Body Work Part 2

This time of night, the L is full, with students getting out of night school and weary late workers like me heading home. Most of my companions had little white wires snaking from pockets to ears, making them look as though their heads were being transfused. A number of them were texting at the same time or listening to their earclips. They looked like the descendants of Alien Nation Alien Nation getting commands from the mother s.h.i.+p. getting commands from the mother s.h.i.+p.

I got off the train at Ashland and hurried to Club Gouge as fast as I could on the icy sidewalk. Even though it was a weeknight, the parking lot was almost full. The people coming and going through the club's doors seemed to be chattering normally, not with the hushed excitement they'd show around a crime scene.

The bouncer was inspecting people's bags and backpacks before letting them in. That was the only sign that something unusual had happened. No one protested-we're all inured these days to being searched. Pretty soon, we'll have to get undressed before we walk into our apartment buildings at night, and we'll probably submit to that without a murmur.

When I reached the front of the line, I showed the bouncer my PI license and explained that Petra had summoned me. The bouncer, Mark, looked me up and down but nodded me into the club.

"I don't know if the Artist'll talk to you," he said, "but she's in the back. Her performance starts in about twenty minutes-I'll get Petra to take you to her."

"What happened?"

Mark shuffled his feet.

"She'll tell you herself. I'm not a hundred percent sure."

I looked at him narrowly, wondering what he didn't want to reveal, but went into the club. Olympia was behind the bar, helping the two bartenders keep up with the orders. As the Body Artist's performance time was drawing near, the club was filling, and drink orders were piling up.

Olympia was striking, with her dyed black hair and the thick streak of white over her left eye. She was dressed in black and white, too, as if she, like the Body Artist, were a canvas on display. Tonight she was wearing a pantsuit that s.h.i.+mmered like oilcloth under the lights. The jacket was open to her breastbone, where you could see the fringed top of a white camisole.

My cousin was easy to find. At five-eleven, with her halo of spiky hair adding another three inches, she towered over most of the room. When I tapped her arm, she finished delivering drinks to four tables without missing an order and then waltzed me behind the stage to the small changing room set aside for performers.

She knocked perfunctorily on the door but opened it without waiting for an answer. The Body Artist was sitting in the lotus position, eyes shut, breathing slowly. She was already naked except for her thong, which was covered with the same kind of cream foundation paint as her body. Close up, she looked more like a mannequin than before, which was somehow more disturbing than her nudity.

Petra cleared her throat uncertainly. "Uh, this is my cousin, the detective, you know. I told you I was calling her when you said you didn't want the police here. Vic, Body Artist. Body Artist, Vic. I've got to get back to my station."

She backed out of the room, the feathery ends of her hair brus.h.i.+ng against the top of the door frame.

The Artist looked up at me. "I don't want to be disturbed before my performance. Come back later."

"Nope," I said. "Later, I'm going to be home. I've been working since eight this morning and I'm beat. Who attacked you?"

"I don't know."

"Where did it happen?"

"Here, in my dressing room."

"The first time I was here, some big guy with tattoos tried to attack you. Was it him?"

"It was . . . an indirect a.s.sault. Not a mugging."

"Were you attacked at all?" I asked. "Or is this a publicity stunt-will I see a paragraph in tomorrow's paper that I repelled yet another customer infuriated by your nudity?"

The Artist's eyes were hard to read inside the mask of paint. "It was a real a.s.sault."

She rose, with the fluid motion of a dancer, and showed me her left leg. Beneath the foundation paint, I could just make out the long line of a cut.

"A piece of gla.s.s was hidden in one of my brushes. It's in the garbage now."

I put on my gloves and extracted the brush from the pile of tissues and sponges that was filling the can. It was soft, made of sable, the bristles about an inch wide and two inches long. A gla.s.s shard had been attached to the bristle head with a piece of wire painted the same color as the handle. Even so, it was easy to spot.

"How come you didn't see the gla.s.s?" I asked.

"I've done this so many times, I don't think about it," she said. "I unroll my brushes, stick them in the paint containers ready to take onstage, and apply my foundation."

"So your brush was rigged before you got here tonight?"

"Maybe. But I dropped everything off here this afternoon so that I could run some errands, and I don't lock the case." She waved a hand at a large metal suitcase under the dressing table.

"You need to give this to the cops. If there's poison on it, or teta.n.u.s-"

"I'll get a teta.n.u.s shot tomorrow morning. But I don't want the police here." For the first time, she sounded agitated, even angry.

"Why not? Someone injured you."

"I don't want police in here s...o...b..ring over me, and I don't want to put clothes on over my foundation. Period, end of story."

Olympia had appeared in the doorway without my noticing. "Who are you? Oh, right, Warshawski, the detective who craves anonymity. The Artist has to go onstage in five minutes, and you're going to hurt her performance, badgering her like this. You need to leave."

I asked Olympia the same question I'd put to the Body Artist about the tattooed guy at the table of drunks who'd tried to jump the Artist the night I came with Jake and his friends. "Chad, I think I heard his pals call him."

"Drunks don't have the subtlety for something like this," the Artist said.

She was staring at Olympia when she spoke. The heavy foundation made it impossible to read her expression, but it flashed through my mind that Olympia had rigged the brush, or at least that the Artist thought she had.

"Get out now, Warshawski," Olympia said. "Go sit at a table in the back-we'll treat you to a drink."

"Thanks, Olympia, but I'm way past my limit tonight."

Over objections from both women, I put the brush into a plastic bag the Body Artist had used to hold cotton b.a.l.l.s, wrote down the date and place I'd found it, and tucked it into a pocket of my handbag. On my way out of the club, I scanned the crowd. I didn't see Chad or his friends, but the heavyset man who looked like a cop was there again. He was nursing a drink at a table by himself. Morose, off-duty policeman without friends, the kind who makes headlines by using his weapon in a crowded bar.

Another person, sitting close to the front, also looked familiar. I studied her for a moment and then decided she was the painter whose work had provoked Chad. Her thin shoulders were hunched up around her ears. Her hands were on the table, tensed so tightly that I could see the tendons raised across the back. She, too, seemed to be alone.

4.

Individual of Interest.

It was a week later that Petra dropped by my office on her way home from her day job. She was drooping. Even her spiky hair had collapsed, and she looked less like a radiant Valkyrie than a houseplant in need of water.

I was in the middle of a complicated transaction with an Ajax Insurance auditor, trying to unravel a fraud committed by one of their claims adjustors, but I gave my cousin an extra-bright smile to show that I loved her and was delighted to see her.

While I talked the accountant through the entries I'd made in my audit software, Petra wandered around my office. She fiddled with stacks of doc.u.ments, studied her teeth in the gla.s.s over my Antonella Mason painting, and then spun a crystal paperweight, a gift from a grateful client, on its edge. She was so distracting that I finally beckoned her over and told her to go across the street for a couple of espressos. By the time she'd returned, her hair damp from the snow that was starting to fall, I'd finished my phone call with Ajax.

I sat her down in the alcove reserved for clients, the sole clutter-free place in my office. "What's up, babe?"

"I, uh, Vic . . . Did you ever find out who put that piece of gla.s.s in the Body Artist's paintbrush?"

"No, why? Has it happened again?"

Petra shook her head. "No. I just wondered."

She had taken off her ski jacket. Underneath, she had on a big sweater topped by a fringed buckskin vest. She wasn't taking money from her dad, but her mother had restocked her closet during their Christmas ski trip.

She started braiding and unbraiding the fringes on the vest. I tried to curb my impatience. She was troubled, and like all troubled people who come to that corner alcove it was hard for her to get to the point.

"I sent the brush up to a forensic lab I use," I said. "The gla.s.s didn't have any germs or poisons on it, and they couldn't lift any fingerprints from the handle. Do you think you know who did it?"

Petra looked up. "No . . . No, I don't . . . But I sort of wondered . . . The atmosphere at the club, ever since that night-really, ever since after Christmas-it's changed. Olympia is, like . . . I don't know-"

"You're wondering if Olympia spiked the brush?" I cut into her dithering.

She made a face. "It's nothing so concrete. But there's this woman who comes in almost every time the Body Artist is performing-I think her name is Nadia-and she does this same picture over and over. She's really good, compared to all the weirdos and sleazoids who want to paint their names or, you know, something gross, but-"

"Was she there when Jake and I came right after Thanksgiving? She was painting pink hats, and a woman's face, and she got that tattooed guy all wound up."

"That's her. Well, Olympia and the Artist have been arguing about her. It's almost like-well, the way they talk-it's sort of like Olympia and the Artist are lovers, or were lovers-I don't know-something like that. And now this Nadia is coming between them, or something."

"It is tiresome when people bring their love life to work, but unless you feel threatened I wouldn't worry about it. Just stay out of the middle. Or quit if it gets too rocky."

"I'm not a baby, I don't care who sleeps with who, although it is like being back in tenth grade when they flaunt it at you." She leaned forward in her earnestness, her hands on her knees. "Vic, I know you and Uncle Sal both were kind of down on me working at a club, but when I started there I loved it, I loved everything about it. The energy, my coworkers, the acts. Olympia, she's amazing. Her music is so cutting-edge, she's so bold. She's only a few years younger than my gran-my mom's mom-but she's so together! I loved working for her. Now, though, she doesn't seem the same. And it's not just the stuff with Nadia and the Artist."

Her voice trailed away, and she started pulling at a loose thread in her jeans, hiding her face from me.

"What's going on, Petra? What aren't you telling me? Drugs?" I added sharply when she didn't answer.

She looked up at me, her mascaraed lashes brus.h.i.+ng her brows. "I don't know. I mean, I know people there are using-you're running around, waiting tables, you see who's putting stuff up their noses or into their drinks or whatever-but I never saw any sign that Olympia was using or even dealing. I did ask Mark-Mark Alexander, her bouncer-and he says Olympia doesn't tolerate drugs in the club . . . at least, not staff bringing them in."

I nodded but took Mark's a.s.surances with a grain of salt. If people were doing drugs in the club, it was because Olympia was turning a blind eye.

"It's really Nadia and the Artist that seem to cause-well, they don't cause it-but whenever Nadia shows up, even though all she does is paint on the Artist, everyone is out of whack. Like those guys, the tattooed guy and his friends. The one guy, Chad, he gets so furious I think he might have a heart attack on the spot. I don't know why he keeps coming back, but it's, like, he can't leave the club alone. And Olympia, she's, like, Let him come in, as long as he isn't violent, because his gang runs up these huge tabs."

She grinned briefly. "And then his buddies leave these humungous tips because they feel embarra.s.sed. So, of course, in a way we all welcome them on the nights they show up."

She started tearing pieces from her coffee cup. "The problem is, this guy has been hitting on me, and when I put him down, Olympia behaved really oddly."

"What guy?" I demanded. "Chad?"

"No. Chad only cares about Nadia. I mean, she's the person who winds him up, or maybe it's the Artist-it's hard to be sure. This older guy, he's kind of crude, and he can't keep his hands to himself. So first I kidded him, you know, going, 'Whoa, buster, seems like your fingers kind of forgot curfew. Better tell 'em to stay home where they belong.' Well, that was like slapping a whale with a goldfish-totally useless. So next time I kicked him good on the s.h.i.+n, and he talked to Olympia, and she came to me and said I couldn't go around kicking customers. So I explained what happened, and she said, Are you sure? And I said, I know what a hand feels like when it's inside my pants, and she said, If I overlooked it, there'd be something extra in my pay envelope. But-"

"Quit." I said flatly. "If Olympia is running drugs-and a bar is a perfect Laundromat for drug money-you don't want to be there when the cops shut her down. And if she's pimping for some sleazoid, you need to run for the exit."

"I will if I have to. But, Vic, it's almost four hundred a week in tips I'm getting there, pretty much tax-free. And my day job, I don't know how much longer they'll keep me on. Would you-I know it's a lot to ask-but could you-"

"What, shoot him?" I asked when she broke off.

That made her laugh.

"If you could do it and not get caught, I'd be your slave for life! No, but could you check him out, do you think, see who he is, see if there's something you could do to make him stop?"

"Do you have his name?" I asked.

"Olympia calls him Rodney. I'm not sure what his last name is-Stranger-Danger, maybe." She scrolled through her cell phone and held it out to me. "This is what he looks like."

She'd taken his picture from above, when she was pa.s.sing his table. It wasn't a good likeness, but it didn't surprise me to see it was the guy I'd pegged as an off-duty cop. Petra wasn't working tonight, but she said she'd be at the club the next night. I promised to stop in, although it bugged me that my cousin insisted on staying on at the joint.

Petra zipped up her ski jacket, her face brighter now that she'd unburdened herself and gotten a promise of help. Even her hair, matted down by her ear warmer, seemed to be springing up.

"Vic-don't tell Uncle Sal, okay? He's already on me about the club being so degenerate and all, and-"

"Sweet Pea, I'm not so sure he's wrong. If I see c.o.ke or ecstasy or some d.a.m.ned thing pa.s.sing between Olympia and Mr. Stranger-Danger, you are quitting on the spot, you hear?"

"Sure, Vic, I promise." She held up three fingers in the Girl Scout salute and danced out the door.

I finished my number crunching for Ajax Insurance. The claims manager seemed to have the intelligence of an eggplant. He should have been able to generate the report himself, but a hundred fifty an hour-I wouldn't complain.

5.

What on Earth Is Going On?

I returned to the club the following night. The Body Artist was appearing, and the joint was alive, practically shaking with twenty- and thirtysomethings. Rodney was there, and so were Chad and his friends. I didn't see Nadia. returned to the club the following night. The Body Artist was appearing, and the joint was alive, practically shaking with twenty- and thirtysomethings. Rodney was there, and so were Chad and his friends. I didn't see Nadia.

I took a table near the back, but Olympia swept over as I was pulling out a chair at one of the rear tables. Tonight she was wearing a black sweater with a deep cleavage over black velvet pants; her touch of white was a corsage of feathers that brushed the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"That table's reserved, Warshawski. I don't have a free seat in the house. You'll have to stand."

"Not a problem, Olympia."

I got up and moved to the railing that created a kind of foyer between the audience s.p.a.ce and the club entrance. I wasn't going to give her an excuse to throw me out by losing my temper.

"And there's a twenty-dollar cover on the night the Body Artist appears. All drinks are six dollars, more for name brands."

I stuck a hand inside my sweater and pretended to be fumbling with my bra. "Want the money now?"

She frowned. "A private eye is bad for business, Warshawski. If you interrupt the show or hara.s.s the Artist, I'll see that you're thrown out."

"I'll tell you what's bad for business, Ms. Koilada: you dealing drugs, or laundering money, or whatever you and Rodney are up to. I want you to know that my cousin Petra's safety is very important to me."