Amani, known to your sister as Desideria
43 Othello Misfires
I’d been so absorbed in Alexandra’s journal that I hadn’t noticed time passing. It was almost three a.m. when I finally finished reading.
What a sorrowful document. At a time in life when Alexandra should have been glorying in the chance to explore the world and her own place in it, she’d been pursued instead by demons. The fierce teachings of her religion, the taunting by her coworkers and boss-perhaps all those things pushed her to a breaking point. Perhaps that’s why she volunteered to drive a truck along the road that led to her death.
Some of the writing showed glimpses of happiness, especially the passages where she described her siblings-Nadia painting a cartoon of Tintrey for Allie, Ernest laughing with her. It was hard to think of them now, Nadia and Allie, both dead, Ernest so damaged he couldn’t speak clearly about his sisters.
You live in the country of safety, Amani had written to Nadia. In the country of safety, Nadia had been murdered, Ernest severely injured.
But nothing showed a connection between Chad Vishneski and Alexandra, except for the fact that both had been in Iraq. Alexandra had worked for Tintrey’s Achilles division. Chad had one of the Achilles shields in his duffel bag. Tintrey had nine thousand employees in Iraq and the U.S. had over a hundred thousand troops there. It wasn’t beyond belief that Chad and Alexandra had met, but she hadn’t mentioned any Chad in the journal.
If I went to Iraq and somehow found Amani, and Jerry the programmer, and Mr. Mossbach and persuaded them, by unimagined means, to tell me everything they knew about Alexandra’s eight months in Iraq and her last day on earth, I still might not find out how she died. If I was going to untangle the story, I would have to do so from the evidence I could find here at home. Clara said her mother and Nadia had fought over the insurance payments the Guamans received after Alexandra’s death. The parents wanted to sue Tintrey, but the lawyer, Rainier Cowles, showed up and persuaded them to accept a settlement.
There was nothing strange about that, or even unsavory, but it so angered Nadia that she walked out of her parents’ home, and was still estranged from her mother when she died. And Clara believed no one was allowed to talk about Alexandra’s death.
I wandered restlessly to the window, carrying my glass. The journal had absorbed me to the point where I’d forgotten to drink the whisky. I parted the blinds, half expecting to see a date tree, but of course there was nothing but snow and ice and a few late-night cars bumping through the ruts.
Rainier Cowles had come to Club Gouge with the owner of Tintrey and the head of the company’s Iraq division to watch the Body Artist’s homage to Nadia. The men’s locker-room jokes gave lie to any notion that they were there out of respect for the dead.
Besides, when I went up to the Tintrey offices, Gilbert Scalia knew exactly who Alexandra Guaman was and how she died. Maybe Tintrey kept track of the Guamans because they feared a wrongful-death suit.
I let the curtain fall. Tomorrow-or, rather, later today-I would visit the Guamans. There had to be a way to get them to talk to me. And then I would buy a very large crystal ball and divine where the Body Artist had gone to ground.
On that helpful thought, I stumbled into bed. This time I fell asleep. In my dreams, Alexandra and Amani were painting a picture of a date palm across my body. In the background, Karen Buckley, her transparent eyes half shut, was crying, “My sister died, too.”
It was a relief when the phone pulled me out of sleep a little before eleven, even though the caller turned out to be John Vishneski.
“Warshawski, someone came after Chad, just like you thought they might. My buddy Cleon was here, and a good thing, too.”
“Attacked right in the ICU? How did they get past the nurses?”
“Dressed up like a nurse. Some blond gal, looked like that actress in Chicago, Cleon said-all brassy hair and whatnot but in a uniform. Cleon looked through the glass and saw her holding a towel over Chad’s nose, and you better believe that he busted in there fast enough to set a record, but she skittered out the other end of the ward and disappeared. What the hell is going on here? What did Chad get himself into?”
I didn’t try to answer that. “I’ll be over in half an hour,” I said.
I was thoroughly awake and thoroughly scared. Why were they going after Chad now? Had they learned that I had the piece of body armor Chad had ripped open? And, if so, how?
While I made coffee, I did some stretches, gingerly, favoring my abdomen. The muscles were healing faster than I’d thought they would even though the color was still horrible. I even managed a few jumping jacks. I drank the coffee while I quickly showered, whisked on powder and blusher, put on a serviceable black pantsuit. My right hand was still tender, but I could squeeze it into a glove. I could even squeeze a trigger with it. Everything was coming up roses.
Before I left, I locked Alexandra’s journal in my closet safe, behind my shoe tree. Mr. Contreras was continuing to deal with the dogs and our dog walker, which took a load off my mind. I clomped down the back stairs in my heavy boots and drove over to Beth Israel, where I made my way through the maze of corridors to the intensive care unit. The charge nurse, visibly rattled, demanded an ID from me before she’d even summon the Vishneskis.
Ex-husband, ex-wife emerged hand in hand. Whatever differences had driven them apart twenty years ago were beside the point with their son’s life in danger.
“I don’t understand this, Vic,” John said. “Who wants my boy dead?”
“How is he?” I asked. “Has he shown any more signs of recovery?”
“He’s opening his eyes more often,” Mona said, “and seems alert for as much as two minutes at a time. They’re saying that’s a really hopeful sign. He hasn’t spoken again, but Dr. Eve is pretty optimistic that he will start speaking soon. She says it’s just hard to tell with brain injuries but that the scans look hopeful. Only, if he isn’t going to be safe here, I don’t know…”
She dabbed at her eyes, and John patted her hand.
“I didn’t want to call the cops,” John added, “because they might say he was good enough to go back to that prison hospital, and I won’t let that happen. But of course the hospital filed a police report, and we’ve had someone here already this morning. Dr. Eve came down and told the detective Chad was still in critical condition, but-I don’t know, it’s all a mess.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I’m getting closer to some answers. I just need one or two more breaks. In the meantime, one of Chad’s buddies is a Marine staff sergeant-ex-Marine, anyway. He’s out of work, and I can pay him something to come up here and be Chad’s bodyguard. I’ll clear it with the hospital’s executive director. If Sergeant Jepson takes the owl shift, maybe you can do the daytime.”
The Vishneskis took me in with them to look at Chad. He’d been such a big, angry man the times I’d seen him. Lying in a hospital bed, his tattooed arms full of IV needles, he seemed to have shrunk. It was unsettling to see him like this, but I knelt next to him and clasped one of his hands.
“You don’t know me, Chad, but I’m a friend,” I said quietly. “I’m working with Tim Radke and Marty Jepson, and we’re going to save you. You’re going to be okay, so relax, and rest and get better.”
I couldn’t tell if he was hearing me, but I repeated the message several times. When I got back to my feet, the Vishneskis said they didn’t want to leave Chad. I went down alone to executive director Max Loewenthal’s office, where I spoke with his administrative assistant, Cynthia.
She knew about the attack; Max had already been briefed by his security chief.