by Mark Wheaton
As Naomi’s arms pulled Michael into her, he felt his ambitions shrink. He’d so long dreamt of power, of the DA’s office, of the governor’s mansion, even the White House. But right now this was all he wanted in the world.
They kissed some more on the elevator ride down and finally broke apart at the valet station.
“Follow me home?” he whispered.
She slipped her ticket to the valet first and grinned at Michael. “Follow me home?”
“Ladies first . . .” he answered, making a sweeping gesture with his arm and giving her a low bow.
Her Prius arrived at the curb a moment later, and she placed the leather satchel containing her files—a gift from Michael—into the passenger seat. “See you in a minute,” she said as she got behind the wheel, and then she drove off.
An eerie feeling gripped Michael. Naomi had once used a peculiar turn of phrase to describe sudden apprehension. The mouth of my grave has opened.
He looked up and down the block and found himself completely alone on a deserted downtown street. Was he just feeling Naomi’s absence? Or was this fear justified? Conventional wisdom had it that Downtown Los Angeles cleared out at night, as if those who worked there in the daylight hours were unwelcome among the dark souls that populated the area after nightfall. Naomi had convinced him this was nonsense, but right now Michael couldn’t hide his fear. There were no cops, only streetlights casting the first few floors of each neighboring skyscraper in shades of yellow and orange.
Then darkness all the way to the sky.
How many people could see him right now? How many people had been waiting for the right moment to catch him alone, a couple of drinks to the wind? The shadows across the street seemed to grow and move. A car screeched around a corner a couple of blocks away. He wished he had his gun, the one he’d bought when he moved to Silver Lake, being mindful of the high crime pockets along Sunset Boulevard.
And then he saw him. Halfway up the block came a hulking figure, his body half-obscured by either the blanket or sleeping bag he was wrapped in despite it being an unseasonably warm March evening. The man moved with purpose, taking long deliberate strides directly toward Michael. Michael could see the man’s eyes as they locked in on him.
It’s a homeless guy, Michael thought. He’ll ask for change. Give him the money you were going to give the valet so you don’t have to show him your wallet.
But the man showed no signs of slowing. It looked as if his plan was to bowl Michael over rather than hit him up for change. The guy had a full head of steam and was moving like a bulldozer. Michael took a few steps back to the building’s doorway, but the sleeping bag–wearing man immediately altered his trajectory. He looked like some kind of mountain dweller clothed in piles of buffalo skins to ward off subzero temperatures.
Why couldn’t he play it cool? They breathed the same air, trod the same streets. They were Los Angelenos, right? Michael fought for people like this.
He was about to nod in greeting when the headlights of his Range Rover swept across the sidewalk as it pulled up to the valet station. The valet hopped out, holding the driver’s-side door open. Michael glanced to the homeless person one more time, dropped all pretense of greeting, and hurried to the other side of the car.
“Shelter’s two blocks that way, friend,” the valet said without malice, pointing down the side street. “You’re almost there.”
The man said nothing but turned quickly at the corner and stormed down the block in the direction the valet pointed. The valet turned to Michael and shrugged. “He gets lost.”
“You know him?”
“Nah, but I see him. He’s tried to stash his stuff behind the building here and there. Crazy as hell.”
Michael nodded and handed over a five. The valet thanked him and closed the door.
Once he was underway, Michael saw that Naomi had called his phone. He hit her number to call her back, but it went to voice mail. He tried again and gave up. He knew she’d laugh at him for being frightened of a homeless guy. She’d list all the horrible things it said about him, and he’d know they were true.
He made his way up Grand Avenue to the 101 freeway. The highway was empty. As he neared the Silver Lake off-ramp, he saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles on the street ahead.
The fear returned.
As traffic slowed, he tried to see what was happening. It wasn’t on the street—that much he could tell. He thought it might be a struck pedestrian or bicyclist. Maybe a homeless person. How awful was it to feel oneself praying for that?
But as he neared, his face began to burn. He felt guilt like he hadn’t his whole life. He knew what was up there, knew it as plainly as he knew his own name. And it was his fault. His fault for pulling her into his world and for daring the universe not to punish him for feeling a little happiness.
As his pulse quickened, he forced the thoughts away. He conjured the image of Naomi sitting on their couch, bundled up in her robe, shaking her head as she chastised him for being late, not just to dinner but coming home. He’d shrug and sigh, then wrap his arms around her and not let go. Not ever. He’d say they should throw everything in the car and go overnight to Lake Arrowhead or Montecito the next morning. Sure, they’d be working the whole time, but how nice would it be to have a change of scenery?
Of course, it wasn’t to be. He didn’t recognize Naomi’s Prius at first, as he was looking at the undercarriage, which faced the street at an odd angle. The car had rolled. The front tires were bent inward, giving the whole car the look of a turtle trying to withdraw into its shell. As he was waved through the intersection, the wheels of the Range Rover crunched over broken plastic, safety glass, and other debris.
He looked at the wrecked Prius, its broken headlights casting light on the grassy curb where it had finally come to rest, and the dark realization that it could only be Naomi’s came over him. The entire passenger compartment had been flattened, the roof had collapsed, shattering the windows, and it now rested flush with the doors. It was only then that Michael realized it hadn’t been hit in the intersection but must have tumbled down from the overpass above. He glanced back and saw the highway guardrails torn away.
Michael marveled at the speed Naomi must have been going to impact the rails so violently.
Was she drunk? Michael thought. Or . . . was she trying to get away from someone?
Even as he fought to remain rational, to look for the solution to the situation no matter how elusive, he could hear himself screaming. Seeing nowhere to pull over, he slammed the SUV into park and left it in the street, engine running. His heart pounded as he turned toward the crash site. The smell of gasoline hung heavy in the air, and the sky was alive with blue and red flashing light.
He forced his body forward, but there was a telling lack of urgency to the paramedics already at the scene. His hope faded with every step.
The mouth of my grave has opened.
II
Like many recently arrived immigrants, St. Petersburg–born Gennady Archipenko worked more than one job to support his family. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, this quickly resulted in his purchase of a multimillion-dollar custom-built modern steel-and-glass home along the Venice Canals, private preschool for his four-year-old daughter, Nina, and a nanny and night nurse for his three-month-old son, Aleksey, as well as a hefty investment in his young wife Yelena’s budding catering enterprise. But those who only knew him through his day job likely assumed from his youth, his lack of ostentation, and the hard-charging way he worked that he still inhabited some squalid apartment in West Hollywood off Plummer Park.
Which was the way he wanted it.
Gennady had one driving force in life—to make people rich. This included himself, though not at the expense of others. He had a fervent belief that if his clients prospered he would, too.
By day he worked as a financial adviser at a local branch of one of the nation’s largest banks. His branch offered all sorts of commission-based fi
nancial plans and investment portfolios that Gennady compared to the fully loaded SUVs and bloated laptop computers sold by big-box retailers. The impressive-sounding list of options inflated the sales price, even if the unknowing customer might never use them. These kinds of accounts preyed on those who didn’t know better. Gennady thought this true of several of his bank’s products.
So instead he made it his business to find out exactly what his customers wanted from their money and created portfolios based on that.
Looking to buy a house within the next five years? Go with CDs.
You’re in your optimal earning years and hope to retire in twenty years? Try the bond market.
Looking for high-yield investments and can stomach big losses? Try mutual funds.
He believed if he did right by these customers, they’d recommend him to their friends. When he subsequently struck out on his own, which was always the hope, he’d only need 10 to 15 percent of these people to follow him in order to keep going. Not that he’d need them for anything but appearances. It was simply good practice for his night job, which required 100 percent customer loyalty and trust, as it wasn’t strictly legal.
“Okay, so how much money do you have in Tallinn?” Gennady asked his latest client, a handsome and always impeccably dressed Ghanaian named Oris Namboh.
Based in Europe for the past ten years, Oris ran a successful commercial production company. He was now relocating to Los Angeles and was looking to bring his acquired wealth with him without having to lose a substantial portion to American taxes. Gennady had been recommended to him by a friend of Oris’s wife, a Russian-born heiress who’d had several friends emigrate to Paris, London, New York, and LA in the great current now flowing out of the former Soviet Union.
“I’ve got about seven million euros in Tallinn, about twice that in Paris, twice that again in Russia—”
“Where in Russia? Moscow or Petersburg?” Gennady said, his finger rising from the tablet he was typing this all into. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Petersburg. Does it matter?”
“Depends on who you are. Proximity to the Kremlin can be impactful.”
Oris laughed. Gennady ran the numbers on the tablet, getting more information as he did. “Is Los Angeles a permanent move? Or do you plan on leaving again within the next ten years?”
“It’s our dream to move to the South of France at some point,” Oris admitted. “Have you ever been? It’s incredible.”
Gennady had not but nodded anyway. “That’s good,” he said. “What I’d like to do is use that Paris account as your primary and build everything from that. On paper, your money will be consolidated there even as you do business in America. You will incorporate, probably an S corp, here in California that you’ll use to pay employees and expenses. You will pay yourself through this. Your money from Estonia and St. Petersburg will come through there as investment, not income or bonds. You will diversify into international funds, and that will be reciprocal with your bank in Paris. Given regulation on both sides of the Atlantic, it will take some time, but it’ll all come through eventually. You will pay taxes, but only on what you earn in America, and only after you’ve covered your operating expenses, which will be substantial.”
“I’m not sure what they’ll look like,” Oris said. “It could vary.”
“Good thing it won’t be up to you,” Gennady countered.
“What do you mean?”
“I decide the number, based on the information you give me,” Gennady explained. “Every year we will zero out your profits based on operating expenses—social security, Medicare, overhead, and so on. But it will turn out that your corporation is very generous with its employees and will match your retirement contributions each year, which will be international, with a loose reporting structure. You will barely break even while providing jobs for California workers. Not only won’t you be investigated, they might give you a prize. As long as your paperwork and fees are paid on time. Which they will be.”
Oris eyed Gennady carefully for a moment, as if wondering whether he was being scammed. He leaned forward. “And your cut? For start-up and upkeep?”
“A hundred thousand dollars, but not payable till the end of your first corporate year,” Gennady said. “If at any time during that year you wish to transfer your account to someone else, I am owed nothing. No prorated amount. No deposit. No money ever changed hands. Anything you did was on your own with advice from a friend.”
“Really?” Oris asked. “That doesn’t sound like good business.”
“This is for my protection, not yours,” Gennady replied. “If you get cold feet, if it turns out there are aspects of your business that you failed to clue me in on, I can walk away free and clear. If you do decide to go with me, on paper I’m little more than an accountant, albeit one who scurrilously overcharges you.”
Oris laughed. Gennady let him.
“Does all that make sense?” Gennady asked.
“It does,” Oris agreed, extending his hand. “You are straightforward. I am accustomed to people lying to get my business. You do not. In that respect you remind me of my wife, who is from Samara. Is being unimpressed a particularly Russian trait?”
Gennady laughed. “I would say so, yes. But as far as Russian women go, so is incredible beauty.”
“Absolutely,” Oris agreed. “Thank you.”
“Any time.”
The two had met at a small Brazilian restaurant Gennady favored in Santa Monica. It catered to locals and had twelve tables all told, with four more they placed out on the sidewalk on warm evenings. If two diners chose to carry on their conversation in Russian, as Gennady and Oris had, no one thought twice. The ocean was only seven blocks to the west, and a breeze carried in the sea air.
Gennady walked Oris to his car, a brand-new Lamborghini Aventador Superveloce, a bonus gifted him after a successful marketing launch by the manufacturer itself. He waved as Oris tore off into the night, then walked the three blocks to where his more discreet Mercedes GLS was parked at a meter. He climbed in and began the short drive down to Venice.
Though there would be more traffic, he took the ocean route down Ocean Avenue and rolled the windows down. He’d loved the sea since he was a child watching ships come in from the storm-riven Baltic. Having an ocean close centered him. As long as he had it in sight, he always knew where he was. It was also the reason he’d wanted to move to Venice, specifically to a house on the canals. The Venice canals were a squared-off grid of four interconnected waterways with large houses along each. Some of these homes had stayed in families for generations. Moving into the canals was near impossible, given the desirability of the location and the competition from the endlessly wealthy of Los Angeles.
But Gennady had lain in wait. He befriended canal homeowners and real estate agents that specialized in the area. When one tipped him off that that a looming divorce could mean a quick motivated sale of the large contemporary, he knocked on the front door and presented an all-cash offer that would’ve been impossible to refuse in any circumstance. Back home, Petersburgers marked their status by how many windows their home had facing the Neva River. His children would have their version of that facing the Venice canals.
As he wound through Santa Monica, Gennady texted his wife to tell her when he’d be home, then checked the voice mail on his night job phone. There were two dozen messages, most relating to stock trades that clients wanted handled when the Tokyo Stock Exchange opened. He glanced at his watch. It had been open for half an hour already. It’d be a late night.
He switched to his day job cell, where he found the same number of voice mails, albeit with comically less at stake. A nighttime client might carefully lay out the instructions for a trade they needed perfectly timed in order to profit a couple million dollars off a currency exchange. A daytime client would ring in the same heady fever over something needing to happen at the opening bell in New York, but the result would be only three or four thousand dollars.
Of course, Gennady gave each request equal weight—retention over profits—and made mental notes as to which needed to be done tonight and which could wait until morning.
The last voice mail on the day job number took him by surprise. It was neither client nor colleague but a woman who identified herself as Naomi Okpewho from the LA district attorney’s office. Adrenaline surged through his body as he listened.
“I’d like to find a time to sit down with you in person,” Okpewho said, her voice coming in and out as if she was speaking while driving. “My office is looking into the financial dealings of Charles Sittenfeld. Your name has come up in our investigation.”
Gennady was surprised. When Sittenfeld was arrested a few months back, he’d recognized the name and went through his inbox to see if he’d ever interacted with him. Though Sittenfeld was considerably higher on the bank’s food chain than him, they had communicated about certain accounts from time to time. None of it was illegal or even quasi-legal to Gennady’s mind. He wondered if the district attorney’s office was fishing, or if there really was something in Sittenfeld’s files with his name on it.
He pulled over and listened to the voice mail a second time, wrote down the phone number Okpewho had left, and made a mental note to see if there even was a Naomi Okpewho in the DA’s office and whether she was on the Sittenfeld case. Even if there was nothing to it, returning the call and making a contact in the DA’s office was worth doing, wasn’t it?
Pulling back on the road, he tried to remember if he’d had any in-person dealings with Sittenfeld. There’d been a few unexpected phone calls that Gennady had written off as his managerial style—surprise those lowest on the totem pole to let them know the bosses kept an eye on them—but nothing else. He hadn’t perceived the man as particularly intelligent or potentially useful, so he’d only answered what was asked and nothing more.
