Nobody Rides For Free Page 11

  It didn’t help that periodically someone would shoot a gun from one car to another, or a semi-trailer would slam into a senior citizen’s aged sedan, or that drivers eager to shave a minute or two from their trip by speeding or darting around other cars would cause a pileup.

  We got onto I-95 as Katya hung up. “The detective investigating the case is named David Wells,” she said. “He’s out of the office right now but he’s due back in an hour.”

  “That’s about how long it will take us to get there.” I looked over at her. “Is it a Russian thing to cut off hands?”

  “Not particularly. I mean, long ago, yeah, they would cut off the hands of thieves. And the Islamic extremists still do that kind of thing, if you believe what you read in the media. But whoever killed Verenich could have cut off his hands so that he couldn’t be identified by fingerprints.”

  Traffic was heavy, so I focused on driving. When we finally reached the Palm Beach County line, the traffic eased and I turned to Katya. “Any reason why Russians have focused on Sunny Isles Beach?”

  “It’s like any immigrant community, such as Boston, where I grew up. Some people establish a beachhead, and others follow. And what’s not to like about oceanfront real estate in a beautiful climate? Part of the problem we have in tracking these deals is that many of them are legitimate. When people come from Russia, they want to invest their money, and they don’t trust the banks, so they pay in cash for the apartment.”

  “Nice to have that kind of cash on hand.”

  “Plus, Russians are paranoid about security,” Katya continued. “They like gated islands and private communities with their own police forces, and all those big high-rises along the beach have outstanding protection. It’s a negative for the Bureau. We have a harder time with surveillance when someone lives behind so many layers.”

  “Hasn’t the volume of deals lessened because of the sanctions the United States placed against Russia after Putin sent troops into Ukraine?”

  She shook her head. “Those sanctions only affect buyers from Russia, and not the wealthy Russian-Americans who are already established here in the States. And if the money is coming in illegally, the sanctions don’t matter.”

  At the Okeechobee Boulevard exit we turned east, crossing over a broad lake edged by tall palms. You could almost smell the money in the air as we drove through downtown West Palm Beach—a cluster of high-rise towers and street-level restaurants and stores. “This is pretty,” Katya said. “Very upscale.”

  I was busy watching the road signs so I didn’t see much, but I agreed with her. We came out at a low bridge over the Intracoastal that led to Palm Beach, which was located on a barrier island like the one in Fort Lauderdale where Dorje was hanging out. A huge yacht drifted to our right, waiting for the bridge to open, and we made it across as the bells began ringing and the lights started to flash.

  I drove slowly down Royal Palm Way, past a mansion turned museum and the offices of private banks. The island had an aura of wealth and privilege, and I thought how ironic it was that Alexei Verenich’s body had washed up there. Rich people could only protect themselves from reality so much. Eventually it caught up to them.

  We turned right onto South County Road. The Palm Beach Police Department was on our left a couple of blocks down. It was a three-story building painted a pale orange, with arched windows and the coral-tile roof that was everywhere. It could have been a shopping center or an office complex, and the only thing that said “police station” were the cruisers parked out front and a discreet sign over the entrance.

  Detective David Wells looked like he played Santa at police Christmas parties—a shock of white hair over a friendly face. His smile and twinkly eyes probably disarmed criminals. “You say you have an ID on our floater?” he asked, when we were seated in an interview room.

  “Not positive yet,” I said. “We think it might be Alexei Verenich, a Russian-born attorney from Sunny Isles Beach.” I handed him the screenshots from Verenich’s website and from his fishing blog, and Wells nodded.

  “Looks like our guy. You have a next of kin?” he asked.

  “I’ve done some research on Verenich as part of my investigation,” Katya said. “As far as I can tell, he has two ex-wives, no kids, a man in New York who may be a brother or a cousin, and an ex-girlfriend, Lyuba Sirko.”

  “I met her Friday evening and she told me that Verenich had a bad temper and a tendency to cheat clients.” I looked at Wells. “What was the cause of death?”

  “Two bullets from a nine-millimeter gun, applied directly to the back of the head,” Wells said. “Coroner believes that the hands were cut off post-mortem, but can’t be sure because of the water damage.”

  I was glad, if only because the thought of Verenich having his hands cut off while he was alive was pretty sickening.

  “What’s the Bureau’s interest in Verenich?” Wells asked.

  “He’s part of an ongoing investigation,” Katya said.

  Wells snorted. “You Feebs are all the same. All take and no give.”

  “Excuse me, detective,” I said. “This conversation began with us providing you with an identification for your John Doe, as well as information on his family and the name of his ex-girlfriend. I’d say that puts us in a cooperative position.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us about the body that hasn’t been released to the media?” I asked.

  He looked down at the desk as if he was considering what he could reveal. “The ME can’t be a hundred percent sure, because of the time the body spent in the water and the fish that took some nibbles, but it looks like Verenich was tortured before he was killed.”

  “How?”

  “The water did a number on the body, but the ME was able to identify burn marks on his upper thighs and the skin of his penis. He also extracted traces of nicotine, implying that someone applied lit cigarettes there.”

  He leaned forward. “You said he’s part of an ongoing investigation. Any chance you tipped your hand and one of your suspects took him out?”

  Katya shook her head. “Verenich is a collateral player in my case. I never spoke to him personally, or spoke about him to any of my sources. So if he was killed because of something the Bureau is working on, his killers didn’t hear about it through me.”

  “You guys want to see the body?” Wells asked.

  I looked at Katya, who didn’t seem eager to visit the morgue, and I agreed with her. “Neither of us knew him before his death, so we can’t ID him conclusively,” I said. “And his murder is your investigation. We don’t want to step on your toes.”

  “Appreciate it. Anything else you guys feel you can share with me?”

  “There’s a boat registered in Verenich’s name, docked at the Sunny Isles Beach Marina,” Katya said. “The Bolshaya Ryba. You’ll want to check out the bloodstains on the transom.”

  Wells made a note of it, and I passed him my card. “If you find any fingerprints or other evidence on the boat, we’d appreciate being kept in the loop,” I said.

  “Always happy to cooperate with the Bureau,” Wells said. “As long as it’s a two-way street.”

  We said our goodbyes and walked back to where I’d parked. The sun was blasting overhead and the area had a sleepy feel, few tourists out on the streets, expensive cars moving sluggishly from one traffic light to the next.

  “What do you think whoever tortured Verenich was after?” I asked.

  “No idea. Maybe someone wanted to know who was behind the LLCs Verenich was fronting for, and he didn’t want to say.”

  “He’d have to be extremely motivated to keep secrets if someone was sticking lit cigarettes onto his dick.”

  “If I’m right, Verenich was working for some very scary people,” Katya said. “He could have been more frightened of what would happen if he told.”

  “But he didn’t live to suffer the consequences,” I said. “Could he have been caught between two rival R
ussian mobsters?”

  “Sounds like he was stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

  “And he ended up in the sea,” I said.

  • • •

  The lights on the bridge from Palm Beach back to the mainland began to flash as we approached. I put the Mini Cooper in park and looked over at Katya. “Verenich was connected to both money laundering and underage porn,” I said. “And if I’m correct, the LLC he fronted for may be distributing flakka, too. Anything else that you know of?”

  “Nothing else has come up, but like I told Detective Wells, Verenich has been very peripheral to my case so I haven’t paid much attention to him. Now that we’ve identified him, there should be something in the paper about his death, and that will give me an opening to talk to other agents and brokers about him.”

  She pulled out her phone and started to dictate questions she’d ask. “Who else did Verenich work for? Did he handle anything other than LLC work? Was he flashing a lot of money around?”

  “Ask if anyone knows about that tattoo of his,” I said. “The one about communism only producing victims.”

  She added that to her list. “What about you? What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll see if I can get a subpoena for Verenich’s bank records and the records of the LLCs he was the agent for. And then I’ll try and trace the flow of money.”

  “How are you going to get the subpoena?” she asked. “We have only the barest threads that connect him to either of our cases.”

  I stared ahead, watching as a big sport fishing boat like Verenich’s moved under the open bridge and I began to put the pieces together.

  “Verenich was an American citizen, right?” I asked, and Katya nodded. “It looks like his body was pushed north by the Gulf Stream, which is in international waters. If I can establish that Verenich’s murder occurred on the high seas, then we have the authority to investigate.”

  “But you told Detective Wells we wouldn’t interfere in his case.”

  “I have a master’s in accounting, which gives me a leg-up on a homicide detective when it comes to examining financial records,” I said. “I’m not trying to take over his case, just get the authority to do some research.”

  “I’d love to hear you explain that to him.”

  “Right now, Detective Wells is the last person I’m concerned about. I want to find those boys and the source of the flakka, and if I have to trample on Wells I’ll do it.”

  16.

  Dance Class

  I stopped at Whole Foods on the way home and picked up a rosemary chicken breast and some grilled veggies for dinner. Jonas came home as I was eating. “Bitch of a day,” he said as he walked in, his tie askew around his neck. “One of the verification systems went down and I had to stay late to get all the data entered once it came back up.”

  He shucked his sports jacket and undid his tie. “How was your day?”

  “Tracked down a murder.” I began to tell him about Verenich but he stopped me.

  “How can you think about stuff like that while you’re eating?”

  I looked down at my plate. The grilled chicken didn’t look anything like severed hands. “Don’t know,” I said.

  “Sometimes you freak me out, Angus.”

  • • •

  That night, I sat up in bed reading an article about the Russian mafia, trying to learn as much as I could in case the group—or someone involved with it—was behind the porn sites and the death of Alexei Verenich.

  I was deep into the story of a crazy Russian nicknamed Tarzan when Shane McCoy called. “Have you made any progress on finding Ozzy?”

  I didn’t like the tone of voice he was using. I mean, yeah, I’m a public servant, but I wasn’t Shane’s servant. “Busy day at work.” I explained about the connection between Verenich and the LLC that operated the porn site, and the way he’d ended up dead.

  “Good for him,” Shane said. “Fuckers like that deserve to die.”

  So much for Shane’s good-guy attitude. I could have suggested that maybe Verenich had a troubled childhood, that he was as much of a victim as Ozzy or Dimetrie, but I resisted the impulse.

  “Verenich’s death means there’s extra impetus to the investigation,” I said. “I’m putting together a subpoena for all his records and there may be information there that will lead me to wherever Ozzy is.”

  “Bureaucracy,” he said. “I hate it. You wouldn’t believe all the paperwork I have to fill out in order to get the state to agree to let us help some of the kids we find. A bunch of paper pushers who care more about filling out forms than helping kids.”

  I hoped he wasn’t throwing me into that group, but I was tired of his attitude. “Listen, I’ve got to get some rest. I’ll be back in touch when I know something.”

  • • •

  After a good night’s sleep, I went to the gym early Tuesday morning. I worked my ass off and left with a pleasant sense of exhaustion, countered almost immediately by a grande mocha from a drive-through on my way home to shower and change for work.

  As I drove south, I called Colin Hendricks and asked if I could stop by his office. A half-hour later I was there. “Any word on Brian Garcia?” I asked, as we sat down.

  “His body temperature is normal, and it doesn’t look like he suffered any significant organ damage. Doctors are slowly working to bring him out of his coma, but I’ve been warned that it could be a couple of days before his memory comes back.”

  He leaned back. “How about you? Find anything interesting?”

  I told him about Verenich, and the possible connection to the Russian mafia. “Not surprising,” he said. “The Organizatsya has its tentacles all over the place.”

  “I’m working with an agent who’s undercover, trying to trace money laundering,” I said.

  “I had a guy out at clubs, gay and straight, all weekend looking for flakka, but the supply seems to have dried up,” Colin said. “I think the media reports on Brian Garcia have got people hesitant about buying it.”

  I promised to keep looking on my own, and then drove to work, where I began preparing the subpoena for Verenich’s records. It was slow, tedious work, teasing out threads of information and putting them into a coherent format.

  Most people think of a subpoena as a document that requires you to appear before a court, but there’s a second kind, a subpoena duces tecum. It’s a legal document that requires the recipient to produce documents or other tangible evidence. It would have to be prepared by the United States Attorney’s office, but I needed to collect the raw materials for it.

  To do that, I had to make a list of every kind of document that might help me track Verenich’s income and expenditures. It was important to be thorough because we would only be given documents that fell under the scope of the subpoena.

  I wrote out the full name and address of his law firm, requesting any and all documents relating to the LLCs he acted as agent for. That meant I had to list all of them in as much detail as I could. I asked for all bank records for Verenich’s business and his personal accounts. For good measure, I threw in all records for his cell phone, his home phone, and his office phone.

  Once again, I kept a window open on the webcam site, but every time I checked, Ozzy wasn’t online.

  I wanted to stay at work until I finished everything I needed for the subpoena, but I also wanted to show up at the conclusion of the four o’clock free dance class at Fort Lauderdale High that I thought Dimetrie Beauvoir might be attending.

  On the way there, I wondered what I’d find. Maybe Dimetrie had made those videos a while ago, left the porn house, and moved on with his life? That was the best possible outcome, provided he could also tell me how to find the operation so I could shut it down.

  I had found only Ozzy in the ads for live webcams, not Dimetrie. And Dimetrie was going to age out of underage porn soon, too, so he might have already left.

  What if he hadn’t? What if I showed up and he refused to talk to me?
After all, he was being paid for his work, enough to send regular money orders home to his sister, and he might resent having to go back to school and losing that income. And of course, it was possible he wasn’t even taking this class or that he wasn’t there tonight. There were a whole range of negative outcomes.

  By the time I pulled into the big lot beside the school, I was thoroughly discouraged, and I hadn’t even looked for Dimetrie yet. Most of the lot was empty, except for a cluster of cars at one side, so I parked near them and waited.

  A few minutes after five, the side door popped open and a cluster of people spilled out. I set my digital camera on zoom and prepared to take pictures if anyone who looked like Dimetrie came out.

  Four girls in their early teens wearing leotards and loose T-shirts, led the way, followed by two women wearing street clothes who were probably their moms. A pair of older women in tights, tank tops, and ballet flats followed. Then came three guys in their twenties. All of them were tall and skinny, and all walked with a curiously erect posture—the same way Dimetrie held his shoulders and head up in the video. They all carried shoulder bags and laughed and joked together.

  The last of the three stopped to hold the door open, and a slender young man with dark skin followed. I focused on his face and shot a couple of pictures of him. I was pretty sure he was Dimetrie.

  I was so focused on him, though, that it took me an extra moment to recognize the guy behind him. Eric, the guy from the gym that Jonas was crushing on.

  I snapped a couple of photos of him to show Jonas, and I was surprised when he and Dimetrie walked to a new-looking Mustang together.

  Was Eric taking dance classes, too? He was in great shape, but I’d never seen a ballet dancer who was so muscular.

  I watched as Eric slid into the driver’s seat, and Dimetrie got in beside him. I turned on my engine and joined the parade of vehicles leaving the parking lot, putting a couple of cars between me and the Mustang. Eric turned north toward the center of Wilton Manors, passing the old fifties-style Dairy Queen and rows of small stores.