by Jay Mackey
The picture wasn’t clear for CJ. “But why would some mobster and an Air Force guy come after a Russian spy? I’m not sure I understand.”
“No, I never did either, Christopher. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
20
Las Vegas, April 2018
Leaving Aunt Donna’s, the three intrepid researchers were bubbling. They clambered into the car and CJ drove off, headed for Penny’s house.
Penny said, “This all makes so much sense.”
“Epic,” said Oval. “Your grandmother, a Russian spy.”
CJ, who was driving, said, “I don’t know. I don’t think she was Russian.”
“Why not?” asked Penny.
“Yeah,” added Oval. “I think you should call her, and say Dos Verdanya, or whatever that is. See what she says.”
“Dasvidaniya? You mean ‘goodbye’ in Russian?” said Penny, throwing a withering gaze at Oval in the back seat. “That’s all you got?”
“Guys,” said CJ. “She can’t be Russian. I’ve had my DNA tested, remember? And I have almost no Russian genes.”
Oval had a solution. “Maybe she wasn’t Russian originally. Maybe she was Bulgarian or Estonian, or one of those.”
“Or, better,” said Penny, “maybe she was recruited by the Russians, but wasn’t Russian herself.”
They were on a roll. Oval said, “Or, listen to this. Maybe her parents were recruited somewhere else.”
“Yeah, like in Italy or something,” said Penny.
“Right. In Italy,” said Oval. “That accounts for all the extra Italian DNA stuff in you. Then her parents came here to do their spy stuff.”
“Aunt Violet probably wasn’t even guilty herself,” said Penny.
“Sure,” said Oval. “Her parents didn’t escape . . .”
“No, they were, like, executed or something,” said Penny.
“Right. And that’s why she can’t tell you about her parents. She’d get caught if anyone knew her parents had been spies who were executed.” Oval seemed quite pleased with this whole thing.
CJ, though, wasn’t quite so pleased. “I don’t know,” he said. “This changes everything. Now I don’t look for orphanages, I look for . . . what? Military prisons?”
Penny said, “Or prisons of any kind. Do spies have their own prisons? I bet not.”
“So then we look for prison breaks?” asked Oval, scratching his head. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Look, the library is open for a while this afternoon,” said CJ. “Let’s go there and talk to Ms. Parsons. Maybe she’ll have some ideas. We can also get on their computers to do online searches.”
“Okay, sure,” said Penny.
“Give me some directions to the library,” said CJ.
“And I’ll start searching for prison escapes on my phone,” said Oval.
By the time they reached the library, Oval and Penny had each done multiple searches on their phones for things that related to prisons, prison escapes, and spies, but found nothing that they could say was helpful or related to CJ’s grandmother.
“There are very few spies who have been caught and sent to prison,” said Oval. “Just a few, and they’re famous. Not to me, but the things I read in Wikipedia say they’re famous. None sound like they could be your relative.”
Fortunately, Ms. Parsons was at the desk in the periodicals section.
“I’m afraid I haven’t found much new about orphanages,” she said when the kids came up to the desk.
“Oh, that’s okay,” said CJ. “We’ve got some new leads, and we’re not sure how to proceed.” He told her about Aunt Donna’s theory that Nini had escaped from something other than an orphanage. Maybe a prison. And that she might have been a spy.
When CJ had finished, Ms. Parsons stared at him for a second, her mouth partly open, frown lines on her otherwise smooth forehead. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you think your grandmother escaped from prison where she was being held for espionage? And that is more likely than that she ran away from an orphanage? And that she has remained on the loose for all these years after her prison escape?”
“Well, yeah, I guess,” he said, knowing it sounded dumb.
Ms. Parsons looked at Oval. “And you agree with this?” she asked him.
Oval, for once, didn’t speak. He nodded and shrugged.
Ms. Parsons turned to Penny. “And you?”
“It sounded better when my grandmother said it,” answered Penny. “But she should know. She was there.”
“And she said CJ’s grandmother was a spy who escaped from prison, huh?” Ms. Parsons shook her head. She wasn’t buying it.
“Yeah, she did,” said Penny, but not with any conviction.
CJ said, “Look, could we pursue both? We haven’t had any luck with orphanages so far, so why don’t we try the prison thing, too? Just to see if there’s anything out there.”
Ms. Parsons shrugged. “Sure. Why not? So when would this prison break have happened?”
“Mid-sixties. Same time period as we were looking at before,” said CJ. “That’s when my grandparents met.”
“Only now you’re looking for something other than your grandmother’s name,” said Ms. Parsons. “How about the trial? When would she have been sent to prison?”
CJ looked at Penny, and then at Oval. They both shrugged. They hadn’t thought about that.
“Some time before, but I don’t know. Could have been any time before,” said CJ.
“It seems to me that if she were a child, she wouldn’t have been sent to an adult prison,” said Ms. Parsons. “So I think I’d stick to a period close to when you think the escape took place.” She looked at each of them, as if for agreement. They each nodded approval.
“Okay, then, so you have birth records to look for in the late forties, all this new prison spy stuff in the mid-sixties, and what was that other thing . . .” She looked at the notes she’d made from the last time they’d met. “Yes, anything you can find in 1982 around the time of that article you found in the museum. Is that about it?”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” said CJ.
“How many months do you have to look through all the material?” Ms. Parsons asked, looking at CJ with a slight grin.
“Months?” he said.
“Well, my boy, it’s one thing to look for something specific, like you did with that article earlier.” She leaned forward. “You knew the exact date the article was printed, and it didn’t take long to pull the microfilm for the newspaper for that date, scroll through and find the article. But now you have years to look through, and no specific dates or events. If I pulled the microfilm for just one year, how long do you think it would take you to look through one year’s newspaper editions? That’s 365 newspapers. For just one of the years. And just one newspaper.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” answered CJ. “A long time?”
“Right. A long time.” Ms. Parsons leaned back like she was exhausted.
Oval asked, “So what do we do?”
“You can get on Google and start searching for espionage trials and prison escapes.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. You’d have to be really lucky to find anything.”
“Yeah, we did some searching already, and couldn’t find anything,” said Penny.
“With something as epic as a spy breaking out of prison, you’d think it’d be famous, like, and easy to find,” said Oval. “But it doesn’t come up on any searches I’ve done.”
“That’s one reason I can’t believe your grandmother is involved in something like this.” Ms. Parsons said.
CJ, feeling the frustration of the reality of never finding anything about Nini, asked, “If you were me, what would you do?”
“I think I’d focus on orphanages, and records of orphans,” said Ms. Parsons. “I’m so sorry I haven’t given you more hope.” She pushed her chair back and started to stand, but then frowned and sat back down.
“I do have one more thought,�
�� she said. “There’s a fellow who’s a regular here. He does a lot of reading of old newspapers, magazines and books, and he’s been very interested in that period, the mid-sixties. Especially 1964–65, I think.” She looked up, like she was thinking. “I seem to recall some interest he had in looking at material from the late forties too, come to think of it.” She looked back at CJ. “Anyway, if anybody knows about something unusual going on, he’d be the one I’d ask.”
Feeling buoyed by even a hint of good news, CJ said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she responded, smiling back. “If you could come in the morning, he’s nearly always here on Tuesday mornings, and usually Friday morning, too. Why don’t you try that?”
“Okay, I will.”
“Come around nine or so, and he should be here. I’ll introduce you.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“Okay. But now, one thing,” she said with a note of caution in her voice. “He’s a little . . uh, eccentric, shall we say. He’ll admit to being a crackpot. But he has a good heart, and as I said, he’s gone over every newspaper and magazine published during those times, and about those times, and chased down every reference. I don’t know what he’s been looking for, or if he’s found whatever it is. He has, uh, particular interests. Maybe even peculiar interests. Well, you’ll see.”
Once out of the library, CJ asked Penny and Oval what they thought.
“I don’t know,” said Penny. “This guy sounds a little scary to me.”
“I think we have to talk to him,” said CJ. “He may be able to help. And we need help.”
“Well, while you’re thinking,” said Oval, “I propose that we head to the Strip, get some ice cream, play some blackjack in the casino of our choice, and thereby prepare ourselves mentally for whatever it is that we’re going to be doing tomorrow.”
And that’s what they did. All but the blackjack thing, anyway, which went afoul when Oval sat at a table at Caesars Palace and slapped down a $5 bill. The woman dealer looked at him out of the corner of an eye, barely lifted a finger, just enough to wag no, no at him.
“Told ya that you had to be twenty-one to gamble, high roller,” said Penny when they were back on the street.
“Hey, it was worth a shot,” said Oval.
21
Las Vegas, July 1964
The girl was still not talking when they got to Little Bull’s house late that night. The house wasn’t anything special—a two-bedroom, one-bath box in a neighborhood full of identical boxes, built in the boom times spurred on by the growth of the Las Vegas casino scene. The house wasn’t far from the casino where Little Bull and Gus worked, and where their father, Bull Matzelini, was head of security.
Gus had been staying in his brother’s second bedroom that summer, but expected that he’d have to move back to his parent’s house when he went back to high school in the fall. He looked forward to graduating the following spring, and then joining the family business full-time.
Little Bull told Gus he should put the girl in the second bedroom. “You can sleep with her, or you can sleep on the couch. Your choice. If it was me,” he said as he very deliberately took a long look at the girl, “I’d definitely be with her in the bed. You decide. I’m hitting the hay, myself.”
The girl—she still hadn’t given them her name—was sexually appealing, almost despite how she looked. She appeared to be about Gus’s age or a little younger, was small—not even five feet tall. Her short cut, disheveled hair was a shocking blonde color, almost silver. Though her light blue eyes were swollen from sobbing, they shone with an intensity suggesting intelligence she had yet to reveal.
She seemed very needy to Gus, not that she wanted anything in particular from him, but that she was dependent on him. He didn’t know if it was because she trusted him, or just that she felt hopeless, and he was the only one around who could help.
He put her in the bedroom, told her he’d be right outside her door if she needed anything, and curled up on the couch.
The next morning, Little Bull was up early, shaking Gus awake.
“Let’s get going. I want to check out the desert from last night, see if we can find any bodies,” he said. “Tell your girlfriend to wait for us here.”
Gus knocked on the bedroom door. Hearing nothing, he opened it a crack and peered in. The girl was sitting up, holding the blanket up tightly to her chin, glaring at him warily. He stepped into the room and told her that he and Little Bull were leaving for a bit, but would be back in two or three hours. He told her where she could find a towel so she could take a shower while they were gone. He also told her she could use his toothbrush, the blue one.
She nodded.
“Just one thing before we go,” he said. “My name is Gus Matzelini, and my brother is Marcio Matzelini, but everybody calls him Little Bull. I’d like to know your name.”
She nodded again. “Venus,” she said. “I’m Venus.”
“Venus what?”
She shrugged. “Just Venus.”
The girl was definitely strange. He didn’t know why she wouldn’t give him her last name, but he wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. “Okay, Venus. We’ll be back, and then we can talk.”
She nodded again, lowering the blanket just a bit.
During the drive out to the desert, Little Bull and Gus speculated on what had happened the night before, and on what role the girl had played. They agreed that she had been in the truck that was overturned, and that the men following were military of some kind. But why a teenage girl would be chased and fired upon by the military was a mystery.
The helicopter was another mystery. At first, they both thought the helicopter was part of the military force, but later it had become clear that it was on the side of the girl and her companions. At least some of them had made an escape in the helicopter.
The helicopter was confusing for another reason—it wasn’t really a helicopter. Little Bull, three years older than Gus, had been in the Army and had seen many helicopters. None were like the one they’d seen in the desert.
“It was one of those vertical jets,” he told Gus. “I think its name is actually something like Vertical Takeoff and Landing. I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard about them. They’re jets, but the engines rotate around so they can take off straight up in the air, and then the engines rotate around and they fly like a regular jet. I’m sure that’s what it was.”
Gus shrugged. “I don’t know. I know the thing didn’t have a blade over the top, and it didn’t sound like a copter, but I was so busy trying to stay out of the way of any stray gunshots that I didn’t really pay much attention.”
“Well, that’s what it was. What else could it be?”
The drove into the desert, following the same dirt road they’d been on the night before. When they neared the battleground, they had a surprise—there was a military roadblock not far from the place where they’d rejoined the road after finding their way down the hill through the desert the night before. A soldier dressed in fatigues and carrying a rifle waved them to a stop, and then came up to the car. “Sorry, there’s a military operation up ahead,” he said. “You’ll have to turn around.”
Gus had a pretty good idea that the operation was to clean up after what had happened the night before, but Little Bull asked what was going on anyway.
“That’s confidential, sir,” said the soldier. Then he asked what they were doing out in the desert.
“Taking a shortcut to a friend’s place. He’s up by Crystal Springs,” said Little Bull. “But we may be a little lost.”
The soldier nodded and pulled a little notebook out of a pocket. “Can I have your names, please, Sir?” he asked, looking in the window to get a look at Gus.
Little Bull didn’t hesitate. “I’m Sonny Ford, and this is my associate, Mickey DiCastro,” he said.
Gus didn’t know whether to panic or burst out laughing. Mickey DiCastro was Tony Faccio’s boss, and Sonny Ford was Mickey’s boss in the Kansas City
mob. They were both in their fifties, so he and Little Bull would have a hard time posing as them if the soldier had had a clue. But he didn’t. He wrote the names down, thanked them, and stood out of the way while they turned around.
They had a good laugh on the way back home. But they realized that they weren’t going to learn anything new out in the desert.
“Don’t look good for Oaf,” said Little Bull.
“Or Faccio,” added Gus.
“Yeah, screw Faccio. I hope he got blown up good. But maybe Oaf will still turn up.”
“Or maybe the military’s got him.”
“Maybe he’ll be held prisoner, like your girlfriend.”
“Yeah, I wish she was my girlfriend.”
“I’ll bet you do. But we sure got to talk to that girl when we get back.”
“Right.”
“Maybe we can get Donna to come over and help her get cleaned up. Get her some decent clothes.”
Donna was Little Bull’s girlfriend. She stayed over at his place once in a while, but not too often, because she had a baby: a little girl, only about a year old.
22
Las Vegas, April 2018
The next morning the three comrades arrived at the library promptly at nine, as promised. They’d had a fun evening, and at least on the surface appeared to be enjoying each other’s company. But CJ felt that things still weren’t right between him and Penny. She acted nice enough, no longer openly hostile, but she didn’t tease him, or touch him, like she had when he first got to Las Vegas. She seemed closed to him, difficult for him to read. He was torn between trying to do something to remedy the situation, and ignoring her to focus on his search for Nini’s background, as hopeless as that seemed.
But when he tried to ignore her, he couldn’t stop thinking about how he could fix the situation. He hated having this thing, this veil of uncertainty, hanging between them.
Jack Dobbins, the man that the librarian Ms. Parsons introduced them to, seemed neither scary nor particularly helpful, at least at first. He was old, probably a little older even than Noga. A funny little hat, like a beret, but with a short bill, was sitting on the table in front of him, which he probably wore to cover the bald patch on top of his head. His wire-frame glasses sat low on his nose as he read a newspaper.
