The Boy Who Stole From the Dead

by Orest Stelmach

  Five phone calls were placed to Bobby on the day Iryna said he’d answered the phone and turned white. One was from Nadia, the other from the hockey coach. Nadia didn’t recognize the other three numbers. The first had a 718 area code. Nadia searched the Internet.

  Brooklyn.

  She dialed the number.

  A woman with a Slavic accent answered. “Hello, Café Glechik, how can I help you?”

  Nadia entered “Glechik” into the computer and searched. “Are you a restaurant?” she said.

  “Yes.” Annoyed now. “How can I help you?”

  “Do you do a big takeout business?”

  “Yes. What would you like?”

  “Thank you.” Nadia hung up.

  The search brought up a supposed Ukrainian restaurant in Brighton Beach. The sour cherry dumplings looked tempting, but half the dishes were Russian. The owners were from Odesa near the Black Sea. That explained the Russian influence. That must have been the takeout Iryna and Bobby ate for dinner.

  The next number had a 551 area code. Northern New Jersey. Nadia dialed the number.

  It rang five times. A man with a gruff voice picked up.

  “You called Bobby Kungenook’s cell phone on April eleventh,” Nadia said. “Who are you?”

  “Who am I?” He paused. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Bobby’s legal guardian. He’s a minor. Do you want to tell me who you are or do you want me to—”

  The voice mellowed. “Ms. Tesla?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This is Tom Dowd. The NHL hockey scout. We met after the game in Coney Island this year.”

  Nadia remembered. “Why are you calling Bobby without my knowledge?”

  Dowd mumbled an apology. Nadia warned him not to call Bobby without asking her permission first.

  “How’s that thing going with his arrest?” Dowd said.

  “It’s a misunderstanding,” Nadia said. “We’re looking forward to our day in court.”

  The third number had an area code of 713. Houston, Texas. That made no sense. Nadia dialed the number and got the automated answering service for the parks and recreation department. That made even less sense.

  Nadia checked the log again. The number 44 was printed to the far left of the entry. The country code for England. She searched for international call information on the web. A call from a landline contained ten digits and two to five more for an area code. A call from a mobile phone contained only ten digits. There was no area code. That meant it was a call from a cell phone.

  Nadia dialed the number.

  “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

  She cursed under her breath. Prepaid cell phone, she guessed. This was the call that Iryna had described. The one that made Bobby blanch. Valentine was from England. The call came from London. It was too much a coincidence to be anything else.

  Afterward she checked his outgoing calls. She found nothing suspicious, leaving her with one logical conclusion based on her previous discovery.

  The answers to her questions were in London.

  CHAPTER 10

  LAUREN SAT BESIDE the pilot in the helicopter’s cockpit. The engine droned. Blades whirred. Headphones muffled the noise. A microphone mouthpiece extended from the side of her headgear to her lips. She’d met with Ambrose’s cousin at the Kotzebue Airport. That woman, in turn, had given Lauren a hot lead on Bobby Kungenook. Now she was en route to Anchorage in pursuit of that lead.

  The pilot’s name was Dan Garner. He had the complexion of a leather bomber jacket.

  “My father was a bush pilot, and my granddaddy was a bush pilot before him,” Garner said. “Yes, ma’am. Before he became a pilot, my granddaddy worked for Wyatt Earp right around the turn of the century. During the Nome Gold Rush.”

  Lauren flashed him a look of disbelief. “The Wyatt Earp?”

  “The one and only. That was around 1895, about fifteen years after he and Doc Holliday shot those cowboys in the parking lot outside the O.K. Corral. Tombstone was a silver-mining boom town, you see. And Wyatt Earp had business interests in mining and gambling.”

  “How did he end up in Alaska?”

  “The Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon triggered a stampede in 1880. He came with the former mayor of Tombstone.”

  “How’d they do?”

  “By the time they got there the beach gold was gone. You needed sophisticated equipment to mine what was left.”

  “So they struck out.”

  “Hardly. They opened a saloon, catered to the miners with food and prostitutes and the other basic necessities of life, and went back to California four years later with a hundred grand.”

  Lauren had never heard of anyone referring to prostitutes as one of life’s basic necessities. She cast an uncertain glance in Garner’s direction. “How about that.”

  “The smart ones don’t gamble. The smart ones supply the gamblers with their basic needs.”

  “Is that what a bush pilot does?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Bring supplies to remote areas of Alaska? Bring whatever the people need?”

  “That’s right. Living in Alaska is a gamble. That means everyone’s a gambler in Alaska. It takes an adventuresome heart to live here. Plenty of gamblers in Nome back then. Jack London, the writer. And Swiftwater Bill Gates, the fortune hunter.”

  “Bill Gates? No relation, I’m sure.”

  “No, but William H. Gates I, grandfather of Mr. Microsoft, was at the gold fields in Nome at the same time as Swiftwater Bill.”

  Lauren couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “I’m going to have to look that one up.”

  Garner nodded as though pleased she couldn’t read him. “The Nome Gold Rush was pretty much a bust, too. Then the Eskimos got bent out of shape because the white folks hunted their moose and their caribou, and the smaller game, too. They said the white man made it harder for them to survive. Can you believe that? Truth is it was time for them to learn they’re part of America, and America is the white man’s country.”

  Lauren paused to make sure she’d heard him correctly, then fantasized about kicking the door open and sending him flying into the rotors. “How much longer to Anchorage?”

  “About half an hour. What brought you to Nome, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m a sports reporter. I’m working on a story about a high school boy in New York. He’s a promising hockey player, a once-in-a-lifetime prospect. And he’s from Kotzebue.”

  “You’re kidding me. What’s his name?”

  “Bobby Kungenook.” Lauren eyed Garner. “Ever hear of him?”

  He pursed his lips, then shook his head. “No. Sorry. If he was that good you’d think we’d have heard about him in Nome.”

  “Exactly. No one knows anything about this boy. He was given up for adoption at an early age but there’s no record of it. It looks to me as though he was born in Kotzebue, went to live with someone who speaks fluent Ukrainian, and showed up in New York City at age seventeen.”

  “Ukrainian?”

  “And Russian.”

  “Plenty of Russian history in Alaska, that’s for sure. If he’s an Inupiaq, his parents might have tried to find a home for him with another Inupiaq family. If they failed, no white American family would take one of theirs, so it makes sense it would be some sort of Russian.”

  Lauren shuddered. “Hopefully I’ll get some clarity in Anchorage.”

  “You meeting someone there who knows the boy’s story?”

  “I got a lead in Kotzebue. I’m not sure this man knows the whole story, but I think he’s met him. I think he knows something about him.”

  “Good for you. Is this going to be a television story or a newspaper story?”

  “Both.”

  “Hot dog. I c
an’t wait to read it. And see it. By God you’ve got me curious. I need to know how this ends.”

  They sat quietly the rest of the flight. Garner landed the helicopter at the Campbell Heliport near the Anchorage airport. A blue sedan idled by the runway.

  “Is that your man?” Garner said.

  Lauren handed him the headphones. “No. Those are agents of the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Anchorage field office.”

  The creases in Garner’s face deepened.

  “You’re my man, Dan. You know that.”

  Garner’s lower lip twitched.

  “Last May you flew a boy and a woman into OTZ. They were met at the airport by police Captain Robert Seelick. They stayed in town for a couple of days, and then you flew them out.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then let me explain. There are one hundred twenty-nine dry communities in Alaska, where it’s illegal to sell or consume alcohol. That creates opportunity for bootleggers. A bottle of liquor that costs ten dollars in Anchorage may cost a hundred fifty in a dry town like Point Hope. You, Dan, are a bootlegger. How did you put it? Oh, yeah. You supply the people with their basic needs. And since alcoholism is a huge problem among the Native Americans, obviously it’s a basic need. Am I right?”

  Garner blanched.

  “In fact, alcoholism is such a huge problem that in a wet village, homicide is six times more likely than in a dry one; assault is four times more likely; and sexual assault is three times more likely. The end result is that a lot of people don’t like you, Dan. A lot of people blame you for their family’s problems, hence one person’s willingness to rat you out to me. Now, you have two choices. Either you tell me everything you know about the boy and I tell those agents I have the wrong man, or they’re going to turn your life upside down. Which is it going to be, Dan? Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to jail?”

  Garner regarded her with contempt. “I want to go home.”

  “Good. I want you to look at this picture very carefully. And I already know the answer so don’t waste my time lying. This is just a warm-up for the important questions.” Lauren pulled a photo of Bobby Kungenook from her briefcase. “Is this the boy you flew into Kotzebue last year?”

  CHAPTER 11

  NADIA ARRIVED AT Global Real Estate Partners in Midtown to meet with Valentine’s boss at 10:00 a.m. on Friday. She’d implied she was an aunt looking for closure in Jonathan’s death. She’d promised to be brief and thanked the man profusely for agreeing to meet with her even before he’d said yes. By the time she was done pleading, he couldn’t say no.

  “Jonathan wasn’t your usual Brit,” Austin Russell said. “In fact, if it weren’t for the accent, you’d have guessed he was a good old boy himself. They would have loved him down in Texas.”

  The morning sun poured through the open blinds in Russell’s modest office. When Nadia squinted, he apologized, hoisted himself to his feet, and closed them.

  “What do you mean he wasn’t your usual Brit?” Nadia said.

  Russell wheezed from the exertion. When he returned to his seat, his torso spilled onto his armrests. “Not the reserved, stiff upper lip type. Life of the party, that one. Not afraid to show his emotions or let people know what he thought, either. Not necessarily the best personality to have if you want to climb the ladder at Global Real Estate Partners but he will surely be missed.”

  “He was the life of the party?”

  “That’s an understatement. He had that larger than life attitude. Bigger, better, more. That was his motto. We have a holiday party for the New York office every January. Used to be in December but everyone’s schedule is so loaded…and the rates go down after New Year’s. Well that wasn’t enough for Jonathan Valentine. He said there had to be a true Christmas party. So he hosted his own for the other associates. Paid for the entire kit and caboodle on his own dime.”

  Nadia decided to play along with the prevailing sentiment. “He was a kind soul, that Jonathan,” Nadia said.

  “Even hired a band. Some hot European club act touring America.” Russell shook his head with admiration. “You know, he wasn’t the smartest analyst here. And I don’t mean that as an insult. He was plenty smart. But we recruit from Columbia and Wharton here. Still, he would have been a heck of a promoter. He would have brought us a lot of business through sheer personality.”

  “What was he working on recently? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “He was part of the team working on a project in New Jersey. New outlet mall outside of Atlantic City.”

  “Nothing international? In London perhaps?”

  “No. We’re strictly Eastern Seaboard. We have offices in twelve foreign countries. London deals with London.”

  “So Jonathan didn’t travel much.”

  “Atlantic City and back. If you call that travel.”

  “Did he have any vacation recently?”

  Russell frowned as though it was a strange question for her to ask.

  “I’m just trying to understand his last days,” Nadia said. “I don’t know why. It may be my way of dealing with the grief. Would you indulge me? Please?”

  Russell stared at Nadia for a moment, then shrugged. “Just the day of his…just his last day.”

  “He took that day off?”

  “Personal day. And of course, there was his father’s funeral in England. He was gone for almost a week. So tragic, both of them dying within a two-week time frame.”

  “Yes, it was,” Nadia said.

  Valentine was in London when the call was made. Valentine had made the call to Bobby himself, Nadia thought. And he’d made it on a prepaid phone so it couldn’t be traced to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Russell said. “I didn’t catch whether you were his aunt on his mother’s or father’s side.”

  In fact, Nadia had never said she was Jonathan Valentine’s aunt. It was actually Bobby who called her “Auntie,” a title she manufactured during their escape from Russia. Whenever she perpetrated a ruse, Nadia liked to stick as close to a truth as possible.

  “Yes,” Nadia said. “Thank you for your condolences, and thanks so much for taking the time to meet me. I know how busy you are.”

  Russell appeared confused by her answer but when he saw her hand extended the gentleman within him burst into action. He pushed off against the desk and rose to his feet. He smiled sympathetically and shook her hand. As Nadia turned to leave, his eyes narrowed again.

  “I don’t think you mentioned your name,” Russell said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Russell,” Nadia said. “I’ll be sure to extend your condolences to the rest of the family when I see them in London.”

  When she got home, Nadia called the Stern School of Business. She asked to speak with the director of the placement office. She knew that Valentine had earned his MBA at NYU. Global Real Estate Partners’s website said so. Tens of thousands of students had earned their MBAs from NYU in the last few years. There was no chance the placement office would know Valentine was dead.

  Nadia identified herself as a forensic security analyst, discussed her background, and said she was looking for an understudy. She told the director that Valentine had applied for a job and she wanted to verify his graduation. The director did so. To confirm they were speaking about the same Jonathan Valentine, she asked to verify his current and previous addresses. Nadia offered Valentine’s most recent address in the Meatpacking District. Johnny had procured it from the police report. The director verified it. Then she asked the director for Valentine’s previous addresses. He gave her the address for the University of Nottingham, and for a secondary school called Felshire. Nadia thanked him, hung up, and jumped on the computer to buy a plane ticket.

  Maybe they would have loved Valentine in Texas, but they knew him in London.

  CHAPTER 12


  NADIA SAT AT a circular table in the lounge of the Four Seasons Hotel on East Fifty-Seventh Street. Her potential client had arranged for an investment banker to meet her. Nadia presumed it was some form of an interview to measure her qualifications.

  At noon, the Four Seasons became one of the hot spots where financiers gathered to discuss deals. This was ironic because the hotel itself was a monument to the peak of the Japanese real estate market and poor financial planning. The owners finished construction in 1993 at a cost of $477 million, or $1.3 million per room. They promptly went bankrupt and sold the hotel at a 60% discount. More than two decades later, the average cost for new luxury hotels was still less than $600,000 per room.

  As Nadia watched the foyer, discount was not a word that came to mind. On the contrary. When a banker chose the Four Seasons he was sending a specific message. His client wanted to hire the best and was willing to pay top dollar. Oh, she’d have to work for it, there was no question about that. The days of mediocrity being rewarded were over. The market collapse of 2008 saw to that. But Nadia wouldn’t have had it any other way. She enjoyed earning her money and she desperately needed the gig.

  Lunch was scheduled for 12:30 p.m. The banker showed up at 12:29 p.m. That was another promising sign. Deal oriented professionals usually raced from meeting to meeting and inevitably ran late. Punctuality implied the client demanded it. Such adherence to the client’s demands meant a lucrative revenue stream was at risk.

  When the man in pinstripes carrying a black valise saw Nadia, he sighed with exasperation. He headed straight toward her as though he’d studied her website. He was tall and slim with a weak jaw and a slippery complexion. He introduced himself as T. Bradley Ehren. He dumped his briefcase on the table. He didn’t offer his hand or a business card. He didn’t sit down, forcing Nadia to look up at him.

  “This is a complete waste of time,” he said. He flipped the briefcase on its end and worked the combination locks.