the back of the room, Anton was so surprised he lost his cool and sent Rodney after her.”
“So I guess your stunt worked. Guess you’re happy as all get out. Just do me a favor, keep your clothes on in public in the future.”
“Yes, sir,” I said meekly.
“Oh, you don’t fool me none with that butter-wouldn’t-melt attitude. I know you. I know you do what you damned well please no matter what I say.”
He spoke roughly. My well-being mattered greatly to him, and he hated knowing he wasn’t fit enough or fast enough anymore to keep up with me, let alone look after me.
“I listen to you.” I put my arms around him. “My mother would be glad to know I have you to counsel me.”
He brightened, thinking that I loved him well enough to compare him to my beloved mother. He bustled about cleaning up the table. It was two-thirty, time we was all in bed, anyway, doll. So what’s the point of fighting when it’s all water over the dam, anyway.
Mr. Contreras was right. The stunt had worked. At least, up to a point. The results, however, didn’t leave me happy as all get out, except for how they affected Chad Vishneski. Two days after my show at the Golden Glow, John Vishneski came into my office, Mona at his side: the state’s attorney had decided to drop charges against Chad.
“We can get him into a proper rehab hospital,” Mona said. “You worked a miracle for us, Ms. Warshawski. I didn’t know what to think when we got to that bar on Sunday, but you knew what you were doing.”
Vishneski grinned. “You ever want to take up that line of work more seriously, let me know. I can play the clarinet for you instead of that gal on those old-time instruments . . . You let me know what all your time and work came to. We’ll settle up.”
I was working on the bill between my endless interviews with local, state, and federal cops. Grateful clients pay up, but the longer you wait between results and invoice, the more their gratitude fades. The trouble with the Vishneski bill was I had to sort out what belonged to the Guaman inquiry—which no one was paying me for—and also subtract items the Vishneskis really couldn’t be expected to cover, like the extra security I’d brought into the Golden Glow Sunday night, or insurance for the Raving Raven’s instruments.
I called Terry Finchley to thank him for getting the state’s attorney to drop charges against Chad. “Does this mean they’re going to charge Scalia, and maybe Rainier Cowles, for killing Nadia Guaman?”
“The state’s attorney is an elected office,” Finchley said at his most wooden. “The incumbent has received great support from the Tintrey Corporation, as Scalia’s mouthpiece reminds me every hour on the half hour. The evidence isn’t great.”
“Marty Jepson can ID him talking to Chad the night of the murder, and maybe one of the tenants in Mona Vishneski’s building can recognize him, too. The Body Artist saw an E-Type Jag in the alley the night Nadia was killed. Oddly enough, Gilbert Scalia owns the same make and model.”
“Marty Jepson is a stressed-out vet who saw someone through a bar window,” Finchley said. “He’s like a lot of our deserving vets pummeled by their time in the desert and prone to confusing reality and imagination. And before you jump down my throat, Warshawski, I’m just quoting the lawyer. As for the Jag—who’s the state’s attorney going to listen to, a stripper who used to work for Kystarnik or the senior veep at a billion-dollar company?”
“So it’s going to be left an open investigation.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“You came away better than you thought you would when you started out,” he said. “Not such a bad deal, even if it does grind my bones to see the Tintrey boys skate. But speaking of open investigations, I need more from you about Lazar Guaman and the attack on Rainier Cowles.”
“You know as well as I do how a good defense attorney would shred me on the stand, Terry. I heard a shot, but I didn’t see anyone fire it. If Lazar Guaman was standing at Cowles’s table, so were a lot of other people. I am not going to get up on the stand to perjure myself or to be made a fool of—either way, it’s bad for business.”
Rainier Cowles wasn’t going to die. The bullet—whoever had fired