Body Work (34 page)

Konstantin and Ludwig were watching Anton, and Anton had his back to the street. I didn’t tell them someone hiding behind the L stairs was stretching an arm out to dig into Rodney’s pockets.

“Get themselves killed? Is that like getting yourself pregnant all alone with a turkey baster in the basement? They stand in front of someone like you who’s holding a gun and say, ‘Shoot me’?”

Anton thought that was funny. “These girls are behaving like that. ‘Shoot me. Blow me up,’ maybe they should all wear signs, put that message on them. Now, you will tell me where you are hiding the papers.”

The figure had disappeared from the L stairs. Through the Mercedes’ whisper-proof windows, I could just hear another train roaring in, and then a loud report, right below us. A second shot sounded. The driver floored the accelerator, but halfway down the block, the sedan spun to the right and slammed into an L girder. An oncoming car honked furiously and swerved out of the way.

Konstantin, or maybe Ludwig, opened his door. I put everything I had into my right shoulder, shoved against him hard enough to knock him out of the car. I rolled over on the seat and followed him.

Three people were pounding toward us up the middle of Lake Street. I got to my feet and swung my arms wildly. Behind me, I could hear the front door of the Mercedes open.

“Vic! Vic! Is that you?”

My cousin’s voice, high-pitched, terrified, more welcome than an angel just then.

I shouted to her to get out of the road, to get out of the way. “Anton has a gun. They all have guns. Get down!”

I was ducking behind a parked car as I shouted. A door opened in a building behind me. A couple of men in waiter’s aprons came outside to smoke. I yelled at my cousin that I was going into the building. A moment later, Petra arrived, with Tim Radke and another man, one I didn’t recognize. All three were out of breath.

Inside, a jazz combo was playing an old Coltrane piece, or sawing at it. In the dim reddish light of the room, I saw that only half the tables were occupied and that no one was paying much attention to the music. A young man came up to us and asked if we wanted a table.

“There’s a ten-dollar cover whether you sit down or not,” he said when we shook our heads.

I stuck a hand into my pocket, fishing for my wallet. My gun was there. The thugs hadn’t patted me down, that was how ineffectual I’d looked to them. I found the wallet and took out two twenties, then cracked open the door.

The Mercedes was listing toward its right side, both tires completely flat. As I watched, Anton’s driver flagged down a passing cab. He held the door open for Anton and climbed in next to him. Konstantin and Ludwig started to get into the front seat, but apparently Kystarnik didn’t want them along—they shut the door and darted looks at the club we’d entered.

“Uh, you guys want to sit, or what?” the manager asked us.

I flashed a smile, or at least tried to. “We’re looking for Club Gouge. We wanted to see this Body Artist everybody talks about.”

“Oh. They burned down last night. But we have a good act coming on in half an hour, a stand-up comic. Take a seat, you’ll see.” His heart wasn’t in the spiel.

I watched Konstantin and Ludwig kneel behind parked cars as I opened the door all the way.

“Konstantin! Ludwig! We’re in here. Come on, the act’s going to start in half an hour!” When they didn’t stand up, I shouted, “Come on guys, no games tonight—it’s too darned cold!”

The two smokers outside the door looked from me to the two thugs. The manager hovered nervously behind me. “If you’re drunk, maybe you should come back another night. You’re kind of making too much noise.”

“You’re so right,” I said. “Petra, just hold the door here while Tim and your friend and I go tell those two bozos to head for home. If anything happens, well, dial 911.”

The three of us ran across the street. Anton’s men got to their feet, guns drawn, but Tim hurled himself at one man’s knees, knocking him into the path of an oncoming car. The driver slammed on his brakes, stopping inches from the thug’s head.

I pressed my own gun against the base of the other man’s skull. “Drop your gun. Now!”

The driver of the car had rolled down his window and was yelling at Tim. My thug thought about turning around to slug me, but I had my left leg outside his and slammed him behind the ear with my left hand. It wasn’t hard enough to knock him out, but it dazed him, and he dropped his weapon. My anonymous teammate scooped up the gun and put our guy in a choke hold.

I hurried to the car and bent down to talk to the driver. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Our friend is drunk. We were trying to get him to come with us to the L, and he tried to fight us off. You okay?”

“No, I’m not okay. If I’d hit him, it would have been your fault.”

“You’re absolutely right. We’ll get him out of here right now.”

The thug in the street was groaning but getting to his feet. “They attacked me,” he said blearily to the driver.

“That’s right, Ludwig, we attacked you. That’s right, that’s what we’ll tell your wife when we get you home. Upsy-daisy, now. Tim, get him back on his feet and out of the street before someone really gets hurt.”

Petra hurried out to join us. “Guys, the manager, he’s, like, calling the cops. What are we going to do?”

“I’m parked just over there on Lake Street,” our new helper said. “Can we get these lowlifes that far?”

“Marty, we’ll cover them,” Tim said. “You go get your truck, if that’s okay with Vic, here: double-time.”

Marty sprinted down the street. The manager and the waiters were crowding the sidewalk outside the club entrance. Tim had taken over the choke hold on Marty’s thug. The guy who’d been knocked into the street was too dazed to fight, but I kept my gun on him, anyway. Petra’s teeth were chattering, and she kept up a flow of nervous, worried commentary: Where is he? Doesn’t he know we have to get out of here? What will we do if the cops get here first?

“Say your prayers, sweetheart,” I finally said to her.

A battered pickup bounced to a stop next to us. Marty got down and helped Tim and me shove our captives into the backseat. Tim and I joined them, leaving the front seat to Marty and Petra.

I leaned back in my corner as Marty pulled away from the club. We’d reached the intersection of Racine before blue strobes swept up the street to the club.

36

A Trip South—Alas, Not to Sunshine!

N
ow what?” Petra said.

The backseat hadn’t been designed for four. None of us could maneuver well, and I wasn’t happy at the possibilities this gave the thugs when they regained their equilibrium. I told Marty to pull over and let me put Petra into a taxi home. If we had more violence tonight, or the police caught up with us, I didn’t want her involved, anyway.

We were just a few blocks from the heart of the restaurant scene, where taxis were plentiful. My abdomen was so sore that it was painful to climb down from the pickup and hard to walk, but I made it to the curb, flagged a cab, got my cousin tucked away. I gave her a twenty and told her to get home to bed, to call me in the morning before she tried to go to the office.

I climbed into the front seat next to Marty. “Who are you, by the way? And how did you guys show up like that?”

“Marty Jepson,” Tim said for him. “He was a Marine staff sergeant in Iraq. He’s one of the gang who Chad and me met at the VA. I texted Marty as soon as Petra and me left you, and he was at Plotzky’s, so he hustled over to help out.”

“Bless you, Staff Sergeant. Was that you who shot out the Mercedes’ tires?”

“Yes, ma’am. Tim here thought the guy who was passed out back there by the L might have a gun, so I crawled over and found it and shot into the rims—fastest way to deflate tires. What do you want me to do with these bastards, pardon my French?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to drive them down to Thirty-fifth and Michigan, give them to Detective Finchley, see what he can pin on them. They must have records for extortion or murder or something.”

The men began spewing invectives, curses in two languages. If their English was any guide, they didn’t think much of me in Ukrainian, either.

“On the other hand,” I said, “if we learned a couple of things from them, like why they thought I had a piece of interesting property, and why Anton Kystarnik is interested in whatever it is, we might let them go off into the night.”

“We can’t interrogate them here,” Tim objected. “There are people all over the place. Besides, the cops might find us.”

“Where do you want to go, ma’am?” Jepson asked.

I thought of Mexico City—sunshine, sleep—but I told him to head toward South Chicago, the poverty-stricken corner of the Southeast Side where I grew up. “We can talk on the way.”

I turned painfully in the seat to look at the captives in the back. “Which one of you is Ludwig?” I asked.

“Bitch, we don’t tell you nothing.”

“Want me to hit them?” Tim asked. “They have a few punches coming, judging from how they were roughing you up.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “We know what they are—creeps who work for Anton Kystarnik—and we know their names are Ludwig and Konstantin. Now, which one of you is which?”

They stared at me, sullen, silent.

“Okay,” I said, “just so we can call you something, you, by the window, you’re Konstantin, and your pal is Ludwig. We can find you easily enough if we need you again. Go on over to Lake Shore Drive, Marty, and head south.”

A cell phone rang in Ludwig’s pocket, and he reached for it. Tim knocked his hand away, and we listened to the phone ringing. Konstantin’s phone started next, a sound like a buzz saw.

“What does Anton think I have?” I asked over the ringing.

“We tell you nothing . . . You or your boy toys, you dried-up cougar!”

“A dried-up cougar? Is that a step up from a bitch or a step down?” I wondered. “Anyway, so far you and your pal are oh for nothing, so let me explain where we’re going.”

We had reached Lake Shore Drive and were heading south, passing the enormous exhibition halls that made up McCormick Place. “You know those high-rise projects the city’s been tearing down? They were home to old-line gangs like the Vice Lords. The city’s relocated a lot of the residents to South Chicago, and the gangs who are coming in have unsettled all the power relationships on the Southeast Side. It’s not a good place for strangers, especially white strangers, to wander around after dark.”

All the time I was talking, both their cell phones kept sounding. I wondered if Anton was trying to reach them, trying to find out if they’d killed me.

“When we get to Ninety-first Street,” I said, “take a right. We’ll drop these creeps off at Houston—that’s where I grew up. Ludwig and Konstantin can see who will drive them north again. Maybe they can flash a bankroll and hire a ride. But maybe that wouldn’t be so smart. Because a bankroll—”

“We don’t know.” That was Ludwig. “Rodney, he calls us, texts us, tells us we are looking for you. Someone is tracking your GPS in your phone. They—”

“Shut up!” Konstantin cried.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and removed the battery. We’d reached the north end of Hyde Park, the toney neighborhood around the University of Chicago where Barack Obama has his home. If someone was tracking my GPS, with any luck they wouldn’t have a tail in place already.

“Tim,” I said. “Just in case Anton cares enough about these two to track them, pull out their cell phones and remove the batteries.”

I covered the pair with my gun, while Tim carefully stuck an arm across each man and found their phones. We were riding close to the lake now, close enough to see the desolate, ice-covered surface stretch to the horizon under the pale starlight.

“You guys were at the nightclub last night,” I said. “What did Anton Kystarnik hear me say, or where did he see me go, that has him so interested in me?”

“We not knowing,” the talkative thug said. “We following orders only.”

“Order followers—the lowest of the low.” I turned around to face front. “Let’s get this pond scum down to South Chicago and go home. I’ve had it.”

“I can pull over, ma’am,” Staff Sergeant Jepson said. “Tim and me, we can beat the truth out of them.”

I thought of Anton’s threat to me, that he could torture me into talking. “You can beat them into saying something,” I said, “but who knows if it will be the truth? Let’s just drop them in the middle of Latin Kings turf. Let them get home as best they can.”

I switched on the radio and stumbled on Nina Simone covering “Strange Fruit.” Her voice, pausing on the beat, cracking, brought a heart-wrenching vividness to the lyrics.

Outside the truck’s dirty windows, the lake had disappeared. The expressway had ended; we were on city streets. We passed shabby houses and boarded-over apartment buildings, the ominous empty lots of a neighborhood that had gone past decay into ruin. Jepson hit a hidden pothole, and we bounced so hard that I couldn’t hold back a cry of pain as my abdomen shook. In the backseat, our duo conferred in Ukrainian.

Finally, Konstantin said, his voice sullen, “We telling what we are knowing.”

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
Nina Simone was singing.

“And what are you knowing?” I asked. “About the Body Artist, or why Anton doesn’t care about her website anymore, or about what he thinks I have?”

“Anton, he says you have special papers, but we not knowing what they are. We knowing only about Body Artist.”

Jepson kept driving, following Route 41 as it twisted past the weed-filled land where U.S. Steel used to operate. I turned off the radio.

“So . . . tell me about the Body Artist.”

“Everyone is paying attention to Anton. The police, the FBI, everyone. Anton can’t move, we can’t move, without the police, the FBI, the Secret Service, moving with us.

“How did he manage it tonight?” I asked.

“Oh, there’s always a way. With Owen.” He pronounced it
O
-ven. “We switch cars—back, forth, back, forth—until we know we’re clear. But Anton knows they are also watching computer, e-mail, telephone. So he talks to Rodney. And Rodney paints Anton’s words on the Body Artist. And then all our friends overseas can read Anton’s wishes.”