The Associate Page 11

  I could hear her puffing away on a cigarette. “What would you like to ask me about Shelly?” she asked. “I’ll tell you anything that you need to know, but I won’t testify in court. Not unless you subpoena me and you pay for my travel. I have no desire to go to Kansas City in the dead of winter, and your investigator, Tom Garrett, told me that the trial was scheduled for December. My tits are freezing just thinking about going there at that time. I left Russia to get away from the cold.”

  I had to stifle a smile as Irina told me about her frozen tits. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t anticipate that you’ll have to testify, but I reserve the right to change my mind. If I issue a subpoena, you’ll be required to attend trial, of course. But I will pay your traveling expenses.”

  She snorted. “Big whoop. You couldn’t pay me enough to go there in December. So I hope that I can tell you what I know and that will be that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What can you tell me about Shelly? How did she come to work for you?”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing about Shelly. She’s a live one. But she never did strike me as a working girl. Her heart wasn’t in it. She specifically wanted to meet some wealthy men in the Los Angeles area, and she specifically was interested in men who were high up in the pharmaceutical business. I don’t judge. I have plenty of wealthy men like that, including men who were CEOs and other kinds of officers working in the pharmaceutical business. I liked Shelly. She was a beautiful girl, great tits and tight little ass, but that wasn’t why I liked her. I liked her because she was whip smart. I knew that I could send her out on dates with wealthy men and that they wouldn’t be offended. She came from that world, too, so that helped. She spoke the language and she had impeccable table manners. That’s what I look for in my girls when they want to date wealthy men – they must have excellent manners, they must look the part – I don’t like my girls to be trashy – they must be extremely intelligent and it helps if they come from wealth. Shelly fit all the bills, so she was very much in demand in that world.”

  “So, you send your girls out to wealthy men. And do they end up taking the girls out, or-“

  “Yes,” Irina said. “I’m not operating a sex ring here. If the man wants to have sex with the girl, she has to, of course. But many of my men don’t even want my girls for sex. They might actually need a date for some kind of function, high society function, or a wedding or something like that. Sometimes they want a girl that they can travel with, because their wives don’t want to travel with them. My girls are not just there for the sex, but they’re also there for companionship. They’re also there because these men need some kind of stress relief, and they’re not demanding like other girls are. These men like my girls because they aren’t trying to trap them into a relationship – they’re only around for these men’s enjoyment. Nothing more and nothing less.”

  I nodded my head, making notes as she spoke. “So, Shelly was interested in meeting people who were players in the pharmaceutical industry. Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. She explained that her father was a big-wheel in the pharmaceutical industry there in Kansas City. Apparently her father never allowed Shelly to go to the industry functions, so she didn’t actually know people in that industry. I thought it was a bit odd that she was so specific, but then I figured that she was looking for somebody like her father. I get that a lot. Lots of girls with daddy issues.”

  “Did she mention the fact that she had a boyfriend? His name is Yasin Ahmadi, and he’s apparently a native of Iraq. He came over here when he was a small child and his parents obtained refugee status. From what I understand, Shelly and Yasin were very much in love for several years. Did she talk about him at all?”

  “No,” Irina said. “She never mentioned a Muslim man. That doesn’t mean that this Yasin wasn’t in the picture. Do you know when she broke up with him?”

  I thought about what Garrett had scribbled in his report to Harper and me. That stood out to me – Garrett had spoke with a number of Shelly’s friends, and her friends all told him that Shelly and Yasin were still together at the time of Shelly’s death. At first, the friends thought that Shelly was only dating Yasin because she wanted to piss off her father. Which she did, of course. She pissed him off but good. Obviously - her father cut her off financially when she started to date Yasin. But her friends soon came to the conclusion that Shelly and Yasin were made for each other. Yasin was Muslim and his parents were from the old country, but he was completely American and liberal. He was observant of the Muslim faith, but he didn’t have the antiquated ideas about women that many Muslim men have.

  That said, Yasin’s father and mother were apparently much more old-school than was Yasin. Abdullah Ahmadi and his wife, Rimsha, had very orthodox views about life. Culturally, according to Garrett, Yasin and his parents couldn’t be more different. Yasin was Westernized – he wore blue-jeans and button-downs, he played video games with his friends and met with his co-workers for beers after work. He listened to rap music as much as he listened to classical music, and he never listened to Traditional Arabic music like his parents did. He and his parents apparently clashed about this, but Yasin didn’t seem to care. He was too busy having fun with his friends.

  That said, according to the report, Garrett indicated that Yasin was observant in the Muslim religion. He had a prayer rug and said his Islamic prayers several times a day. He observed Ramadan and all the Muslim holy days. He even kept the dietary restrictions of the religion. He understood his religion to be one of peace, even though he knew that many Muslims had a more radical view of the Quran. His father was one of the ones who had a radical view of the Quran.

  I wondered how Abdullah and Rimsha felt about Yasin seeing Shelly. And what if they found out about Shelly’s extracurricular activities with the wealthy men in Los Angeles? For that matter, what if Yasin found out about it? Could he have been angry enough to kill Shelly?

  “I don’t think that they did break up,” I said. “As far as I know, Shelly and Yasin were still seeing each other at the time that she died.”

  “Oh, well, there you go. Shelly was seeing these wealthy men behind Yasin’s back and he killed her. Happens all the time, especially with those Muslims. There, I solved the case for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But I’m Erik Gregorian’s lawyer. He’s been charged with Shelly’s murder. I owe it to him to do more than a cursory examination of the likely candidates for her murder. That means that I need to know more from you about Shelly and her relationships with her clients. I understand that she was seeing Wells Armstrong on a regular basis, and that they came back to Kansas City and resumed their relationship. Is that right?”

  “Yes. That is right. Wells Armstrong became one of Shelly’s regular clients, and, by the end of that summer, Wells was her only client. I didn’t mind, because Wells had her more or less full-time, so she was getting paid a lot of money by him to be his escort. That kept the money flowing to me, too, so I let her go ahead and keep seeing Wells and excluding her other men.”

  “Did she explain why she was seeing Wells full time?”

  “No. She didn’t. But I assumed that the two of them hit it off. That happens sometimes, you know. A client becomes infatuated with a girl, and the girl becomes infatuated with the client, and the two of them actually start an actual relationship. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. I assumed that was what happened here. I didn’t know that Shelly also had another man in Kansas City. She never spoke of that.”

  I made notes, but that seemed odd to me. From Garrett’s report, Shelly and Yasin really seemed to be in love. Those friends never even knew that this Wells fellow existed in Shelly’s life. She never spoke of him to her friends. They never met him. She went out with her friends, but always with Yasin in tow, not Wells. Yet supposedly Shelly was also in a relationship with Wells. I wondered if he kept paying her when they got back to Kansas City and Shelly resumed her “normal” life, whatever that meant f
or her.

  “Okay,” I said. “I think that I have the picture of what was going on with Wells and Shelly. Can I ask you just a few more questions?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “As I said, I’m eager to help you over the phone, because I don’t want you to call me as a witness in trial. I hope that we can avoid that at all costs.”

  “I’m not going to make any promises,” I said. “But I’ll certainly try to avoid calling you at trial. Now, I need to know if you have any connections to the Russian mob.” I certainly didn’t think that she would tell me the truth if she did, but I still wanted to get her reaction. “And if you are familiar with a man named Sargis Gregorian.”

  “Sure, sure,” she said, to my surprise. “Not to the question about my having connections to the Russian mob, but to the question about Sargis Gregorian. I know him. Just about everybody knows him here in Los Angeles. He runs a large part of LA, and many of us have to pay him in order for us to work in his territories.”

  My ears perked up. “Are you one of the ones who has to pay him? Are you in his territory?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” she said. “You can take what you will from that answer.”

  “I’m going to take that to mean that you have to pay him,” I said.

  “Listen, that is how it works here in Los Angeles. Sargis makes everybody pay him. Everybody from the lowly guy running a convenience store to people like me who run businesses which are less than legal. And I don’t mind paying him, either. He has most of the LAPD in his pocket, so, I pay him, and he keeps the cops off of my doorstep. I consider that to be getting quite a lot for my money.”

  I cleared my throat. “Would it surprise you to know that Erik is implying that his father might have been behind Shelly’s hiring? That Sargis Gregorian was the one who told my client, Erik, that Shelly was above-board, when she really wasn’t?”

  “So? What are you trying to say here?”

  I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting at. There was something that was nagging me about Irina, especially since I figured out that Irina and Sargis not only knew one another, but were financially connected to each other. “I’m not sure,” I said truthfully. “I don’t really know what I’m getting at. I’m trying to put the puzzle pieces together.”

  “Well, if you ask me, I would look at that Yasin fellow. I know those Muslims and how they treat women. They would consider it a real dishonor to find out that their woman was an escort for wealthy men. It’s always the boyfriend, anyhow, but in this case, I would seriously consider that it’s the boyfriend this time, too.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  I was going to keep both Yasin and his father in mind. Either one of them might have been angered into killing Shelly. But, at the same time, maybe not. It seemed that sabotaging Shelly’s car would be too subtle. I knew about honor killings, which is what this might fall under, and they usually killed the girl outright with a knife. They didn’t go to elaborate means. They just came right out and did it.

  Besides, this wouldn’t be an honor killing, per se. A true honor killing involved a member of the person’s family. Usually the girl would be killed because she had sex with a boy, or even if she was raped. The girls might also be murdered because they renounced the faith, or they refused an arranged marriage or they started to have feminist ideas. I didn’t think that it was customary to kill somebody who was only dating a guy who was from a Muslim family. I really didn’t think that the case of Shelly fell under the auspices of a traditional honor killing.

  I hung up the phone and stared at my notes. I was eager to get with Harper and see what she could tell me after she spoke with Wells. I wondered if the stories would match up. Would Wells admit to the fact that he met Shelly through an “escort service?” Did Wells know about Yasin? If he did know about Yasin, what did he know about him and how much did he know? Did Shelly and Wells have an understanding? Did Shelly and Yasin have an understanding? And what about Irina? She had a monetary relationship with Sargis. Was that significant?

  So many questions, so few answers. My trial strategy was starting to take shape, however. There were enough candidates who might have reason to want Shelly dead that it was going to be fairly easy to steer the jury away from Erik. While I was with Harper – we both thought that Erik was good for the crime – I was encouraged that there appeared to be enough alternate suspects that we could build a decent case.

  I called Harper, and she answered from her car. “Yeah, Damien,” she said. “What did you find out?” Then she groaned. “When are they ever going to coordinate these goddamned traffic lights a little better? I swear to God, I’m sitting her at a red light, and the light ahead of me is green as a Christmas tree. So, when I get up to that light, it’s going to be just turning red. This kind of shit drives me crazy, even after all these years.”

  I heard her humming along to the radio. “I just spoke with Irina,” I said. “I found out some interesting tidbits.”

  “She knows Sargis, doesn’t she?” Harper asked.

  “Well, yeah, and that’s interesting, too. But Shelly went to Los Angeles to sign up with this service specifically because she wanted to meet wealthy men who were highly placed in the pharmaceutical industry.”

  “Hmmmm,” Harper said, drawing out that word. “She specifically wanted to meet wealthy men who were highly placed in the pharmaceutical industry. Out in Los Angeles, specifically. I wonder what’s up with that? Hopefully I’ll find that out when I speak with Wells himself. I hope that he’s able to give me something to go on with this.”

  “I have a feeling that he’s going to. Provide some kind of clarity, that is. In the meantime, I-“

  I looked up and saw that Pearl was peeking her head through the door. “This came for you,” she mouthed, seeing that I was on the phone. “I mean, it came for Harper. But it looks pretty important, so I need for you to review it.”

  It was a FedEx package. I examined it while I spoke with Harper, wondering what it was. It was a box that wasn’t very large at all – it was the size of a ring box, maybe just a bit larger.

  “You what?” Harper asked. “I’m sorry, you cut off in mid-sentence just now.”

  I had lost my train of thought. “I forgot what I was going to say to you.” Usually, when I forget what I was about to say, I try to fill the conversation with small talk. That usually got me back on track. “In the meantime, I’ll be seeing you tonight for dinner. I’ll bring the dessert.” For me, bringing dessert usually meant that I would go to the Hen House, which was a grocery store near where I lived in Leawood, and pick up a pie. But, for tonight, I actually special ordered a Tiramisu from Dean and Deluca, which was a gourmet grocer that was across the street from that Hen House. I didn’t want to go too cheap for Harper.

  “Yes. Bring the dessert. I’ll see you at 7.”

  We hung up.

  I never did remember what I was going to tell Harper.

  Chapter 15

  I tore open the FedEx package and saw a small portable drive inside. I immediately put the drive into the USB port on my computer and booted it up.

  There, on the screen, was Shelly. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and she was fresh-faced. This was the first time that I had actually seen the girl, except for in pictures in the newspaper after she died. Other than, of course, her gruesome death photo.

  I was struck by her beauty. She had creamy skin, big blue eyes and a tiny frame. She was dressed in a t-shirt that said “I’m not always rude and sarcastic. Sometimes I’m asleep.” I had to smile just a little at that. Even though she looked the part of the sorority girl, she seemed to have the fuck-you attitude that I always found appealing.

  She was staring at the screen and she shook her head from side to side for a few seconds. Then she bit her lower lip.

  I soon realized that this was a video diary. She stated the date as August 9 of the previous year, so this video diary was presumably filmed over a year ago. “There’s not much to tell,”
she said. “My dad is a fuck-head, as usual, but I don’t give a shit about that anymore. He seems to have a problem with Yasin. I mean, of course he has a problem with Yasin. That’s the reason he won’t pay for the rest of my schooling. I’m in my last year, and I want to go to NYU and get my master’s, but it looks like I’ll have to be paying for that on my own. Thank God I got that job last summer. That was a pretty lucrative job, too, paid very well. I’ll have my tuition and books and apartment and everything else I need this year, and I’ll be paying it all out of pocket. I don’t need him or his money.” Then she raised her eyebrow. “And it looks like I’ll have to keep on working that job if I’m going to make a go of Yasin and me. He just found that he’s been accepted into medical school at UMKC. He wants to get married, but his parents don’t exactly approve of the two of us, either. I’ll have to be the breadwinner for a little while, because I don’t want Yasin to have to go into too much debt.”

  I made notes as she spoke. So far, she was confirming a few theories that I had about her. Specifically, I now knew exactly why she was working as a call girl. She wanted to marry her Yasin and support him while he went through medical school. Since her parents cut her off, and his parents apparently did the same, she was going to have to make money. Lots of money. Yet, she was a journalist, working for the Kansas City Star. That surely didn’t pay much money. I had to wonder why she chose that field if she was going to have to make enough money to support both herself and Yasin while Yasin attended medical school.

  I then wondered if she kept doing her call-girl routine in Kansas City. Was she working as a call-girl at night? Yasin was presumably very busy as a first-year medical student. It was likely that he wouldn’t even notice if she went out at night to meet men. Maybe she was working as a call girl while she was working for The Star. All while infiltrating Erik’s clan as a computer hacker. If that was the case, she was a busy girl indeed.