bailed her out, and now she lets Rodney run tame around her club. If—”
“Who told you that?”
I smiled. “Sources. Nadia Guaman was getting Chad Vishneski all wound up. When he started attacking her in the club, it created a stir, and the club got in the news. Anton can’t afford to have a spotlight on him these days. The feds are already paying too much attention to him. So he gets Rodney to shoot Nadia and frame Chad, and two problems are solved at the same time.”
Widermayer gave a derisive snort. “I thought you were a detective, not a fairy-tale writer.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a fairy tale as long as the state’s attorney and a jury believe it.”
I drew my feet up under me, despite the bulk of my boots, and the credenza gave kind of a squawk.
“Get off that,” Widermayer said sharply. “If you break it, you replace it.”
“Fifty bucks at Walmart. Not worth worrying about.”
“Olympia Koilada doesn’t figure in your fairy tale, I notice, but if she’s your client I’d advise her to be very, very careful.”
“Yeah,” I said, “why’s that?”
“She hasn’t kept her side of a bargain she made, and that means she’s not trustworthy.”
The credenza wobbled under my weight. Widermayer watched it and me with as much alarm as his large plate of a face could express. I hopped off: I didn’t want to impale my spine on a tax book.
“If Olympia shows up dead or beaten, or something, you and Anton will definitely be the first ports of call for the cops. Not to mention your boy Rodney.”
“Nothing to do with me,” Widermayer said.
I leaned over the desk and smiled into his face. “He’s using your car. The law tends to hold you responsible for little things like that.”
“If you’re threatening me, you’re wasting your breath.”
I straightened up. “I wouldn’t call it a threat, Mr. Widermayer. More like information.”
As I left his office, I looked back to smile at him. Not even his eggy face could conceal his expression this time, and it wasn’t one that proclaimed eternal love and devotion.
21
The Super-Rich and Their Fascinating Lives
When I got back to my car, I wrote down the names I’d seen on Widermayer’s assistant’s computer while they were still fresh in my mind: Bettina Lyzhneska, Konstantin Feder, Michael Durante, Ludwig Nastase. An Eastern European crew, except for Durante and Rodney.
There were only a dozen or so cars in the lot, mostly the nondescript Fords and Toyotas that people like Widermayer’s assistant might drive. I copied down their license plates, anyway. Maybe I could push on my relationship with Murray and find out who they were registered to.
The Mercedes sedan Rodney had been using was parked there. I sat up straighter. Rodney drove a car registered to Widermayer, but I had a feeling that anything Widermayer owned really belonged to Kystarnik, or at least was available to him. Which probably included Rodney himself. He was exactly the kind of muscle Kystarnik might use.
I dug my maps out from under Mitch. Roehampton, where Kystarnik had his Chicago-area home, was only a few miles up the road. While I was this far north, I might as well see what eight hundred million dollars bought you. I started to query one of my subscription databases for Kystarnik’s home address, then realized how exposed I was sitting there. I drove back down Dundee Road and pulled into a strip mall. Wireless service in the northern suburbs was golden: before I could leave the car for a sandwich, LifeStory was flashing Kystarnik’s address and a few biographical details on my tiny screen.
I squinted at the text, but finally had to enlarge it and read it a few words at a time. I hated to think that glasses lay in my future, that my eyesight was dimming as my body was slowing down. Weren’t there any compensations for turning fifty?
Kystarnik had bought a house on seven acres almost twenty years ago. There were two pools, stables, tennis courts, three kitchens, nine bathrooms, and bedrooms enough to entertain all his visiting thugs at once, along with their partners and children. I assumed there were flunkies to look after the stables and kitchens and so on, but my little screen didn’t tell me that.
Kystarnik had been born in Odessa, but he’d lived in America since his late teens. He’d been married only once, to the woman who died eight months ago. Melanie Kystarnik, born Melanie Frisk, had been a native of Eagle River, Wisconsin. How