I didn’t feel very Rock-like crossing the Loop. Rainier Cowles and Kystarnik had me so spooked that I stopped in my bank to cash a large check; I didn’t want to take the chance that they might be able to track my credit card or ATM transactions. That’s the trouble with the Age of Paranoia—you know people can trace you, given the resources, but you don’t know if they are actually doing so, not unless you’re a whiz like NCIS’s Abby Sciuto, who can back-trace anyone who’s looking at her records.
When I finally reached the Glow, it was half an hour after the closing bell, and the traders were packed three-deep around Sal’s famous mahogany bar. Sal saw me, nodding as she directed traffic. Within two minutes, a minion appeared with a glass of Johnnie Walker Black. I left the drink on the bar, not wanting alcohol to take the edge off my awareness. I also resisted the temptation to pull out my cell phone and reconnect to the world. I was anxious about Chad Vishneski’s safety as well as the Guaman family’s, but I couldn’t take any chances right now.
When the traders, exhausted by a day from hell in the markets, had finally drunk themselves into enough oblivion to manage a commute home, Sal came over to my perch at the end of the bar.
“I hear Olympia’s had to close the Gouge,” she said. “Bad fire in there.”
I shrugged. “Not that bad. She needs to redo her stage and her electrics, but the structure’s okay. Question is, where she’ll find the money, since she’s already in way over her botoxed forehead to Anton Kystarnik.”
Sal’s lips rounded in a soundless whistle. “So the rumors were right this time. I couldn’t believe anyone would be such a complete idiot. Still, as my mother says, a fool and her wits are soon parted.”
She paused, measuring me. “You’d probably better know there’s another story running around the club scene. Some people say you started Olympia’s fire.”
“People will say anything, won’t they? Especially Olympia Koilada. I did threaten her with legal action if she kept slandering me, but she probably knows I don’t have the time or patience for a civil suit.”
“So how did the fire start?”
“Actually, I sort of did start it.”
Sal threw up her hands. “Oh, Vic, why? I’m sure it wasn’t the kind of pedestrian reason most of us would have: she dissed your cousin, she kicked your dog, or, in my case, the last time I had a fire here some idiot had left her curling iron on a stack of towels in the women’s toilet.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. It was sort of collateral damage.”
I described the night at the Club Gouge, with Kystarnik’s thugs beating up the Body Artist and Olympia because they couldn’t run their message board on the Artist’s body.
“So where is Buckley doing her show now?” Sal asked.
I shook my head. “She hightailed it. No one knows where to find her, but she’s a woman with more than one identity. I know two of them, and wouldn’t be surprised if she had a third to use as a bolt-hole in a situation like this.”
Sal’s shaved and painted brows lifted so high they looked like cathedral arches. “You looking for her? What’s Kystarnik going to do if you find her?”
“That, my dear friend, is the question of the hour. They have history, Anton and the Artist. The Artist and Zina, Anton’s only kid, were so close, they OD’d together. Zina Kystarnik died, but the Artist pulled through and then disappeared. Where she spent the next thirteen years is a total mystery, at least to me, but Kystarnik apparently knew. At least, he knew she was doing her act at Olympia’s. He’s been using her, I just learned, but does he hate her or love her? Will he kill her or protect her? I’m betting the first, but he’s a psychopath and they are like tornadoes, you don’t know where they’ll go.”
“Kind of like you, Warshawski,” Sal said. “Is anyone paying you to look for the chick?”
“Not exactly. Someone is paying me to show that Chad Vishneski didn’t kill Nadia Guaman. Kystarnik and the Body Artist don’t connect the dots, but they sure have enough dots on them to look like a measles epidemic. Kystarnik wouldn’t have wanted a spotlight on Club Gouge and the Artist, so I don’t think he was behind Nadia’s murder. I’m convinced the killer was hired by Tintrey. Or maybe even Rainier Cowles himself.”
I stopped to count on my fingers. “So many parties to this horror show. Besides Cowles and his pals at Tintrey, there are four others: Nadia, Chad, the Body Artist, and Kystarnik. When a fifth party blocked embodiedart.com, Kystarnik was beside himself. He roughed up the Artist and slapped Olympia around. He wanted that communications network up and running.”
I brooded over my drink. “I’m sure it was Tintrey that blocked the site. Only now they seem to be happily doing business with Kystarnik. It was Anton’s thugs who were parked outside the Guaman house this afternoon, but a week ago they didn’t know each other’s names. I don’t know how it happened, although I’m wondering if Olympia brokered that marriage. And how it happened isn’t important—it’s what they’ll do next that scares me.”
“You may make sense to yourself, but it’s gibberish to me.”
Sal went over to talk to a couple of new arrivals whom she knew. Erica, Sal’s bartender, came around with the Black Label bottle.