Chapter 22. The Hornet's Nest (November 15,1987)

Ryan spun in his chair childlike several turns. He could do that at home where no one could accuse him of insanity. After several complete rotations, he stopped abruptly to let the dizzy run around in his head. He believed the answers might come if he cleared his mind and checked all the motives… if not Anna’s, his own. She would have been able to tell him about how deep in this shit she was involved had she not had a motive.  And now she was still protecting the identity of whoever it was behind it. He knew about Yuri but wasn’t clear about whose muscle Yuri was. It was two days after finding Perry's body and he didn't know where to go with what he had.

The Bratva, or Russian Brotherhood, underground since Tsarist times, had begun to flex overtly during Glasnost in new banking and private, semi-legit, business enterprises. Some saw the train wreck coming. Most were middle and upper management officers in the KGB and the Spetsnaz (Russian version of Special Forces). Their involvement in Afghanistan blew the lid off any semblance of restraint as some there saw opportunity to exploit the fruits of the Black-Market trade from the opium fields of that desolated country.

Ryan wondered whether it did go as far as snuff-films. He was compelled to play it safe because, from what Casey had shared of this Yuri character, this case was dynamite and could easily be buried in the shadows where no one dared to look without extreme consequences.

Everything about Santa Barbara was run as a small town with ambitions to be a real city. Anything that might disturb that image for the Chamber of Commerce was swept away with the confetti after Fiesta before the sun came up the next morning. A crime involving anything more nefarious than a street crime was hung on the most convenient suspect and tucked away in the archives and that ended all investigation unless it was a celebrity that grabbed headlines. A pop-star accused of child molestation would, of course, send the elected DA into high campaign gear so that his face would be on the evening news with nation-wide coverage. The sort of thing that was going on under their noses with this one was too complex and too seedy to soil Santa Barbara pristine appearance.

The body of a cab driver on Camino Cielo, and that of a prostitute discovered in the basement on Canon Perdido, had the makings of was an S&M sex game gone wrong and a possible mob hit. This was juicy stuff and Ryan was grateful none of it had made the evening news yet. These kinds of scandals would normally make all the headlines but there were powerful forces tamping down any of his efforts to shed light on it even within the corridors of the department. It had all the elements of a good front page story: i.e., murder, prostitutes, and sex games. The local press and broadcast news outlets basically echoed press releases from the Sheriff and Police Departments. The extent of investigative journalism, locally and nationally, was merely to edit them for entertainment purposes. None could afford to have real investigative journalists nosing around and pissing off their sources. None-the-less he wondered why the DA’s office wasn’t hot on this case.

Ryan wasn’t familiar with the Russian Bratva criminal activities beyond, credit card scams, and small-time extortion of businesses in Brighton Beach weren’t that big of a deal to anyone. The sex trade, arms dealing, and heroin from Afghanistan weren’t as immanent as the Mexican Cartels flexing muscle in border towns back then.

The detective had heard of snuff films but hardly believed they were anything more than urban legends. He thought that no matter how murderous these thugs from the Soviet Union were, snuff films were not to their taste. Whoever it was, thought that Perry had something to do with exposing the operation. They were right about Perry because it was his tip that led to the discovery of the dungeon and the body. Ryan knew how all criminal organizations eliminate snitches in their midst. Suspicion was enough to take out Anna and Kraszhinski to cover all bases.

He held pictures of Bob and Doc a few minutes before he pinned them to his corkboard. A Montecristo sat unlit in front of him on a conspicuously large brass ashtray. He picked it up, clipped the end, and moistened it in a loving ritual he’d observed since his active duty years in Havana. Lighting it and, after a few brief puffs, he held the smoke in his mouth without inhaling. Sometimes he wondered how every cigar was unique but possessed the same spirit that arose from the plantation soil of Cuba.

He reflected on his Imelda, of the mesmerizing, exotic, Mambo rhythms of his first assignment with the Navy before the Revolution in the streets Barrio of Habana Vieja. He was thick and stout, she was a head taller, lithe, and with hips. They were Mutt and Jeff on the dance arena but it mattered less to her or her friends that he was whiter than white. Cuba was divided by class and not by race. A revolution was in the air and anyone that awakened in the Barrios by the music of the congas, the Rumba, and Samba, knew it.

It occurred to him that she left him because she loved him… before the revolution would surely sweep him up and put him against a wall. He slipped a cassette into the small stereo under his desk. He inhaled but a taste of smoke and stood to the syncopated ta-ta, ta-tunga-ta beat of a Bolero Rumba… he longed for and imagined the warm swaying syncopation of Imelda’s hips and brown arms swinging in front of him. He forgot his troubles and stepped an awkward two/four to the present moment. A second more disturbing thought… hell, he hadn’t gotten laid in two… or, was it three years?

The cigar had gone out by the time he sat, mind refreshed by the medicine of the Rumba. The vision of Yuri and a dark figure in the shadows above holding puppet strings to Doc, Bob, Anna, Crash, and another on the side, came to him. Who was the dark figure? Who did the puppeteer control in the PD or DA office?

The cab company’s Sun City Transportation accounts could be checked but Ryan suspected Doc’s real bank appointment might have been a hidden one. Investigations of illegal enterprises adhered to the Watergate admonition to “follow the money” up to the puppeteer or puppeteers.

He was cruising down the main surface road through Goleta towards Santa Barbara when he saw the red Jaguar cross Hollister from a side street and onto Auhay Street. It was from the Juvenile Detention Facility. Curious, he tailed the Jag from far enough away. The Jag stopped at the Seventh Day Adventist Church parking lot. Ryan turned into the driveway of a house with a realtor sign posted on what was once a lawn across the street from where he had a clear visual contact. He could also see what looked like the profile of a young girl in the car. She must be why he was at the Juvie.

Doc got out of the Jaguar as though he was pausing to think or waiting for someone. A plain sedan, the kind the DEA uses, entered from the other side. Ryan recognized Yuri through his binocular… the same Yuri Casey told of snooping around the Harbor. Doc’s posture… body language was submissive. Ryan got glimpses of his lips that appeared to coincide with a shirking of shoulders saying, “I don’t know.” Yuri’s back was to Ryan but his frame was such that it could be seen to be dominating if not threatening. Yuri made the girl get in the back seat of his car. Ryan decided that he would follow Yuri and let Doc go wherever he wished.

Yuri’s sedan sped away into the back gate to Hope Ranch at a pace Ryan found hard to tail without giving himself away. Such an operation took team work to avoid being seen and Ryan was ever so much alone. His instincts already forewarned the possibility Yuri was a pro and would know he was being tailed regardless

. 

Hope Ranch is an area of hills and arroyos that was once the domain of some large estates. Most had been subdivided into a compact array of min-mansions hidden away on shady winding tree lined roads plopped down in the midst of live oak groves on one or two acre lots. There were still a few of the decaying older estates, with several acres for vast lawns and gardens, horse stables and corrals, and long-assed driveways. But Hope Ranch’s glory days had been over for decades. Even back then, the old money of Montecito had once looked down their noses at the Nuevo Riche of Hope Ranch before its own manors had likewise been subdivided. Now both were beginning to be occupied by the Nuevo-Nuevo Riche of the Dot-Commies in the eighties and nineties.

Hope Ranch is unincorporated, having its own private security with the power of arrest in lieu of the County Sheriff patrolling its streets. They were visible at times ticketing Looky-Lous passing through on the main road, Las Palmas, to and from Hendry’s Beach. He almost lost the Jag until, on a whim, he drove up Via Roblada where the last of a few huge estates were tucked away. He drove past one of the long drives that went past a guardhouse straight towards the ocean to a compound. The red Jag was at the gatehouse. Ryan kept driving. It would be too conspicuous to stop.

His pilot’s license qualified him on two engine craft and helicopters. Though Ryan owned neither, he belonged to a flying club that kept and maintained a half dozen aircraft for its members. He would check out the twin engine Beechcraft the club owned before going downtown. The hangers were only a few miles west of Hope Ranch.

It was another hour after filing a flight plan and checking out the craft before Ryan was in the air. As he flew a half mile out along the coast he circled in at the lowest legal altitude where he could see the red Jag. It stood-out leaving the main buildings of the complex towards the street. Surveillance from the air told him nothing except that Doc  had spent a considerable amount of time at the estate... and it was most probable that the young girl was still there too. He thought his time would be better spent to find out from County records who owned the property… or, what the fuck, he’d buzz the complex and see if he could raise some hell.

He got back to the hanger to find a complaint had been filed against him for flying too low over a residential area in the name of a certain billionaire, Anton Smerdyakov. People that did business with him called him The Stench… but never to his face. He had some sort of skin condition. His medications accounted for the odor.

Ryan took another hour at the flight office explaining himself and filling out the forms to contest the complaint. He knew it was a double-edged sword because Smerdyakov would then know who the crazy asshole was that buzzed the property. It was worth it to find out a little bit more about the stench coming from Hope Ranch and that obligated him to check out the Juvenile Facility to find out who was the girl and why she'd been released to Doc.

Back at his apartment the phone rang. Ryan expected it to be Lopez. His expectations were met.

“What are you doin’, buzzing Hope Ranch, Ryan? That was completely irresponsible. Bad PR to fuck around with these people.”

“I was at legal altitude and at least five hundred yards out from the shore over the Ocean.”

“Bullshit Ryan. The complaint says you flew at tree-top over their property!” Lopez began his tirade shouting, “That’s two complaints in less than a week!”

Ryan held the phone a good distance from his ear until there was a pause. No sense in arguing so he cut in apologetically, “Okay, okay… maybe I did. I’m on leave, remember. The Department isn’t responsible for what I do on vacation.”

“I thought you were taking your boat to Mexico.”

“Maybe I already have. Putting her in dry dock as we speak. Scrape some barnacles. New paint job. It’s cheaper there.” Ryan was sure Lopez had no idea about The Sherlock’s location and that he would be trying to find out. Ryan wasn’t sure, however, whether it was idle curiosity or if the Lieutenant was probing on someone else’s’ behalf. “Why do you care?”

“No reason, just hoping you’re resting and enjoying some time off.” Then Lopez showed his hand, “Say, speakin’ of time off, that Kraszhinski fuck has fallen off the face of the earth. You got any ideas on that?”

“Naw, last I saw him he was shit-faced on State Street. Could be in any gutter.”

“And that whore, what’s her name again?”

“You know goddamned well what her name is, Lopez. You wanted me to take some time off and now to do all your work for you while I’m on vacation. Make up your mind.”

“No, Ryan. You’re a good man. I hate to see you ruin your career. You’ll lay off it if you know what’s good for you.”

“Now, why’s that a problem for you, Lopez,” Ryan hung up the phone and shook his head in disgust “… that I don’t know what’s good for me?”

It was a hornet’s nest just waiting to be stirred… Ryan decided he needed to have a drink, A stiff one. The Tee Off on Upper State Street was far enough from downtown that he might not have to run into anyone else from the Barn. The best prime ribs could be had there and the bartender, Peter, made all his drinks strong enough to be called a double anywhere else. Ryan would have preferred a prime rib instead of a drink but for the Doctor’s orders. The Doctor didn’t want him to drink either but it didn’t matter that day. He was the only patron at the bar enjoying the solace of his date with a when Rogers came in the door and sat next to him.

“Say, Ryan, thought you were in Mexico banging that whore. She’s a person of interest now you know.”

Ryan would have punched him then but held back. Always working the case it was in his best interest to keep from getting personal, “Which case do you mean Rogers, the cabbie or the dungeon?”

“The cabbie belongs to County. The dungeon is ours. You think they’re connected?”

Ryan held back again. He wanted to slap this little shit a few times if only to get some respect. Rogers was everything Ryan hated about a certain breed of police … those who have the ambition to climb the ladders of bureaucracy but serve no one but themselves. He saw them everywhere in Government no matter whether it was a local police precinct to Congress and the White House. They were critters that crept into every niche of the Pentagon during the Vietnam Clusterfuck. Give the cockroaches, easily stepped on, a little authority or a badge and watch them morph into giant carnivorous rats.  Mean-spirited contempt mixed with a portion of bluff and bluster was mistaken for courage and they often confused wit and cleverness for wisdom, and acumen. Rogers would have never been so impudent before he knew Ryan was on the ropes at the Department.

Ryan was at the age where he no longer cared one way or the other about the ambitions of people like Rogers. Young and brash, they always go for the head shot but that leaves an opening at the gut where older men like Ryan patiently slugged away at it until his opponent caved in for the knockout blow. Rogers just figured Ryan was too old for the job and that his old fashioned ethos got in the way of his advancement. Therefore, he was stuck where he was and would never get as far in the PD as a young buck like himself and that was the measure of success for men like Rogers. Solving cases was only a means towards that goal.

Ryan also knew that he lived in a brave new world where the wise don’t win wars. This generation never defeated an enemy, they preferred to assimilate them. Culture was no longer relevant and history had become little more precise than gossip about the past. Any attempt at rational discourse or opposing vies were shouted down or belittled as "Just more bullshit" at its best and demonized otherwise. He could see a time coming when the opinion pages of the newspapers were moved to the front page and passed off as objective journalism. This trend would not have bothered Ryan except that it seems to have infected every institution from the Supreme Court to minor criminal investigations. It had little to do with liberal ideas vs conservative ones to him but rather that it placed personality and emotional appeal above any kind of scientific or honest inquiry.