Sal’s brows contracted. “If—and that’s a mighty big if—Olympia is doing or dealing, get your cousin out of there ASAP. It’s a big chance to take, though. I wouldn’t think Olympia would risk her license and her property by letting a dealer operate so blatantly.”
“Maybe so, but there’s something going on there. You stop by one of these nights and you’ll see what I mean.” I picked at a loose corner of the label on the Scotch bottle. “You said you and Olympia weren’t old lovers, but what about her and Nadia Guaman? Or her and Karen Buckley? Were Nadia and Karen around the club scene, at least as far as you know?”
“I never heard of this Nadia, Vic. Karen Buckley, I’ve caught her act. It’s a startling piece of performance art for this town, the kind of thing you expect in San Francisco or New York, but not conservative Chitown. Gal like that could sleep with anyone for any reason. I mean, maybe she’s having an affair with Olympia, maybe she slept with the dead woman, but I’m guessing Buckley’s not a dyke. I wouldn’t even say she was bisexual. She just does what she wants when she wants with whoever she wants.”
An omnisexual. I wondered what that felt like, to do what you wanted when you wanted. Buckley hadn’t struck me as a very contented person, despite her yoga poses and deep breathing.
“That paintbrush with the glass—at the time, I wondered if the Artist or Olympia did it as a publicity stunt. I’m still not convinced they didn’t. But Nadia could have sabotaged it, or even Chad, I suppose.”
“Could be. Olympia’s been hurting along with the rest of the economy. If she thought it would bring in business, she’d cut her own wrists in front of a webcam.”
“Would you?”
Sal laughed. “Hell, no. I’m quite attached to my own good looks, thank you very much.”
I looked at her seriously. “You’re tough, Sal, and one of the strongest people I know. But you’re sane. What you just said about Olympia, you may have meant it as a joke but the very fact that such an image came to your mind means you feel what I’m talking about, that edgy, danger-daring quality.”
“You’d be the expert on that particular bit of human nature, Warshawski. You going to drink that whisky or just play spin the bottle all night?”
“Neither.” I handed Sal my AmEx card. She used to run a tab for me when she and I first opened our businesses twenty years ago, but those days have disappeared with the rest of the economy.
I took side streets going home. I was tired, and whisky at the end of a long day hadn’t been the smartest move before getting behind the wheel. Sal’s response to my questions about Olympia hadn’t done anything to dampen my enthusiasm for my case. That was because my enthusiasm level had been low to begin with. Chad with a Glock on the pillow next to him was a high hill to climb over, and I didn’t think I’d find an easy path on the other side.
I hadn’t actually seen any ballistic or forensic evidence in the case. In the morning, I’d check with the ME on that. In the meantime, before going to bed, I turned on my laptop and logged on to my subscription databases; they could spend the night hunting for information about Nadia Guaman. For good measure, I also asked about Olympia, Karen Buckley, and Chad Vishneski.
When the alarm woke me at six, I wanted to shoot it or scream, or something. I’ve never been much for early mornings, and when it is pitch-black, with the kind of cold that makes you feel your head is strapped inside iron bands, it takes every ounce of will not to pull the covers over your head and wait for spring.
“Bunter!” I cried. “Bunter, get that cappuccino machine fired up. And look smart about it!”
What a strange fantasy, to imagine someone who was dressed and ready to do your bidding at whatever hour it pleased you to bid him. So very obviously politically and socially incorrect, and yet how much I longed for my own Bunter. I flung the covers back and ran across the cold floor to the kitchen, where I put on my espresso maker, before tiptoeing to the bathroom.
I turned the thermostat up to sixty-eight before collecting the dogs from Mr. Contreras.
When I got home and thawed out, I sat at my laptop with my second espresso. LifeStory, an innocuous-sounding outfit, for whose detailed searches into everyone’s lives I pay eight grand a year, had sent me a profile of Nadia Guaman.
Guaman had gone to Columbia College in the south Loop after a childhood in Pilsen and high school at St. Teresa of Avila. Her father, Lazar, worked as a baggage handler up at O’Hare; her mother, Cristina, was a cashier at a Pilsen hardware store. They still lived in the bungalow on Twenty-first Place where Nadia had grown up.