None of us had had much exercise the last few days, and I was glad for the chance to run. The dogs rolled in the snow and chased after b.a.l.l.s, which bounced high on the ice. We pa.s.sed people on cross-country skis who cheered us on-everyone's spirits were better for this rare day of bright sunshine.

As we moved on, I sang "Un bel di" just because the beautiful day brought the words to mind. Yet a sense of menace underlies that aria, and menace seemed to rise up and greet me when I reached Widermayer's building. The address board listed two tenants for the second floor: Owen Widermayer, CPA, and the Rest EZ company.

I don't know every sleazy operation in Illinois, but Rest EZ was hard to overlook. About eight months ago, the owner, Anton Kystarnik, had been in the middle of a messy divorce when his wife conveniently died in a small-plane crash. Investigators came to the reluctant conclusion that it had been a genuine accident. I'd followed the story with the same enthusiasm as every other conspiracy theorist, learning along the way that Kystarnik's wealth came from payday loans, which, in my book, are just juice loans that aren't conducted in alleys.

Say you get caught short near the end of the month. No problem: you sign over your upcoming paycheck to Rest EZ as surety, they advance you cash. At up to 400 percent interest, if you repay it in 120 days, 700, or even 1,000 percent interest if you go over the limit. See? It's juice and it's legal.

I stared at the tenant list. Rodney drove Owen Widermayer's car. Widermayer shared a floor with Kystarnik. Surely Kystarnik wasn't the guy who'd bailed out Olympia. She was supposed to be a savvy businessperson. No one would sign up for a million-dollar bailout at 700 percent. But why did she give Rodney the run of her club if she didn't owe Kystarnik some big kind of favor? Or were she and Rodney, or even she and Anton Kystarnik, lovers? There was a disgusting thought.

Nothing in the building supported the reports of Kystarnik's wealth, estimated at eight hundred million at the time of his wife's death. The cheapest gray matting covered the hall floor, the doors were that pale faux wood that fools no one, and the hall lights had been chosen to save every watt possible-not, presumably, because Kystarnik was green, but because all his money went to his lavish homes here and abroad. I didn't remember the reports that clearly, but I seemed to recall something in the south of France or Switzerland or Italy, or maybe all three, besides a two-swimming-pool affair in nearby suburban Roehampton.

The only money the tenants had spent on their public s.p.a.ce went to the security cameras above the doors. These were small, discreet, and high-quality.

Rest EZ's offices were at one end of the second floor, Owen Widermayer, CPA's at the other. The doors in between weren't numbered or labeled, so who knew where the CPA began and the juice lender left off ?

I was pretending I didn't know about the juiceman, so I pressed the buzzer next to the CPA's door. There was a pause while someone looked at my honest, friendly face in the camera and then buzzed me in.

Widermayer's office was as drab as the hallway. There wasn't any art on the walls. The only decoration was a tired philodendron that wasn't exactly dead but didn't seem to be growing, either. A beverage stand in one corner held some Styrofoam cups and a shaker of fake powdered milk. The coffee in the carafe was so overheated that a sickly caramel smell filled the room.

The woman who sat behind the cheap metal desk looked as tired as the plant. She was going through pieces of paper-the little receipts you get from taxis or from restaurants, as far as I could tell-and typing from them into her computer. She didn't look up until she'd finished the stack under her left hand.

"I'm V. I. Warshawski," I said in the overly bright voice one uses around depressed people. "I'd like to talk to Owen Widermayer."

"You don't have an appointment." She wasn't hostile, just stating the facts.

"No, ma'am. Is he in?"

She was tired, not ineffectual: no one could see him without an appointment. If I told her what I wanted, she'd see if he could fit me in.

I held out a business card. "I'm a detective. I'm investigating a murder, and Mr. Widermayer's car was found at the scene."

That did get her attention. She started to dial, then got up and went to a door behind her desk. She shut it behind herself so quickly that I didn't get a look inside.

I moved around so that I was standing next to her desk, half facing the shut door. She hadn't bothered to exit her computer spreadsheet.

My mother had brought me up with very strict rules. Only una feccia una feccia , a fecal kind of lowlife, ever looked at other people's private papers or opened their mail. , a fecal kind of lowlife, ever looked at other people's private papers or opened their mail.

Sorry, Gabriella, I murmured, leaning over to look at the screen. As I'd thought, she had been logging in expense receipts. For someone named Bettina Lyzhneska. One eye on the door, I scrolled across the spreadsheet. Konstantin Feder, Michael Durante, Ludwig Nastase, and, at the end, Rodney Treffer. I murmured, leaning over to look at the screen. As I'd thought, she had been logging in expense receipts. For someone named Bettina Lyzhneska. One eye on the door, I scrolled across the spreadsheet. Konstantin Feder, Michael Durante, Ludwig Nastase, and, at the end, Rodney Treffer.

I scrolled back to Bettina's column just as the door opened behind me. I was holding my hands over the radiator next to the desk as the a.s.sistant reappeared. She frowned, looking from me to the computer, as if wondering what I'd seen, but I merely made a bright comment on the miserable winter.

"Mr. Widermayer can see you for ten minutes, so I hope you have your facts organized. He likes people to come to the point."

"Excellent," I beamed. "I like pointy people, myself."

Her frown tightened, but she motioned me to the door behind her, which she'd left half open.

Widermayer, like his a.s.sistant, was communing with his computers. He held up a hand, like a trainer ordering a dog to sit, without looking up from his three monitors. I sat in a chair that would have dug into my bones if I hadn't had on so many layers of clothes.

Widermayer, as much as I could see of him, was built like an egg-not exactly overweight, but definitely rounder in the middle, narrower at the top. His head, bald except for a fringe of gray hair, looked egg-like, too. I began to feel hungry, longing for a fluffy omelet.

The boss's office was just as spartan as the front room. Widermayer's desk was handsomer, being made of some kind of wood instead of metal, but the blinds blocking the winter sun were bent and dusty, and nothing hung on the walls except a clock, which showed seconds slipping past us into eternity.

Widermayer kept his eyes on his monitors. I was getting bored.

"You have ten minutes for me, Mr. Widermayer," I said, "so why don't you let me know why Rodney Treffer is using your car to stalk artists in Chicago."

Widermayer held up one of his pudgy white hands again. I got up and circled around his desk to look at the monitor he was studying. There I was on the screen, my profile in LifeStory, my own favorite subscription search engine.

"I don't think you'll find anything on Rodney Treffer in there," I said. "Nor about your Mercedes sedan."

"But it's telling me you don't have any legal standing to ask me questions." His voice was deep and booming, unexpected from his flaccid body.

"You agreed to see me, Mr. Widermayer, and my business card explains that I'm a private investigator. I've been hired to discover who murdered Nadia Guaman. Rodney is a key suspect."

"The police made an arrest. Rodney had nothing to do with it."

"No one's been convicted yet. And there's compelling evidence that the guy in custody didn't shoot Ms. Guaman."

I leaned over his shoulder to read the details about me. Funny how I'd never bothered to test LifeStory's accuracy by checking my own records. They had my outstanding mortgage correct, but they showed me still driving my old car.

I tapped the screen. "They show me owning an old TransAm, which was totaled a few years back. I signed over the t.i.tle when I sold it for sc.r.a.p. Makes you wonder how reliable their research is, doesn't it?"

He clicked a key to bring up his screen saver and leaned back in his chair to look at me.

"What evidence?"

"I just told you, they're listing the TransAm among my a.s.sets, when-"

"What evidence that Chad Vishneski didn't murder that Mexican gal?"

"You're sort of following this story, aren't you? You know the name of the guy who's been arrested, but, like LifeStory, you're relying on poor sources. No Mexicans were killed."

He opened a new window on his computer and called up the news reports on the shooting. "Nadia Guaman. Mexican gal. Killed outside some nightclub."

"Nadia Guaman, woman, American. And you know darned well where she was killed because Rodney was there, so surely he told you about it. And a few nights ago he drove one of your cars to the club. If anything happens to Rivka Darling or Karen Buckley, or even me, Rodney will definitely be the first person the police will question. And then they'll talk to you because you own the car he drives, and then they'll talk to Anton Kystarnik because you lease your office from him."

I was making up the last item-it just seemed like a reasonable a.s.sumption. Since Widermayer actually looked as startled as possible for a boiled egg, it must have been accurate.

"Tell me about the evidence. Then I'll know whether it's worth talking to Rodney."

"My clients pay for confidentiality."

"In other words, you've got a big fat zero."

"I've been around too long to let someone goad me into revealing confidential information. I'll tell you, in exchange for another fat zero, that the police are taking my results very seriously." No one ever said it was wrong to lie to Anton Kystarnik's accountant.

Widermayer pretended to yawn. I sat on the cheap deal credenza that held his tax and law books. It wobbled a bit, and I wondered if it might give way beneath me, but I liked the way it distracted his attention.

"Olympia Koilada," I said. "Anton Kystarnik bailed her out, and now she lets Rodney run tame around her club. If-"

"Who told you that?"

I smiled. "Sources. Nadia Guaman was getting Chad Vishneski all wound up. When he started attacking her in the club, it created a stir, and the club got in the news. Anton can't afford to have a spotlight on him these days. The feds are already paying too much attention to him. So he gets Rodney to shoot Nadia and frame Chad, and two problems are solved at the same time."

Widermayer gave a derisive snort. "I thought you were a detective, not a fairy-tale writer."

"It doesn't matter if it's a fairy tale as long as the state's attorney and a jury believe it."

I drew my feet up under me, despite the bulk of my boots, and the credenza gave kind of a squawk.

"Get off that," Widermayer said sharply. "If you break it, you replace it."

"Fifty bucks at Walmart. Not worth worrying about."

"Olympia Koilada doesn't figure in your fairy tale, I notice, but if she's your client I'd advise her to be very, very careful."

"Yeah," I said, "why's that?"

"She hasn't kept her side of a bargain she made, and that means she's not trustworthy."

The credenza wobbled under my weight. Widermayer watched it and me with as much alarm as his large plate of a face could express. I hopped off: I didn't want to impale my spine on a tax book.

"If Olympia shows up dead or beaten, or something, you and Anton will definitely be the first ports of call for the cops. Not to mention your boy Rodney."

"Nothing to do with me," Widermayer said.

I leaned over the desk and smiled into his face. "He's using your car. The law tends to hold you responsible for little things like that."

"If you're threatening me, you're wasting your breath."

I straightened up. "I wouldn't call it a threat, Mr. Widermayer. More like information."

As I left his office, I looked back to smile at him. Not even his eggy face could conceal his expression this time, and it wasn't one that proclaimed eternal love and devotion.

21.

The Super-Rich and Their Fascinating Lives.

When I got back to my car, I wrote down the names I'd seen on Widermayer's a.s.sistant's computer while they were still fresh in my mind: Bettina Lyzhneska, Konstantin Feder, Michael Durante, Ludwig Nastase. An Eastern European crew, except for Durante and Rodney.

There were only a dozen or so cars in the lot, mostly the nondescript Fords and Toyotas that people like Widermayer's a.s.sistant might drive. I copied down their license plates, anyway. Maybe I could push on my relationship with Murray and find out who they were registered to.

The Mercedes sedan Rodney had been using was parked there. I sat up straighter. Rodney drove a car registered to Widermayer, but I had a feeling that anything Widermayer owned really belonged to Kystarnik, or at least was available to him. Which probably included Rodney himself. He was exactly the kind of muscle Kystarnik might use.

I dug my maps out from under Mitch. Roehampton, where Kystarnik had his Chicago-area home, was only a few miles up the road. While I was this far north, I might as well see what eight hundred million dollars bought you. I started to query one of my subscription databases for Kystarnik's home address, then realized how exposed I was sitting there. I drove back down Dundee Road and pulled into a strip mall. Wireless service in the northern suburbs was golden: before I could leave the car for a sandwich, LifeStory was flashing Kystarnik's address and a few biographical details on my tiny screen.

I squinted at the text, but finally had to enlarge it and read it a few words at a time. I hated to think that gla.s.ses lay in my future, that my eyesight was dimming as my body was slowing down. Weren't there any compensations for turning fifty?

Kystarnik had bought a house on seven acres almost twenty years ago. There were two pools, stables, tennis courts, three kitchens, nine bathrooms, and bedrooms enough to entertain all his visiting thugs at once, along with their partners and children. I a.s.sumed there were flunkies to look after the stables and kitchens and so on, but my little screen didn't tell me that.

Kystarnik had been born in Odessa, but he'd lived in America since his late teens. He'd been married only once, to the woman who died eight months ago. Melanie Kystarnik, born Melanie Frisk, had been a native of Eagle River, Wisconsin. How 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 canva.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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?" 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 ledge behind them, but their fingernails were carefully cut and buffed. Not the kind of manicures that would last long if they had to handle heavy equipment.

I finished my coffee and wrapped my sandwich in a napkin. "It's like my granny used to say: the rich get richer, the poor get trouble. Maybe I won't call on Anton after all. Sounds like he wouldn't want to be reminded of Melanie."