21
The Super-Rich and Their Fascinating Lives
When I got back to my car, I wrote down the names I’d seen on Widermayer’s assistant’s computer while they were still fresh in my mind: Bettina Lyzhneska, Konstantin Feder, Michael Durante, Ludwig Nastase. An Eastern European crew, except for Durante and Rodney.
There were only a dozen or so cars in the lot, mostly the nondescript Fords and Toyotas that people like Widermayer’s assistant might drive. I copied down their license plates, anyway. Maybe I could push on my relationship with Murray and find out who they were registered to.
The Mercedes sedan Rodney had been using was parked there. I sat up straighter. Rodney drove a car registered to Widermayer, but I had a feeling that anything Widermayer owned really belonged to Kystarnik, or at least was available to him. Which probably included Rodney himself. He was exactly the kind of muscle Kystarnik might use.
I dug my maps out from under Mitch. Roehampton, where Kystarnik had his Chicago-area home, was only a few miles up the road. While I was this far north, I might as well see what eight hundred million dollars bought you. I started to query one of my subscription databases for Kystarnik’s home address, then realized how exposed I was sitting there. I drove back down Dundee Road and pulled into a strip mall. Wireless service in the northern suburbs was golden: before I could leave the car for a sandwich, LifeStory was flashing Kystarnik’s address and a few biographical details on my tiny screen.
I squinted at the text, but finally had to enlarge it and read it a few words at a time. I hated to think that glasses lay in my future, that my eyesight was dimming as my body was slowing down. Weren’t there any compensations for turning fifty?
Kystarnik had bought a house on seven acres almost twenty years ago. There were two pools, stables, tennis courts, three kitchens, nine bathrooms, and bedrooms enough to entertain all his visiting thugs at once, along with their partners and children. I assumed there were flunkies to look after the stables and kitchens and so on, but my little screen didn’t tell me that.
Kystarnik had been born in Odessa, but he’d lived in America since his late teens. He’d been married only once, to the woman who died eight months ago. Melanie Kystarnik, born Melanie Frisk, had been a native of Eagle River, Wisconsin. How had they met, I wondered, where had they met? Of course, Eagle River was notorious as the vacation refuge for members of the Chicago mob. Maybe as Kystarnik cut his teeth on the extortion racket, someone like the Outfit’s late, lamented CPA, Allen Dorfman, took Kystarnik under his wing. I pictured Anton and Melanie meeting at a Friday fish boil.
Melanie and Kystarnik had one child together, a daughter named Zina, who had died almost fifteen years ago, of unspecified causes. Even juice lenders suffer pain.
I drove up Telegraph Road to Argos Lane and found the gates to the Kystarnik place. Seven acres is a lot of ground; even though the bare trees and shrubs let me peer through the gates I couldn’t really see the house, although I did see little red lights that told me my pausing at the perimeter was being recorded.
In the city, I would have canvassed the neighbors, but out here it was hard to imagine a neighbor close enough to see what the Kystarniks were doing, even if I could weasel my way past their gates to talk to someone. And what plausible reason could I provide for asking?
I’d passed an indie coffee bar just before turning onto Argos Lane, so I turned around and went back. I needed a bathroom stop, anyway, and some kind of snack. The coffee itself smelled rich, fresh-roasted, unexpected in this exclusive, retail-lacking little enclave.
A utility service truck was in the lot, and a couple of cars. It was lunch hour; some eight or nine people, who looked as though they might work on the surrounding estates, were perched at the little tables with drinks and sandwiches. The two people behind the counter—young, fresh-faced—kidded with the regulars, but they treated me with an impersonal briskness.
When I’d ordered my cappuccino and a toasted cheese panino, I pulled out my map. “I’m looking for Argos Lane—how close am I?”
One of the men waiting for his coffee laughed. “You’re just about standing on top of it. You looking for anyone in particular?”
I flashed a grateful smile. “Melanie Kystarnik and I went to school together, and I thought, while I was in the area, I’d see if I could pay my respects to Anton.”
The people in line at the counter shifted a bit, as if trying to back away from me.
I spread my hands. “I know it’s been a while since she died, but I wasn’t able to get back for the funeral. We’d lost touch after she married—she was living in such a different world than what I knew—but we used to go canoeing together in Eagle River when we were kids. I know it was quite a blow when Zina died.”
There was a wordless communication going on among the regulars, and then a heavyset woman about my age said, “You really have been out of touch if you think Zina’s death was a blow to Mrs. Kystarnik. She was off to Gstaad for skiing six weeks later. Maybe the mister felt it harder. Everybody said Zina was more his child than hers.”
Someone tried to shush her, but the woman continued, “If this lady . . . What did you say your name was?”
“Gabriella. Gabriella Sestieri.” I brought out my mother’s birth name glibly.
“If you really were a friend of Melanie’s, it would have broke your heart to see how much trouble that girl of hers got into by the time she died.”
“That’s so sad!” I exclaimed. “No wonder Melanie didn’t answer my Christmas cards. I wondered at the time, but then I decided it was because her life had gotten so glamorous, those ski vacations, the private yacht and everything. But if Zina was doing drugs—”
“Doing drugs!” a man chimed in. “They say she was running the ring that supplied all the kids in the northwest suburbs, her and Pindero’s kid.”
“Clive!” another woman said. “You can’t know that. And this lady doesn’t need to hear that kind of talk when Mrs. Kystarnik is dead. And the girl, too. What has it been, fifteen years now? Let the dead bury the dead.”
“Yeah, but Steve Pindero was a good guy, and he suffered as much as Kystarnik when his Frannie OD’d. More, probably.” Clive’s jaw jutted out, the grievance as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. “And then to find out his girl had been using his own rec room as a drugstore!”
Two men at a table in a corner had been watching me. They had hard hats sitting on the window ledge behind them, but their fingernails were carefully cut and buffed. Not the kind of manicures that would last long if they had to handle heavy equipment.
I finished my coffee and wrapped my sandwich in a napkin. “It’s like my granny used to say: the rich get richer, the poor get trouble. Maybe I won’t call on Anton after all. Sounds like he wouldn’t want to be reminded of Melanie.”
“Forgot about her already,” Clive said, “If you go by the blonde who’s—”
“Clive,” the heavyset woman warned.
This time, he subsided, but as I opened the door to leave I heard the others pick up the gossip. One woman, who worked at a neighboring estate, had heard the doctor say the new girlfriend was already five months pregnant. Another had seen her wearing a necklace that used to belong to Melanie. Diamonds and emeralds, worth a hundred grand, easy.
As I got into my car, the two men who’d been watching me left the coffee bar and climbed into the utility truck. They followed me when I turned onto Argos Lane. I didn’t slow for the Kystarnik estate, but the truck stayed with me as the road wound around a golf course and bent south. When I connected with a major artery, I stood on the brakes and jumped out.
The passenger got out of the utility truck and came over to me, no hurry. “You’re just visiting the area, but you drive a car registered to a local person, hmm?”
“And you drive a truck, but you’ve got computer access to the Illinois DMV in it,” I said. “You handling the feds’ stakeout on Kystarnik?”
Hands on hips, he gave me a Clint Eastwood stare that made him think he looked tough. “Maybe you should get back to the city where you belong.”
“Maybe, indeed,” I agreed. “Any reason to think my old friend Melanie was killed to make way for the new pregnant blonde?”
“We’ve entered your plate number into our database,” he said by way of reply.
“Now I am impressed. Or I would be if I didn’t already have a federal file. By the way, if you want anyone to believe your work really requires a hard hat, nix the weekly manicures.”
When he pulled off one of his gloves to look at his nails, I took a picture of the utility truck’s license plate with my cell phone. He ran to my side, dropping his glove, and tried to grab my phone.
“Off-limits,” he said.
I shook my head. “I have no idea who you are. I thought you were with the feds, but now I’m thinking you work for Kystarnik. The Chicago cops need to see who’s tied to his operation.”
The other guy got out of the truck. “What’s the problem here?”
“Problem is, she took a picture of our plate.”
“Problem is,” I said, “you guys are hanging out around a thug. If you’re on his payroll—”
“Oh, Chrissake, Troy, show her your badge.”
The first guy scowled but pulled out his ID. Troy Murano was with the Secret Service, not the FBI after all. In a spirit of generous reciprocity, I showed them my PI license.
Besides guarding the President, the Secret Service investigates large-scale fraud, but when I tried to ask Troy and his partner what they thought Kystarnik was up to, they told me to mind my own business.
“So why is a Chicago PI sniffing around him?” the partner asked.
“Just minding my own business,” I said in the spirit of reciprocity. I tucked my cell phone into my pocket before getting back into my car.
The utility truck didn’t follow me when I turned onto the main road. I pulled into another strip mall and shared my sandwich with the dogs, who were getting restless after spending several hours in the car.
If the Secret Service was tagging around after Kystarnik, they weren’t being too secretive about it—those security cameras dotting Kystarnik’s fence would have spotted the utility truck long ago. Maybe the feds were hoping to pressure him into a misstep. If he was laundering money, maybe they thought he’d reveal his bank accounts to their electronic scanners. Maybe I should have suggested they look at Club Gouge, but, for all I knew, they already had a lead on Rodney and the club. More than ever, I wanted to get my cousin out of the place.
I guess it had been instructive to drive up here, although it was hard to say what I’d gained besides seeing my tax dollars at work.
I turned to my voice mail, which had been beeping at me in some indignation. “You have eleven new messages,” it cried in my ear.
One of the calls was from Sanford Rieff at the Cheviot labs, saying he’d found something interesting. Since I was in their neck of the woods, I drove on west to Cheviot’s complex.
Rieff came out to the lobby to see me. “Vic! I don’t have anything so dramatic or definite that you needed to make a trip out here.”
“I was in the area,” I explained. “What’s up?”
“We’re still waiting for a report back from a national ballistics clearing center to see if the two guns are involved in any other shootings, but we’ve done an analysis of the beer cans. Mass spectrometry shows a high concentration of Rohypnol. Roofie, you probably call it. In beer like that—whoever drank it is probably very sick.”
Roofie. The date rape drug.
“He’s in a coma,” I said slowly. “Is there any way to tell if he put it in the beer himself?”
Rieff smiled. “That’s the interesting piece of your little puzzle. If this comes to court, it’s going to be tricky, very tricky. Lawyers and expert witnesses will battle for days, and defendants will watch their bank accounts vanish before their startled eyes.”
“Thanks, Sandy, but why?”
He led me back to his office and brought my report up on his computer screen so I could see the graphics.
“The fingerprints on the cans are odd, at least to Louis Arata, who’s our expert. If you pick up a can or a glass yourself, you press only one finger, usually the middle, full against it. Besides your thumb, of course. You touch the can with the tips of the other fingers. Here, face on, we have prints for all five fingers.”
He tapped the screen with a soft pointer to show me what he meant. “The can is clean except for those five fingers. Usually, you pick a can up, put it down, pick it up. Your prints soon overlay one another. I’m betting—or Louis Arata is betting—that a third party held the drinker’s fingers on the can. I’ll put it all in writing for you.”
I stared at the screen while Rieff rotated the image for me. Who would have gone to so much trouble to frame Chad Vishneski? Rodney and Olympia? Karen Buckley? Anton Kystarnik? And why? That was the even more urgent question.
I got up to go.
“I’d say this is pretty darn dramatic, Sandy. Guard those beer cans and so on in your deepest vault.”
Back in my car, I talked with Lotty’s clinic nurse, Jewel Kim, and told her about the Rohypnol. “Can you make sure that Lotty and her pet neurosurgeon know ASAP? I don’t know if it can help with Chad’s treatment this many days out, but that’s probably what put him in the coma.”
Jewel looked at Lotty’s notes on Chad. “She’s ordered a broad-spectrum search for drugs, but I will let her know that she can narrow it down to Rohypnol. Thanks, Vic.”
I stared out the windshield for a long time, thinking over Rieff’s report. I e-mailed the gist of it to Freeman Carter, and then, even though I knew Freeman would advise against it, I called Terry Finchley. He answered the line himself, but when I announced myself his voice grew cold. He was still angry, which prompted me to become super-perky.
“Guess where I am right now.”
“If you said sunning yourself on a Florida beach, now that would cheer me up.”
“Almost. I’m on the banks of the Skokie Lagoon. At the Cheviot labs, where they did some nifty forensic work on the beer cans that had been in Chad Vishneski’s bed. Guess what they found?”
“I’m not in the mood, V.I. Just tell me.”
“Roofies.”
“So the perp tried to off himself. Make my day.”
“The fingerprint analysis suggests a third party was present.”
The dogs had been cooped up in the car too long. They were whining at me, making it hard to hear Finchley. Cheviot’s building sat in a culde-sac that backed into one of the lagoons that dot the area. I let Mitch and Peppy out.
“Why are you doing this?” Finchley demanded.
“Doing what?”
“Trying to show me up over the Guaman homicide. I know you and I have had our differences, but—”
“Terry, I’ve always liked you, and I respect you as a cop. I’m not trying to show you up. If I were, I’d be giving my news to Murray Ryerson to broadcast wholesale instead of telling you.”
Mitch had found something to roll in. Peppy was barking at him, demanding her turn. I pretended I didn’t know them.
“I told you yesterday that Nadia Guaman’s and Chad Vishneski’s computers were both missing. This makes me think that one or both of them knew something a third party wants to keep hidden. I just learned there’s a story about Vishneski’s beer cans: not only did someone mix Rohypnol in his beer, they wiped the cans clean and then placed his fingers on them to make prints once he’d passed out.”
“You’d be hard-pressed to argue fingerprint pressure in court,” Finchley said.
“That may be true, although Freeman Carter has persuaded juries of more implausible things. But I don’t think we’ll get to a courtroom. I started this investigation prejudiced against my client’s son, but the more I learn, the more I think he was framed, poor stressed-out vet. Someone’s covering their tracks exceptionally well, but somewhere, somehow, they’re sure to have slipped up. When I find whatever mistake the real perp made, I’m counting on you to release Chad Vishneski. Assuming he’s still alive.”
“Oh, damn you, anyway, Warshawski.”
He cut the connection. The dogs had moved down to the lagoon. I trailed after them, stopping where they’d been rolling. A dead raccoon. When I’d persuaded them to get back in the car, I was annoyed with myself for my stupidity in letting them run free. They stank, and it was too cold to ride the Tollway with the windows open.
I drove along Dundee Road until I came to a groomer’s. I had to wait almost an hour until they could fit in Mitch and Peppy, but the wait allowed me to catch up on the rest of my calls. Even the expense of two shampoos beat wrestling the dogs into my own bathtub at home.