We walked back to the L stop. The snow wasn’t heavy, but we could see the traffic on the Kennedy going about ten miles an hour. Petra wasn’t the only one with a fun afternoon in front of her: I was going to have a great time on the Kennedy myself.
“I don’t get it,” Petra said as we got on the train. “If Frannie Pindero knew Anton Kystarnik, why didn’t she say something last night when those guys were beating her up?”
“Hard to say without talking to her. The other big question is, if Kystarnik isn’t blocking her website, who is? You any use as a hacker?” I asked my cousin.
“Sheesh, Vic, I’m not a geek!”
“You can be a fashionista and still know how to hack,” I objected. “What about your friends or lovers? Did you completely waste your time in college?”
She pulled a face. “You’re the crime expert. Don’t you know anyone?”
“Tim Radke,” I finally said. “He told me he was a systems something in the Army but hasn’t been able to find civilian work using his training—right now, he’s installing consumer electronics.”
I called his cell phone and asked if he’d be interested in a freelance systems job, something that might help prove Chad’s innocence.
He was out in the western suburbs again today, but he said he could make it to my office by eight-thirty or so.
31
Searching for an Artist
At my office, I left Petra with a list of five or six hundred Chicago-area hospitals and picked up my car for the drive to Roehampton. It was after five p.m. when I got to the little coffee bar I’d visited the previous week. The couple behind the counter were cleaning their machines while a trio of women sat slumped at a table, drinking coffee. Their clothes and general fatigue suggested they were maids warming themselves before their long bus ride home. The two baristas were exhausted, too, but tried to pretend pleasure at seeing a customer.
“I don’t need anything,” I said, “and I won’t keep you from locking up. I was up here last week, and a guy named Clive was talking about Steve Pindero and his daughter, Frannie. I need to find Steve Pindero. If you don’t know him, maybe you can tell me how to reach Clive.”
The baristas looked at each other and slowly shook their heads.
“I remember you,” the male barista said. “You were asking about Melanie Kystarnik. We can’t share information about our customers with you.”
I shut my eyes and thought for a longish moment: it was time to put some cards on the table.
“Everyone is tired and wants to go home after a hard day’s work,” I said. “Including me. My hard day’s work yesterday ended at three this morning after I fought a bunch of thugs who were beating up two women in a nightclub. It began again four hours later with a call from a terrified teenager whose family is being harassed by these same thugs.”
The three maids were looking alert. Someone else’s troubles, danger faced by a remote party, good news all the way round. The young man behind the counter kept rubbing a cloth over the steaming spout for the big cappuccino machine, but he was paying attention. The young woman had stopped rinsing milk pitchers.
“My name is V. I. Warshawski, I’m a private investigator, and I’m trying to find out who shot and killed a young woman outside a nightclub right after New Year’s.” I took out the laminated copy of my license, and the couple behind the bar gave it a cursory look.
“Oh my, yes,” one of the maids said softly. “I read about that shooting. It was some crazy vet, wasn’t it, some poor boy who got his mind taken to bits fighting over there in Iraq.”
“That’s who the police arrested,” I agreed, “but I don’t believe he killed Nadia Guaman. I had never heard of Steve Pindero before I came in here the other day, but either his daughter, or someone using Frannie’s name has been performing as Karen Buckley at the nightclub where Nadia was murdered. Whoever she really is, she vanished last night. I’m hoping you can give me some ideas on how to trace Frannie, or maybe her dad. I looked up Steve Pindero online, but I couldn’t find him listed anywhere.”
The maids murmured among themselves, and then the oldest of the trio said, “Oh, no, miss, you wouldn’t find him. He died years ago. After his girl had the overdose and