were reckless. Simply, you were minding your own business until someone kicked you. That’s good enough for me.”
“Thank you, Lotty, I knew you would understand.” I was bitter at her sarcasm. “In fact, I was minding my own business—at least, I was tending to my detective business. I do not go out of my way to get hurt. If a bully is running the street, do you want me to stay inside with the door locked and hope he hurts someone else?”
Lotty had been probing my abdomen with quick, skillful pressure, pinpointing the sorest spots, but she stopped, fingers over my right ovary. “I don’t suppose there’s a middle ground? Perhaps with a bully, there never is.”
She finished her probing. “So—do as Jewel suggests, a cold compress, arnica. I’ll give you prescriptions for a good anti-inflammatory, and an antibiotic, to be on the safe side. In a day or two, with your DNA, the worst will be past. You won’t run or let those dogs pull on you for a week.”
The last sentence was a command, not an observation, and I took it meekly with me to the waiting room.
38
A Pleasant Chat with Olympia
Mr. Contreras was torn between relief that nothing serious was amiss and disappointment that I couldn’t be confined to quarters for a month or two while he looked after me. He rode with me in the taxi down to my office so I could collect my car. When I told him I wasn’t going home, he tried to argue with me at first, then decided he should drive me.
“I’m going to pay a surprise visit to Olympia Koilada,” I said. “You sure you want to come along? I can’t have you breaking her neck, or anything, just because you don’t like the way she treated Petra.”
“You’re the one that likes to run around town getting beat up. I’ll be there to protect whichever one of you needs it most.”
I laughed, clutching my abdomen, and turned the keys over to him.
Olympia lived in a loft building just northwest of the Gold Coast, one of those conversions that followed the gutting of Chicago’s old industrial corridor. According to my computer search, she’d paid almost a million dollars for half of the fourth floor, the side that faced the Chicago River. I wondered what it would fetch if she had to liquidate in the middle of this slump.
When I rang Olympia’s bell, she squawked at me through the intercom.
“It’s V. I. Warshawski, Olympia.”
“Go away,” she snapped.
“I don’t think so. I think we’ll have a lovely conversation about you, Anton, and money laundering.”
A couple of minutes passed where the wind made a good substitute for an ice pack on my sore belly, and then a buzzer sounded, unlocking the door. When we got off the elevator at the fourth floor, Olympia’s door was cracked open. She waited until we got close enough for her to identify us before she opened it all the way.
I had never seen her away from the club. In blue jeans and a turtle-neck, without makeup, she looked younger, even a bit vulnerable, although the large gun in her left hand kind of countered that image.
“Rodney kicked me so hard last night that I’m having trouble getting around today,” I said. “My neighbor, Salvatore Contreras, is helping me out. Mr. Contreras, Olympia Koilada.”
Mr. Contreras stuck a hand out, but Olympia didn’t move. I lifted my sweater and peeled back the Ace bandage to show her my bruises.
She blenched. “Rodney did that?”
“Yes indeed. But it was all for the good because, after he got knocked out, I persuaded two of his cretinous team to confide Anton’s code to me.”
“You knocked Rodney out? Oh my God.”
I didn’t tell her the big role luck played in my salvation last night. I wanted her to think that I was as powerful—more powerful, even—than her tormentor. Besides, in a way I had knocked him out—he’d slipped on my vomit, after all.
“Weeks ago, I told you to trust me,” I said. “If you had talked to me to begin with, I wouldn’t have these bruises today.”
Olympia moved away from the door, the gun shaking in her left hand. We followed her in, shutting and bolting the door. I took her gun and sat down on a white couch. My boots were making dirty little puddles on the salt-and-pepper rug, but Olympia didn’t seem to notice.
“You know about Anton’s code, right? You knew the feds were investigating Kystarnik’s mob ties, but you let him