had they met, I wondered, where had they met? Of course, Eagle River was notorious as the vacation refuge for members of the Chicago mob. Maybe as Kystarnik cut his teeth on the extortion racket, someone like the Outfit’s late, lamented CPA, Allen Dorfman, took Kystarnik under his wing. I pictured Anton and Melanie meeting at a Friday fish boil.
Melanie and Kystarnik had one child together, a daughter named Zina, who had died almost fifteen years ago, of unspecified causes. Even juice lenders suffer pain.
I drove up Telegraph Road to Argos Lane and found the gates to the Kystarnik place. Seven acres is a lot of ground; even though the bare trees and shrubs let me peer through the gates I couldn’t really see the house, although I did see little red lights that told me my pausing at the perimeter was being recorded.
In the city, I would have canvassed the neighbors, but out here it was hard to imagine a neighbor close enough to see what the Kystarniks were doing, even if I could weasel my way past their gates to talk to someone. And what plausible reason could I provide for asking?
I’d passed an indie coffee bar just before turning onto Argos Lane, so I turned around and went back. I needed a bathroom stop, anyway, and some kind of snack. The coffee itself smelled rich, fresh-roasted, unexpected in this exclusive, retail-lacking little enclave.
A utility service truck was in the lot, and a couple of cars. It was lunch hour; some eight or nine people, who looked as though they might work on the surrounding estates, were perched at the little tables with drinks and sandwiches. The two people behind the counter—young, fresh-faced—kidded with the regulars, but they treated me with an impersonal briskness.
When I’d ordered my cappuccino and a toasted cheese panino, I pulled out my map. “I’m looking for Argos Lane—how close am I?”
One of the men waiting for his coffee laughed. “You’re just about standing on top of it. You looking for anyone in particular?”
I flashed a grateful smile. “Melanie Kystarnik and I went to school together, and I thought, while I was in the area, I’d see if I could pay my respects to Anton.”
The people in line at the counter shifted a bit, as if trying to back away from me.
I spread my hands. “I know it’s been a while since she died, but I wasn’t able to get back for the funeral. We’d lost touch after she married—she was living in such a different world than what I knew—but we used to go canoeing together in Eagle River when we were kids. I know it was quite a blow when Zina died.”
There was a wordless communication going on among the regulars, and then a heavyset woman about my age said, “You really have been out of touch if you think Zina’s death was a blow to Mrs. Kystarnik. She was off to Gstaad for skiing six weeks later. Maybe the mister felt it harder. Everybody said Zina was more his child than hers.”
Someone tried to shush her, but the woman continued, “If this lady . . . What did you say your name was?”
“Gabriella. Gabriella Sestieri.” I brought out my mother’s birth name glibly.
“If you really were a friend of Melanie’s, it would have broke your heart to see how much trouble that girl of hers got into by the time she died.”
“That’s so sad!” I exclaimed. “No wonder Melanie didn’t answer my Christmas cards. I wondered at the time, but then I decided it was because her life had gotten so glamorous, those ski vacations, the private yacht and everything. But if Zina was doing drugs—”
“Doing drugs!” a man chimed in. “They say she was running the ring that supplied all the kids in the northwest suburbs, her and Pindero’s kid.”
“Clive!” another woman said. “You can’t know that. And this lady doesn’t need to hear that kind of talk when Mrs. Kystarnik is dead. And the girl, too. What has it been, fifteen years now? Let the dead bury the dead.”
“Yeah, but Steve Pindero was a good guy, and he suffered as much as Kystarnik when his Frannie OD’d. More, probably.” Clive’s jaw jutted out, the grievance as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. “And then to find out his girl had been using his own rec room as a drugstore!”
Two men at a table in a corner had been watching me. They had hard hats sitting on the window