Chapter 8

In Kansas City, two north-south thoroughfares -- Troost and Prospect -- used to destination streets. Shopping, nightlife, good bars and restaurants. Ladies wore finery, gents sported suits, even top hats.

That was then.

Today, there are incipient signs of rebirth, but the streets are still dangerous at night.

Daddy taught me that ‘serve and protect’ was part of the Job, but that it wasn’t enough in and of itself. “Make a difference in their lives, Winter.” Well, that began to happen for me mostly when I struck out on my own, as a private detective.

Inspired by the heroic work that women like Sister Mary Packer do, I started a personal version of Big Sisters. On the East Side. Poor, sometimes desolate neighborhoods. Troost, east to Prospect, 15 or so blocks.

Mostly poor, mostly black, mostly single, mothers. Young mothers with young daughters. A forgotten, or ignored, population.

Someone called my little effort the East Side Sisters and the name stuck. I started with Peggy Rawlings, then Vanessa Henderson volunteered. Today there are nine of us.

We focus on just the most basic of needs for the girls. A physical checkup with a real doctor. Follow-up visits by a registered nurse. Food vouchers for both healthy food and the occasional fun snacks. No soda though.

Clothes -- enough for fresh outfits -- school and church.

A roving tutor who encourages regular school attendance as much as she checks homework. Emergency funding for things like utilities. A 24 / 7 phone number.

East Side Sisters is earnest, but like with Mary’s shelter, I’m not sure how much good we do. How much of a real difference we make in their lives.

Wedding Week was to begin on the first Sunday in May. Vanessa and I had turned the responsibility for the ceremony, celebration, guest list, flowers, food ... everything over to my mother and Peggy.

They were good at this sort of thing and enjoyed it, especially Mom.

We’d be married in my parents’ house on Meyer Boulevard. The party, weather cooperating, would be outside, in their back yard. The food would be catered, the music would be a sound system, not a live band. The guest list would be small.

Once I signed off on the basic parameters, my part was more or less finished.

The guests of honor -- Sasha and Marina, Vanessa’s grandmother and mother -- would stay at my parents’ house. Now that Mom and Daddy were empty nesters, there was plenty of room. Vanessa gratefully accepted Mom’s invitation to host her only living relatives. They’d probably be more comfortable in a house than in either of our lofts.

Although with all Sasha had been through in her turbulent life, I imagine she could have adapted to any environment. Sasha’s father had been one of six or eight drunken Russian Army men who raped her mother, Veronika. And left her for dead.

Veronika survived and turned to prostitution to put food on the table. Then to give Sasha a chance at a life away from Kiev, away from Russia, she sold her daughter to an American businessman from Milwaukee. A pedophile.

Vanessa not only isn’t bitter about that, she fully approves. “In America, GrandmaMA at least had a chance.”

When Sasha became pregnant, at 14, Mr. Milwaukee either sold or gave her away to a whorehouse madam. This may have been in Chicago, but the family isn’t sure.

So, Sasha was born of rape. Marina was the daughter of a pedophile. Vanessa never said who her own father was, Marina had never married.

Marina, who grew up fluent in English, mostly avoided Sasha’s calling. Vanessa told me, speaking casually about an uncomfortable subject, “MaMA turned tricks for a few years, but stopped when she got to high school. Mostly stopped.”

My god, have I had it easy in comfortable, middle class, Kansas City.

Another revenge porn case. Another pro bono case. This asshole secretly taped himself fucking a married woman. She didn’t dump him, in fact she was enjoying the clandestine fling.

But he posted the sex tape, sent links to her husband, her two teenage children, her parents, her boss, her coworkers, her friends. He included all of her contact information too.

Just because he could.

What I wanted to do was tape him being butt-raped by a vicious gang of bikers. Then return the online favor. Of course that’s just fantasy on my part. Mostly.

Instead, the Sullivan twins and their team managed to get the tape deleted from all five sites. After I had registered it in her name under the copyright law.

But the damage had been done. Her marriage probably wouldn’t survive. Her kids would never look at her the same way. She had to change all of her contact numbers.

She wanted to change her name, move to another state. I understood.

Some people might say it was her own fault. That she got what she deserved for cheating on her husband. Bull Shit.

The porker who ruined her life ... well, I have his contact numbers too. I’ll figure out something. One of these days. Won’t do the wife much good, but I’ll feel a little better about the human condition once I’m finished with him.

Vanessa offered to select our wedding dresses and I was happy to turn over the responsibility to her. She knows more, and cares more, about clothes than I do. By far. It’s not that I’m a frump. It’s just that Vanessa has more style.

Plus, I was busy working during Wedding Week. It happens. Slow times are interrupted by rush jobs, one piled upon another. This month it was mostly insurance cases.

I was working a tough hit-and-run case for State Farm. The victim, a 62-year old great grandmother from Independence was shopping on the Country Club Plaza for a birthday present for her daughter-in-law.

There are a few on-street parking spaces in the 15 square blocks that make up the Plaza, but over 90% of parking is out of sight. There is one parking lot, hidden on four sides, that is tucked behind commercial buildings. The rest of the parking is in garages that are fronted by exquisite, colorful tiles, cast-iron rails and scrolls, sculptures and plants.

It’s the loveliest disguised parking I’ve seen.

The Plaza is so different from typical shopping centers that are, essentially, huge parking lots with stores in the middle.

State Farm’s client, Martha Anderson, had, unfortunately for her, spotted one of the rare street parking spaces. This was one on the north side of Brush Creek Boulevard. One of the major east-west streets in the neighborhood. It was a little after 11 on a sunny Wednesday morning.

Martha, being conscientious, glanced at her sideview mirror before opening her car door. What the police later reconstructed was that a driver in the west-bound left lane suddenly swerved into the right lane just as Martha opened her door. The driver, we would later learn, had been texting.

The driver’s right fender, bumper, and headlight smashed into Martha’s door and slammed it forward into the body. It also shattered Martha’s left arm from the elbow down.

He, or she, not only didn’t slow down, but sped up. Three witnesses turned at the sound of the crash and could agree only that it was a large SUV. Make, color, model ... no one could be sure. Which isn’t that unusual. It happened in a matter of seconds and they were almost in shock at the sudden violence.

No one could testify whether it was a Missouri or Kansas license plate. Of course it could have been from anywhere else, but the odds don’t support that type of initial speculation.

I re-interviewed the three sort-of witnesses, asking different types of oblique questions, hoping that an off-center approach would trigger a faint memory. Nope.

Martha had been rushed to St. Luke’s for emergency surgery. It was only a siren-aided minute or two away. I was able to see her three days after the accident. Although to State Farm and me, it wasn’t an accident, it was a crime.

Martha was still under the influence of some happy pills and didn’t seem to be in too much pain. Her left arm was in a cast which was taped to a body cast. There had been some rib and cartilage damage as her torso had been torqued violently. She was halfway immobile but in good enough spirits. Considering.

She had grandmotherly rouged cheeks and pillowy white hair.

“Catch the cocksucker yet?”

“Not yet. I’m so sorry this happened, Martha. Can you tell me anything, anything at all?”

Surprisingly she could. It had been a woman driver. Martha was 90% sure, she could picture the full mane of hair from the back. “It’s like a flashback, I don’t think I’m imagining it.”

I moved the gender needle from 50% to 60%.

On the Plaza, when there’s an accident, a heart attack, a stove-top fire in an apartment, emergency responders are there in a flash. The Plaza is a civic gem and the city rushes to take care of it. In Martha’s case, it was an ambulance, three police cars, two Plaza Security cars and two fire engines from the KCFD Station 19 on West 43rd Street, just a few blocks north.

From my time on the Job, through Daddy’s connections, with my private credentials, and with the authorization letter from State Farm, I had relatively easy access to police investigators on both sides of State Line.

Paint chips and headlight fragments identified a green Range Rover Sport. Which I learned would be around $80,000 with a few add-ons. This hinted more at Johnson County, fucking Kansas, than my home town.

But even including all of the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area -- over 2,000,000 -- there wouldn’t be that many of those expensive Range Rover Sports.

Now if she, and if it is indeed a she, lives somewhere else, say Alaska, that makes the search a little more challenging. But odds are, she’s from around here.

I couldn’t out-police the police, so I went to my underground connections asking a few colorful in-the-know characters about auto body repair shops that wouldn’t automatically cooperate with the authorities.

I got lucky. I remembered my former client, Eva Martinez, was married to a man who was in the biz. Frank now had four repair shops. And through mutual suppliers, interchangeable workers, the usual gossip mills, he was connected inside the industry.

Eva came along to introduce me to her husband. Frank Martinez had worked himself up from the Argentine in Kansas City, Kansas to Overland Park in the much more affluent Johnson County. I gave him a pass on living in fucking Johnson County because he, Eva, and their three children lived in downtown Overland Park. A pretty cool area, actually.

Frank looked like he came of age wrestling radiators, car hoods, engines. He was thick. Thick shoulders, chest, arms. Solid belly, thick legs. He was about five and a half feet tall. Shorter than his wife, but as handsome as she was pretty.

When I asked, he immediately said, “Ernie Monaro.”

Eva gasped, “Ernie?”

Frank nodded, “He has one of the biggest body shops in Kansas. But he also has two smaller ones. Hidden. Chop shops.”

A lead?

“Can you tell me where they are? It won’t come back to you.”

Frank held out his hand for my cell. I handed him a prepaid which I always carry in my shoulder bag. He typed rapidly and deftly with his thick index fingers. Google Maps.

I thanked him profusely.

“De nada.”

I agreed to meet Eva for coffee as soon as I made three calls. First to my KCPD contact. Then to the Kansas authorities. Finally to State Farm. I gave all of them the two addresses and what little else I knew.

I would be rooting for Mizzou over Kansas, but if it panned out, I’d earn my State Farm money either way. I may despise the state of Kansas, but not enough to miss a significant pre-wedding check.

Eva seemed genuinely glad to see me. And soon I knew why. She wanted to talk. We’d had so many conversations, deeply personal on her part, when she was under the thrall of Dr. Frederick Schultz. Our Freddie.

She looked around for Starbucks eavesdroppers, then plunged right in. “I’m still grateful to you, Winter. Eternally grateful.”

“Did Frank suspect anything when you got back? Freddie was still in the news.”

“No, I had told him, even before we left for California, that my therapist was a woman doctor. Lindsey Conners.”

“Good.”

Eva nodded, then became thoughtful, “He was a monster, Freddie. I knew it at the time but it didn’t really sink in all the way until I saw the coverage. I was enjoying the sex, even knowing how wrong it was, and trying to block out the sick part of it.”

“Naturally.”

Eva took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly. Her faint Latina accent became a little more pronounced, “I really miss the sex, Winter. I got used to it. Hooked on it.”

I remained quiet, one of my best talents.

“So I went back to the Argentine. To the man who had asked me before. I said yes this time.”

It wasn’t a confession, not in the least. Eva, for whatever reason, probably Freddie, didn’t feel she could talk to her college friend, Rebecca Montgomery. And she’d become used to, comfortable with, sharing her most intimate secrets with me.

I listened, heard her out, another talent.

Hey, I’m a full service agency.

Wedding Week was in full swing.

Sasha and Marina, down from Indiana, were comfortably settled in my parents’ Meyer Boulevard home.

Marina, dark hair, model’s angular features, looked much more like Vanessa’s sister than her mother. Sasha, same patrician face, same upright posture, looked like the white-haired grandmother she was. Three Slavic beauties.

Sasha’s English was good and her understanding of it better. But she was still more comfortable in her native tongue. Which was Ukrainian even though it was still Russia by the time she left. And never returned.

I was especially proud of Walker when Vanessa brought Marina and Sasha to our loft for dinner. It was Sasha’s first time in Kansas City. Walker smiled and said some words I didn’t understand in his warmest, most welcoming voice.

Sasha beamed and let out a torrent of rapid-fire sentences in Ukrainian. Walker had said, merely, “Welcome to our home,” but Sasha appreciated the token effort immensely.

Little brown-noser.

He and Mindy heated up a borscht with sour cream and served it with pampushky, a sort of soft garlic bread. That modest course was followed by pierogis stuffed with various fillings and then a delicious lamb roast.

I didn’t know for sure, hadn’t taken the time that Walker and Mindy obviously had to research Ukraine, but the meal was probably a cliché dinner. An American interpretation of a foreign cuisine.

But the thought mattered to Sasha, Marina and Vanessa.

Walker and Mindy, two little brown-nosers.

That Walker had lust in his heart for Marina was not lost on Mindy. Like Vanessa and me, Mindy was amused. Boys.

Now that Mindy is back with Walker, his father doesn’t get to spend as much weekend time with him. But Richie tries. He often takes Walker and Mindy out to lunch or dinner, trying to stay in touch, trying to do the right thing.

He and Vanessa have always gotten along well. While he was married to me and after. Despite dumping me, Richie is basically a good guy. And a pretty damned decent role model for Walker.

Vanessa wants me to keep fucking him after we’re married. But I’m not sure, just not sure.

Daddy is a handsome man, a fact noted by our visitors, Sasha and Marina. He’s a no-nonsense, straight ahead guy. Which the police recognized early on and used him in certain press situations. He has an easy way with most media personalities.

Partly, it’s because he’s intelligent, experienced now, and intuitive. All qualities that serve him well when talking with reporters. He also understands how and when to let something casually slip out. And how to have a colleague leak a tidbit to someone who knows someone.

He once told me, “The press is just another tool in the toolkit. Like fingerprints, DNA. Use what you have.”

And, Daddy is photogenic, looks good in the paper, on TV, online.

But I think a lot of his media success is because he doesn’t care. Unlike many of his bosses, and the career politicians in town, Captain Jennings doesn’t seek the limelight. If his name never came up in public again, that would be fine with him.