by Ron Fisher
Alvin had told me where he lived, so I made a detour from my route to the Clarion and headed to his apartment in Clemson. Hopefully, he would be home by now.
Thirty-five minutes later, I knocked on his door. I could tell he recognized me, and he wouldn’t take the chain off the door. Through the gap, I asked him if he knew anybody who spoke Russian. I guess the question so surprised him that he didn’t slam the door on me. He just stood staring at me through the opening.
He said, “If this is a joke or something, then I don’t get it. Now, go the fuck away.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you answer my question. Do you know anyone who speaks Russian?”
He was looking at me like I was a madman.
“No, I don’t know any fucking Russians, and I don’t know why you’re asking me such a stupid fucking question.
“Who told you May Burgess was in the market for opioids?”
He stared at me a moment. “I ain’t admitting to nothing. But it sure wasn’t no Russian. Now leave, or I’m calling the cops. This is harassment or something.”
A drug dealer calling the cops, I thought. That would be different. But his genuine bafflement at the question made me believe him. I headed to the Clarion.
As I drove, I went at the Russian problem from a different direction—not from what I knew, but from what I didn’t know. Laverne Dollar had revealed that he was part of Kelly’s beating. He didn’t actually say that he or his brother Sonny did it. Did they bring in someone else to do the dirty work on Kelly? Someone who spoke Russian? Maybe there was a Dixie Demon with a Russian background. Anything was possible, I supposed.
The other big question that I had no answer for was who was behind the OMSK Corporation? All I knew was that according to April, OMSK owned the Tiger’s Tail Bar and Grill. I had assumed that the Dollar brothers were behind it, using it as a shell company to launder their drug money.
Something had been nagging at me about the Dollar brothers since I’d gotten to know them better in our underground soiree. The Dollars were nasty individuals, but neither was the brightest bulb on the tree. I still had a hard time seeing them as the masterminds of an opioid manufacturing and distribution operation. They struck me as labor, not management.
Perhaps there was an unknown faction involved here. Someone or something above the Dollar brothers in the hierarchy. Like the OMSK Corporation, maybe. April said that when Kelly grilled Terrell Dent about OMSK, she was sure Dent told Sonny Dollar about it, and Sonny would have told Laverne. If OMSK was controlling the Dollars, then the news that Kelly was sticking her nose into their business would have soon reached them. And shortly after that, Kelly was assaulted and beaten.
So her attack was either a big coincidence, something I rarely if ever believed in, or the Dollar brothers, the Dixie Demons, or someone in the OMSK Corporation was willing to use violent means to discourage her. And it was someone who spoke Russian, who I was pretty sure wasn’t one of the Dollars. Finding out who was behind the OMSK Corporation became my first order of business.
#
The chatter around the Clarion was about the special edition. It was a huge success. The sidewalk stands and outlets had sold out everywhere. Even the extra copies we kept at the Clarion, with the exception of the couple we kept for posterity, were gone. By noon there wasn’t a copy to be found anywhere . . . and there was a huge boost in sign-ups for our digital version. The Clarion was seeing the largest circulation bump in years.
I got on my computer and searched OMSK. The first thing that showed up was an interesting surprise. OMSK was the name of a city in south-central Russia, on the Irtysh River. Russia. Another coincidence? I didn’t think so. I had expected OMSK to be an acronym for something, not the name of a town in Russia. Now, I definitely had to find out who was behind it.
I was out of my league here. To find the hidden owner of a shell company, I needed help. I needed someone with the skills to find things on the internet that people didn’t want found. I needed a hacker.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Jason Pilgrim was in his cubicle, working on this week’s digital issue. He looked up from his computer screen as I approached, an apprehensive look on his face like he thought I was bringing bad news.
I said, “I need your help. I want you to find out who’s behind something called the OMSK Corporation.”
He ignored my question and asked, “Is Ms. Mayfield okay? I heard she’s awake.”
“She’s going to be fine. It will just take her a little time to get back to a hundred percent.”
“Great,” he said, visibly relieved. “She’s an awesome lady and I owe her big-time. She hired me when no one else would.” He paused. “You know about that?”
“The hacking? Yeah, I know about that.”
“And that don’t matter to you? My record?”
“Christ kid, for someone in the news business hacking should be a prerequisite. Now, what about this OMSK Corporation? Will you look into it for me?”
“Kelly already had me doing that. She said they owned that bar—what is it? The Tiger’s Tail? Kelly thought it was a shell company.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Did you find out who owns it?”
“No, I didn’t get that far. I only found the name of the Resident Agent of the corporation, and that in addition to the bar they own carwashes and coin laundries. That much was easy. But the Resident Agent isn’t the Beneficial Owner, whose identity is hidden. That’s the point of a shell company. When Kelly got hurt, I stopped looking. I was waiting for her to get better and tell me what she wanted me to do, because the next step would be to look into some things that might require breaking the law. Sometimes, that’s the only way to connect the dots to get what you’re looking for.”
”Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier?”
Jason shrugged and gave me a sheepish look. “I was afraid you’d fire me. Digging into this was heading in the same direction that got me arrested before. At the time, I didn’t know you knew about that, or how you’d take having a jailbird hacker working for you.”
“It wouldn’t have been a problem and it still isn’t. So, who is the Resident Agent?”
He punched a key on his keyboard and opened a file. Looking at it, he said, “Gregor Popov, a New York Attorney.”
“Popov,” I said. “A Russian.”
Jason looked at me like, Duh, so what?
“I think we just connected a dot,” I said, and told him about Kelly’s attacker speaking Russian. I could see wheels turning behind his eyes as I spoke.
Jason said, “That special edition we just ran about opioids and those Dollar brothers. Kelly was working on that story before you were, wasn’t she?”
“I just picked up where she left off.” Until she told me that her attacker spoke Russian, I had the Dollar brothers down as the kingpins behind everything, including assaulting Kelly and owning the OMSK Corporation. Now, I’m not so sure. This Russian thing has thrown a monkey wrench into my thinking. I’m starting to wonder if the brothers had bosses and that’s who runs the OMSK Corporation. This Russian lawyer is no coincidence, and if he’s a Russian, and the person who assaulted Kelly was Russian, then perhaps the Beneficial Owners are Russians too.”
“Holy shit,” Jason said. “I just had a wild thought. The attorney is from New York. And what New York Russians—from the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn called Little Odessa to be exact—are known for dealing in criminal stuff, like illegal drugs? The Russian mafia.”
As crazy as it sounded, he might actually be on to something, I thought. Had he just connected all the dots? “An interesting and creative thought, Mr. Pilgrim.”
“I watch a lot of TV,” he said.
“If the Dollars didn’t personally do the beat-down on Kelly, maybe they were just an assist to OMSK, and some Russian thug did the hands-on work.”
“So then, who killed the Dollars?” Jason asked.
“The authorities seem to think it was the Dix
ie Demons. What if it were the Russians?”
“The Russians? But why?”
I said, “Maybe the Dollars had outlived their usefulness. The operation here was certainly finished, and they had become a risk, I would think. It was time to cut all ties. The Russian mob isn’t known for working well with others anyway.”
“Damn,” Jason said. “We sat right here and solved the whole thing.”
“We haven’t solved anything. All we have is a theory. We don’t have a shred of real proof for any of this. And the first dot on the string—Kelly’s attacker calling her a bitch in Russian—could just be some goon who simply took a Berlitz course.”
“You don’t believe that,” Jason said.
“No, I don’t. But it doesn’t matter what either of us believes. It’s no different than the newspaper business. We can’t publish a story without substantiation and verifiable sources, and the authorities can’t do anything with what we’ve got either. We need some proof. Hard evidence that ties the Russians into everything, and I don’t see a way to get it.”
Jason sat quietly for a moment.
“It doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying, though,” he said.
“And how do you propose we do that?”.
“What I do best—prowling the hidden corners of the internet.”
What he was talking about would probably be breaking some hacking law. I gave it less than two seconds thought. “Okay, do it. I’m going to check up on Kelly. Let me know if you find anything.”
I could hear the keys on Jason’s computer already clattering behind me as I walked away.
#
Kelly was asleep when I walked into her room. I didn’t try to wake her. A nurse I recognized was removing a dinner tray from an over-bed table on wheels. It looked like they had Kelly on a liquid diet. There was a small half-empty bowl of clear broth and a half-glass of apple juice, both with straws in them. There was also some lime gelatin dessert with a bite or two taken out of it. She hadn’t eaten much, but at least it was something.
“She’s still pretty groggy,” the nurse said. “It’s going to take her a while to get back to normal, but she will. Doctor Mathis was just in here. He’s pleased with how she’s doing and wants her to sleep as much as she can for now.”
“Is that a way of telling me that I shouldn’t wake her up?” I asked.
The nurse gave me an apologetic look and smiled. “That would probably be best. I’ll bet you anything, she’ll be far more alert in the morning. More like herself if she gets another good night of sleep.”
I hung around a few more minutes and watched Kelly sleep. There was a peace on her face that wasn’t there when she was in the coma. This was a different kind of sleep.
More than anything yet, it made me feel like everything was going to be okay. I left her to her rest.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The next morning I was back at the hospital to find Kelly awake this time, having breakfast, but still on the liquid diet. She looked better, but I wasn’t sure she felt better. She kept going in and out of sleep and would close her eyes for long moments as we talked. I wasn’t sure she was hearing a lot of what I said.
The nurse came in, and I asked her about it. It was normal, Kelly was improving, but it took time. It was a gradual process and Kelly would remain groggy and needing a lot of sleep and rest for at least a couple more days. I’d heard all that before, but I had to keep asking.
I told Kelly about us doing a Clarion edition on everything, and Kelly mumbled that she wanted to read it. But with her drowsiness, and apparent difficulty concentrating, I didn’t think she was ready to do much reading yet—or was prepared for the many questions I wanted to ask her.
We talked about inconsequential things for a little longer until finally I leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. I’d had enough of kissing her on the forehead and cheek. She surprised me by returning the kiss and for the first time in a while, it felt like old times. Maybe she was getting better after all.
#
Jason was standing in my office doorway two minutes after I got back to the Clarion. Beneath the rings in his nose, lip, and eyebrows, I thought I detected an excited face.
“I’ve connected a few more dots,” he said. “Attorney Gregor Popov, the Resident Agent of the OMSK Corporation, is a partner in the New York law firm of Vasily, Barnes & Popov. Ten years ago, one of the partners, William Barnes, defended a man accused of being part of a huge pill mill in New York City. Drum roll please—the defendant was a known associate of the Russian mafia.
Jason grinned at me. He had now found a connection between Gregor Popov—and therefore the OMSK Corporation—with a law firm that handled cases for members of the Russian mafia dealing illegal opioids. One dot away from tying the Russian mob to OMSK.
“Well done, Jason,” I said.
“Thanks, but I’m not finished. There’s got to be more to learn here. I want to spend a little more time looking, but right now, if you want a digital edition for this week’s paper I’ve got to get to work on that.”
“Okay, I said, “I’ve got some work to do on that too. Come see me if you find anything else.”
After Jason left, I got back to doing my part in finishing this week’s Clarion. Vickie and Joanne had handed in their stories, and I went over them, making minor changes. The robbers who robbed and pistol-whipped the convenience store clerk turned out to be two seventeen-year-old males, who as minors, we couldn’t use their names. Times were truly terrible when more and more, children were committing serious crimes.
I wrote a small follow-up to the special edition, but it was mostly about Kelly’s improving condition and how we expected her back at the Clarion soon.
I didn’t put anything in it about the Dixie Demons being suspects of interest in the murders of the Dollars. First, because I didn’t think Sheriff Bagwell was ready to do that yet, and I didn’t want him on my ass again, and second, deep down, I didn’t believe it. They probably were in the drug thing somehow, maybe pushing the Dollar brother’s opioids, but I couldn’t see them involved in any more significant way. Besides, my gut was telling me that I was on the right track with this Russian angle. I just had to prove it.
By late afternoon I had sent everything over to Eloise with my stamp of approval for a morning run. Two editions in one week—a first for the Kelly-Eloise-John David Clarion era. Then I went to see if Jason had dug up anything else on the Russians.
I found him taking a sheet of paper from a copier. He held it up and grinned at me.
“I found the original New York Post story about the pill mill bust,” he said. “This shows that the pill mill headed up by the Russians in New York City also distributed opioids to a network of dealers as far away as—get this—South Carolina. So, I’ve got the Russians pushing opioids right here in the Palmetto state.”
He handed me the copy of the newspaper article to read.
As I read it, something lit up a darkened corner of my brain just for a millisecond as if the beam from a lighthouse had swept across it and revealed something. I ignored the sensation and kept reading, but it nagged at me. I stopped, went back and reread it. This time it was like a bolt of lightning struck me.
I quickly folded the article and stuck it in a shirt pocket. “I need to go,” I said to Jason.
He stood with his mouth open in surprise at my abrupt exit. I headed for the parking lot. I would fill him in later if what I’d seen in the article turned out to be what I thought.
As I got into my Jeep, I was torn between doing what I was about to do or calling Bagwell and Agent Underwood and bringing them in on it. I was still working on a theory with no hard facts, this theory, based on what could be a coincidence in the New York pill mill article. I was tired of getting jumped on for bringing Bagwell and Underwood things they couldn’t prosecute. I would check this one out first before I went to them with anything less than solid proof.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The sun was low in the w
est as I approached the address I’d found on my cell, which turned out to be a two-story townhome in a lakeside community on the east side of Lake Hartwell, not far from Clemson. The house was out on a point with a dock and ski-boat in the back. I’d say the place was in the three-quarter to one-million-dollar range—and although it wasn’t at the conspicuous consumption level, the place was pretty impressive.
I rang the doorbell and listened as footsteps approached behind the door.
“Mr. Bragg,” Doctor Michael Stefans said as he opened it. “This is a surprise. What brings you to my humble abode?”
“Zdrahst-vooy,” I said. Hello. The only Russian word I knew. I couldn’t remember where I’d learned it. Probably from a Boris and Natasha cartoon as a kid.
“Hello to you,” he said, then paused and gave me a surprised look. “Do you speak Russian?”
No, but you just showed me that you do, I thought. That was easy. Question number one answered.
“Oh, I just picked that up somewhere,” I said. “Don’t remember where. I say things like that sometimes to keep people from thinking I’m some dumb southern redneck. Which I am, of course.”
He tried to smile at that. It didn’t quite work. He knew he’d revealed something that he shouldn’t have and was wishing he could take it back.
“Well, come in,” he said, moving aside to let me pass and closing the door behind us. “I was making dinner and had I known you were coming, I would have made enough for two. I am what you would call a confirmed bachelor, and eat too often alone. Dinner guests are always a welcome change.
The house smelled of garlic, and spices I didn’t recognize. Whatever he was cooking, it wasn’t southern fried chicken.
I saw no reason to beat about the bush. “I wanted to ask you about the OMSK Corporation, through which you own carwashes, coin laundries, and a bar called the Tiger’s Tail. Did you name your company after the town in Russia?”
