by Paul Neuhaus
I shifted the phone from one ear to the other. “Creepy? Creepy how?”
I could almost hear the shrug on the other end of the line. “There’s Loud Frat Boy and there’s Loud Frat Boy Clearly Capable of Raping a Co-ed. It was the second one with those two. Subjective reaction. Take it with a grain of salt.”
“Like I say, Big Hair I’ve met. You’re not out of line. Did you get a name on this second guy?”
A moment of hesitation. “I did, but I’m sure I misheard it.”
“Give me your best shot.”
Oscar didn’t want to sound stupid. “Was it ‘Hellion’? I know that isn’t right. No one is named Hellion. Still, he was a foreign guy.”
“You talk to him?”
“For just a minute. I was there as Ivory. He complimented me on my pumps. Said something about putting me to work. I laughed politely. I didn’t wanna know what he meant. Again, creepy.”
“Where was he from?”
“I didn’t ask. Either Hellion or Noah. He sounded a bit like Chekov from the old Star Trek. Anyway, long story short… Noah didn’t like Big Hair, but he really didn’t like Hellion. Made him jittery. I never found out if he had a reason for the jitteriness. Beyond the obvious.” Oscar sighed. “I don’t even know if this is anything you can use. It just popped into my head and stood out as unusual. Sorry if I’m wasting your time.”
“You are most definitely not wasting my time.” If nothing else, I might recognize Hedeon Ponomarenko when I saw him.
As soon as I got off the line with Oscar, I did the obvious: I Googled Hedeon Ponomarenko. Our man from the Ukraine came to the States in the mid-nineties. His wasn’t a Horatio Alger story. He came from money and immediately bought himself some roots in Los Angeles. Houses, businesses, influence. I clicked the Images tab and hit the mother lode. If only I’d done the search sooner, I wouldn’t have needed Oscar’s description. Still, Oscar’s description was on the money with one small missing detail. Ponomarenko had a scar from the middle of one cheek, across the bridge of his nose, to the middle of the other cheek. Looked like a knife wound in my semi-professional opinion. In all of the pictures, he was smiling from jug-ear to jug-ear and looking very much like a frat boy who could find the fun in nearly anything. In nearly every picture, he was with a different woman. All of them were way out of his league—if his league was based entirely around his looks, which it wasn’t. One image—from a movie premiere—featured Ponomarenko and a second-tier actress. The Ukrainian was sandwiched between the bimbo and Liam O’Connor who was sporting a tux and the same insipid smile as his buddy. Just as I was getting bored, I came across a caption that made me click the image and go to the linked story. The caption said, “Local Businessman and Restauranteur Team to Bring a Taste of Kiev to the West Side”. The article was from two years prior and was a repackaged press release for the opening of Neyizhkasha. The accompanying photo showed Ponomarenko and Oxana Mykhailo standing in front of the eatery. Oxana was way smaller than Hedeon, but the two looked like two peas from the same pod.
Since I seemed destined to have my phone grafted to my head all morning, I gave in to fate and dialed Adalee Palmer at the Times. She obviously had caller-ID on her extension (or maybe she didn’t). “Palmer’s Crematorium,” she said. “You kill ‘em, we grill ‘em.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said back.
“What can you tell me about Hedeon Ponomarenko?”
“Boris Badenov impersonator and man about town?”
“That’s the one.”
“What do you want to know?”
“He’s not, strictly speaking, above board is he?”
Adalee laughed. “That’s cute what you said. Above board. No, he is not, strictly speaking, above board. Good luck proving it in court, though. Or printing it without getting dog piled by a million libel lawyers.”
“What do you know about him and connections to the Aetheric Concordance?”
“Nothing beyond the obvious. Doesn’t he pal around with Liam O’Connor? Isn’t O’Connor like a deacon or something in the Church?”
“Yeah. He’s also the guy that shot the kid in West Hollywood. The one I told you about.”
“And you think Insane from the Ukraine’s got something to do with that?”
I appreciated the oblique reference to Cyprus Hill. “He’s got something to do with something. How about shipping? Is Ponomarenko involved in shipping?”
“Probably. He’s into everything else. What gives here? What made you think I’d give you all this for free? Usually, I can at least get a couple of beers out of you.”
“Adalee, it’s like ten-thirty in the A.M.”
“Oh, shit!” she said. “I’m behind.”
I blew past the whole alcoholism-for-laughs bit. “Would you say a guy who could smuggle white slaves and smack into this country could smuggle other things too?”
“Sure. Why not? What’re you talking about?”
“I’m just speculating on a hypothesis.” That phrase was one of Palmer and I’s old stand-bys. It was from Miller’s Crossing. An old Coen brothers movie. “From a very, very brief encounter with one of Ponomarenko’s… employees, I deduced he was into trafficking—both drugs and people. I also have it on good authority—and strictly off the record—he might be smuggling something else into this country. Something that arrives in Long Beach and gets trucked out to Riverside.”
“Riverside? As in Destiny Base?”
“Yup.”
Palmer’s side of the line went quiet for a moment. “As soon as you’ve put the pieces together, I want this. For my byline.”
“Your byline? What about Wyatt Greebly?”
“Wyatt Greebly can go fuck himself.”
As I stood up to leave, my phone stopped me one last time. This time it was a text from Dennis Hill. “Turn on the TV,” it said. “Local news.” I sat down again and picked up the remote on my desk. I tuned it to one local station and saw they were on a commercial break. I flipped to another and found what Dennis was talking about. The local news. Breaking story. Newscaster lady with black hair piled high. Newscaster guy with tanned, leathery skin. They were talking about two morning murders. Two morning celebrity murders. Less than an hour apart. I settled in to pick up the specifics.
First came Nolan Hayes. Academy Award-winning director. For a movie everybody thought was great but which came down in the general estimation over time. Oscar had a lot of those (and I don’t mean the bartender from Thatsa Spicy Meatball). He went out to get the paper and was shot dead in his driveway.
Next came Darby (AKA Darby Hansen). Musician with an eclectic style (I liked his stuff). Made it big in the 90s. Settled into what many called a more introspective, “adult” mode in the twenty-first century. Shot through his front window. Pronounced dead on the scene. (He bled out.)
What’d the two men have in common? Their ties to the Aetheric Concordance.
Hayes had made headlines a couple of years prior when he found out the more science fiction-y aspects of the AC—something they keep hidden to all but their highest ranking members (AKA, the people that’ve paid the most). Not only did the director leave the Church, he made quite a stink about it. The New Yorker. Vanity Fair. It was high profile enough that everyone heard about it—even me, the guy that’d missed the supposedly great cable documentary.
As far as I knew, Darby was still in the Concordance, but his struggles with drug abuse were widely known. As sins in the AC go, being a junkie runs a close second to being queer.
Wyatt Greebly’s info on Concordance hits had been dead on the money—sooner than I and probably even he could have expected.
Then something occurred to me. If the airheads weren’t quite done yet, I could think of one other target just off the top of my head.
Scarlett Albright. She didn’t stick with her Church-mandated marriage to Tad and was considered an embarrassing black mark on their ledger. I texted back to Dennis: “Another potential victim… Send
a car.” I typed in Scarlett’s address and got out of there in a hurry.
8 The Crackdown
I hobbled back to my apartment and got into the Jeep. Then I drove as fast I could to the gray area between Century City and Beverly Hills. I didn’t have Scarlett’s phone number or I would’ve called. (I’m sure it was unlisted.)
Why was I going myself? Why didn’t I just leave it to the LAPD? I guess because I didn’t want to let Liam Liam O’Connor kill anyone else I was acquainted with. Also, part of me wanted to be the guy that put a stop to the crazy deacon. Never mind that I’d’d just spent a week in the hospital and was getting around on a cane.
Anger and shame do terrible things to your judgement.
When I got to Scarlett’s concrete house, the front gate was open. I drove in and there were two Porsches in the driveway. The black roadster and a forest green Cayenne.
Fuck.
During the drive, I’d had a chance to cool down, and I had hoped I’d have to do nothing more than sit with the former Mrs. Albright until the police came. Instead, I’d gotten exactly what my earlier, more hot-headed self had wanted.
I got out of the Jeep as quietly as I could and had a sudden flash of my gun (the only gun I owned). It was a pretty, black alloy and steel-framed Smith & Wesson Model 457,.45 caliber weapon. One of several pieces favored by the police. It was a helluva fine gun, and it was still sitting where it always sat. In one of the lower drawers of my desk.
I’m such a fucking idiot.
But the cards were on the table and I couldn’t just stand around outside watching the grass grow.
I walked quietly across the tile floor to the living room. Liam O’Connor was there with his back to me. He was standing between myself and the lady of the house. With his left hand, he was holding her tightly by her bicep. With his right hand, he was ripping off her t-shirt. As I stood there in disbelief, I flashed back to something Oscar had said. Something about raping co-eds.
The big Irishman’s gun, the CZ was stuck into his waistband in the back of his jeans. I had another odd flash: The CZ is a Czech-made firearm. A country that shares a border with the Ukraine. Possibly a coincidence.
I didn’t waste any time. I put all of my weight (painfully) onto my feet, strode into the room, and broke the cane on the Gonzo gargoyle. I jabbed the newly pointed end of the walking stick into Liam’s right kidney. Then I pulled the gun out of the top of his pants and shot him in the head. Scarlett Albright’s face and naked torso were splattered with red mist. O’Connor went down, dead.
Wobbly, I dropped on the couch to take the weight off. Scarlett screamed and screamed. “Shh, shh, shh,” I said. “Come over here.”
The girl did as she was told, dropping to her hands and knees and crawling to me across the floor. She got up onto the couch and curled up in my lap. I held onto her for as long as she needed. Until her crying was manageable.
“Come on,” I said. “Get up and get a shirt on. There’s no reason to give the police a cheap thrill.”
“The police?” she said, her voice broken by a weepy hiccup.
“Yeah. I let them know this might happen. They should be on their way. Go on now.”
She did as she was told, which was good because I wanted to see something before the cops arrived. I had to turn O’Connor slightly to get past the broken cane half which was still sticking out of him. I fished his phone out of his left-hand front packet and was pleased it wasn’t locked with a passcode or a fingerprint reader. I went right to his Contacts app. To the Ps. Under Ponomarenko there were multiple entries. Multiple addresses and multiple phone numbers. One of them popped out in a major way: Sokil Shipping, Long Beach, CA. I committed the address to memory and put Liam’s phone back in his pocket.
The police came and took our statements. Since my statement matched Scarlett’s and since Scarlett had bruises and scratches consistent with the attempted rape, the cops didn’t make too much of O’Connor’s death. They’d connect the murders of Darby and Nolan Hayes to Liam’s timely demise soon.
Dennis Hill hadn’t come with the other officers (LAPD was having a busy day) but Agent Patty had. “They told me you were the one that put in the call. I wanted to see if you’d be dumb enough to come here yourself.”
Cops and a guy from the ME’s office were looking at O’Connor’s corpse. Scarlett had overheard Yelburton. “Not so dumb from where I’m standing,” Albright’s ex- said. “If he hadn’t come here, I would’t be standing at all.”
The policemen and the coroner guy gave the FBI agent a sour look. A look that said, “She’s kinda got you there”.
Yelburton flushed a little. “Anyway, it’s only been a couple of hours since I saw you. You’ve been busy.”
I had a decision to make. I couldn’t keep flying solo. Not with the condition I was in (and not with a broken cane). “I’m going down to Long Beach,” I said. “You wanna come with me?”
“What’s in Long Beach?” she asked, playing coy. She started walking, and I followed, limping.
“You know goddam good and well what’s in Long Beach.”
Agent Patty made an attempt at changing the subject. “We talked to Wyatt Greebly. The reporter from the Times. We leaned on him a little and he turned us on to his informant.”
“Informant? I thought he had multiple informants.”
That took the woman aback. Apparently, Greebs hadn’t been as forthcoming with her as she would’ve liked. “Be that as it may…”
“Who’d you get? The one they call Willie the Waffler?”
“Yes. A strange man. Like Joe Pesci from Lethal Weapon if Joe Pesci from Lethal Weapon was hopped up on goof balls.”
I shuddered. Joe Pesci was, in my view, a real blight on the Lethal Weapon franchise. The most annoying character in pre-Jar Jar Binks cinema. “What’d Willie have to say?”
“He said there’s a room at Destiny Base only like three or four people are allowed into. He said Patrick Dankworth calls it ‘The War Room’.”
I turned to her with a raised eyebrow. “That’s… unsettling,” I said.
She stopped on the lawn next to the three parked cars. “What do you think’s in Long Beach?” I could tell she was fishing. She wanted to see what I knew or had guessed.
“A shipping company. Owned by Hedeon Ponomarenko. Sokil Shipping. They bring in, I’m assuming, heroin, girls from countries less advantaged and ours, and weapons. Weapons I’m gonna say are of Czech manufacture.”
“Interesting…” she said, nodding her head. Then she walked away from me without saying another word.
“Where’re you going?”
“Long Beach. Are you coming or not?”
I caught up with her on her way to her government-issue American car.
Before she got into the driver’s side of the auto, she called out to someone on their way into the house. “Agent Yao!”
Agent Yao stopped and looked at her.
“I’m headed down to Long Beach. A place called Sokil Shipping. Have three or four agents meet us there.” She started to get into the car again and realized she’d forgotten something. “Agent Yao!”
Poor Agent Yao stopped again.
“Have them bring a cane.”
The younger man was confused. “What, like a candy cane?”
“No, like a walking cane.” With that, she got behind the wheel and we pulled out of Scarlett’s property.
It was midday so the traffic on the 405 South wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. We sat in silence until we passed LAX. Finally, I said, “Don’t you think we oughta be friends now?”
“What do you mean?” my monotone host said.
“There’s no longer any reason for you to play coy with me. We’re headed in to check out what I’m guessing is our final lead. Dankworth’s hatchet man is dead, and we’re about to find out what Hedeon Ponomarenko has been smuggling in for the airheads. I think we both know that it’s weapons. The only question is why. Outside of the odd crank like Liam O’Connor, w
hat does a church need with armament?”
“Not a church, a cult.” I wondered if she was thinking about her own Mormon roots.
She had me there. Two entirely different kettles of fish. I wasn’t a huge fan of organized religion, but I’ll concede most organized religions don’t build up arsenals. “Okay. The question remains… Why?”
Agent Patty gripped the wheel a little tighter. “Did Willie the Waffler mention Patrick Dankworth’s current state of mind?”
“I didn’t talk to Willie directly. I talked to Wyatt Greebly. But, yeah, Greebly said there were rumors. About Dankworth being a few wafers short of a Holy communion.”
“We’ve had a man inside Destiny Base for the past three weeks. He hasn’t been able to get close to the inner circle, but he has had access to the grapevine. People say Helen’s recent infidelities, Tad’s ‘betrayal’ of he and Patrick’s friendship, rumors of the loss of 501(c)… All of them together’re making Dankworth a rubber room candidate. His behavior’s been even more erratic than usual. More erratic even than a cult leader with nearly unquestioned authority oughta be. We don’t know what that spells for those of us living in the real world yet, but I’ll wager it ain’t good.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
Yelburton sighed. “That’s the good news. I’m not gonna do anything. Making a decision like that is way above my pay grade. Right now my only responsibility is verifying what Liam O’Connor’s little friend has been pulling in through the Port of Los Angeles. And, yes, you and I both know what that is in all likelihood. I gotta hand it to you though. Me and my people have been working this case for a while and you caught up with us pretty dang fast.”
“Aww.” I said. “I bet you say that to all the private investigators.”
“No, just the ones with chutzpah. Ever thought about being a Federal agent?”
