I was struggling to my feet when a welcome voice bellowed through the room.
“This is the police. We have closed the doors. Return to your seats. And one of you people behind the bar, turn up the lights.”
It was Terry Finchley, standing under the spotlight on the stage with a bullhorn. Officer Milkova was behind Vishneski, pulling his hands from Scalia’s throat. Terry tossed the horn to the floor and came to our table.
“An ambulance is on its way, Warshawski. Go put on some clothes. And then you’d better be prepared to tell me all about it.”
53
After the Brawl
As the night wore on, events began to blur. Ambulance crews came for Cowles and for a woman who’d been shot when one of Anton’s thugs tried to kill the Body Artist. Someone—it might have been the Renaissance Raven—wrapped me in a big furry coat. I never did learn who it belonged to.
Terry Finchley had set up operations at the end of the bar. He demanded I give him the names of any key players, besides the group at Tintrey’s table, but I had told him only about the Body Artist and Anton’s creeps. I was pretty sure I’d seen Rodney in the crowd, but he’d managed to slide out ahead of the cops along with Anton. They’d left Konstantin and Ludwig to take any heat coming Anton’s way.
Jarvis MacLean demanded that Finchley arrest Lazar Guaman for shooting Cowles. When MacLean turned to me, insisting that I confirm that Guaman had shot Cowles, I shook my head.
“Can’t help you there, Mr. MacLean,” I said. “I had my back to your table when the gun went off. I didn’t see it.”
“Damn it,” MacLean said, “he was holding the gun. You made him drop it.”
“Still can’t help you,” I said. “Gilbert Scalia might have shot Cowles, the way he shot Nadia Guaman. He framed Chad Vishneski for Nadia’s death, and now he could be trying to frame Nadia’s father for shooting Rainier Cowles.”
That got Terry’s attention in a hurry. He had been prepared to let MacLean and Scalia rush off to their waiting limo, but he ordered me to repeat the accusation.
“What are you basing that on, Vic?” Terry asked. “Your woman’s intuition or actual evidence?”
I gave a tight smile. “Marty Jepson ID’d Scalia as a man who accosted Chad outside Plotzky’s bar the night Nadia Guaman was shot. And one of Mona Vishneski’s neighbors saw him and a second man escorting Chad home about half an hour later. The neighbor recognized Scalia’s Iraq service medal. Maybe he can pick Scalia out of a lineup.”
“I have major responsibilities in a war that the U.S. is waging against our most ferocious enemies,” Scalia said. “I can’t be bothered with this kind of crap.”
Terry’s eyes narrowed. “Murder is a kind of crap, Mr. Scalia, the worst kind. If you’ve shot someone in my city, then you’ll have to take time away from your heavy duties to answer my questions.”
Terry told Milkova to see that Scalia and MacLean were driven to his office at Thirty-fifth and Michigan. “Let Captain Mallory know what we’re doing. And, of course, let them call their lawyers. I gather their chief counsel is over at Northwestern getting his head sewn back together, but they must have other lawyers at their disposal.”
Finchley told me I could sit down until he was ready for me, and I retreated to the stool the Renaissance Raven had used. After that, I remembered things only episodically. Jepson and Radke smuggling the Raven out of the bar through the basement service door. Perhaps she was afraid a police inquiry might keep her from her European tour.
Petra shrieked at the blood from my left foot pooling on the floor. I hadn’t noticed it until then. “Vic! You’ve been shot!”
I pulled my foot up and looked at it under the spotlight. A piece of glass was embedded in the ball. I hadn’t even felt it when I walked away from Rainier Cowles.
“Don’t worry about that now. What I need is for you to make sure the Body Artist hasn’t left.”
Petra gulped. “Vic, you can’t just sit there with glass in your foot.”
“Then pull it out and go find the Body Artist.”
Petra disappeared into the crowd, which was sounding like the herd in one of those old John Wayne movies: low mooing, restless movement, prelude to a stampede. Now that I knew about the glass in my foot, I couldn’t bring myself to get up to look for the Artist. I tried to scan the crowd to see if I could spot her, but it was impossible with so many bodies crammed together.