Nobody Rides For Free

by Neil S. Plakcy

  The password had to be hidden in the video. There was no reason to give viewers an address, only to lock them out. I went back to my frame-by-frame analysis, and after another couple of dozen frames of the jockey slowly stripping, I found another orange screen, a single frame with the words M4N B0Y L0V3 in that same snowcapped font.

  I went back to the password window and typed that in. Immediately, it was replaced by a very professional-looking series of screen captures. It was a webcam site, a supermarket of gay guys looking for action. Some were clothed in everything from T-shirts to business suits, while others were naked. Some had teaser videos you could watch, while others displayed lengthy chunks of text beneath their faces, promising they were “sweet company, with an awesome smile,” or “playful and funny with a little bit of dirty mind.” They were lonely, horny, and eager to meet new people. Many of the guys looked young, but I couldn’t tell if that was because they were underage, or made to look that way.

  About halfway through the list I found the boy I was looking for, but he wasn’t online at the time. I took a screenshot of his picture and saved it to a folder I’d created for the case, and then printed a copy, too.

  I checked with a domain name website, where I discovered that the URL for the site was registered to a company called gayguysonline.net. The e-mail contact—admin@gayguysonline.net—wasn’t helpful. But right below it on the registration site was the company name, street address, and phone number.

  My pulse raced. The address was in Wilton Manors. “Gotcha!” I said out loud.

  I quickly popped the address into Google Maps, only to find that it belonged to a company that rented mailboxes. Disappointing, but not surprising. I punched the phone number into a database program and discovered that it was one of many assigned to a company that sold no-contract cell phones through electronics stores.

  I used my own phone to dial the number, pressing *67 before I dialed so that if I was calling a cell phone or a caller ID unit, the recipient wouldn’t see my incoming number, only “private” or “unknown.”

  After a couple of rings, the call went to an automated voice-mail message. I hung up, then turned to the Florida Department of State’s website, where I found the records for the administering organization behind the website, a company called Gay Guys Online LLC.

  Most of the information there made no sense to me—entries like “document number” and “last event.” I clicked through each of the hyperlinks for corporate annual reports, but unlike the ones I was accustomed to dealing with in my days as an accountant, these contained nothing more than what was in the state’s records. Even the articles of organization were useless.

  The only real information was under the heading “Registered Agent Name and Address.” The agent was an attorney named Alexei Verenich, with an address on Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach.

  His company’s website was very simple: the name of the practice and the address, along with a headshot of Verenich himself. There was no indication of the kind of law he practiced, no glowing recommendations from clients, or marketing copy encouraging you to hire him and his firm.

  Before I called his number, I did some more research. There wasn’t much online about Verenich, though he was a member of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce and several other professional organizations. I went back several years through the monthly summary of discipline actions provided at the Florida Bar’s website, but I couldn’t find any complaints registered against him.

  Verenich’s name appeared in the records of numerous real estate transactions, all of them in either Sunny Isles Beach, a city on the barrier island at the tip of Miami-Dade County, and Aventura, another independent city right across the causeway from it.

  As a last resort, I looked him up in the FBI database, where I was surprised to find that he was the subject of an ongoing investigation. The agent on the case was listed as Ekaterina Gordieva, from the Miami office.

  Even though I’d only been there about eight months, I thought I knew all the agents in my office by name, but I’d never heard that one. I went down the hall to speak to Roly about her, but first I wanted to see if he’d heard anything about Brian Garcia.

  “Still in the medically induced coma. You find anything about that boy he was e-mailing?”

  I told him about the progress I’d made. “I found a video like the one Ohpee mentions in his e-mail to Brian, and that led me to a company domiciled in Wilton Manors. The site is owned by an LLC and the registered agent is a guy called Alexei Verenich. According to the database, he’s the subject of an ongoing investigation led by an agent named Ekaterina Gordieva. You know her?”

  “Katya. She’s a transfer from New York working undercover on a money laundering case. This guy must be involved in that. I’ll send her an e-mail and ask her to reach out to you. It may be a day or two though, depending on what she’s got going on.”

  He leaned forward. “Remember, what you have is still circumstantial. I’m not seeing any evidence that there’s an actual teenage boy in trouble. Talk to Katya, but remember to keep your eye on the flakka distribution. That’s your case and you need to focus on it.”

  I nodded, but I remembered Tommy Carlton, and the way I had stood by while he was tormented. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake with this boy.

  5.

  Front Man

  I returned to my office, and opened another FD302 to report on the guys I’d interviewed about local porn companies at Lazy Dick’s the night before, and then added information about the movie, the website, and Alexei Verenich.

  It was grim to see how little I’d accomplished, and I realized that the form made it look like I’d only been focused on finding Ohpee, not on the drugs. That reminded me to add the results of my conversation with Colin Hendricks at the DEA.

  By the time I’d finished, the agent that Roly had mentioned called me, and we arranged to meet at a coffee shop near where she was working. I hoped she’d have some insight into Verenich and his possible connection to drug dealing and pornography.

  As I drove south on I-75, past vast tracts of undeveloped land at the edge of the Everglades, I wondered how Ohpee had ended up at the porn house. I was pretty sure by time I was a teen that I liked boys more than girls, but I hadn’t acted on any impulses and I wouldn’t do so for another couple of years. I’d grown up in a safe, healthy atmosphere, and it was sad to think that other kids didn’t have that opportunity. I had strong memories of my dad and I’d always felt that my mom loved me and Danny. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we always had food on the table, heat in the winter, and clean clothes to wear to school.

  How would we have survived if our mother had died while she was still single? My dad was an only child and had no close relatives. Would we have been shipped off to my mom’s sister, who had four kids of her own? Sent to foster care? Would we have ended up on the street, lost and abandoned?

  When I-75 crossed the border into Miami-Dade County and then died into the 826, the landscape around me changed to industrial and commercial buildings. Most of the signs and billboards were in Spanish, advertising everything from lo mejor musica to ambulance chasers asking if I was lesionado. I could buy teléfonos móviles, comida latina, or seguro de salud, health insurance under Obamacare.

  After a long drive east, I landed in Wynwood, a neighborhood north of downtown Miami. The area was once a decaying warehouse district home to a large Puerto Rican population, but now boasted hipster coffee shops, craft beer outlets, and tons of artistically rendered graffiti. It was all mixed with run-down apartment buildings and small stucco houses with elaborate grillwork over the windows and doors.

  The coffee shop where I was supposed to meet Agent Gordieva was in a repurposed gas station. I parked by an old pump, ordered a café mocha, and sat down with my laptop. I initiated the VPN software and began catching up on department e-mail. I was reading a long treatise on armored car robberies when I heard a woman say, “You must be Angus.”

 
She was very pretty, with honey blonde hair and a luscious figure poured into a business suit with a short skirt. “What gave me away?” I asked. “The red hair?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know what color your hair was. But you have FBI written all over you.”

  I must have pouted, because she said, “Don’t worry, it’s a good thing. You look honest and trustworthy. I’ve had to work hard not to let my Bureau training show through when I’m undercover.”

  The barista called “Katie!” and the blonde walked over to retrieve her drink.

  “I thought your name was Katya?” I asked when she returned.

  “I prefer Katya. But try getting a barista to spell that on your cup. I Americanize when I have to.”

  She took a sip of her coffee. “Thanks for coming over here to meet me. I’m working undercover as a sales agent for one of the Russian brokers in Sunny Isles Beach, and right now I’m dealing with some nutty clients who won’t stop calling and texting me. It’s hard for me to get enough free time to go all the way out to Miramar.”

  I gave her the rough outline of my case. “The reason why I reached out to you is because a name came up, and when I looked him up in the Bureau database it said you’re investigating him, too. Alexei Verenich.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, he’s the front man for a bunch of LLCs that invest in real estate, primarily in Sunny Isles Beach. How did he come up in your case?”

  “As the registered agent for a company running a porn site.”

  “Sleazy is sleazy,” Katya said. “You’d be surprised at how many different things a group like the Russian mafia is into.”

  “Whoa. That’s what you’re investigating? The Russian mafia?”

  “My investigation is targeting money laundering through real estate purchases, and a lot of the money passing through comes from people here in South Florida we suspect have connections to the Organizatsya.”

  “Can I talk to Verenich?” I asked. “To ask him about his connection to the LLC that operates the porn site? He’s the best lead I have to this boy who’s being exploited.”

  “Can you hold off on that, please? I understand your concern, and believe me, I hate the idea of kids being sexually exploited, too. But I don’t want to spook Verenich with a visit from the FBI, even if it’s something different from my case. Give me some time to dig into his business and talk to people.”

  “Does he have other porn clients?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only been investigating the real estate companies, not him specifically.”

  “Do you know anything about him personally?”

  “Divorced with two adult sons. He was dating a much younger girl named Lyuba Sirko, but I think they’ve broken up.”

  Verenich was my best lead, and it was frustrating to be told I had to hold off, though I understood that was the nature of the game at the Bureau—triage to give priority to the more important case. My interest in Verenich was only peripheral at best—I had no direct knowledge he was involved in drug distribution, only the tenuous connection to the porn production company.

  “So there’s nothing I can do?”

  She looked at me. “You busy Friday night?”

  I shrugged. “Not particularly.”

  “Want to go clubbing with me? Lyuba often hangs out at Russian bars in Sunny Isles Beach. If we cruise around and find her, I can introduce you, and you can see if she’ll tell you anything about Verenich’s business.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not that good on sweet-talking girls.”

  “Trust me, you don’t have to say anything. Just smile and look handsome and you’ll reel Lyuba right in.”

  I wasn’t going to out myself to this stranger, so I agreed.

  “Good. You can be my wingman, too. I’ve been snooping around a guy named Yevgeny Berdichev, who owns a convenience store in Sunny Isles Beach that might be a front. He makes large cash deposits regularly and then makes transfers into offshore accounts. He also owns a couple of car wash businesses, a Laundromat, and a liquor store—all cash-intensive businesses.”

  She picked up her coffee and took a sip. “I heard a rumor from one of my contacts up north that a bigwig from the Organizatsya in New York is going to be in Miami this weekend. We’ve never been able to pin so much as a traffic ticket on him. I’m hoping that he’ll show up at one of the bars where the Russian mafia hangs out. If I can catch Berdichev entertaining him, that will help me make connections between the New York operation and the one here in Florida.”

  I liked her, and I thought it would be fun to hang out with her for a while. And good for me to get out somewhere new, away from the small world of Wilton Manors, where everybody knew my name and knew that I worked for the FBI. If I wanted to avoid the ghettoization Roly and I had talked about, it was important that I be able to operate effectively outside my comfort zone. Could I schmooze and flirt at a straight bar as easily as I did at a gay one? I’d see on Friday night.

  6.

  Back from the Dead

  As I was leaving the coffee shop, my cell phone rang with a call from an unfamiliar number, from an area code in West Virginia. I assumed it was a robo-call but I answered anyway.

  “My name is Shane McCoy and I’m calling from Lazarus Place,” the man on the other end said. “Can I speak to Angus?”

  I introduced myself, and he said, “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been talking to the police but I can’t get anywhere with them.”

  “Talking to them about what?”

  “It’s complicated. Can you come over here and talk?”

  I looked at my watch. It was late afternoon, and I didn’t need to head back to Miramar. “I can be there in about forty-five minutes,” I said.

  We hung up, and I remembered the nickname Raj, the bartender at Lazy Dick’s, had given me. The Green Hornet. I’d need all my powers to be the superhero these kids needed.

  • • •

  My car was like an oven, and I took off my jacket for the ride north and blasted the air conditioning. It was late afternoon by the time I reached Fort Lauderdale. The sun was a giant orange globe that glowed from behind one of the high-rise towers. Long shadows spread in front of Lazarus Place, a three-story building with a white-washed stucco exterior, grills on the first and second floor windows, and a rainbow flag over the front door. The high-rises of downtown Fort Lauderdale loomed in the background, but the distance between those million-dollar condos and this run-down neighborhood was greater than the few blocks that separated them.

  I put my suit jacket back on to cover my shoulder holster, locked my car, and walked up the cracked concrete sidewalk.

  The guy who answered the door was in his late twenties, broad in the chest, with a sexy five o’clock shadow, and dark brown hair that hung down to his shoulders. He wore faded Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt that read: “Prayer, the original wireless network,” and a pair of bright green Crocs.

  He was sexy in a friendly, effortless way. I showed him my badge and said, “Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”

  “No, thank you, for looking into this,” he said, as he ushered me into the building’s foyer. “I’m glad someone cares enough.”

  Shane locked the deadbolt behind me. “This isn’t exactly the safest neighborhood,” he said.

  “I should tell you I’m armed,” I said.

  “I’m glad. But don’t tell the kids—it’s going to freak them out enough knowing that there’s an FBI agent in the house.” He pointed to the room to our right, where a mix of African American and Hispanic teenage boys were sprawled on thrift-shop sofas and bean bag chairs, reading or playing a video game. “That’s our lounge, and to the left is our classroom.”

  The building had a warm but shabby feel, with Spanish tiles on the floor and inspirational posters on the wall. The one in front of me read, “Aim for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll be among the stars.”

  “The kitchen is straight ahead. Can I get you something to drink? Sorry I don’t have
anything alcoholic to offer you. We keep things substance-free around here for the kids.”

  “I’d love some water.” We walked through to a kitchen that reminded me of my grandmother’s, with an avocado-colored refrigerator, a pop-up toaster, and a couple of lights hanging from the ceiling in plastic globes.

  He pulled a couple of bottles from the fridge. I felt guilty for taking supplies from a non-profit. I made a mental note to make a donation to Lazarus Place when I could.

  “So why have you been talking to the police?” I asked.

  “A boy who stayed with us for a while disappeared a few weeks ago. He left behind some of the stuff he’d been given, which made me think that he didn’t move on. But the police detective insisted that if he ran away from somewhere else, he probably ran away from here. I tried to explain what we do but she wouldn’t listen.”

  The cold water felt good going down. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you do here,” I said, as we sat at the Formica-topped kitchen table. “I know Lazarus was the guy Jesus raised from the dead but that’s about it.”

  “Do you know why Jesus did that? Why he made Lazarus the subject of his most awesome miracle?”

  “You got me there.”

  “Lazarus was a bachelor living with his two spinster sisters,” Shane said. “In the book of John, chapter eleven, when Lazarus was dying, his sisters sent word to Jesus saying ‘Lord, the man you love is ill.’”

  “Hold on. Are you saying Jesus was gay?”

  “Not at all. Other translations say either ‘the one you love’ or ‘your friend,’ and there’s a whole raft of commentary that insists this was just brotherly love. But he cared so much for Lazarus that he raised him from the dead. That’s a metaphor for what we’re trying to do here. We’re a shelter for runaway LGBT teens, mostly gay boys who end up on the streets of Fort Lauderdale. Though we’re a Christian ministry, our focus is on helping these kids feel better about themselves, get back in school, or get jobs.”