The Girl With 39 Graves

by Michael Beres

  Niki’s mantra, as she ran through her neighborhood, changed from Greek tunes to CCC repeated over and over. CCC, CCC, CCC…

  Lunchtime, Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. The Bakery Café was peaceful until Demidchik, the neighborhood Russian, pinballed on wobbly legs through morning traffic, nearly being hit by a Lexus, pushed through the rain-spattered door, and spotted his prey. Demidchik wore Lenin look-alike wool coat and cap. He sneered as the door’s brass bell jingled merrily, his voice like a Department of Streets and Sanitation dump truck unloading gravel.

  “Lazlo Horvath! Gypsy from Ukraine! There are few left from old country! Mexican fence jumpers and Arab women with burkas invade neighborhood!”

  Ria, the café proprietress, frowned from behind the pastry display case. When Lazlo ignored Demidchik the tirade continued. “I speak of this godforsaken corner of Chicago, not Ukraine, our bride basket for Arabs…Not so funny?”

  Lazlo stared at his newspaper. “Has Demidchik awoken from a vodka nightmare?”

  Demidchik grinned. “I slept in Russian cemetery last night. Papa Joe is not buried here, yet he speaks to friends through tunnels dug during the Great War.”

  “Did Stalin’s slave laborers run into Hitler’s digging the other way?”

  Demidchik shook his head as he marched to the serving counter, eyeing pastry, but settling for coffee. He retrieved coffee pitcher and cup from the counter and plopped down at Lazlo’s table, spilling some of Lazlo’s luncheon borsht. He removed his cap, sat smugly yet surprisingly silent after his initial outburst, drinking cup after cup of black coffee poured from the insulated pitcher. Lazlo placed his newspaper on the table behind him and bent to his borsht bowl to finish what remained. Demidchik, whose few remaining scalp hairs stood at attention from wool cap static electricity, pounded the table and ranted on a new topic.

  “Killer’s trademark! Force open victim’s mouth until jaw breaks, stuff mouth with contaminated Chernobyl soil. Russians cut Ukraine’s energy and sabotage nuclear plants, ignoring borders. Putin is Prime Minister, but will again be President. Russians like Putin are chessmen. When things happen in Ukraine, a Russian has made a move. Therefore, killer is Russian! It will be proven when CSI’s study hair found at scene!”

  A bull’s-eye erupted from Lazlo’s borsht bowl as Demidchik pounded his fist. Lazlo looked out the window. Although rain had ended, traffic was still snarled. This morning an easterly from Lake Michigan reminded Lazlo of a spring storm blowing in from the Kiev Reservoir years earlier during a trip to see his brother who worked at the Chernobyl plant, his brother flown to Moscow only to lose his hair and die in Hospital Number Six.

  It was April 2011. The Chernobyl disaster’s 25th anniversary was at hand, Japan had experienced its earthquake, and Demidchik sat across from Lazlo shouting incoherently. Rather than speaking of earthquakes, nuclear threats, or his usual tirade about “foreigners” invading their Chicago neighborhood, Demidchik squawked about a serial killer.

  A younger Demidchik had been “cured” in a Kharkiv asylum, immigrated to the US, and, unable to find a satisfactory Russian neighborhood, moved to Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. Demidchik barked broken English from a mottled visage with a salt-and-pepper goatee shaped like a penis. Ria asked Demidchik to lower his voice when she came to the table to refill the coffee pitcher. Construction workers at another table, hard hats beneath their chairs like World War II helmets painted orange, glanced with uncertain smiles toward Lazlo.

  “And now,” groused Demidchik, “with killer loose, Russian Mafia has eye on me,”

  “Mafia with only one eye cannot be very effective,” said Lazlo.

  “Effective? My phone is bugged! My car is bugged!”

  Demidchik turned to the construction workers, their lips squeezing away smiles. Two were African American, one Hispanic, the fourth Caucasian. “Pakistani doctor put something inside when he removed appendix! They work together, these Mafias. Mafias create serial killers! Killing Ukrainians, Americans, even Al-Qaeda if Obama was smart enough to hire them!”

  The construction crew, at first amused, now stared at Demidchik.

  “You think I am April fool?” asked Demidchik.

  “April Fools’ Day was last week,” said Lazlo.

  Demidchik lifted his coffee pitcher as if giving a toast, gulped the remaining hot coffee directly from the pitcher, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, took a few deep breaths, exhaling coffee steam through yellow teeth, put on his worn Lenin cap, and stormed out, slamming the door, the brass bell jingling furiously.

  “I should give that man my wife’s tamales,” said a Hispanic worker as the construction crew paid their bill, all of them laughing. On their way out they tipped their hardhats.

  Ria brought tea to the table. Ria’s hair was long, the color of bread crust and tied in back. Her homeland was a former Hungarian-speaking village in what was now the Czech Republic, not far from Lazlo’s roots in the former Hungarian-speaking portion of Western Ukraine.

  “I’m sick of Demidchik’s bride basket joke,” said Ria. “We should be proud Ukraine was known as the breadbasket, not make jokes about it. You’ve been here since breakfast, Lazlo. Are you practicing ESP?”

  Lazlo motioned toward the stack of newspapers on the table behind him. “I’m keeping up with news about the serial killer.”

  “Still the Kiev Militia investigator. Tell me what you’ve discovered.”

  “The killer has moved from Kiev to Odessa. The first victims were older, broken jaws and contaminated soil stuffed into their mouths.”

  Ria sipped tea and licked her lips. “And now victims are girls like my cook, who would have been trafficked if not for you. You don’t need Internet, Lazlo. Your years in Kiev gave you telepathy. Go to State Street and see if Chicago needs a special investigator.”

  “They don’t believe in ESP, and I’m too old, even for special services.”

  “Old-schmold. Contact your Kiev associate. The two of you are keenly aware of the past, sharing déjà vu. Do you know the opposite of déjà vu?”

  “No, what’s it called?”

  “Jamais vu, another French term meaning things not yet seen. Call Janos, Lazlo.”

  “You are a Gypsy fortuneteller, Ria.”

  “The Bakery Café uses telepathy rather than Internet.” Ria smiled and held her glass two-handed. “Lazlo Horvath is thinking of connections between the serial killer, long-term radiation, and the upcoming Chernobyl anniversary. Everything and everyone is connected like in that Six Degrees of Separation movie. Were you aware a Hungarian named Karinthy came up with the theory? Your friend Janos in Ukraine is Hungarian. Call him.”

  “Last time I called Janos was when I’d barged into the investigation of that old man found beneath a bus on North Avenue. They said the driver started out not knowing a drunk was underneath. Instead of believing them, I go to the family, who insists he’s not a drunk, and with their permission I’m allowed into the morgue. The body crushed, the face intact. He was no drunk; his face had a look of determination. The examiner showed me a locket of hair from the man’s wallet, red hair. Afterwards I discovered none in the family had red hair. A simple locket of hair and I can’t let go. The Chicago detectives said I reminded them of Columbo. The head of detectives told me I could be charged with interfering. Our alderman told me to fuck off.”

  Ria looked out the window. “And so you called Janos to discuss the tradition of saving hair from loved ones. Kiev detectives with Hungarian creative spirit, partners reading one another’s thoughts. Ilonka and I were like that. Life is not for waiting, Lazlo. Life is for contacting friends and creating love.”

  Lazlo wanted to grasp Ria’s hands and ask her to dinner. But last time he asked, Ria reminded him about her lover, Ilonka, who died of breast cancer, saying she’d meet another Ilonka one day. Lazlo stared into Ria’s eyes until the café door opened. An old Ukrainian woman fro
m the neighborhood held the hand of her great granddaughter. Ria smiled and there were smiles on both the ancient face and the fresh face of youth as the brass doorbell jingled them in from the now sunny street. The little girl immediately ran to the display case containing jelly and cream-filled pastry. Ria left the table.

  A small patch of sky was visible between buildings across the street. A dark northeast horizon, the spring storm heading across Lake Michigan where it would give Detroit a taste of rain and continue into Canada. The man run over by the bus was still on Lazlo’s mind. He visualized wide tires doing their work on the torso, blood oozing. Although he could not recall the man’s name, he remembered the eldest son. Outside the morgue the son asked if Lazlo was from his father’s past? No. The son complained a Greek woman from Detroit had called, asking about the health of his father, about the year 1939, about hair saved. The son told the woman his father was 90 and to mind her own business. A Greek woman from Detroit, the year 1939, hair saved, a dark horizon, and now this Chernobyl killer. Yes, he’d call Janos.

  Chapter 3

  Tea rather than coffee left Guzzo sleepy as he sat on the edge of the bed. The silver tea glass holder’s finger loop was too small so he held the hot bottom. On the holder’s edge, “Odessa, Ukraine,” was engraved in both English and Ukrainian.

  The table resembled a half-eaten crime scene—eviscerated cheese-filled strudel, puffs of powdered sugar, blood-red jam oozing from crepes, tea stains on doilies surrounding the samovar. Guzzo recalled the table having squeaked its way into the room on casters needing oil. The wheels were several inches in diameter, caster hubs gray, cracked rubber treads. Guzzo imagined shell-shocked refugees rummaging through post war trash, yanking casters off crushed gurneys, and saving them for future use at hotels yet to be.

  Guzzo put down his tea glass, glancing at his tattooed wrist. During a layover in Germany others had gotten the usual eagles and weapons. His tattoo was different, the word STORM in all caps with an arrow pointing toward his hand. He wondered what the Ukrainian word for storm was and how it would look in Cyrillic. Probably pretty weird like a scream not screamed despite the painful wrist application.

  Guzzo’s mind time traveled during the night, the blood of strangers searching for his spirit. Leftover dreams from Sicilian ancestors, the violence of family feuds.

  Vera was the only person to whom Guzzo confided his morning thoughts. He once told Vera, sleep was like being in the mind of a death camp commandant at dusk, the huge pleading eyes of prisoners glowing in sunset while he selects dinner wine. Vera said she also had disturbing dreams because her parents were, “The last of the red hot dissidents,” and because her grandparents had survived to reveal the worst of Stalin’s starvation of Ukraine.

  Vera was Guzzo’s anchor. The irony? He would never have met her if he hadn’t accepted assignments passed through the Chicago fishmonger named Pescatore, who received his instructions from another Pescatore in New York. In another lifetime before Nine-Eleven, Guzzo asked his Chicago Pescatore how assignment messages arrived. It had been noisy in the office that day, the fish grinder in the adjoining room so loud Guzzo felt it was safe to ask.

  Pescatore paused to wipe guts from his long filleting knife on his apron. “Messages come to market inside special fishes. I can tell by the look in their dead eyes which carry messages, and from what part of the country or world they originate.”

  Aware of the term, “Sleeping with the fishes,” Guzzo apologized for asking and during subsequent visits asked innocuous questions about the fish business, such as what was done with the ground up fish guts from the noisy machine next door?

  “Oh the grinder? We put the mix into barrels and sell it to a company where they separate the juices, dry the byproduct, and use a pelletizing machine to make animal feed.”

  Pescatore obviously had many connections—fish product connections as well as crime families as well as intelligence agencies. How else would information for assignments be gathered if not for connections? And money. No matter his being careful when meeting Pescatore, Guzzo hoped some day, by being attentive, he’d be able to determine the source of non-fish-business funds.

  Guzzo cinched up his pajama bottoms, stood from the bed, and walked around the serving table to a full-length closet mirror. He leaned close and examined his eyes, which were neither dead nor bloodshot. He could not lean too close because of his Stetson hat brim. He smiled at himself, adjusted the crease in the hat purchased at a Kiev shop. Beyond the mirror’s image of the smiling cowboy in plaid pajama bottoms was the view out the sliding door to the balcony. The morning sun had climbed, the sky blue, the Black Sea Harbor brown, and Vera’s kimono blowing between her legs in the sea breeze red and semitransparent in sunlight.

  Sounds of the sea had been replaced by Odessa’s morning traffic, people scurrying in Ladas, Skodas, and scooters as they snaked between trucks and buses. A bus accelerating reminded Guzzo of the Chicago assignment—the early morning pint of bourbon, the fat rear tires, a push. An especially loud V-twin motorcycle rumbling like a mountain lion reminded him of the Colorado Rockies assignment—a man and his straight-pipe Harley Davidson so badly dismembered, scattered, and burned, DNA tests and Milwaukee factory records were required. Although assignments had begun with old men, younger persons searching the past were added. Not children. A California man had been babysitting a grandson. Not yet two, the boy stared wide-eyed at Guzzo while he performed his task using a kitchen towel to suffocate the man. When the boy laughed, trying to get out of the highchair to join the game, Guzzo carried the highchair out of the kitchen and closed the boy in a bedroom. Strange, he now recalled that before death, the old man pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and held it up, as one would present a crucifix to a vampire. The paper had strands of hair taped to it. Not knowing what else to do, he took the paper from the old man and put it in his pocket. Later, away from the assignment, he saw the hair was red, the tape and paper yellowed with age. Nothing was written and he burned the paper with the hair. The way the old man held the hair up, and a vague story of men saving strands of hair, stayed with him. The story wasn’t from Pescatore, but from a conversation recently overheard in a Chicago park at a family reunion, a relative going on and on, saying, “Sure he’s old. But what about that hair he saved? Who’s that belong to?”

  Guzzo’s full name was Anthony Ulysses Guzzo, the Ulysses from a great uncle who, in the 1920s, fled Mussolini’s war on Sicilian Mafia to become a Chicago produce importer. Guzzo’s parents moved to Tucson, Arizona, because of his mother’s allergies. Family called him Tony. Everyone else, beginning in grade school, called him Guzzo, or sometimes Smiling Guzzo. The only use of his middle name was on official documents. Even the girlfriend he almost married didn’t know his middle name.

  Following a tour in Bush Senior’s first Iraq war escorting supply convoys, Guzzo got a law enforcement degree at University of Arizona and worked Security on the Arizona-Mexican border where migrants paid to either walk to their deaths, or be sardined into vans leading to shitty jobs. He was introduced to the Mexican drug lord who tried to hire him. When Guzzo refused, the drug lord, paying off East Coast favors, put him in contact with the New York fishmonger who sent Guzzo to the Chicago fishmonger. Over time, non-drug-related assignments rolled in. Ulysses was how Guzzo thought of himself—a king battling full circle back to his roots, a fisher of ancient men.

  On assignment in Kiev ten years earlier, Guzzo captured Vera with his smile. Both were at the Kiev airport after the Twin Towers fell. Neither could get a flight into the US. They spent several days together. Vera agonized over her pre-green-card past—activist parents executed while she hid in a closet clutching a headless doll during the twilight of the Soviet era. Guzzo put on the smiling face of American business. The aftermath of Nine-Eleven became their bond. With help from Vera’s contact in a Ukrainian security agency she was able to get papers, Guzzo brought her back to the US, they married
, and had two girls in the span of two years. They lived in Orland Park, Illinois, outside Chicago where Guzzo had easy access to his intermediary.

  Several years earlier Vera said she’d never return to her homeland, but here she was. After sightseeing in Lviv and Kiev, Guzzo, Vera, and their pre-school girls were in the middle of a weeklong stay at a five-star Odessa resort hotel. Vera was ten years younger than Guzzo and still awaiting US citizenship. The girls, four and five, were Americans through and through. Vera taught them Ukrainian, but they had no trace of Vera’s accent. Arriving in Ukraine, his girls magically transformed themselves into Ukrainians. This morning they enjoyed a giggly room service breakfast in bed watching Ukrainian television cartoons. It wasn’t until the hotel nanny picked the girls up for a children’s museum outing that Guzzo threw aside the blanket, sat up on the edge of the bed, had more tea from the samovar, and put on his new Stetson.

  Vera and both daughters were petite blondes with high cheekbones, very Russian. Guzzo was light-skinned for a Sicilian and had the thin face, large hands, and soccer-ball shoulders of a Ukrainian laborer. As long as he didn’t speak, they passed for Kievians escaping the cold. Vera spoke Russian and Ukrainian, completing the window-dressing for his assignment.

  Being April, Odessa should have been warmer, but the weather was cool. Even so, April Fools’ celebrants cavorted on the beaches. Guzzo’s family trips outside the hotel involved shopping and sightseeing well away from the beer and vodka-guzzling students, polluted brown water, and shipyards. Sunbathers gathered across the boulevard on the beach—some walking, some standing and swinging their arms to ward off the chill, and a few nearly naked skinny souls reposing on colorful blankets pasted to the off-white envelope of the beach like postage stamps dedicated to Stalin era famine victims.