work on my website, at [http://embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com. Remember, it’s a cold, cruel world out there, but art can keep you warm even if it can’t keep you safe.”
She held up her hands in a peace sign, and left the stage. Olympia kept the images running on the screens while she turned canned music back on, and the audience relaxed into explosions of laughter. The release of sexual tension made everyone order drinks, and my cousin and the rest of the waitstaff were running around madly for the next twenty minutes.
I’d had enough of everyone at Club Gouge, but I went back to the Body Artist’s dressing room thinking I should at least talk to her. Olympia’s bouncer was standing outside her door.
“Sorry, but she doesn’t want to be disturbed after her performance. It takes a long time for her to clean up, and she’s exhausted.”
“I know just how she feels.”
I smiled and ducked under his arm and was in the dressing room before he could grab me. He followed me as the Artist started squawking in outrage.
I’d wondered if she wanted privacy to do drugs after her act, but she was, in fact, putting some kind of paint-removing cream on her arms and legs, then wiping it off with hand towels. The floor around her was littered with paint-smeared towels. I wondered if she was a big enough star that someone cleaned up after her or if she had to do her own laundry.
“Ms. Artist, did you tell Nadia I was in the club to spy on her?”
The Artist kept wiping herself off with towels and refused to say anything, but her flat, almost transparent eyes studied me in the mirror.
“She’s sure she’s being spied on,” I said. “Is she paranoid or is someone really after her?”
“You’d have to ask her, wouldn’t you?” the Artist said.
“Nadia waits in here, doesn’t she, while the band plays? She gets special treatment from you, and that annoys Olympia. But it makes me think she’s told you why she’s so nervous. Are she and Chad in the middle of a bad divorce?”
The Artist smiled for the first time. With contempt, not good humor.
“I’m not going to help you build a dossier on anyone,” she said. “Now it’s time for you to leave. Unless you want to clean my cunt for me.”
She used the shocking word deliberately, as if to goad me into blushing or flinching. I looked at her steadily until she bit her lips in discomfort and turned away.
“Mark, get her out of here. Or call the cops.”
Mark took my shoulder. “You heard her. Don’t make me break your arm or something.”
“Or your hand,” I said, “or the mirrors in here. I’m not going to fight you, Mark, at least not tonight.”
I let him escort me out of the room, feeling grumpy with everyone including myself. I had been an ineffectual cousin with Petra and a lousy detective. I felt even worse the following night. That was when Nadia was murdered. That was when I was up past two a.m. talking with Terry Finchley and his team.
6
Blood, Blood, Blood
By the time I finally finished talking to Terry Finchley, to lesser cops, saw my cousin safely into her Pathfinder, and argued with Olympia, it was almost three. None of us got much out of our night together.
I learned from Finchley that Nadia’s last name was Guaman. I learned she had been a graphic designer—hence, her skill with the paintbrush—and that she had turned twenty-eight this past fall. I learned that she had died from the massive bleeding caused by two bullets entering her chest, and that she had been shot at a range of about fifteen feet—the distance from the back door of the club to the alley, where the shooters had waited.
While I was talking to Terry, one of his team came over with a report about Chad and his friends. No one could provide a last name for any of them, but Finchley took their descriptions and put out an alert. They hadn’t been in the club tonight, but that didn’t mean Chad hadn’t been lying in wait for Nadia.
When Terry asked me what I knew about Chad and his friends, I only shrugged. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him about the heated exchange I’d heard between Chad and Nadia the previous night. Maybe it was Nadia’s vulnerability, or the fact that I’d cradled her in my arms as she died. Or the discomfort I’d felt when she accused me