Body Work by Sara Paretsky Page A

landed in the Sanitary Canal flashed through my head, and I laughed but didn’t say anything.
    He eyed me narrowly, annoyed at my frivolity but smart enough not to expose himself to possible ridicule. He looked at his watch: the conversation was over. He asked perfunctorily if I was heading to the cemetery, and when I said no, he strode briskly down the street to his car. It was a BMW sedan, which looked a bit like him—expensive cut, shiny black exterior, sleek lines.
    I moved slowly to my Mustang. This was its third winter in Chicago, and it didn’t look sleek at all. It looked like me, tired and even confused, since the front and rear axles seemed to be pointing in opposite directions.

11
    The Mama and the Papa, in Concert
    B ack in my office, I found messages from Lotty and Freeman Carter. Lotty had called to say that her neurosurgeon, Dr. Rafael, had visited Chad at Cermak Hospital. Rafael had insisted on his removal to Beth Israel. Freeman’s message let me know he’d provided the court order to expedite Chad’s move—he should be at Beth Israel already.
    I called Freeman to thank him, and tried to reach Lotty, both to thank her and to try to get an idea about Chad’s health. Unfortunately, she wasn’t available, and the charge nurse had a scrupulous sense of protocol: I wasn’t part of the family or one of the lawyers; I didn’t get any news. John Vishneski’s phone was turned off; that probably meant he was with his son in the ICU. I asked him to call me and opened the case file I’d started on Chad.
    I added Rainier Cowles’s name to the Vishneski file, but the name sounded so bogus I did a LexisNexis check on him. He was a partner at Palmer & Statten, one of the globe’s megafirms whose Chicago presence occupied eight floors of a Wacker Drive high-rise.
    Cowles had grown up in the northwest suburbs and was respectably educated, with a BA from Michigan and his JD/MBA from Penn. He’d joined Palmer & Statten right after passing the bar, and during the next twenty years had moved steadily up the path to partner. The Palmer & Statten website listed his particular expertise as corporate litigation, with a specialty in multinationals.
    I didn’t find a record of a name change, but it still seemed incredible that parents had burdened their child with such a name. “Prince Rainier,” I murmured to the computer. He’d probably been called that a ton in his subdivision growing up. Maybe it’s why he’d put on the carapace of corporate success. Imposing trial presence, important car. But he must have a soft center, or he wouldn’t be involved with the hard-luck Guamans. Or maybe he’d represented them in litigation over Ernie’s injuries.
    None of this speculation was helping me look at Chad’s relationship with Nadia.
    “The client is the boss. His son is innocent. Get to work proving it,” I said aloud in my sternest voice and phoned Mona Vishneski.
    Mona had left her mother’s as soon as she learned of her son’s arrest, and was now back in Chicago. She was staying with her ex-husband in Wrigleyville, which John hadn’t bothered to tell me. She agreed to meet me for a cup of tea at Lilith’s, a little café on Southport near John’s apartment, around five.
    The snow had started again. Lilith’s was six blocks from my apartment. With the ice and snow packed along the curbs making street parking a challenge, it was better to put my car in my building’s alley garage and walk. I carried my laptop with me in a waterproof case.
    It was already dark by the time I got to the café. The warmth and lights inside seemed feeble against the wind whipping snow pellets against the windows. I ordered a double macchiato and found a table as far from the door as possible.
    While I waited for Mona, I started to download the reports LifeStory and the Monitor Project had given me on Olympia, Karen Buckley, and on Chad himself. I was especially curious about Karen, after her performance at Nadia’s