43
Othello Misfires
I’d been so absorbed in Alexandra’s journal that I hadn’t noticed time passing. It was almost three a.m. when I finally finished reading.
What a sorrowful document. At a time in life when Alexandra should have been glorying in the chance to explore the world and her own place in it, she’d been pursued instead by demons. The fierce teachings of her religion, the taunting by her coworkers and boss—perhaps all those things pushed her to a breaking point. Perhaps that’s why she volunteered to drive a truck along the road that led to her death.
Some of the writing showed glimpses of happiness, especially the passages where she described her siblings—Nadia painting a cartoon of Tintrey for Allie, Ernest laughing with her. It was hard to think of them now, Nadia and Allie, both dead, Ernest so damaged he couldn’t speak clearly about his sisters.
You live in the country of safety, Amani had written to Nadia. In the country of safety, Nadia had been murdered, Ernest severely injured.
But nothing showed a connection between Chad Vishneski and Alexandra, except for the fact that both had been in Iraq. Alexandra had worked for Tintrey’s Achilles division. Chad had one of the Achilles shields in his duffel bag. Tintrey had nine thousand employees in Iraq and the U.S. had over a hundred thousand troops there. It wasn’t beyond belief that Chad and Alexandra had met, but she hadn’t mentioned any Chad in the journal.
If I went to Iraq and somehow found Amani, and Jerry the programmer, and Mr. Mossbach and persuaded them, by unimagined means, to tell me everything they knew about Alexandra’s eight months in Iraq and her last day on earth, I still might not find out how she died. If I was going to untangle the story, I would have to do so from the evidence I could find here at home. Clara said her mother and Nadia had fought over the insurance payments the Guamans received after Alexandra’s death. The parents wanted to sue Tintrey, but the lawyer, Rainier Cowles, showed up and persuaded them to accept a settlement.
There was nothing strange about that, or even unsavory, but it so angered Nadia that she walked out of her parents’ home, and was still estranged from her mother when she died. And Clara believed no one was allowed to talk about Alexandra’s death.
I wandered restlessly to the window, carrying my glass. The journal had absorbed me to the point where I’d forgotten to drink the whisky. I parted the blinds, half expecting to see a date tree, but of course there was nothing but snow and ice and a few late-night cars bumping through the ruts.
Rainier Cowles had come to Club Gouge with the owner of Tintrey and the head of the company’s Iraq division to watch the Body Artist’s homage to Nadia. The men’s locker-room jokes gave lie to any notion that they were there out of respect for the dead.
Besides, when I went up to the Tintrey offices, Gilbert Scalia knew exactly who Alexandra Guaman was and how she died. Maybe Tintrey kept track of the Guamans because they feared a wrongful-death suit.
I let the curtain fall. Tomorrow—or, rather, later today—I would visit the Guamans. There had to be a way to get them to talk to me. And then I would buy a very large crystal ball and divine where the Body Artist had gone to ground.
On that helpful thought, I stumbled into bed. This time I fell asleep. In my dreams, Alexandra and Amani were painting a picture of a date palm across my body. In the background, Karen Buckley, her transparent eyes half shut, was crying, “My sister died, too.”
It was a relief when the phone pulled me out of sleep a little before eleven, even though the caller turned out to be John Vishneski.
“Warshawski, someone came after Chad, just like you thought they might. My buddy Cleon was here, and a good thing, too.”
“Attacked right in the ICU? How did they get past the nurses?”
“Dressed up like a nurse. Some blond gal, looked like that actress in Chicago, Cleon said—all brassy hair and whatnot but in a uniform. Cleon looked through the glass and saw her holding a towel over Chad’s nose, and you better believe that he busted in there fast enough to set a record, but she skittered out the other end of the ward and disappeared. What the hell is going on here? What did Chad get himself into?”
I didn’t try to answer that. “I’ll be over in half an hour,” I said.
I was thoroughly awake and thoroughly scared. Why were they going after Chad now? Had they learned that I had the piece of body armor Chad had ripped open? And, if so, how?
While I made coffee, I did some stretches, gingerly, favoring my abdomen. The muscles were healing faster than I’d thought they would even though the color was still horrible. I even managed a few jumping jacks. I drank the coffee while I quickly showered, whisked on powder and blusher, put on a serviceable black pantsuit. My right hand was still tender, but I could squeeze it into a glove. I could even squeeze a trigger with it. Everything was coming up roses.
Before I left, I locked Alexandra’s journal in my closet safe, behind my shoe tree. Mr. Contreras was continuing to deal with the dogs and our dog walker, which took a load off my mind. I clomped down the back stairs in my heavy boots and drove over to Beth Israel, where I made my way through the maze of corridors to the intensive care unit. The charge nurse, visibly rattled, demanded an ID from me before she’d even summon the Vishneskis.
Ex-husband, ex-wife emerged hand in hand. Whatever differences had driven them apart twenty years ago were beside the point with their son’s life in danger.
“I don’t understand this, Vic,” John said. “Who wants my boy dead?”
“How is he?” I asked. “Has he shown any more signs of recovery?”
“He’s opening his eyes more often,” Mona said, “and seems alert for as much as two minutes at a time. They’re saying that’s a really hopeful sign. He hasn’t spoken again, but Dr. Eve is pretty optimistic that he will start speaking soon. She says it’s just hard to tell with brain injuries but that the scans look hopeful. Only, if he isn’t going to be safe here, I don’t know . . .”
She dabbed at her eyes, and John patted her hand.
“I didn’t want to call the cops,” John added, “because they might say he was good enough to go back to that prison hospital, and I won’t let that happen. But of course the hospital filed a police report, and we’ve had someone here already this morning. Dr. Eve came down and told the detective Chad was still in critical condition, but—I don’t know, it’s all a mess.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I’m getting closer to some answers. I just need one or two more breaks. In the meantime, one of Chad’s buddies is a Marine staff sergeant—ex-Marine, anyway. He’s out of work, and I can pay him something to come up here and be Chad’s bodyguard. I’ll clear it with the hospital’s executive director. If Sergeant Jepson takes the owl shift, maybe you can do the daytime.”
The Vishneskis took me in with them to look at Chad. He’d been such a big, angry man the times I’d seen him. Lying in a hospital bed, his tattooed arms full of IV needles, he seemed to have shrunk. It was unsettling to see him like this, but I knelt next to him and clasped one of his hands.
“You don’t know me, Chad, but I’m a friend,” I said quietly. “I’m working with Tim Radke and Marty Jepson, and we’re going to save you. You’re going to be okay, so relax, and rest and get better.”
I couldn’t tell if he was hearing me, but I repeated the message several times. When I got back to my feet, the Vishneskis said they didn’t want to leave Chad. I went down alone to executive director Max Loewenthal’s office, where I spoke with his administrative assistant, Cynthia.
She knew about the attack; Max had already been briefed by his security chief.
“We’re moving Chad to a private room,” she said, “and we’ll have someone from security there twenty-four/seven. But the cost of an intensive care patient in a private room—Chad’s veterans benefits won’t cover it.”
“Cynthia, this is so wrecked. If someone murders Chad, his parents will sue you for negligence, and you’ll end up paying buckets in damages—surely it’s cheaper to suck up some of the cost of a private room—”
“Don’t lecture me on costs,” she broke in. “I’m on the page with you, but I don’t run this circus, and neither does Max. We’re doing a lot for you here, but, the last I saw, this wasn’t the V. I. Warshawski Hospital for Indigent Veterans.”
Beth Israel, like most other Illinois hospitals, devoted less than one percent of its patient care to the indigent. But I needed help, not combat, so I only said, “You’re right, Cynthia, you’re right. I’m sending a Marine up to act as bodyguard. That’ll take care of some of the expense, right, if you don’t have to use one of your own people?” I hesitated. “The man who stopped the intruder described her as looking like Renée Zellweger in Chicago. Anton Kystarnik has at least one woman on his hit team.”
Cynthia had never heard of Kystarnik, but when I explained who he was she said she’d mention it to their security chief and to Max.
“If it’s any comfort, this isn’t going to go on much longer,” I said. “I’ve stirred the hornets’ nest, they’re buzzing around like mad, stinging wherever they see exposed flesh, and that’s going to lead me to the queen. Or king, probably, in this case.”
“That’s no comfort at all,” Cynthia cried. “We can’t have our hospital turned into a war zone. It’s bad enough all the gangbangers coming in here who have to have their weapons pried away from them—sometimes even in the operating room! I can’t worry about somebody who’s supposed to be in police custody to begin with.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say except maybe to beseech her not to tell Lotty, and that didn’t seem like the act of an optimist. Instead, I promised to wrap things up as quickly as possible.
“If there’s one more incident like this, Chad will have to be moved,” Cynthia warned me, “and Max will tell you the same.”
With that stern valediction weighing me down, I returned to my car. I wanted to get in touch with my cousin to see if she had Marty Jepson’s cell phone number, but she wasn’t answering the office line or her own cell. URGENT! CALL ASAP, I texted her before driving to Thirty-fifth and Michigan, where I tried to see Terry Finchley.
Liz Milkova, the officer I’d spoken to the day before, came out to meet me. I went through the motions: We’d met at Club Gouge, we’d spoken yesterday, I’d worked with Terry for years.
“Several things have happened,” I added, “including Chad Vishneski being attacked in the ICU. But, in addition to that, I can explain how Anton Kystarnik has been communicating with his subordinates, so any eavesdropping devices can’t tag him.”
“I can take a message and give it to Detective Finchley.”
“I’d like to give all the details to Terry myself.”
Her eyes, so dark a blue they were almost black, darkened even more. “I may be a woman and a junior detective. But I know how to take a statement.”
I felt my eyes turn hot. “I am one of the old-fashioned feminists who helped open this door for you, Officer Milkova, so don’t get on your high horse with me. If you were Eliot Ness in the flesh, I still would want to talk to Terry. Unless it’s you and not he who’s in charge of the Guaman murder now.”
Someone behind me started to clap, and I turned. Terry had come out into the lobby. “Warshawski, if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never get more satisfaction than I’ve had just now, having someone hand you your own shoulder chips on a plate.”
I gave a twisted smile. “I live to serve others, Finch. Did you know someone dressed up like a nurse and went into the Beth Israel ICU in the middle of the night? She tried to smother Chad Vishneski with a towel. A friend of John Vishneski’s was there and chased her out.”
This was news to Finchley, and he sent Milkova off to find out who in the police department had spoken to the ICU staff. He took me into a conference room, where I gave him a detailed description of the way Kystarnik and Rodney Treffer had used the Body Artist as a message board.
“That’s interesting, Warshawski, but not real helpful since you say your stripper, or artist, or whatever, has vanished. And Club Gouge is closed for the time being.”
“Thanks to Kystarnik!”
“You say. But the owner, that Olympia woman, says otherwise.”
He held up a hand as I started to protest. “I’m not saying she’s right and you’re wrong. I’m just saying we don’t have any basis to go collecting guys—or gals—who work for Kystarnik. And, believe me, I’d like to. These Eastern European thugs have added a whole new dimension to weapons and cruelty that our gangbangers never aspired to. As for Rodney Treffer . . . Guy took a beating the other night, and you called to report it, is that right?”
“No.” I looked at him steadily. “Guy had me cuffed and was kicking me in the stomach”—I lifted my sweater to show him my color-coded abdomen—“when he slipped and hit his head on the ice. A couple of Iraqi vets came along and made sure Rodney’s pals didn’t finish me off.”
Officer Milkova had come back into the room. She gasped at my bruises.
“You file a formal complaint?” Terry asked.
“Not yet,” I said, “but I’ll be happy to. The vets—a Marine sergeant and an Army systems pro—helped me persuade Treffer’s subordinates to explain the code Treffer was writing on the Body Artist. It’s irrelevant now, since the club’s been trashed, but Kystarnik may revive his code to use elsewhere. I’ve written it all out for you.”
When he’d read it on my computer screen, Terry nodded, and sent Milkova for a data stick so he could make a copy of it.
“You think this has something to do with the Guaman woman’s murder?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s all murky right now. Everything came together through the Body Artist, but until she shows up I don’t know how we’ll connect those dots.”
Milkova reappeared with a data stick. I copied the report, then got to my feet.
“The Vishneski kid, he’s still out?” Terry asked casually.
I didn’t think he needed to know that Chad had woken up long enough to ask for his “vest.”
“The Vishneskis say their neurosurgeon told your officer that he’s still critical. He hasn’t regained consciousness as far as I know.”
“As soon as he’s stable, he goes back to County. The fact that Anton Kystarnik used Club Gouge as a private mailbox has nothing to do with Guaman’s murder. Vishneski is still in the frame as far as we’re concerned.”
“Even though someone tried to smother him this morning?” I asked.
“Could be some completely different quarrel. Could be a friend of the dead woman, looking for revenge. You haven’t shown me another believable perp.”
“I’m working on it, Terry, and I’m pretty darned close right now.” I got to my feet. “By the way, someone using Kystarnik’s address plunked down twenty-three thousand in cash to cover Rodney’s hospital bill. What does that tell you?”
“That Treffer has richer friends than I do.”