Kentucky Woman

by Mike J. Brogan

  “If I have any. And by the way Quinn, I can’t afford a high-priced lawyer.”

  “Mr. Delacroix is doing this on the cheap as a favor to my professor.”

  “But I insist on paying him something!”

  “He said you could ‘pay him whatever and whenever.’ I suggest a modest amount if we lose, more if you win.”

  “Please thank him.”

  “I will.”

  Once again, Quinn had come through with the legal advice she could not afford to be without … and could not afford to pay for.

  Minutes later, as they drove near Frankfort, she noticed Quinn kept checking the rearview mirror.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That the black Navigator or red pickup is following us again?”

  “They’re not.”

  “Good!”

  “A blue Jeep is.”

  She spun around and glimpsed the dark blue Jeep behind a vegetable delivery truck, three cars back. Two large men sat in front.

  “It’s been back there since Louisville. Usually three or four cars back. I slow down, it slows down.”

  “Right now it’s speeding toward us!”

  “Hang on!” Quinn hit the gas and raced around a furniture truck.

  She checked the mirror. “Forget it. The Jeep just exited.”

  Ellie exhaled and shook her head, “What’s another word for paranoid?”

  “Us …”

  She nodded. “But you know what they say about us paranoids?”

  “What?”

  “We only have to be right once to be right!”

  Quinn smiled as he exited I-64 and headed toward the center of Frankfort.

  Overhead, Ellie heard the roar of an aircraft. She looked up and saw a twin-engine Cessna descending toward Frankfort’s Capitol City Airport. To her right, the huge dome of the Kentucky State Capitol gleamed white against the robin-egg-blue sky. The green Kentucky River, meandering alongside them, headed toward the center of town, like they were.

  Quinn turned on Brown’s Ferry Road and headed toward the Gen-Ident Lab. They passed a lush emerald golf course, then crossed the river and turned onto East Main Street.

  “Quinn …!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Silver Toyota SUV. Three cars back! Made the same four turns you just made.”

  Quinn made a quick turn onto a narrow street.

  Ellie checked. “Make that five.”

  Quinn turned onto Mero Street.

  She looked back. “Still there!”

  Quinn careened onto a wide street and accelerated toward the Capital Plaza area.

  The Toyota sped after them.

  Quinn shot through a yellow light.

  The Toyota ran the red light.

  “He’s gaining!” Ellie said.

  Quinn passed some big trucks. “Do you see him now?”

  “No. He’s blocked behind a car hauler.”

  Ellie saw the Frankfort Convention Center ahead and pointed at a parking garage.

  “Quinn – maybe lose him in the garage!”

  He ducked into the garage, grabbed the ticket, shot down to the lower level and said, “Let’s take the rear exit.”

  “NO!” she said, pointing. “Look – the exit’s backed up! He’ll see us in line.”

  “Shit!” Quinn raced to the far end of the garage. “Did he see us enter the garage?”

  “I don’t think so. But maybe.” She pointed to an empty spot beside a yellow Penske truck. Quinn backed in to hide the car’s license plate against the wall.

  They jumped out and hurried through a side exit door onto Clinton Street where they merged into a mob of noisy conventioneers strolling toward the Frankfort Center.

  Ellie looked around and saw no silver Toyotas. They hurried over to a yellow taxi and got in.

  “Where y’all goin’?”

  “Straight ahead,” Quinn said.

  The taxi drove off.

  Ellie looked back and saw the Toyota pull up near the garage entrance. The driver looked left and right, paused, then drove off in the opposite direction.

  “Just drive us around town a while,” Quinn said to the ear-studded young driver in a blue University of Kentucky sweatshirt. “And tell us if you see a silver Toyota SUV following you.”

  The driver’s eyes shot open.

  “Whoa … y’all, like, bein’ … followed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Awe-some …!”

  The cabbie gave them the Frankfort mini tour, with non-stop commentary on Daniel Boone’s grave, the State Capitol Building, the old governor mansion, the new governor mansion and handed them two 50%-off coupons for Ramsey’s Fried Chicken. Minutes later, he stopped back at the Convention Center garage. Ellie saw no sign of the silver Toyota. They returned to Quinn’s TrailBlazer and drove out of the garage.

  “Next stop, Jessica’s lab!” she said.

  “Not yet!” Quinn floored the accelerator. Ellie’s head snapped back against the seat. In the mirror she saw why.

  The silver Toyota bolted from behind a gas station billboard and raced after them.

  “Look for Second Street,” Quinn said.

  “The lab’s on Patterson!’”

  “The cops are on Second. The taxi passed it.”

  Quinn careened onto Main Street, raced ahead two blocks, then turned left and seconds later screeched to a stop in front of the modern, gray-stone Frankfort Police Headquarters.

  Behind them, the silver Toyota pulled over to the curb, paused, then shot down a side street.

  They hurried inside the station and told a white-haired officer on desk duty about the silver Toyota SUV.

  The officer frowned. “Reckon we got us a problem.”

  “Why?” Ellie asked.

  “Ten miles from here is the Georgetown Toyota plant. They build 550,000 vehicles a year. There’s thousands of silver Toyota SUVs in the state, hundreds in this area. We’ll put out a BOLO, but finding the right one will be like looking for a specific blade of grass at a sod farm.”

  Ellie felt her frustration surge. “We have another problem, officer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being followed when we leave here.”

  “No problem, ma’am. We’ll be the only one following you! We’ll trail y’all for a few miles. Make sure no silver Toyotas or any other vehicle follows you.”

  “Thanks, Officer,” Quinn said.

  Ellie and Quinn got in his TrailBlazer and drove off with two police cars tucked right behind them.

  Ellie said, “I’m calling Jessica to set up another place to meet.”

  “Makes sense.”

  After several seconds, Jessica answered.

  “Hey, Ellie, where are you -?”

  “ – someone was following us, but I don’t want them following us to your lab.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Let’s meet out of town.”

  Jessica paused a few seconds. “Okay. McCarthy’s Bar on Upper Street in Lexington. Thirty minutes. I’ll bring the DNA results. See you there.”

  If we’re lucky … Ellie thought.

  FIFTY

  In the Rendez Booze Saloon, a redneck saloon ten miles west of Lexington, Heinrich De Groot sat in a dark corner, squeezing his 24-carat gold Montblanc pen, trying hard not to ram it into the pea-sized brain of Huntoon Harris.

  “Explain something!” De Groot said.

  “Whut …?”

  “How can you follow terrorists down an exploding road in Iraq, but can’t follow a college kid down I-64?”

  “This guy Quinn drives like Dale Earnhardt.”

  “And you drive like Ray Charles!”

  Huntoon’s face turned beet red. “I was gainin’ on the bastard when he stopped at the police station. Got my ass outta there fast!”

  “Only thing you did right!”

  Behind him at the bar, De Groot heard someone shout “Fuck you!”

  He turned and saw a huge
guy taunting a small hunchback about his hump. The hunchback slapped a blackjack against the bully’s head so hard the bully’s glass eye popped out, skittered across the floor and rolled toward the men’s room. As the big guy ran after his eye, the hunchback hightailed it outside and roared off on his Harley.

  Trailer-trash! De Groot thought, disgusted he had to meet here to avoid being recognized.

  He turned back to Huntoon. “Find out where the hell Ellie Stuart and Quinn went in Frankfort. I’m sure they went to another lab. Find out which one, then tell me immediately!”

  “Right!”

  De Groot picked up his Financial Times and started reading, knowing this was the only time the paper had been in the Rendez Booze Saloon.

  A minute later, it dawned on Huntoon he’d been dismissed, and he left.

  De Groot was concerned about Ellie Stuart. Her follow-up DNA test at Southern Genetics Labs had just confirmed, as he knew it would, that she was not Radford’s daughter. And last night, Huntoon and Roy Klume had destroyed her and Radford’s DNA tests and samples at the Gen-Ident lab.

  But De Groot suspected she’d ordered yet another secret DNA test. Why else would she return to Frankfort? It was time to make her DNA irrelevant. It was time for Nicolai Sergei Pushkin.

  De Groot took out his untraceable burner phone and dialed. As it rang, he thought about Pushkin. The Russian ex-KGB operative was the most terrifying man De Groot had ever known. And the most reliable.

  “Yes …?” Pushkin said in a soft whispery voice that reminded him of Peter Lorre, the creepy-voiced old movie star.

  “I need some dry cleaning,” De Groot said.

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Short notice.”

  “Couldn’t be helped.”

  “How important?”

  “Very! When can you get to Louisville?” De Groot asked.

  Pause. “Plane ready. Two hours.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Need all info now! Name, address, photo, background, hourly schedule, send all now. Put in email draft folder.”

  “Will do. The usual fee?” De Groot asked.

  “Nyet! Express cleaning cost extra.”

  “How much extra?”

  “Twenty thousand!”

  De Groot swallowed at the nearly $60,000 price tag, then realized he could withdraw the money from the trust fund of Lucille Puckett, his 87-year-old tobacco heiress client, drooling away with dementia. He’d replace the money from his enormous Radford estate sales commissions.

  “Half to Belize account now, half after,” Pushkin said.

  “Agreed, but this is very important! No screwups.”

  “Have I ever let you down?”

  “No.”

  Click.

  As usual, Pushkin had hung up within sixty seconds. His KGB phone training was too entrenched.

  De Groot thought back to the night he’d met the six-foot-five, two-hundred-thirty-pound, blond, muscular Russian – and not a moment too soon. The mob had just given De Groot another pay-up-now threat. De Groot refused, so the mob sent its top three persuaders: Gino Fat Lips, Sam Strunzala and Carlucci Skotzene. They cornered him in an alley and started beating him with a Louisville Slugger.

  Then Strunzala pulled out a handgun and aimed it at De Groot’s knee. As he started to pull the trigger, the gun flew from his hand – thanks to Nikolai Pushkin who’d appeared from nowhere and rammed Strunzala’s head into a brick wall. Strunzala dropped like wet cement.

  Gino Fat Lips, enraged and swinging the bat, rushed toward Pushkin. The big Russian didn’t move until the last second when he ducked the bat and rammed an ice pick deep into the man’s ear. Fat Lips collapsed into a seizure. Carlucci Skotzene was last seen running from the alley.

  De Groot had never seen anything like it. He stared down at the two bodies, then at Pushkin. “You saved my life. Why?”

  “They have weapons. You have none.”

  “But I have these,” De Groot said, handing Pushkin three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.

  The big Russian seemed surprised, but pocketed the money.

  “Are you available for, ah … similar assignments?” De Groot asked.

  “Always available, if price good.”

  And he had been available over the years. De Groot helped Pushkin get rid of some major personal immigration problems and Pushkin helped De Groot get rid of some major people problems. The man had never failed him.

  Nor would he now.

  FIFTY ONE

  LEXINGTON

  Ellie and Quinn walked inside McCarthy’s Irish Bar. She squinted, adjusting to the dim lighting. Customers hunched over small round tables sipping their drinks, a few danced in a back room, some cheered a Kentucky basketball game.

  Ellie hoped to cheer her DNA in a few minutes.

  Despite just learning that her second DNA test at Southern Genetics reconfirmed she was not Leland Radford’s daughter, maybe, just maybe she’d have the luck of the Irish here. She’d read that Radford was an Irish name. If she was a Radford – she’d shout, “The drinks are on me!”

  She looked around. Lots of blue-collar workers and white-collar businessmen hunched over whiskey, and no-collar students hunched over pitchers of beer. On the jukebox the Clancy Brothers sang about a “Whistlin’ Gypsy.” On the walls, paintings celebrated the olde sod, Ireland, and the new sod, Kentucky, with Derby winners Secretariat, Citation, Whirlaway and others. In Kentucky, the important celebrities have hooves.

  She and Quinn sat down to wait for Jessica.

  A well-endowed waitress in a red T-shirt strolled toward their table, jiggling her considerable endowments. Ellie noticed Quinn noticing her endowments.

  “What can I get y’all?”

  Breasts like yours, Ellie wanted to say, but said, “A Guinness, please.”

  “Same for me,” Quinn said.

  The waitress checked their IDs, sashayed off and a minute later placed the creamy stout beers in front of them.

  Quinn turned to Ellie. “May the wee leprechauns bless your DNA and place a vile curse on your enemies!”

  “I’ll drink to that!” she said, clicking his glass and sipping some foamy Guinness. She liked its thick malt taste, sort of like an Irish milk shake.

  The door opened and Jessica Bishop in her white lab coat, stepped inside. Several customers looked up at the attractive six-foot-three woman.

  Ellie waved her over and Jessica zigzagged through the crowd like a broken field runner. She sat down, clutching a large Gen-Ident envelope.

  “Anyone follow you?” Quinn asked.

  “No. I checked.”

  The waitress appeared and Jessica pointed to the Guinness.

  Ellie studied Jessica’s envelope. It was secured with red tape and a large wax seal. Jessica gave no indication she’d seen the test results.

  Ellie’s pulse thumped in her ears.

  “This sealed envelope holds your secret back-up DNA test results. It was handed to me just before I left the lab. I have no idea what the results are. I wanted to open it in front of you Ellie, and have you, Quinn, serve as a witness.”

  “Makes sense,” Quinn said, then he frowned. “Wait …”

  “What?” Jessica asked.

  “An unbiased witness would be more credible.”

  Jessica nodded, then turned toward a young student at the next table. “Excuse me … .”

  The student, a beautiful Asian girl wearing a blue University of Kentucky sweatshirt, looked up from a thick chemistry textbook. “Yes …?”

  Jessica pointed at the envelope. “Would you please witness me unseal this envelope and take out some documents?”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Happy to.”

  Jessica broke the wax seal, then pulled off the red tape. She reached in and took out a stapled report. She showed the student the report.

  “Would you please write your name on the top of the report?”

 
“Sure.” She wrote Kimberley Han Dolata and her email address.”

  “Thank you, Kimberley,” Jessica said, then started scanning the test results.

  On the jukebox, Tommy Makem sang Four Green Fields, a sad ballad about a kindhearted old Irish widow whose property was unfairly taken from her. Is someone unfairly trying to take Leland Radford’s property away from me?

  Jessica flipped through some pages, then rechecked others, her face revealing nothing.

  Beneath the table, Ellie’s leg jackhammered.

  Quinn tapped his beer blotter.

  “Well, the results are quite clear.” Jessica flipped to the back page again.

  “And …?” Quinn asked, leaning forward.

  “This test proves without question that your DNA and the DNA of Leland T. Radford …” She took a deep breath … “do not match.”

  Ellie’s mind went numb.

  “I’m really sorry, Ellie, but Mr. Radford can not possibly be your biological father.”

  Ellie slumped down, feeling like barbed wire was being pulled through her veins.

  FIFTY TWO

  BAGHDAD

  At the Al Mut’ah Hotel, Nafeesa Hakim stared up at the dim, dangling bulb as Khalid Al-Kareem slid his sweaty, three-hundred-pound, garlic-reeking body off her. For the last twenty minutes, his greasy skin had pinned her to the bed’s stained mattress and its protruding spring, which, she noticed, protruded farther than his penis.

  She turned her head to escape his fetid breath.

  The Al Mut’ah was one of the Baghdad’s cheap Pleasure Marriage hotels where Iraqi men enjoyed legal sexual encounters with women other than their wives – as opposed to the lavish palaces where Saddam Hussein enjoyed women other than his wife.

  Pleasure marriages were cash only. But not tonight. Khalid Al-Kareem did not pay her one single dinar for the pleasure of her sexual delights.

  He’d paid her with something far more valuable.

  An official Iraqi marriage certificate.

  Khalid was a director in Baghdad’s Social Status Court, the official government issuer of marriage certificates. Nafeesa’s certificate stated that she married First Lieutenant Richard J. Radford in Baghdad on June 4, two weeks before a roadside bomb took his life.