by Paul Neuhaus
“Move back in? As your wife or as a surrogate Ava?”
I grinned at her. “That’s way too fucked up a phrase for me to parse.”
She returned the smile and drew closer to me. “Fine. Leave it unparsed for now.” We kissed, and she stood up and headed for the exit.
“Where’re you going? You just got here.”
“I’m gonna move back in. Before you change your mind.”
My brain told me the quickness with which she committed was another indicator of what a weird place we were in. I stifled the response as best I could. “I’m not gonna change my mind. Do me a favor, though: Get something to eat this time. We need to work on getting you fattened up again.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “‘Fattened up’? Again’? You’re such a fucking idiot.”
“That was never in doubt.”
She left, and I had one thought: I was happy to be alone. No one was there watching over me or trying to get me to talk to them or poking or prodding me with anything. It was the first time I’d felt like myself since I came out on the other side of the beating. I turned on CNN and pinched my boner to get it to go down.
The next morning, I was finally discharged from the hospital. I felt like I hadn’t seen the outside world in months. Hailey brought me some new clothes to wear since the ones I had on when I was admitted were too bloody and shredded for further use. On our way out, Randall Dunphey met us. “You’re leaving?” he said, seemingly disappointed. He was carrying a bouquet.
“Yeah, did you think they were gonna keep me here forever?” I was still getting used to the cane they’d given me. I needed it, but fortunately, I wouldn’t need it for long.
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
“That’s okay. Walk us out.”
Dunphey fell in step alongside us. “Believe it or not,” he said. “I enjoy visiting people in hospitals. To me, it’s always an opportunity rather than a thing to be avoided.”
“Oh, you’re the one.”
“The one what?”
“The guy that enjoys visiting people in hospitals. The exception that proves the rule.”
“Yeah,” Hailey threw in. “That’s weird, Randy. Really, really weird.”
I took the bouquet off his hands and handed it to my wife. “Listen, man, I’m so sorry I dropped the ball. Hailey told me you lost your job.”
He nodded. “I did. But we knew there was a better than even a chance of that happening. Gary told me you came to talk to him. Said it was a nice thing you did. Then he fired me. Maybe it’s time for a new line of work. Something less toxic.”
“Try politics.”
“Ugh. Look, I just wanted to say, I saw what you did—you got the shit kicked out of you on my account, what, three times? I sure as hell can’t say you didn’t give it the old college try.”
“Or maybe I’m into pain.”
“No, that’s me, remember,” Randy replied, grinning.
“Right. Sorry, Rhonda.” Hailey looked at us both funny, but I didn’t elaborate. “Tell me something…” I said to Dunphey. “Have you heard from Evelyn?”
“Evelyn… dropped off the face of the earth. Along with Tad Albright. I liked Evelyn. She was fun but now I’m thinking it’s better to make a clean break from all of that. The better to move on.”
“That… sounds like a good idea to me. If you need help, just ask. For real.”
Dunphey nodded. “Why’re you asking me about Evelyn? There’s no case to work anymore. It’s over.”
I shook my head. “It’s not over. Not for me. None of it sits well. I can’t leave it in the state it’s in. If for no other reason than my professional reputation.”
“That’s swell, Uncle Jack. You realize I can’t pay you, right?”
“I don’t want your money.” I switched into a deep, dulcet tone. “Because this time it’s personal.”
“Were you just trying to do the Trailer Guy voice?”
“I was. Was it good?”
“Not even a little bit,” he said, and we all laughed.
7 The Final Phase
After we left the hospital, I had Hailey take me to Glendale. To Pepe Bell’s. We went down the side street where I’d parked and, miracle of miracles, my Jeep was still there. There was a ticket for being parked there on a street cleaning day, but that was a price I was willing to pay.
I’d convinced Hailey to let me do some work on the condition that it be “non-taxing”. She left me and went back to Sherman Oaks. Just as I had at the hospital, I felt some relief at being alone again. P.I.-ing is a solitary business, and I was predisposed in that direction, anyway. Hailey knew that. She knew I needed my alone time. Once she was gone, I backtracked on foot to the defunct restaurant. The back door was unlocked, so I peeked in. Kaspar’s feast was where it’d been left, rotting and stinking up the joint. Despite the brutalizing treatment she’d visited upon my nethers, I suddenly felt bad for the woman. She was a mean old crone, but losing her grandson had probably hit her hard. I looked the place over, but I didn’t turn up much. Arsen had held Tad Albright there for less time than I’d been in the hospital. Neither had left anything behind in the way of clues.
I had to figure out which threads were still left hanging. Which threads I could continue to tug at. I could only think of two such threads and both had the last name “Nguyen”.
I went back to the Holiday Inn in West L.A. where Liam O'Connor had tried to put the kibosh on Nikki Nguyen. Given my traumatic memory loss, I expected the people at the motel to Twilight Zone me. To tell me they’d never had a tenant named Nguyen and to get me questioning everything I thought was real. That didn’t happen. They remembered Nikki; they remembered the incident with O'Connor, but they also told me Nikki had moved out—without leaving a forwarding address. I guess she had nothing keeping her bound to Los Angeles. Her twin was dead and, without meaning to, he’d left nothing behind for his sister but danger. If I’d been her, I probably would’ve bailed too.
I sighed and left the motel.
When I went back out to the street next to the Holiday Inn, Nikki was there feeding the meter. Her own injuries had improved considerably. She looked pretty. “I was just in there,” I said. “Looking for you. I figured you skipped town.”
“No,” she said. “I switched motels. The Best Western across the street is way cheaper. What happened to you?” she said, indicating the cane.
“Remember last week when you got the shit kicked out of you? It looked like so much fun I thought I’d try it.”
She nodded, her face curious. “Buy me a BLT?” she said.
“Yer goddam right.”
The Best Western had a little restaurant. Nikki and I each ordered a BLT and some coffee and settled in.
“What have you heard?” I said. “Since I saw you last?”
“Two things: Jack and shit. They even stopped watching me a day or two after I got out of the hospital. That’s the other reason I moved. To stay one step ahead of Liam O'Connor.”
“Across the street?” I said, incredulous. “Tip number one for staying out of reach of the bad guys: Move more than thirty yards away.”
She shrugged, taking a bite out of her sandwich. She didn’t seem too worried about it.
I brought her up to date with my story—which, of course, stopped at the gates of Destiny Base. When I got to the part about putting out O'Connor’s eye, she said “yay!” in a little girl voice which, despite being macabre, was still delightful. “Anyway,” I said, wrapping up. “After all that, I’ve got Jack and shit myself. I don’t understand any of it and the guy who killed your brother is still out there.”
“Yeah, but at least he’s a cyclops.”
“At least he’s a cyclops,” I agreed. “You said you dated him… Can you fill in any blanks for me? Hangouts? Local family members? Friends? Weird habits? Anything at all that’d help me get a line on him?”
She thought for a moment and then took an eyebrow pencil ou
t of her purse. She scrawled something onto a paper napkin and handed it to me. The napkin said, “Neyizhkasha”.
“What’s this?”
“Liam has a friend,” Nikki said.
“Hard to believe.”
“I know, me too. But he does. Hedeon Ponomarenko.”
I repeated the name back to her, and she adjusted my pronunciation. “What kind of name is that?” I said.
“Ukrainian. Liam the Mick’s best friend is a… what’s a derogatory name for Ukrainians?”
“I’ll get back to you.” I remembered the paper Dennis Hill had shown me in the hospital. The one about the packages coming in through the Port of Los Angeles for shipment to Riverside. The packages with a Ukrainian origin point. “Tell me more about this Ponomarenko.”
“Hedeon. The last name means ‘clergyman’, although there isn’t much holy about Ponomarenko.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s… nice. He and Liam were close. I went out to dinner with him several times. If you didn’t look too deep, you wouldn’t think much about it. But Hedeon had a thing. You know how sometimes people have a thing where you feel like there’s more to them you can’t quite put your finger on? For me anyway that was the case. With Hedeon, I mean.” Nikki and Tad were both good at spotting ‘things’, apparently.
“Did you ever put your finger on it?”
“No, it was just this vague notion that he might be… thuggish. I wish I’d paid more attention to what my brain was trying to tell me. If I’d let myself believe Hedeon was a thug, I might’ve realized Liam was a thug and saved myself some grief.”
I looked at the napkin she’d written on. “And ‘Neyizhkasha’? What is Neyizhkasha?”
“It’s a restaurant. A Ukrainian restaurant. According to Hedeon, it’s a Cossack word. It means—are you ready?—‘Do not eat porridge’.”
“That’s weirdly specific.”
“I know. The lady who runs it… Apparently not a big fan of porridge.”
“I guess not. The lady… She got a name?”
“Oxana. Liam took me a few times. We hung out with Hedeon. I hated it. The restaurant, I mean. Everything was boiled.”
“The former Soviet bloc. Not known for its cuisine.”
“Amen.”
I folded my hands in front of me and leaned in closer. “Look…” I said. “You’ve given me another lead, and that’s great, but I need a favor, and if you say ‘no’ I’ll understand. I don’t want to put you in an ethical bind…”
She smiled around the rim of her coffee cup. “What the hell’re you talking about?” Maybe I didn’t need to bring it up. I mean, she was the girl who thought she could avoid another beat down by moving across the street. Still, I figured I needed to bring it up.
“I painted myself and my friend Dennis into a corner the other day. Mostly Dennis. I mentioned—in front of you—that Tad Albright might’ve been kidnapped. That’s a federal offense. Me mentioning it obliged Dennis to call the FBI. I begged him not to since it’d put my client’s job at risk. When a cop knows a P.I. well sometimes there’s tit for tat…”
“You scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours?”
“Exactly. Dennis told me he couldn’t look the other way on the kidnapping because I’d mentioned it in front of you.”
“So, if I’m following you, Dennis did you a favor by not telling and he’d be in deep shit if his favor came to light?”
“That’s it, you’ve got it.”
She shrugged with her shoulders. “Yeah, I don’t give a shit. I don’t owe Tad Albright anything. And Dennis seems like a nice guy. Your secret goes with me to my grave.” She held up three fingers to drive the point home.
“Oh, thank God,” I said, placing my hand on my chest.
“You wanna know the funny thing?”
“What’s the funny thing?”
“If you hadn’t mentioned it, I would’ve forgotten all about it.”
“Great,” I said, flagging the waiter so I could pay the bill. “That’s about par for my course.”
I left Nguyen in the motel's lobby. I had just two more avenues I wanted to pursue before calling it a day. I’d promised Hailey I’d take it easy.
I drove into WeHo and, given the recent hospital stay, I couldn’t park too far away from Thatsa Spicy Meatball. I’d just have to risk being beaten by Noah’s friends. Hell, where I was going, I had better than even odds of being beaten, anyway. Ivory Snowden wasn’t at the hostess stand. It was Jenny Tailya. I put on a pleasant face. “Hi, Jenny. Is Ivory here?”
Jenny looked me up and down. “Ryan Gosling. Ivory didn’t do that to you, did she? You didn’t look like you were in that bad a shape when you left here the other day.”
“No, she didn’t. Don’t get me wrong: Ivory can whip ass with the best of them, but a professional did this.”
She flicked her eyelashes at me. “What’re you, a glutton for punishment? You’ve already had it handed to you twice and you’re back for more?”
I sighed and said, “Three times. To date. Is she here?”
Jenny Tailya flicked her chin over her shoulder. “She’s inside. Tending bar…”
I nodded and brushed past customers coming and going in the narrow space. I went to the bar and there was a guy with short-cropped hair and a five o’clock shadow. That confused me. “Excuse me…” I said. “I’m looking for Ivory. Ivory Snowden.”
The man smiled at me with row upon row of perfect teeth. “You found her, honey. Or should I say ‘Ryan’?”
I did a double take. “Oh, shit,” I said, squinting. “It is you. Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
She (he?) shrugged. “That’s part of the gig. What brings you in here? I didn’t do that to you, did I?”
I shook my head. “I was just telling… Ms. Tailya…. Your’s wasn’t the only beating I got last week.”
Ivory laughed out loud, an unabashedly masculine sound. “Oh, I believe it. You bring out the worst in people.”
“I guess I do.”
“I’ve gotta say… You’ve got big brass ones. A lotta people around here blame you for Noah’s death.”
“What about you, Ivory?”
“Call me ‘Oscar’,” he said. “Ivory’s my drag name. It doesn’t work when I’m sporting stubble.” He picked up a glass and started wiping it clean with an immaculate white rag. “I… don’t know what to think. I mean I don’t think you pulled the trigger, but you may’ve led his killers to where he was.”
“I could see why you’d think that. I’ll let you in on a little secret… Keep it in your corset for now.”
He dropped the glass to waist height, intrigued by the whiff of gossip in the air. “Go ahead…”
“I was there when Noah died. I saw the man who shot him. He was Aetheric Concordance.”
Oscar whistled. “Shut the front door. What does that even mean? Was Tad aware? Did Tad help?”
“I dunno. We could ask Tad but he’s missing right now.”
“Wow,” he replied. “Just wow. I take it you’re still sniffing the trail?”
“I am—although my original client is already fucked. I’m doing it because a) I liked Noah and b) I’ve got a reputation to worry about.”
“Nobody fucks your shit up and kicks your ass six ways from Sunday and gets away with it?” he said, chiding me.
“That’s about the size of it,” I replied, trying not to let my wounded pride show.
“What do you drink?” He said, putting the glass on the bar and indicating he meant to fill it for me.
“Not for me, Oscar. I had my guts put through a grinder. I just got out of the hospital this morning.”
My bartender grinned, stooping to open a mini fridge at his feet. From out of the fridge he drew a bottle of Broguiere’s chocolate milk and poured some into the shot glass in front of me. He grabbed himself a matching glass and poured out some additional milk.
I was delighted. “That’s… perfect,” I said. “Salut!”
/> We clinked glasses and downed our chocolate milk together. “Listen,” he said. “Sorry if I was a little rough on you the other day.”
I wiped away my milk mustache. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t exactly enjoy getting my ass beat, but… Weird as it sounds, your heart was in the right place.”
Oscar nodded and I could see he was misting up. He poured out another couple of shots and raised his. “To Noah!” he said.
“To Noah!” I echoed.
We downed those shots too and Oscar said. “Now… What can I do you for?”
“What can you do me for? What can you do me for? I’ll be honest with you: I just stopped here on my way to another lead. A place where I might be able to turn out the killer. I guess this is the part of the TV show where I say to you, ‘If there’s anything else you can think of… Anything at all…”
He nodded. “Have you talked to Noah’s sister? Nikki? She’s local.”
“I did. In fact, I just did. The guy that killed Noah tried to kill her too.”
“Tried to kill Nikki? Do me a favor: if you track this guy down, bring him here to the restaurant and let me go a couple of rounds with him. You can join in, or you can just watch. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t feel much like scrapping yet, but we had another encounter after I saw him kill Noah. I put out his eye.”
Again, the toothy grin. “You put out his eye?”
I nodded and Oscar and I fist-bumped over the bar. “I take it we think Nikki’s good people?” I said, looking for corroboration of something I was already pretty certain of.
“Nikki’s a weird one. A great kid but sometimes she leaves you shaking your head like, ‘Why would anyone in the world do what she just did?’”
