V

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY

When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

SAN FRANCISCO

I’M SITTING IN A u-shaped booth in the back corner of Dahlia’s Lounge, a swank cocktail bar in Mission, with a half-finished cosmo in hand that perfectly matches my Valentino Garavani Crepe Couture mini dress. Across from me is a short, bald man in his fifties, with a weak chin he’s trying desperately to hide under a thin beard. He’s nervous and fidgety, making his words occasionally crash into one another as they rush out of his mouth.

He says, “I just wanted to thank you again for taking the time to sit down for this interview. My editor is ecstatic you said yes. Do you mind?”

He places his phone on the table. An audio recording app is on screen. He waits for me to agree before hitting the button.

After taking a sip I say with a smile, “Of course. Anything for Fortune magazine.”

A week ago my assistant received an email from Fortune. They wanted to do a spread on a hot bossy gender-fluid strong woman running one of the largest nonprofits in the world. It writes itself.

His name is Leo Schwartz. I read a few of his past articles. They were good. Not great. He was new to the magazine without even a picture on his bio.

After pressing record he sits back into the leather cushion with a notepad and pen to jot down some notes. He’s not drinking alcohol. He doesn’t have to. This is a career highlight. He’s practically bursting out of his pants with excitement.

“When did you first arrive in America?”

I sit my drink down while thinking back. “June of 2021. I can’t remember the exact day off the top of my head. I remember seeing my half-brother on television a few weeks later win the UPRISING world championship.”

I remember that very well. The match was on the television in Tibor Petrov’s suite when I cut his throat and watched him bleed to death on his couch. He had it coming for years after everything he put my father through.

Leo scribbles down a few lines.

“And you debuted with UPRISING…in July the following year?”

“Yes,” I answer.

He looks up from his paper. “So what did you get up to for thirteen months?”

An amused chuckle slips through my lips. The insides of my eyeballs turn into mini movie theaters screening wonderful memories of me strangling a man with a garotte, beating a woman to death with a baseball bat, kicking a priest chained to a concrete block overboard and watching him sink into the murky depths of the Gulf of Mexico…

All of them were D-List names on Spiral’s List. Opponents he had faced in various promotions over the years that stuck in his crawl. No one particularly interesting to namedrop, other than that one guy who looked like Brad Pitt and could NOT shut up all the way down the kiddie slide before it dumped him into the wood chipper.

“I hitchhiked across the country with little more than pocket change, going from town to town. Along the way I’d run into someone who needed help and I’d take care of whatever problems ailed them, then I’d be on my way to the next stop.”

He says sarcastically, “Like David Banner?”

“More like Jack Reacher. With tits.”

He nearly chokes on his water from laughing. “That’s…that’s good. I won’t include that in the article but—”

“You should. It’ll make a great headline. Yelena Gorgo: Jack Reacher with Tits.”

He shakes his head while giving me an amused look under his brow. “Okay, so you join UPRISING, and at that time no one knows you’re the daughter of Niels Gram—”

SPIRAL.

“—or the half-sister of his son, Nathan Grey. Better known to the world as Jack Moreau.”

“Newp.”

“But over time people began to suspect.”

“I laid it on pretty thick. The rumor started on the internet and grew from there until I officially revealed it in an interview.”

He twirls the pen in his hand in thought. “At that point, your brother was the sole beneficiary of your father’s estate.”

“Yes. Dear Ol’ Dad felt bad having never been a part of Nathan’s life, so that was his way of making up for it, I suppose.”

LIAR screams in my head.

“But you had a relationship with your father, right?”

“Yes, I spent large portions of my childhood with him. Either he would come visit me in Moldova or I’d go stay with him in Denmark over the summers.”

“Yes. I’ve already worked up the background on your relationship with your father, so let’s skip ahead a bit. Your brother inherited your father’s estate and that included the Niels Gram Foundation, a charity your father started while he was still alive. Some people at the time suggested it was a ploy to earn back some good will after his, now these aren’t my words, ‘sordid past.’”

“Not true,” I say. “He was a deeply caring man, and he wanted to give back something to the world after he found out about the cancer. It was born from a place of absolute unselfishness.”

More like money laundering.

“And when your brother inherited the estate, he was given the keys to the kingdom, so to speak.”

“Yes.”

“And renamed the foundation after his mother, Jacqueline Moreau.”

My eyelid involuntarily twitches when I hear that name. He notices.

“I’d prefer not to talk about that,” I say before taking a long drink.

“Nice,” I hear my Dark Half say from the next table. She’s sitting in a chair, a perfect copy of me but grungy and wet, like she was just dragged out of the bay. She gives me a double thumbs up.

“I understand,” Leo says. “Sore subject. Let’s move ahead. At any point did you and Nathan sit down and talk about a role for you in the company your father created?”

“No. Nathan was hesitant to accept me as his sister, which was understandable, and quite frankly I had no desire to be part of the company or have any say in how my father’s money was used.”

“Liar, liar pants on fire,” the Other Me shouts with her hands cupped around her mouth.

“I don’t care, I don’t care, I can buy another pair,” I say to her.

Leo looks up. “What?”

Fuck, did that one slip out? The Other Me bursts with laughter.

“Oh, nothing. Some song that’s been stuck in my head all day. Don’tcha hate that?”

“He does NOT believe you,” she says while tipping her chair backward, balancing precariously on the hind legs, until she loses her balance and crashes to the floor while cackling like a hyena.

“Okay,” he says before clearing his throat. “Your brother was in a horrible accident in November of 2021 when he was hit by a bus in Las Vegas. His injuries were serious and he nearly died.”

“His heart actually stopped in the ambulance and again at the hospital. So technically he did die—twice.”

“And at that point you assumed control of the foundation.”

“My brother had, without my knowledge, added me to his will a month prior. His lawyer was already at the hospital when I arrived. He informed me that I had power of attorney per the revised will.”

“That must have come as a shock.”

“I was surprised. We had never had a single private conversation but there’s something to be said about blood, isn’t there? He didn’t care for me but he knew we were tied together. He certainly didn’t want to leave it to his adoptive brother.”

“So after Nathan recovered, why didn’t he resume control of the foundation and his finances? The public has not seen or heard from him since the accident.”

This conversation is quickly starting to lose my interest. I didn’t realize recapping my entire professional life would be so tedious. Usually talking about myself ranks rather high on my list of preferred activities but this seems to be less about me and more about the shit that has happened around me.

“The traumatic brain injury has left him severely disabled,” I say after a sigh. “He requires around the clock care and is unable to properly communicate.”

“Nathan then still is technically the largest shareholder in the foundation and its subsidiaries, as well as the name on his finances, having survived the accident.”

“Technically.”

“Making you what, exactly?”

“I have legal custodianship over him and his finances, making me the obvious successor to his position in the foundation as CEO and chair. The board has been very happy with my contributions.”

“Your first of which was erasing the name Jacqueline Moreau, Nathan’s birth mother, from the foundation and rechristening it after your father.”

There’s that eye twitch again.

“It was my father’s foundation,” I say, starting to lose my patience with the tone this interview has taken. “The name should never have been changed to begin with. Where are we going with this?”

My Dark Half says from the peanut gallery, “I don’t like him. He’s a sneaky one.”

Leo holds up a finger before digging into his messenger bag. He takes out a manilla folder like this is an episode of Law & Order, places it on the table and spins it around in front of me.

“Do you like stereograms?”

I look at him confused as that nervous way he initially talked and acted slips away like a costume.

He says, “They are two dimensional images that create optical illusions, tricking the brain into seeing a three dimensional picture.”

“I know what a stereogram is. I don’t know what this has to do with your article.”

“I love them,” he says with an impish little grin. “Even as a kid I loved discovering the mysteries hidden in the chaos. You might say that, in part, led me to my profession.”

“A reporter?”

“Not quite.”

He opens the folder. The first page is a picture of my brother, Nathan, comatose in the hospital with dozens of tubes sticking out of him, along with a copy of his chart from the night of his accident.

My Dark Half leans over my shoulder with me and we both shout, “What the fuck?”

Eyes around the bar briefly dart in our direction. Leo waves a hand and says, “I take no pleasure showing you this picture but I think it’s necessary to find the answer in the chaos.”

“If you print this picture I will destroy you and your rag.”

He looks down at his hands, then back up before saying. “Do I really strike you as someone who works for Fortune Magazine? I’m wearing clothes I bought at Walmart this morning.”

“Who are you?”

“Ari Katz: Private Detective from Florida, duly licensed in all forty five states including this one.”

My eyes could not roll back any harder.

“I think that is my cue to leave.”

He turns the page and in an instant I’m driven back down into my seat. A black and white photo shows Tibor Petrov—Russian mobster turned CIA informant, the man whose words single handedly sent my father away to rot in an insane asylum—dead on a couch where I left him with evidence markers and investigators swarming in the background.

“It’s funny,” he says, bemused, “how so many people connected with you or your father have ended up dead.”

He turns another page.

“Or missing.”

It’s a newspaper article from the Times-Picayune detailing the disappearance of former New Orleans homicide detective turned true crime author Alexandra Dupin. Her body is still rotting under my father’s Garden District mansion.

The article even mentions her investigation into daddy and his suspected role in the death of Jacqueline Moreau. Yes, that Jackie Moreau. Nate’s bitch mother.

I’m fucking pissed. Mostly at myself. I had been so careful, yet Dick Tracy here has put so many pieces together. How did he even get those pictures? The one of Nathan had to come from his former lawyer, taken before I got to the hospital. I’ll be paying him a visit.

The snap of Petrov is a police photo from the investigation. He must have paid a pretty price for that. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I enjoyed seeing him again limp and cold on the sofa.

The Other Me grabs a nearby chair and plops it down in front of the table for a front row view.

“I wish I had popcorn. Hell, I wish I could eat popcorn!”

To Ari I say, “Are you insinuating that I had something to do with this woman’s disappearance? Or the dead man on the couch? Or my brother getting hit by a bus? You give me too much credit.”

Granted, I did do the first two. Nathan getting hit by the bus was more luck than anything.

“You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all coincidence. Tibor Petrov was a Russian oligarch who fled his own country after the mob figured out he was leaking information to INTERPOL, the CIA, and anyone else willing to pay. He had a list of enemies a mile long.”

He leans on one elbow while stroking his beard. “And Dupin? Women go missing all the time in New Orleans. You know, it’s interesting though. Both of these cases have two things in common. The first is that both are connected directly to your father.”

“And the second?”

“Petrov loved prostitutes, and around the time of his death he was visited by a Ukrainian woman. It was hard to make out her face in the footage, but she was quite tall and fit. Curiously, the night before Dupin disappeared, she was seen at a book signing speaking to a woman that was described by several eyewitnesses as Amazonian, who apparently spoke Russian and had a thick accent.”

He flashes his teeth. “Your grandfather was Russian, yes? Did you pick up a bit of the mother language from him?”

“I don’t speak Russian.”

I do.

“Nor do I have an accent.”

We must kill moose and squirrel! I’d like to thank the academy.

My Dark Half jumps up and yells, “I MUST BRRREAK YOU.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “Again, coincidences do happen. Two deaths don’t mean much, and you weren’t even in Vegas when your brother was hit by that bus, so it’s not like you kicked him off the curb…but then there’s this.”

Another page turn. Another newspaper clipping. What is this, a bad 1990s whodunit? Did he really print all this out?

“Vanessa Byrne, a healthy woman in the prime of her life, tragically died from COVID in 2023, less than twenty four hours after the onset of symptoms, and only a few days after she threw a costume party at her house here in San Francisco. A house you now own. And isn’t it funny? I spoke to ten people who attended that party, and every one of them remembers Vanessa speaking with someone matching your description.”

It was Yelena Gorgo, in the study, with a cigarette spiked with palytoxin toxin.

“She tested negative for COVID at the hospital but the diagnosis was assumed based on her symptoms. She only lasted two hours after they put her on a ventilator. Curiously, she also was tied to your father as the former owner of a wrestling promotion your dad worked for in 2019. I was told their professional relationship soured quite a bit before abruptly ending. Your dad never wrestled again. Shortly after he was diagnosed with glioblastoma.”

Byrne, Dupin and Petrov, all three names on my father’s list which he gave to me before the cancer took him. He marked all three for death (or worse).

“Alright, Mr. Kats,” I say before downing the rest of my cosmo. “I think that is enough story time for me. You can think what you want but the thing about stereograms is that, most of the time, your mind is inventing the picture in the chaos. Someone yells out they see a sailboat in the collage of colors, and all of a sudden everyone else does.”

“I get it,” he says. “Honestly, I don’t care about any of these people.” He closes the folder and slides it away before shoving it back in his bag. “Couldn’t care less. What I do care about is Estaban Farre.”

Mari’s grandfather. The guy I tortured to death in an abandoned slaughterhouse for a week before he finally croaked.

The Other Me leans over and says, “Don’t play ignorant. He already knows.”

She’s right.

“Duh.”

I say to the detective with a groan. “Mari’s grandfather? What about him?”

“So you know who he is.”

“Of course I do. Why do you?”

“His brother called me up a couple weeks ago. He says Esteban came to the States to visit his granddaughter. The two were exchanging calls initially but then Esteban stopped answering his phone. Next thing you know, another week passes. He called the motel Esteban was staying at and no one had seen him. He had vanished. Poof. Leaving all his belongings in the room.”

“Tragic.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Truth be told, the brother even admitted Esteban is a bit of a bastard, but nonetheless, I was hired, and so I’m going to do everything in my power to find Esteban. Or at least find out what happened to him.”

“So let me guess. Now you’re presuming that I’m behind Esteban’s disappearance, too. Next you’ll pin me down as the Zodiac Killer and D.B. Cooper.”

His lips curl like a jackal. “I know that he visited Mari. I know this because her assistant told me. Mari has so far resisted meeting with me with various excuses.”

“She is a busy busy bee.”

“Did she tell you that he came to see her?”

“Yes.”

“What was the nature of the conversation?”

“You can ask her, if you can con her into a fake interview like you did me.”

“Fair enough.”

He takes a drink of his water before shoving his notebook into his bag and sticking his pen into the pocket of shirt. He reaches for his phone. I thought about smashing it or accidentally spilling his water on it, but that’s a bridge too far in such a public place. Besides, he might have someone here with him watching or even recording us on video.

He stops himself from ending the recording. “Oh, one last question. What were you doing out in Montura?”

My stomach drops. Montura is the town where I took Estaban. The shuddered Montura Ranch is where we spent our final days together with him strapped to an offal cart in a defunct meat processing plant.

“Excuse me?”

“When digging through your foundation’s, I mean your brother’s foundation’s records, I found a receipt for payment to Wells Fargo to reserve Montura Ranch for a period of one month.”

The anger seeps out of my skin like sweat under the hot sun. “How did you get that? That’s an internal document. What little shit have you’ve been greasing with your bullshit lies? We are building a data center. It was one of the locations we are looking at.”

“A data center.”

“That’s what I fucking said, Art.”

“Ari.”

“Whatever.”

“A data center—in the middle of bum fuck Florida, a stone’s throat away from swampland.”

“Time to go,” my Dark Half says. “I think we’ve gotten our ass kicked enough for one night.”

Fuck me.

I slide out of the booth. Not in a tissy, but casually. Don’t give him any more ammo. I stand from the seat and look down at him while hooking my purse over my shoulder.

“Mr. Kats, I’ve entertained your dog and pony show but if I am going to get fucked, I’d rather it be from someone much better looking than you.”

“Ouch,” he says half-heartedly while picking up his phone.

The Other Me pats me on my shoulder and says, “Well done. You really showed him.”

I leave the cocktail bar and start walking north on Mission. My exterior is as cool as the brisk night, but inside I’m in turmoil. My stomach is in knots. I don’t know what to do.

“I do,” my Dark Half says, skipping along next to me like a child. “We fucking kill him.”

“Obviously,” I say with a huff.

“But first we find out any and everyone he has told about us and we wring their necks like chickens until they can’t squawk-squawk and cluck-cluck. Then we destroy every document he has on us. THEN we fucking kill him in the most horrible, fucked up way possible!”

I’m Yelenea Gorgo and I endorse this message.

The following excerpt was posted on THESPIRALEFFECT.NET

OH TONY YOU’RE SO FINE
Posted: 08/31/2024

Don’t tell PETA but he POOCH was almost screwed.

We’ve been so busy lately. Business is great. Money rolling in. We’re the toast of the town! And our love life? Let’s just say Azzy has spent more time with Yelena’s hand inside of her than a vaudevillian ventriloquist puppet.

Suffice to say, Yelena has been distracted and we must admit, our interest in this little game has waned.

But then something happened only yesterday that reminded us of why we do this, and we realized what it was that we were missing: an antagonist.

Someone to grind our gears. Someone to sizzle the grizzle in our bizzle. A face we want nothing more than to punch. A set of eyes we dream of tearing out and sticking in a jar of formaldehyde. A pretty neck to squeeze and squeeze and SQUEEZE until it pops!

And wouldn’t you know it? He’s been right in front of us the whole time.

Tony, we’ve never formally met. Hi, we’re Gorgo. We’ve traveled in similar circles but always just out of reach. Don’t mind our nosism. It’s a thing we do when we’re in the groove.

We don’t have anything against you, per se. You’re a great wrestler, you show a lot of creativity in the ring and outside of it, and you’re obnoxiously likable. You’re not our cup o’ tea in the looks department but with the right regime of hormones, you could really be a hot piece of ass.

You could even change your name to Tony Two Tits.

Now THAT’S what we call marketing.

But there is one thing that curdles our milk: it’s how you treated Datura.

You showed your true colors, Mr. Tough Guy. You wanna go out there and snarl and smash us bad guys to get your cheap little reactions from the mouth breathers. Is it because we deserve it?

Sure we do.

But we don’t think you’re motivated by such a simple premise better suited for the next MCU entry.

You’re a narcissist, bucko. Trust me, we can smell our own. You’re looking at the all time leader in that category. The only difference is Yelena does’t parade around in her vanilla life pretending to be something else.

What was it you said a few months back? “Anything and EVERYTHING in life requires you to sell yourself.”

That’s you in a nutshell, Tony Two Tits. That’s where our similarities end. We ain’t selling shit, baby cakes. We aren’t sitting at the life equivalent of a sweaty convention hall hoping all the good little boys and girls buy enough autographs to fund our next X exclusive photoshoot to power our engagement farm. We’ll leave that level of prostitution to you.

The reprisal for the way you treated Datura, the disrespect you showed her, has been a long time coming—like a sad housewife who’s not had a property shag since Queen Elizabeth was still giving Prince Philip reacharounds (to use the parlance of your countrymen).

We’ll have more to say in Tampa. See you soon.