing until I was old enough to fly on my own.
56
A Song Across the Ocean
I drove down to Pilsen the day after my show at the Golden Glow. Cristina, in her own way, had been tough and cold. Or at least bitter and hostile. She didn’t want to thank me for clearing up the search for Nadia’s killer or even for focusing a public spotlight on Tintrey for their treatment of Alexandra.
Instead, Cristina blamed me for her husband’s behavior—the police were circling around Lazar Guaman as a “person of interest” in Rainier Cowles’s shooting. I suggested to her that the Guamans hire a criminal defense lawyer, to be on the safe side, and she threw up her hands. “Why not say he is guilty and run an ad in the paper? Having a lawyer makes him look like he has something to hide.”
“Having a lawyer means he won’t get tricked into saying something that can be used against him in a trial. I know a first-class criminal defense lawyer. She just joined my own lawyer’s practice, and I’ll be glad—”
“No more favors, por favor ! Haven’t you done enough harm to us already? Did you think we were a house full of puppets, that you could just pull our strings and make us dance? My two daughters lie dead. And now what will become of us without the money we were getting from Alexandra’s company?”
“Ma!” Clara was red with embarrassment. “How can you say that? Prince Rainier killed Nadia! His bosses murdered Allie! We were like—like slaves, bowing down to them. We’re better off without their money. Nadia was right—it was blood money!”
“Of course you’d take this detective’s side over your own mother’s,” Cristina said. “You ran off to her. You left your own family to run off to this woman. And now your papi could be in jail for murder. What good have you done, the two of you?”
The world was a weight on her head—I could understand that, with the wrecked remains of her family around her. “But Clara deserves all our best efforts to have the bright future Alexandra wanted for her,” I said. “And it will be easier for her to go to school now that this heavy load of secrets has been taken from her shoulders.”
“She’s right, Ma, and when I finish college, I’ll get a good job and look after you and Ernie, and even Papi, if they don’t send him to prison. And maybe they won’t. By the time everyone hears what Prince Rainier and his pals did to Allie and Nadia, they’ll give Papi a medal, you’ll see. Stop trying to make Vic and me feel guilty for stepping forward.”
I grinned at Clara and hugged her, but her mother’s words haunted me as I tried to clean up the residue of the case. I hung out some with Sal, and the two vets came around to check on me once or twice.
The three of us went to visit Chad in the rehab hospital where he’d been transferred. It was a relief when he instantly recognized his friends: I’d been afraid that he’d be like Ernie, with lasting brain damage. The three men greeted each other awkwardly. It’s so much easier for women to hug and show emotion.
“I hear you guys saved my ass,” Chad said.