by Rex Miller
Blue Kriegal was always braggin' about how well-connected he was in the St. Louis operation, but Jesus Christ, anybody with half a brain would have sense enough to know that was about 90 percent bullshit. Who in their right fucking mind would have anything to do with a stone whackadoo like Blue Kriegal if they didn't have to? He was a fucking maniac. Little tiny kids 'n' shit. Damn. It was enough to make you sick.
Belmonte had to deal with him a couple times a year when Kriegal would come down through McAllen and want Belmonte to get him some Mexican stuff. And he'd have to take the weird son of a bitch over and get him straight with some poor little baby. Crazy fucker. That was the kind of maniac you had to deal with sometimes.
Personally Belmonte got off on young chicks. Even a good-looking young boy once in a while. Take 'em down real good. He could dig that. But not no little babies 'n' shit. He was a little kinky sure. Plenty twisted and whatnot. But he wasn't fucking CRAZY.
The loud voices echoed through the Homicide squad room at Buekhead Station.
"It's your turn, that's why," the fat detective snarled at his friend as he produced a couple of withered ones from a disreputable-looking billfold. He leaned over with some effort and tossed the folded bills onto his partner's desk. "Large coffee-with and one "of them big long things looks like a schvatza's pecker."
"Say ya want a big long thing that looks like Arnold Schwartzenegger?"
"Missing out on life?" fat Dana Tuny announced to the room, cupping his ear like a radio broadcaster and pushing his voice down an octave. "Why go another day without the revolutionary new hearing aid from Say What Incorporated. It's the exciting hearing aid made for assholes! That's right! You heard me correctly. It's the new miracle hearing aid shaped like a suppository. You stick it in your ass instead of your ear —"
"What's a five-letter word beginning with S that means Athenian lawgiver?" Jack Eichord interrupted from across the squad room where he was engrossed in a crossword puzzle.
"Schmuck," James Lee said helpfully.
"Schmuck is six letters, you schmuck. Hey, Eichord, Lee's goin' across the street. You wanna banana daiquiri or anything? Or is the sun over the yardarm yet? I mean, it's eight-forty-five in the morning, hey?" The partners began to giggle like little girls.
"Sorry, I didn't hear that, I have a banana daiquiri in my ear," Eichord muttered.
"You ain't supposed to be diddlin' around any-whichway," Lee told him. "I heard you were on some big-mob thing."
"Yeah. Tryin' to find out who wasted Dutch Schultz."
"I'm workin' on it right now," Eichord mumbled-"SOLON — that's the mother." He filled the word in.
"What'd he say?" Lee said to his partner.
"Say what?"
"Say WHAT? What do I look like anyway, a hearing aid for assholes?"
"I said Solon," Eichord told them.
"Okay," Lee said, getting up and heading for the door, "so long."
"Yeah," Tuny called to him, "write if you get work and hang by your balls."
Long ago Jack had learned to tune them out. If you worked out of Buckhead it was a thing you developed early on. A hearing aid for assholes, he thought as he doodled the word Solon with a black pen. He shook his head.
He had learned a trick about detective work from a writer. A nice old gent by the name of Carlton E. Morse. Guy used to write I Love a Mystery and One Man's Family on radio. Morse had taught him the secret of opening your mind to the flow of ideas. Another dude who was in the intelligence racket had shown him a trick or two to make the flow come easier. Eichord appeared to be doodling aimlessly but his spongelike mind was soaking up whatever trickled over the top of the dam.
He had drawn a huge S O L O N and made the two Os into old-time pie-cut eyes. Given them eyebrows. And as he blacked in the eyes pushing hard with the felt-tip pen over and over, the paper tore and his pen plunged through one of the eyes and he saw the eyes of the first cadaver, the bloody sockets, the headline EYEBALL MURDERS, the eyes of a little monkey holding its hands over its eyes, SEE NO EVIL printed on a greeting card, and a man looking up from a card, casually, but with a flicker of recognition in the wiseguy eyes, and it all merged in Eichord's mental storehouse as he picked up the phone to call the Major Crimes Task Force, his employer of record.
Eichord had looked into many unusual mob assassinations because they had drawn lots of ink in a given jurisdictional area. Jack was just one of the people the feds would pull in on crimes of homicide that would draw what might be termed "undue notoriety." Potential scandals, in other words. Sensitive homicides. Most of these were not technically serial killings. A serial kill, at least the way MCTF played it, was when there were four or more related murders. That was the official Quantico definition. Who ever decided three weren't but four were — that nobody could ever quite pin down, but the definition stuck.
Three men down. Eyes blasted out. Payback, West Coast Mafioso-style. Wise-guy eyes. SEE NO EVIL. A too-casual glance away after the flash of visual recognition.
"Hey, homeboy, what's to it?" he says into the phone. "Yeah. I got a biggie." Pause. "Don't say can do until I lay it on you." Polite chuckle. "What I need is — I need to know the name of every male passenger who left for St. Louis from LAX between five-thirty and six A.M. on —" He glances at a calendar and gives the man a date.
"Huh uh. No, I'm not sure what gate either." But then in that open sponge a metallic voice resonates:
PASSENGERS NOW BOARDING FLIGHT TWA BLAH BLAH FOR ST. LOUIS GATE 41. He can see SEE NO EVIL looking up from the greeting card at the voice over the speakers, leaving, moving out a boarding gate. "It might be forty-one. Forty-four. I don't recall. I think it was a TWA flight. But check 'em all please. Yeah, I know. I want whatever the airline has on all those males. There couldn't have been that many planes leaving L.A. for St. Louis at that time of the morning. Be surprised if there's more than one. Thanks, babe. Yeah — I need it day before yesterday."
Eichord flashes on the eyes, trying to put a face with it, but nothing comes. Just hooded eyes looking up. Cop awareness. Savvy showing. Cops and wise guys are habitual watchers, and old-cop habits die hard. Could be anything. Could be nothing. But after so many years in the arena Jack Eichord had finally learned to trust hunches.
Under the S O L O N artwork with the penetrated eyeball he printed SEE NO EVIL, and the words laid a shiver against his spine.
Belmonte had a nice, tight little operation, and a secretary with a nice, tight little pussy, and this shit with the snuff movie got him so hot he couldn't wait to get back to her. Cathy was always complaining about her big work load and he'd got her a secretary of her very own. She was good-looking, but dumber than a fucking lox. And he was already starting to work the new girl over too.
He liked to go up and rub his package right in those big fawn eyes and be talking some movie bullshit to her but stiffening right in her face. Let that hard cock tent the fly of his slacks and show her what he had while she squirmed around and tried to act like she wasn't looking. A nice two-handed pat on the shoulders. Welcome to the team and whatever. And rub that nice hard cock against her cheek just a little. Get Cathy over and start some serious touching right in front of her.
He liked her in old-time hooker clothes. Today she'd had on that out-of-style 60s green mini-skirt. Fish-net crocheted, green, wool job you could see right through. He'd fool with his new cherry a little, then take Cathy in and make her clean his office. Have her do it the way he liked, keep those legs real straight and bend from the waist while she dusted so the little short skirt would hike way up there on those silky thighs. Damn. She had a beautiful butt on her, and those legs. Nice stuff on the bitch.
And he'd go over and slip her little bikini pants down and thrust himself right on in there dry. Make her cry out a little. Pinch those beautiful things for love handles and hold on to her while he banged her up against the wall, then pull out and shoot his load in her face the way he enjoyed. Watch that hot, milky juice splatter across the gorgeous shee
n of daytime makeup under those eyes like big black spiders. Shoot his hot wad into those pink, wet lips and watch her lick it all off him.
And just as he'd climax he'd be thinking about how the little doped-up slut screamed when he put her eyes out.
Part Two
Spain
Who was this man who sat alone in his well-appointed prison of a home waiting? Waiting when under a different set of circumstances he would have gone after her himself. This was, in truth, no man. On the outside you saw what appeared to be this creature of his own design: one Frank Spain by name. A pair of cold, emotionless, hooded eyes that had long ago mastered the trick of staring, unblinking, into space.
His was a face used to showing nothing. Reflecting nothing out of the ordinary. Visage, bearing, demeanor, composure, all icy cold. Placid. Calm and unruffled. But what you saw had in fact become what he was. Empty. Over the years the slaughterer's trade had taken his humanity from him. Spain was a hollow man.
Mr. Cipher. Blank stare. Distorted, flat vision. Bullet-proof sensibility, scarred soul, Wizard of Off. Death-man. This was the shell who answered the phone to hear the voice of Mel Troxell, flying in from Cleveland with bad news.
Spain made him tell it on the phone, of course, and listened to the entire report without interrupting. When Troxell was through, he simply thanked him and told him that he would see him when he got to St. Louis tomorrow.
At least Mel Troxell had the balls to bring the report and hand over his bill in person. For Spain's exorbitant bill from the P.I. firm he got a list of names and a small canister of film that he could not bring himself to watch. The list had cost Troxell a bundle. The report was as good as anything Spain had ever attempted himself. Maybe better. Beyond thorough. Meticulously double-referenced. Triple-checked. This guy's people were damn good. It was worth the money.
The man who called himself Spain answered a few questions, asked many, many more. He surprised Troxell with his coldness and lack of tears. He took the news like a man with a heart of stone. Clearly he felt something, but he must be one of those who chose to keep their grief a private matter. He would do his crying alone. Mel Troxell had broken his share of bad news to people, and his impression was that Spain would be able to deal with it. The only part he had any reservations about was the final payoff.
Then it became Spain's turn to talk. He knew instinctively that Troxell would have to be convinced, and he dredged up reserves of inner strength and managed a consummate piece of playacting. He knew the degree of conviction he would have to show to convince a pro like Troxell that he was incapable as a father of following through on the case. He would use the tools of the Method actor and let the report itself trigger his scene. It wouldn't be that tough. As soon as he heard who was involved he could feel the flood-gates starting to burst inside.
His own people. HIS OWN FUCKING PEOPLE had killed her. Oh, not directly. Those were punks. Nobody types on the outer rim of the mob. But they were working for his own fucking family. Ciprioni. The old man Sally Dago's people. Those sons of bitches. He could feel himself reddening with the madness of it. It was all he could do to think he wanted to taste the revenge so badly. He fought to stay cool as Troxell took him through the report of his daughter's murder.
It was critical that Troxell bought the scene so he took it by the numbers, drawing him out on details as he imagined a "normal father" would in such circumstances. It was easy to do. His emotions were those of any father. Grief. Bitter sadness. Disbelief. Violent rage. Then crushing heartbreak. He feigned confusion at the chain of command, trying his best to muddy the waters with Mel Troxell wherever he could with regard to who was guilty.
"Do you mean those boys — those children — they sold her?" He wiped tears.
"Yes, that's exactly what they did." Troxell began explaining the sticky, red trail of abuse, torture, and death that began with the boys Dawkins and Nunnaly, and led into the sordid milieu of the most depraved porn merchants, and Spain winced as he heard names he knew so well. Punks who worked for the family. He had to fight from snarling at the name "Blue Kriegal." That piece of shit. He was NOTHING. Some trash who sold kiddie porn. Tied to
Dagatina in only the most remote way, but of course Troxell had no way of knowing that. The family used trash like that for mules and mokes. Garbage to stand up and insulate the people who were of some consequence. Porn — in fact, the whole skin racket in general — played virtually no part in the scheme of family business. To think his own people . . .
" — understand what I'm telling you, here." Troxell's tone jolted him and he said, shaking his head in confusion, "All these names . . . Who are these people? Why didn't the police do something? Who's responsible?"
"In a general sense we all are. Anybody who buys a videocassette that contains pornography is feeding that business. But this was a special subbranch of that particular world. Child porn is a bigger industry than most of us think. It has a relatively small but intensely active production and distribution chain. It is obviously aimed at the underground. The home market and the illegal subculture — and it's within that distribution and manufacture that the industry is tied to organized crime. The men who killed your daughter — Morales the cameraman, and Belmonte the packager, and, if you want to call him that, the producer — were making a snuff film for an outfit that is run by a man named Kriegal. He controls production for much of the mid-western and southern states."
"If his identity is known, why don't the police arrest him?"
"It's not that easy. He's like most of the smart mob people now. He stays sufficiently insulated from the actual criminal acts that he remains just out of reach so far as the law goes."
"I just don't see how that can be. I mean, pornography and — torture — and murder —"
"It is the same as the narcotics business. It is protected. Protected not just by dirty cops or politicians but by the green curtain of money that gets pulled across the face of any business with a semilegitimate facade. The crime families are enormous now."
"This man — does he control the porn business for the Mafia here?"
"Yes, but he's just a soldier in an army of mob people, and the snuff movies and all of that are at the extreme outside of the circle of syndicate production. What is now sometimes called The Syrian Mafia, just a newspaper name, but it refers to the top men in the crime family here, two men named Rikla and Measure who control mixed ethnic factions of what is left of the old crime organizations."
"And they specialize in porn with children?"
"I doubt if those men even realize the extent of Kriegal's kiddie-porn operation. They are older men — both in their seventies, and technically they are called 'crew bosses' for the top capos. A man named Salvatore Dagatina, now elderly and in prison. A man named Tony Cypriot, his real name is Ciprioni, who more or less controls the underworld in the Midwest, but their so-called 'underbosses' " — he glanced at a piece of paper —"this James Russo and Lyie Venable, they take a part of Kriegal's profits, so presumably they, at least from a structural standpoint, oversee the operation for their higher-ups. It plays only the smallest part in the overall crime cartel."
"How do you get justice for something like this? The real murderers are as much these men you've just been talking about as they are the ones who actually did it."
Troxell saw what he thought might be the hint of total breakdown in the face of the man. His body suddenly had that brittle look a person sometimes gets before they come unglued. Spain let himself shake in an uncontrollable spasm. It didn't take much playacting on his part. Ever since he'd heard Ciprioni's name he'd been shaking visibly. That cocksucking scum. All the times he'd kissed that guinea ass. Yes sir, MISTER Ciprioni. The times he'd killed for him. Jesus CHRIST, it was too much.
He could hear himself telling the PI, "I just can't . . . I can't go through it. No more. I've lost my wife and now my KID!" His body felt like it was going to self-destruct right then and there. Additionally, there was the curious sensation of
watching himself putting it on for Troxell. He wondered for just a fleeting instant as he tried to manifest the signs of a nervous breakdown if indeed he was having one. "The endless questions. Tiff's name smeared in filth." Going on as he shook apart, letting the words freeze his heart. Something about the legal system being what it is. Turnstile justice. The incompetence of the doo-dah and the law's doo-dah, and so forth and so on and vamp to the coda. "Years of agony and notoriety for my dead daughter and WHAT THE FUCK FOR? They'd never do a week in jail for it —" on and on.
Troxell just looked across at his client and mentally shrugged. He couldn't put this guy through it. Here was a man on the brink of total collapse. One look and you could see he was unwrapping.
Now he could see he'd read Spain all wrong. The facade he'd thought was icy strength was just a persona — the frozen mask of a man wound tight, a main-spring about to break under pressure, a bereaved father strung out to his limits and beyond. Frank Spain was somebody balanced on the lip of a deep nervous breakdown.
Still, Mel Troxell tried to argue for the prosecution of the guilty as much as the system would allow. He gently tried to convince Spain that he was too far gone to handle this properly, which brought out all the stops. Spain went into a screaming rage about how he was the client paying the bills, he was the father who had lost a daughter, and he did such a job of portraying a mind about to snap that Troxell finally just shrugged one last time and left. The irony was that it was only an act in Spain's mind. The reason he'd been so convincing with Troxell was that he was in fact going insane. And this beckoning insanity was what the PI saw and what allowed that door to be closed.
The moment the man left, Spain shut off the flow of emotion the way you'd close a faucet. He sat very quietly reading the report again, although he didn't need to do so. Every name, every phrase, every comma, every sentence, was burned into his forebrain, blasted into the cortex forever. Yet he read the report again. And yet a third time. Reading between the lines with the years of insider knowledge that led him down new streets not covered on the pages. He made new, more informed assumptions. Conjecture and theory gave way to the beginnings of his plan. Again, a fourth rereading, this time making notes on a yellow legal pad as he reread the story of his daughter's seduction, abuse, addiction, torture, and degradation. And then, her horror-filled death.