“Sex parties?”
“Oh, you know, Anton liked Zina and me to help entertain his friends. His wife was usually pretty stoned by the time night rolled around, and we thought at first it was fun. We made so much money, you can’t imagine-for a teenager to have a thousand dollars in cash-but sex with those guys-it’s why Zina and me, why we started using. Had to be high to get through the night. Anton, he had pictures, that’s why I couldn’t move without being afraid of him and blackmail.” She began chipping at her fingernails, tearing off little pieces and throwing them to the floor.
“So it must have been horrible when you saw Rodney at Club Gouge,” I said.
She looked up. “I’ll tell you what was really horrible. He knew me before I knew him on account of he’d put on about a hundred pounds. Anton had been sending him to Club Gouge just to keep the heat on Olympia about the money she owed. But when he recognized me, it all started again. Anton had this idea, he thought it was so damned funny-”
“Yes, to use you as his message center. I got that much. And that’s why you were so angry the night they came in and started beating on you.”
“I wanted to kill you,” she said. “If Anton thought I’d ratted him out to a cop, even a private one, my life was worth less than the paint covering me. So I ran home and grabbed my stuff and hid out. But then I saw your ads on the Net and I couldn’t stay away-I needed to see what you were doing in my name. I guess you were counting on that, weren’t you?”
She looked at me in surprise, as if startled to think I could be that clever.
“Hoping for it,” I said, “not counting on it. I didn’t know what would happen tonight. I wanted the cops to see an alternate version of the story of Nadia’s murder. I thought if you were here, you could fill in some critical blanks.”
The Artist began fiddling with the paintbrushes I’d left out on the counter.
“Yes, poor Nadia. I thought she was full of drama-self-drama-over her sister. Poor Allie, too. Is that really what happened to her? Raped and murdered in Iraq?”
“It’s what really happened to her. The wrong guy got shot tonight. Just my opinion, but the corporate guys, MacLean and Scalia-nothing will happen to them. Once the Guamans threatened legal action over Alexandra’s death, they must have talked to her boss in Iraq, that guy Mossbach. Scalia and MacLean are the ones who got Cowles to pay off the family. In my book, that makes them accessories to Alexandra’s rape and murder. Well, maybe Finchley will get enough evidence to arrest Scalia for Nadia’s death, but I don’t see a murder charge sticking. Meanwhile, Scalia and MacLean are responsible for hundreds of American dead because they substituted sand for gallium in their body armor.”
The Artist had limited interest in any life other than her own, certainly not in Tintrey, or unknown soldiers overseas. She flung the brushes down and walked over to the stairs leading up to the club.
“Not quite yet, Ms. Pindero. I need to know how Tintrey and Anton came together. Tintrey was blocking your website, I’m pretty sure of that, and Anton didn’t know it the night he came to Club Gouge to try to force you to bring the site back online. Yet two days later, Anton was providing MacLean backup at the Guaman house.”
“Anton will kill anyone for no reason,” she said. “Or break their necks just for fun, if he’s in the mood.” Her voice had gone flat again, and all expression had left her face.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s pretty much how I have him pegged, too. That’s why I figured you needed an insurance policy after you ran away. You were scared, that was obvious from the way you’d recklessly jumped through the back window of your apartment-”
“You found my home?” She came back into the main part of the room, her face white. “How?”
“I’m ignorant about a lot of stuff, Ms. Pindero,” I said, “but I’ve been tracking missing people for a long time. When I saw the frenzied way you’d come and gone, I thought you might call Anton, keep him happy by telling him that it was Tintrey blocking the site.”
She stood perfectly still, not even seeming to breathe. There was a piece I was missing, a piece she didn’t want me to figure out. I tried to relax, to let go of my anxious thinking, to recall what had happened the different times I’d seen her perform in the club. The night of the memorial for Nadia Guaman, I’d seen Vesta and Rivka. And the boys from Tintrey had been there.
“Rainier Cowles was in the club when you did your memorial,” I said slowly. “You denied knowing him.”
“I’d never seen or heard of him.” Her eyes were wary.
“No. But Vesta looked at him through the curtains, and you asked her to point him out to you. A day or two later, you went to his office. You didn’t know if he could be useful to you or not, but he was an important lawyer. And he had a connection to the Guaman sisters.”
She sucked in a breath, and I knew I’d made a lucky guess. “So what if I did?” she said. “Is that a crime?”
“I don’t know anymore what’s a crime, what’s stupid, or what’s just plain wrong,” I said. “Lazar Guaman-was he stupid to say yes to Tintrey’s money? He had a brain-damaged kid to support and no power to go up against them to fight over Alexandra’s death. Was it criminal to shoot Rainier Cowles? A jury may say so if the police make an arrest, but I’m not so sure. Was it just plain wrong of you to go to Rainier Cowles? I don’t know. You tell me.”
The Artist kneaded her fingers together. “It was wrong and stupid and criminal to sell drugs with Zina, I know that. And I didn’t go to prison, but I might as well have, the life I’ve been living the last thirteen years.”
“Maybe you’ve been a prisoner of your fears, but it still beats an orange jumpsuit and sexual assault by guards when they’re in the mood. What did you tell Cowles?”
“I said I’d call Anton for him if he needed any extra muscle for anything. Okay? Are you happy now?”
“I’m ecstatic. Is there anything else I’ve been too ignorant to know before you take off?”
She paused, one foot on the stairs. “Alexandra Guaman was incredibly beautiful and very sweet. Even I-fell for her the one week of her life that I spent with her. She made me so angry, not wanting to meet me in Chicago. I wanted to out her to her family! But she didn’t return my calls. And then she disappeared.”
“She didn’t disappear, not the way you do.”
“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.