I must have dropped off to sleep, because the next thing I remember was Lotty holding my foot while Vesta pointed a flashlight at it. “Yes, it is just glass, not a bullet. And Sal has a good first-aid kit. This will hurt: I don’t have any topicals with me—I don’t go to nightclubs expecting to need them. Vesta, a little lower and to the right.”
The pain as she pulled the glass out shot through me like an electric current. Lotty’s expert fingers probed the area, didn’t find any more fragments. She swabbed the wound with antiseptic, which jolted me again, and pieced the gaping pieces of flesh together with tape before wrapping the foot up.
“Thank you, Lotty,” I said weakly. “Sorry the evening’s entertainment took such a shocking turn.”
“Why would I expect otherwise when you’re in charge? God forbid that the Chicago Symphony ever hires you to run a program for them.”
The words were harsh, but her tone was affectionate. She squeezed my shoulder and ordered Petra, who’d hovered, white-faced, behind her, to bring me a hot, sweet drink. No alcohol! Lotty waited until Petra returned with some hot cider and stood over me while I drank it.
“You have to stay?” Lotty asked when I’d finished the cider. “I’m getting Max to take me home. You know, men in uniform. I think I’ve seen enough of them for the evening. You have someone to see you home when they let you go?”
“Plenty.” I got up to kiss her good night and ask her to take Mr. Contreras with her. He had been buzzing around the perimeter while I talked to Terry and while Lotty worked on me. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have the energy to talk to him right now, but I wanted to stay until I could see the Body Artist alone. I didn’t know if I could even keep her in the bar when the cops finished with her.
“Petra needs to go home,” I said to my neighbor when he started to reject Lotty’s offer of a ride. “She’s seen way too much violence tonight.”
That suggestion brightened his face: looking after Petra was a pleasure as well as a duty. As soon as he left with Lotty and Petra, I turned to Vesta. “If Karen is still in the bar, if the cops don’t send her down to Thirty-fifth and Michigan, will you hold on to her for me? I want to talk to her alone and may never find her again if she gets away tonight.”
Vesta’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “You’re half dead where you’re sitting, you know. But if it’ll cheer you up to talk to Buckley, or whatever her name is, I’ll sit on her chest until you’re done here.”
When Terry finally finished with me—“I saved the worst till last, Warshawski”—and the last of the cops disappeared, Vesta stepped out of the shadows inside the mahogany horseshoe and brought the Body Artist over to me. Marty Jepson and Tim Radke followed. I wondered where Rivka was, but Vesta told me she’d made Rivka leave an hour or so earlier while the cops were interviewing the Artist.
“We’ll go down to the basement and talk while I clean up and change,” I said to the Artist. “Vesta, can you escort her down? And Tim, Marty, why don’t you hang around up here? If she decides to run up the stairs, I’ve got this gimpy foot—I can’t stop her.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” the Body Artist said, “so you might as well let me go now.” Her chin was high, defiant, Joan of Arc confronting her Burgundian jailers.
“Then you can sit in lofty silence, while I clean up and dress. And I’ll talk to you.”
54
The Body Artist’s Tale
The concrete floor and walls were just about at the freezing mark. I turned on a space heater full blast, but I was still shivering. I began rubbing cold cream on my legs. Vesta retreated into the back, sitting on a crate of beer bottles. She stayed so quiet during our conversation that, after a few minutes, both the Artist and I forgot she was there.
“Let’s see,” I started, “you were born Francine Pindero, you and Zina Kystarnik sold drugs to the rich kids on the North Shore until you and she overdosed. She died but you survived. I guess that proves how ignorant I am because I always thought dealers were too smart to use their own dope.”
“How did you know my name?” she demanded.
“I’m a detective. I detect things.”
“Then how did you detect I’d given roofies to your tame soldier?”
“That was a guess.”
I ran a facecloth under the tap in a sink that stood in one corner of the basement and soaped my breasts. It felt wonderful, like being newborn, to see my own skin again.
“You guessed wrong. Like you guessed wrong about Anton and me.” Her arms were folded across her chest, her mouth a thin uncompromising line.
I dried off and pulled on a T-shirt and a sweater. My hair, stiff with the hair spray Rivka had used to hold the Barbie dolls in place, felt heavy and filthy, but I’d wash it at home.
“You let Rodney Treffer use your ass as a billboard for Anton Kystarnik.”
“Wrong,” she said.
“Okay, what’s the right version?”
“Why should I tell you one damned thing?”
“No reason,” I said. “My version is the one that will go out in the Herald-Star, and then it will be all over the blogosphere. But if you’re cool with that—”