“Bring them out.” It was the sound of authority, a man speaking with the rumbling r of a Slavic accent.
I heard someone open the dressing room door. I couldn’t see anything, only heard a cry of pain suppressed and footfalls overhead. One set was heavy, boots, the other almost noiseless, perhaps the Body Artist’s bare feet.
From the other end of the room, I heard Olympia snap, “Let go of me, damn you!” Then the horrible sound of hand on skin, a noisy slap, and a woman, also with a rumbling Slavic accent, saying, “You speak when we ask questions. Otherwise, you are quiet.”
“You’ve no right—”
Slap. “This is not an American courtroom. You are not having rights. You are having only responsibilities, and these you are not meeting.”
I fumbled in my pocket for my cell phone and typed a text to Petra, begging her to call the police and get them to the club. I didn’t know Terry Finchley’s number by heart, so I put in the number for his friend Conrad Rawlings, who works now in South Chicago. tell Conrad 2 call Terry. thugs r beating Olympia.
Above me, I heard another slap, and a man’s voice saying, “Go to the computer, bitch, and turn your gallery back on.”
That was Rodney.
The Body Artist said, “I didn’t shut the site down. I thought you did. I can’t get access to it.” Her voice was a little wobbly, but she was maintaining an admirable level of control.
The thugs hit her again, and then I heard a crash, cascading metal, amplified by the wooden floorboards. Loud cursing in a language not English. A paint can rolled across the stage and bounced to the floor near me. A scuffle, more metal flying about, and then another smack of hand on flesh and a high-pitched yelp.
“Hold that stupid bitch.” The master voice, maybe even Anton Kystarnik himself. “You know our agreement, Olympia. I don’t want to burn your pretty little club down. So no more little-girl lies. And you, you no-good whore, no more little-girl tricks from you, either. Fix your website. Then we all can go home happy.”
“But I don’t know why my site is—”
Again someone hit her, harder this time.
I slid out from my hiding place. The man who’d been guarding the door to the corridor was gone—they figured they had control of the premises. I moved to his spot behind the curtain and peered through the gap.
The thick wires connecting the plasma screens to the mains came through here and went under the door to a wall outlet in the corridor. I stepped carefully so I wouldn’t trip and betray myself.
The stage was covered with paint. I saw now what the noise had been: Karen had hurled the contents of her cart at her attackers. Brushes and palette knives were scattered wholesale. One knife had landed near me. I slid a hand through the gap in the curtain and picked it up. Its blade was too pliable for use as a weapon.
The thugs all had on those black ski masks so popular with bullies. I thought I could tell Rodney by his beer belly, but the others were indistinguishable. One figure had a gun trained on Olympia, another on the Body Artist, who was still covered in her performance paint. Someone with red paint all down the front of his jacket forced Karen to sit, smacking her hard, and brought the laptop she used with her slide show over to her.
“Open the website,” he growled.
Karen, her fingers shaking, typed in the URL. Lights shifted and flicked in the house, and I realized the computer was still attached to the plasma screens on the stage. By craning my neck, I could see the same message I’d been getting: Out of respect for the dead, we have temporarily taken the site off-line.
“Now you put online,” he said.
“Someone got into my system and changed the password,” Karen said. “I can’t open it.”
“Liar,” the head man growled. “Log on.”
Karen typed something, and, on the screen, we could all see the message come back.
“Invalid password. Try again.”
She tried again and got the same message.
The man giving the orders nodded and the thug holding Karen slugged her jaw. I couldn’t stand and watch, and I couldn’t take them all on, either. I knelt and gouged at the insulation around the thickest of the wires snaking through my feet, peeled it back. My hands were trembling in my panicky haste. I finally loosened a strip, pulled it away from the wires, and stuck the palette knife in between them.
A crack like thunder, an arc of lightning, and the theater went dark again. The knife blade splintered in my hand, and the shock knocked me backward. Sparks sizzled and spat from the exposed wires. I scrambled under the curtains onto the stage on my hands and knees.