“How was I to know that? It wasn’t until Nadia showed up that I learned what happened to Alexandra. When Nadia introduced herself to me as Allie’s sister, I hoped—I thought, maybe—she would be the same. They looked alike, and Nadia even seemed to want to go to bed with me. Then it turned out she was using me! She didn’t care about me at all. She was using me just to get answers about her sister.” Her colorless eyes turned dark again.
I smiled sourly: only Buckley, or Pindero—or whatever her name was—got to use people. Nadia had broken the rules. A modest revenge for a modest girl. I didn’t say any of this—I wouldn’t get anything more out of the Artist if she felt I was judging her.
“So she made you really angry. Did you finger her? For Anton?”
“Don’t you understand anything? Anton is poison. I try to stay out of his way. Just—when I saw those two guys hanging around the alley after my show the night Nadia was killed, I thought, Oh, let them jump her. I didn’t know they were going to kill her. But once she was dead, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t go to the cops. Not with my past, not with Anton and the drugs and everything. No one would come forward for me, none of those North Shore snots who used to come to Anton’s pill parties. They’d be glad to see me go to prison.”
She had come back into the room, her pale face flushed, animated in a way I’d never seen before. Nothing like the need for self-exculpation to get your blood pressure up.
“So those were Anton’s men who killed Nadia?” I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I’d been so wrong about Rainier Cowles and Scalia and the rest of the Tintrey gang.
“I don’t know who they were,” she said. “I just could tell they were bad news, the way they were lurking in the alley, ski masks over their faces, leaning against this old Jaguar, like they thought they were in a movie or something. At first, I thought they were after me. I was really panicking, but then I saw they’d spotted me. They looked me over, the way guys do, and shook their heads. That made me see they were after someone else, so I went onto Lake Street and got in a cab for home.”
I wanted to shake her or smack her, something that would force some kind of empathy into her. Didn’t she care that five seconds could’ve saved Nadia’s life? All she needed to do was ask the valets to call the cops—she didn’t even need to put herself on a 911 tape.
I swallowed my bitter words. Nothing I said in this cold basement tonight would change Karen Buckley, but an angry tirade would drive her away. She’d said something else that was more to the point.
The men were leaning against an old Jaguar. I’d seen an old Jaguar, a beautiful one; I’d been coveting it. Where? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think back over the past month. There had been one outside the Tintrey offices. The day I went up there and Scalia threw me out, I’d seen it in the executive parking area.
“So you let Chad Vishneski take the fall,” I said. “It looks like, after tonight’s charade, the police may pressure the state’s attorney to drop charges against Chad. But if they don’t, I’m making sure that you, my sister, are in the hot seat as a witness.”
“Not if you can’t find me.” The Artist smiled naughtily like a toddler in a game of “I dare you.”
“I’ll find you,” I said drily. “I’ve done it once; the second time won’t be nearly as hard. That car in the alley, the Jaguar. Do you know enough about cars to know the make? Could you see the color?”
“It was in an alley, it was night. I couldn’t tell the color, just in the street light I could see it said Jaguar on the trunk and then a letter, E, and I thought, oh, gross, another code. Just like what Rodney was always painting on me. And what does that have to do with anything, anyway? . . . I’m leaving now. So tell your goons not to try to stop me.”
An E-Type Jaguar. The car of my dreams. The car I’d seen at Tintrey. “Do you enjoy living on the run?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you