by Paul Neuhaus
I went into my apartment and—just as I’d hoped—Hailey was there. She was in the kitchen frying up some pork chops. A jar of applesauce was on the counter. After the day I’d had such a simple, savory meal was right up my alley (despite the pork I’d had at lunch). She came to me right away with a spatula still in her hand and looked me over. She didn’t like what she saw. “Christ,” she said. “You look like shit. I should’ve never let you go.”
I decided to dodge the lecture. Right by the door was a black plastic garbage bag tied off with a zip tie. “What’s this?” I said.
Hailey, dressed in a sweater that broke about mid-thigh and a pair of wool socks, looked down at the bag with disdain. “Ava’s stuff,” she said. “Your little girlfriend left behind more than you thought. It’s here just in case you want to keep any of it. For sentimental reasons. Or fetishistic ones.”
Without hesitation, I picked up the bag and carried it out to the dumpster by the car park. When I returned, I went straight to the kitchen, put my hand on Hailey’s hip and kissed her neck. I still wasn’t ready for sex, but she looked pretty. Pretty in a way that comforted me.
“I hope pork chops’re okay,” she said after she returned my kiss.
“Pork chops are great. What’s the statute of limitations on the razzing?”
“The razzing?”
“About my ‘little girlfriend’.”
She looked over her shoulder and grinned at me. “Brother, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just checking. I’m gonna shower.”
“Do you need help?”
“I think I can manage.”
“Okay, we’re gonna eat and then we might just go right to bed. Also, someone called you. A lady.”
“A lady you say?” I said, with mock interest.
“Don’t get too exited. She sounded like a stiff.” She went over to the wall-mounted phone and picked up a pad from a table underneath. “Patty Yelburton. FBI. She wants to talk to you. Tomorrow at ten. At your office. It didn’t sound like a request.”
“Peachy.” I tried not to sigh as I went off to shower.
After my shower, we ate pork chops, and a couple of Snack Pack puddings (a vice of mine). True to her word, my wife cleaned up the debris and shuttled us both off to bed. I was asleep within seconds.
I told Randall my office was a shit box, and I wasn’t lying. The nice thing about it was that it was within walking distance of my apartment. I got there at 9:55 the following morning and Agent Patty Yelburton was already waiting for me. She didn’t look the way I expected her to look. Sure, she was dressed in a dark navy blazer and pants, but she was also tiny. Five foot two and petite with curly brown hair and big brown eyes. If I didn’t know she was a federal officer and if she was wearing different clothes and a little makeup, I would’ve found her cute. As soon as she opened her mouth, that went out the window. I could only describe her voice as a staccato monotone. Fast but completely without inflection. “Mr. Huggins?”
I went around her to open the door to the office. I reached inside and flicked on the lights then indicated she could go in. “Yep. That’d be me.”
Yelburton went into the mostly empty space. My office was a long rectangle with a desk and two chairs at the far end. About halfway down the right wall, I had a full-sized refrigerator, a mid-century style breakfast table and a sink with a counter. On the counter was a coffee maker and some cups. Mounted opposite the desk, was a 4K TV (my one extravagance). On the desk was an old computer. The walls were unadorned; the place smelled stale, and the ambient temperature was too low.
“Sit where you want. At the table if you want coffee. In front of the desk if you don’t.” She chose the desk, but that didn’t stop me from starting the coffee maker. I was still tired even though I’d slept for something like ten hours. I had to reconcile myself to the fact it’d be awhile before I was one hundred percent again. With the bean juice going, I went around to my side of the desk and at down.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “‘Depleted’ is probably the best answer. It’ll pass.”
“You’re probably too active too soon. Just because you’re out of the hospital doesn’t mean you should be out of bed.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” I said. “How did you know I was too active too soon?”
It was the G-woman’s turn to shrug.”We had a man on you yesterday. Would you like a breakdown of the places you went and the people you talked to?”
“That won’t be necessary.” I had to hand it to her operative. I hadn’t noticed all day long that I’d had a tail. I’m usually really good at spotting that kind of thing. “Why were you surveilling me? Am I under investigation?”
She smiled, but it was a humorless thing. “You don’t have to be under investigation to be surveilled. We can surveil you if we think you’ll lead us in directions we wanna go.”
That irritated me more than I expected it to. “Or you could hire me. Does it say something you’re piggy backing onto my investigation? If I crack the case, do I get the credit?”
She shifted her ass from one cheek to the other. The chair I had on the other side of my desk was all wood. Not very comfy. “Sure, if that’ll make you happy.”
The coffee maker beeped, and I got up and went over to it. “Are you sure you don’t want coffee?’
“I’m a Mormon,” was her reply.
Right. Mormons didn’t ingest caffeine. So, I had a cute-but-not-really Mormon FBI agent with a weird voice in my office. Wonders never cease. I dropped a couple of packets of sweetener into my cup along with some pumpkin spice-flavored creamer then I went back around to where I’d been sitting. I took a long sip, letting the liquid warm my guts. “You’re the one called this little meeting. Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
She shifted her weight again.
Before she could start in, I said, “Sorry about the chair.”
“Yeah. It’s a real butt buster. If you crack the case, me and the boys’ll chip in and get you a new chair.”
“I can’t wait.”
Yelburton folded her hands on her lap and said, “Can I ask you why you went to Neyizhkasha yesterday evening?”
“Why wouldn’t I go to Neyizhkasha? I hear the boiled yak is to die for.”
“This will go a lot faster without the one-liners.”
“Sorry. Women usually go weak in the knees for my Henny Youngman.”
“I don’t know who that is. Would you answer the question?”
I ran my finger along the top of my coffee cup. It was a Rocky and Bullwinkle coffee cup and I loved it. “What if—and this is strictly a theoretical—I decided I didn’t want to?”
“You didn’t want to answer the question? About why you were at Neyizhkasha?”
“Yes.”
She unfolded her hands and refolded them again with the one that’d been on the bottom now on the top. She was fidgety for an FBI agent. “Then… nothing in particular would happen. I would ask you why you don’t want to answer my question.”
“Because I’m a private citizen and it’s none of your business.”
“Can I ask you about your friend Lieutenant Hill?”
Uh-oh. I definitely didn’t want to go down that road. “What about him?”
“Is he… grabby, would you say?”
“Is he ‘grabby’? Did he touch you inappropriately, Agent Yelburton?” I picked up a sock monkey from my desktop and held it up. I did a squeaky voice that was supposed to be coming out of it. “Show us on this doll where he touched you.”
The right side of her mouth moved away from the center. It wasn’t a smile, but it was probably the closest approximation she could make. “I misspoke,” she said. “‘Grabby’ has other connotations. Let me rephrase: Does Lieutenant Hill have a tendency to take things that don’t belong to him?”
“I’m afraid you’re gonna have to be more specific…” She was also oblique for
an FBI agent. Dennis had been wrong. She wasn’t a typical example of the species.
“Like paperwork. Case files. Your investigations moved in a more Ukrainian direction than they had prior to your… misfortune out in Riverside. Did that come à propos of nothing?”
“No. Not nothing. That lead came from an interview. Wasn’t your tail listening? At the diner in the Best Western?”
“Nikki Nguyen. My guy in the field couldn’t get a table close enough to you. And he doesn’t read lips. My oversight.”
The Bureau had trained lip readers? I couldn’t help but picture decoder rings and pens that squirt acid. “Ms. Nguyen told me about a known associate of Liam O’Connor—and a place where one or both of them could be found.”
Time for another weight shift. Uncrossing and recrossing the legs. Top hand and bottom hand switching out again. The chair really was awful. “Which brings us back to Neyizhkasha. I take it you didn’t speak to Hedeon…”
“No. Mr. Ponomarenko wasn’t there. At least that’s what the mouthy hostess wanted me to believe. I didn’t talk to him, but I talked to one of his, um, I guess ‘employees’ is the most polite word.”
“One of his girls.”
“Yes,” I replied. “Out of her mind on scag. She tried to draw me away—probably to a place where I could be quietly disposed of. She wasn’t very good at it. Probably a combination of incompetence and heroin.”
“Do you know anything about Hedeon Ponomarenko?”
“No, do you wanna tell me?”
“Not particularly, no.” She he flicked a piece of lint off of her knee. “I will tell you this: He’s the subject of a Federal investigation.”
I took another sip of my coffee and said, “Ah ha. This is the warning visit.”
“The warning visit?”
“Yeah, the visit where you warn me—in no uncertain terms—to stay away from Ponomarenko. Am I right?”
“It’s not a warning visit.”
My shoulders drooped. I’d been wrong?
“No, a warning is such a hard-ass thing. This is more of a professional courtesy visit.”
I hadn’t been wrong. “You’re politely asking me to stay away from Ponomarenko…”
“Yes, don’t you think that’s so much more pleasant?”
“Agent Yelblurton, it would be my great pleasure to stay away from Hedeon Ponomarenko.”
That caught her off guard. She blinked at me. “Really?”
“Yes, of course. I mean after you asked me so nicely. As a professional courtesy—from me to you—I will do as you ask.”
The right corner of the mouth went again. “You’re patronizing me, aren’t you?”
“Would I do that?” I picked up the sock monkey and tossed it to her. She caught it. I did the squeaky voice again. “Show us on this doll where he patronized you.”
Agent Patty stood, put the sock monkey onto the desk, patted its head and turned to go. She handed me her card. “My card. You know the drill. You have a great day, Mr. Huggins.”
As soon as Yelburton left my office, my phone rang. I looked down at the screen and it said, “Los Angeles Times”. It wasn’t Adalee. Her office number was in my contacts. It wasn’t the subscription department since I didn’t have a subscription. Too much fake news. I picked up and said, “Huggins.”
“Hey, Mr. Huggins. This is Wyatt Greebly. Adalee’s friend. We met at Molly Malone’s.”
“Greebs!” I said, happy to hear from him. I’m always happy to hear from a potential lead.
“I told you…” the reporter said patiently. “Nobody calls me that.”
“Yeah, but they totally should. It’s a dandy nickname.”
There was a moment of silence during which he was going over his options. “Fine,” he said at last. “Have it your own way.”
“Attaboy, Greebs. What can I do you for?”
“Funny thing…” he said. “Right after I talked to you I had a bit of serendipity.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. A little penicillin will clear that right up.”
The pause from the other end was longer this time. “Are you always like this?”
He was right to call me on it. I was being way too flippant with a guy I barely knew and who could probably help me with my investigation. “Sorry, Greebly. I’m still wrecked from my hospital stay. Plus, I just got a friendly visit from the FBI. Why don’t you tell me about your serendipity?”
“Sure, no problem. I’ve never been in their direct line of fire, but working the Concordance beat is stressful. It’s not like dealing with normal humans.”
“You got that right.”
“The AC isn’t the only thing I cover for the Times—far from it—but it’s definitely the noisiest part of my beat. People that wanna talk about it really wanna talk about it. I’ve got whistleblowers and former members coming through here all the time. One of my regulars—a guy with real commitment problems (we call him ‘Willie the Waffler’)—just paid me a visit.”
“Why do you call him Willie the Waffler?”
“Because he can’t make up his mind. One minute he’s in the AC, the next he’s out. I feel bad for him, actually. I’ve never met anyone so indecisive. Anyway, he dropped by and dropped a ton of bricks on me. He says the Concordance is about to roll out something big.”
“Tell me…”
“The rank and file don’t know about Tad Albright and his boyfriend. I didn’t know about it until Willie told me. The higher-ups know, though, and, believe it or not, they’re thrilled.”
“They’re thrilled? How’re they thrilled?”
“A lot of leaders—particularly the old guard from the LaRue days—have been troubled by the Church’s hypocrisy. Saying one thing and doing another.”
I looked into my Bullwinkle mug and saw that it was empty. I stood long enough to refill it. “Saying one thing and doing another vis-à-vis homosexuals?”
“For starters, yeah. A lot of them wonder why, if the Concordance forbids something, Leadership condones it. They say the cachet celebrities bring doesn’t warrant selling out the organization’s core values.”
“So, the high-muckety mucks heard about Noah Nguyen’s murder and they liked it…”
“That’s what Willie said. And, thanks to the goodwill that created within the body politic, Dankworth is planning more.”
“Planning more murders?”
“Not necessarily murders. I couldn’t pin Willie down on the specifics, but, at the very least, let’s call them chastenings. Against people who deviate from doctrine.”
Suddenly, my head was pounding. “Do you have any idea who the targets might be? People who are members or who enjoy Church protection but who don’t adhere strictly to the teachings?”
The man on the other end of the phone coughed and said, “I have some ideas, yeah.”
“Do you have a pen?”
“Do I have a pen? I’m sitting in the middle of a busy newsroom.”
I fed him the number for Dennis Hill’s station house and told him to ask for my friend. “Do it now. Do not pass go or get a hundred dollars. Tell him exactly what you told me. Since Patrick and his people’ve already killed two people and savagely beaten some others, we better not discount what Willie the Waffler’s saying.”
Greebs agreed and hung up to the call the police. I looked at my now silent phone and said to it, “Jeeze Louise, I’m dealing with honest-to-God wackos here.”
As soon as I put the phone down on my desk, it rang again. Another unknown number. I picked up and said, “Huggins.”
“Huggins? Isn’t that a brand of diapers?”
I didn’t recognize the voice, but decided to play along. “That’s Huggies.”
“Right. Sorry. I still want to call you ‘Ryan’. This is Oscar. From the Meatball.”
“Oh, okay. You got something for me, Oscar?”
His voice became more tentative. “I dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s just something I remembered last night. It might be nothing.”
I leaned in. “Or it might not be something. Lay it on me.”
He took a deep breath and launched into his story. “A long time ago—I’m thinking three or four months, Tad and Noah had a party. At a house in West L.A. A lot of trees in front and in back. Very private. Owned by Tad’s brother Keith. The happy couple invited some people from Boy’s Town. It was nice. Drinks. Light food. Catered. Anyway, there were a lot of people there. A lot of people. The inner circle. People who could be trusted with Tad Albright’s secret sexuality. A few of them were Aetheric Concordance. Not anybody I recognized. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t like, what’s his name, Peter Dankworth was there.”
“Patrick.”
“Right, but still… People from Albright’s cult.”
“If you didn’t recognize them, how do you know they were airheads?”
“Noah told me. He obviously knew Tad’s invitees better than I did.”
“Anybody stand out?”
I could hear him smiling through the phone. “See? It’s questions like that convince me you know what you’re doing, Sam Spade. Yeah, there were two people Noah singled out. He didn’t like them. As in at all. There was a guy. Tall. Prematurely gray. A ton of hair. Like the movie director. David Lynch. Handsome. I’d’ve done him. Except for the fact that Noah was nervous around him and he had a vibe.”
“A vibe?” I said.
“Like someone you’d maybe wanna get to know, but you’d hate yourself in the morning.”
Turns out a lot of the people around me were good at picking up vibes. “Your instincts were good. So were Nguyen’s. That’s the man who killed Noah. I saw him do it.”
The line went quiet. “Jesus. If only we could see the future…”
“I know. What about the other guy?”
“He was Big Hair’s ‘And Guest’. A stocky guy. Jet black hair. Steely eyed. Thick build. Powerful. Jug ears. I thought they might be a couple, but Noah told me they were just friends. Thick as thieves. The two of them were having too much fun, if you know what I mean. There was no booze they wouldn’t drink, no joke they wouldn’t laugh extra-hard at. Obnoxious if you paid them just a little attention. Creepy if you paid them more.”