INTERLUDE

ARI KATZ: PRIVATE DICK

I followed my obsessions too long. I’m their slave…and one day they’ll choose to destroy me.
— Nikola Tesla, The Prestige

SAN FRANCISCO

“SHE’S A KILLER,” KATZ says emphatically. “A certified nut job. I’m telling you this is someone you should be investigating.”

Across the small table, John Eckhardt is enjoying his burger a lot more than he is the conversation. He takes a large bite and chews with his elbows on the table, hunched over to keep any food from falling on his dark brown off-the-rack suit.

Katz stares over his untouched egg white omelet and jams his finger down on the closed folder next to his plate. “You read the file. Yelena Gorgo fucking murdered Vanessa Byrne in your backyard and at least three others. Who knows how many more.”

His visible frustration forces his words through his teeth. It’s been building ever since Eckhardt pushed the folder away with an obvious indifference after the waitress delivered their food. 

“Are you fucking listening to me?”

Echhardt drops his sandwich down on his plate. “Would you keep your goddamn voice down?” He reaches for a napkin and quickly wipes it over his mouth before continuing. “You sound like a lunatic.”

Katz scoffs. “I sound like a lunatic?”

Eckhardt leans back into his chair. A gold seven point star badge is clipped to his belt. INSPECTOR stamped in an arch above S.F. POLICE.

“Ari, how long have we known each other…thirty years?”

Katz rubs his hands together roughly while shaking his head. “John, I am telling you—”

“And I’m telling you,” the inspector says, “Vanessa Byrne died of COVID.”

“Says who?”

“The hospital for one. The medical examiner for two. Both of them are a lot more qualified to make that determination than you.”

Katz gives an agitated huff. “It doesn’t add up. She wasn’t some old lady with emphysema.”

“Healthy people die, too, Ari. I pulled the report after we talked on the phone. It’s true she had no underlying medical issues, but she also had an entire pharmacy in her bloodwork. She tested positive for cocaine, xanax, opiates and alcohol. That’s it. No other toxins. She wasn’t poisoned. End of story.”

“Not all poisons come up in a standard tox screen. You know that.”

“Come on,” Eckhardt says. “Are you hearing yourself? Who do you think this woman is? Some sort of criminal mastermind?”

Katz pushes his plate aside to make space to open the folder. He starts flipping through the pages. “What about the others? Every single one of them are directly connected to her. This one here. Alexandra Dupin. When she was a homicide detective, she put Gorgo’s dad in a loony bin not once, but twice. A couple years ago she vanishes into thin air after being seen talking to a woman matching Gorgo’s description.”

Eckhardt sighs, giving up any hope of finishing his meal in peace. “Alright, you want to do this? Fine. I called New Orleans PD. Spoke to Broussard, the detective in charge of the case. He told me the woman you’re referring to was described by witnesses as having a Russian accent with dark hair. This woman left the bookstore and Dupin went back to signing books for over an hour. Cameras caught her later leaving the bookstore alone.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

Eckhardt cuts him off. “After Dupin was missing for a week or so, they came up with a list of possible suspects. One name was Nathan Grey, Gorgo’s half brother. There had been an incident between him and the missing woman a year or so before. He had broken into her house and scared the holy hell out of her. He was having some sort of mental health crisis. So fast forward, they bring him in and ask where he was that night. He was in Vegas that night. Easily confirmed. So the detective shows him security video of this mystery woman you’re talking about and asks if he recognizes her. He says no.”

Katz throws his hands up. “So he lied. It’s his sister.”

“Your own notes say he hated this woman and refused to acknowledge her as his sister. You even allege that she somehow changed his will. If he hated her so much, why not rat her out? Sounds like it would have solved him a lot of problems.”

Katz puts his face in his hand and rubs a dent in his forehead with his fingers. “It doesn’t add up, John. I’m telling you, it does not add up.”

“Okay,” Eckhardt says with his hands in front of him. “Let’s consider your theory. Yelena Gorgo is an Olympic medalist, a world famous professional wrestler, the CEO of a massive corporation, and a serial murderer who has killed at least four people across three states. I’ve been around a lot of murderers, Ari, and all of them lack the amount of self control someone would need to maintain these drasticly different lives. The person you are describing in your notes is insane.”

“She is insane,” Katz says, raising his voice out of exasperation. Eckhardt tries to calm him down but Katz won’t hear it. “Have you not seen her videos? Have you not read her fucking twitter feed? This woman is a lunatic!”

Eckhardt loses his patience. His hand slams on the table then points at Kahtz and he says, “It’s a goddamn character she plays on television, Ari. She’s a wrestler. They’re all pretending to be something they aren’t. My son watches that shit. He has a poster on his wall of a guy with white eyes and a snake around his neck. They’re characters, Ari.”

“Not this one.”

Eckhardt lets out a long breath. “Okay, this is your theory. Yelena Gorgo is severely ill. She has multiple personalities. By definition, this makes her unstable, to say the least. One personality is able to live an upstanding life as a corporate executive. Another rampages across the country killing people. Somewhere in the middle the two personalities manage to maintain a successful career as a professional wrestler. It doesn’t make sense.”

Katz’s eyes go wide. “Exactly! It doesn’t make sense! And that’s why she has gotten away with it!”

Eckhardt stares at his friend. “Ari, how’s everything back home?”

The question puts Katz back on his heels. He shakes his head with a rumpled brow and says, “Fine, fine. Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“I heard about Mary,” Eckhardt says gently. “I should have called when I read the obituary. I’m sorry I didn’t. I meant to but time got away from me.”

Katz is filled with rage.

“Are you fucking serious? What the fuck does my dead wife have to do with this conversation?”

“You don’t seem like yourself. You seem…obsessed.”

“I’m not obsessed…”

“A man calls you from Spain,” Eckhardt says. “His brother came to America to see his granddaughter and hasn’t called home. You take the case. From there you lead to this. You are connecting dots that I don’t think are there, Ari, and I think you are doing it because you need something to latch onto. Mary died only three months ago and instead of grieving you’ve spent the whole time crafting this conspiracy theory.”

Katz closes his folder with a sneer. “Thank you, Jordan fucking Peterson for your words of wisdom.”

Eckhardt watches the folder get shoved into Ari’s messenger bag. “Okay, if I’m wrong, then why are you doing all this?”

“Because someone has to do something,” Katz says directly. “I have to do something. I have to…I have to do something that matters. Most of my career has been doing shit I’m not proud of. I went from solving murders with a badge to destroying marriages with a camera. I never should have hit that kid.”

The kid. Eckhardt was there. At the time they were partners serving as homicide detectives in New York. Back in 2003 a family was found dead in their Brooklyn apartment. The killer was the sixteen year old son who had a history of violence. There was an argument that day between him and the father. That night he came back with a pistol, tied them up, and executed them one by one.

In the interrogation room the kid showed no remorse. His eyes were black like the devil’s eyes, without a hint of humanity hiding behind them. Eckhardt and Katz listened to him recite every moment, from the first shot to the last, and the horrific things he did to them afterward, in analytical detail, as if he was giving a scientific presentation.

It was the things he said about his little sister that finally pushed Katz too far. He lunged over the table and violently attacked the kid, beating him near death while Eckhardt struggled to pull him off. It took another two detectives to finally drag Katz away. By then, the kid was hamburger with broken teeth and a cracked skull.

Katz would have faced criminal charges, but Eckhardt and the other detectives gave false statements saying the kid provoked Katz. The tape conveniently disappeared and the union managed to save his pension, but he was never going to be a police officer ever again.

The kid ended up with a traumatic brain injury and lost the ability to communicate. He was living in a group home upstate last Eckhardt checked.

Katz sharply sniffs his nose while wiping away tears from under his eyes. “Back in May, I came home late. Stinking drunk. Vomit on my shirt. This was near the end, when the cancer was really doing a number on Mary and I didn’t want to be around her. I could smell the death on her and it made me hate being there. I walked into our bedroom hoping she was asleep. She wasn’t. She was lying there, barely more than a skeleton, staring at me with those sunken eyes, and asked me where I was. I lied and said I was working a case. Why I thought she’d buy that I don’t know. She pressed me and I snapped and said like an idiot ‘This is what I do. I’m a detective.’”

He gives a laugh. “You know what she said?”

Eckhardt says softly, “What did she say?”

“She said, ‘You aren’t a detective anymore. You’re just a dick.’ Then she laid down and went to sleep. From then on, I started spending more time at the office. I don’t know if we said more than five words to one another after that. I wasn’t even there when she died. So you ask me why I’m doing this, I say it’s because I want her to be proud of me. I want her to look down and see that Ari Katz did something good for once and maybe she’ll forgive me for letting her go alone.”

Eckhardt takes a deep breath, then says, “Ari, I want you to go home.”

“John.”

“I want you to go home and find someone to talk to about all this. You need help.”

Katz says again louder, “John.”

Eckhardt stares into his friend’s eyes. “You’re not doing this for Mary. You’re doing this because of Mary, because of what happened to her and how you failed as a husband. Let this go or it will be your downfall. It’ll be just like that kid back in Brooklyn, only this time I won’t be there to help you clean up the mess.”

Katz grabs his bag and lurches out of his seat. His hip hits the table, rattling the silverware and nearly knocking over their drinks. He stares down at Eckhardt and snarls.

“Fuck you, John. Fuck you and your fucking high horse. You think that star on your belt makes you better than me? Hmm? You were never half as good as I was on my worst day.”

“Okay, Ari.”

“I’ll show you. I’ll show everyone.”

Katz rushes out of the diner, drawing more than a little attention from the Monday lunch crowd. One diner in particular watched him very closely and had been during the entire conversation between the men. If Katz hadn’t been so determined to sell his old friend on his theory, he might have realized how she wasn’t very interested in reading whatever book she was thumbing through on her kindle as she sipped on mimosas, or the unenthusiastic way she picked at her salad. Maybe he would have seen past the demure woman’s large sunglasses and dark wig and realized she had a familiar face.

But he didn’t, and with him gone, she’s now watching Eckhardt casually slide his plate back in front of him and return his attention to what’s left of his burger and fries. She pays the waitress in cash with a hefty tip but sticks around to keep an eye on the inspector.

Eckhardt never makes a phone call, writes a text, or shows any concern for anything Katz told him. He finishes his burger, pays the waitress, and then gets up to leave.

She shadows him out the door. He even holds it open for her. “Thank you,” she says in a mousy little voice. “You’re welcome,” he says while looking down at her.

Outside their paths split, with him going left to his car parked on the street, and her walking down the block and around the corner. After another ten feet, a black Lexus drives up beside her and stops.

She looks around before opening the passenger door and getting in. The car takes off down the block before the door is even shut. She removes the sunglasses, wig and hairnet, then gives her matted blonde hair a run through with her fingers with a scrunched face.

“How did it go?”

The driver, Yelena Gorgo, looks over at her assistant, Angel, with a burning curiosity and immeasurable amount of jealousy that she was not able to be in there, too.

Angel takes the opportunity to torture her boss. “Oh, you know, it went okay,” she says while scratching her scalp, sending her feathery hair all around her face.

Yelena does a hard brake at the next stop sign, causing Angel to jerk forward against her seat belt. She yanks on the strap and yells, “For fucks sake, Yel. I’m just messing with you.”

Yelena looks over while the car idles at the sign. “Mama wants the deets, baby girl.”

Angel rolls her eyes as her arms cross. “He told the cop everything, even showed him a folder with a bunch of pictures and notes in it. The cop didn’t buy it.”

“You sure?”

Angel’s head turns and she says, “I’m sure. Katz freaked out in front of the whole diner because the cop suggested he was losing it over his dead wife or something like that, then he stormed out.”

Yelena perks up. “A dead wife, hmm?”

The car behind them honks its horn. She flashes a middle finger at the rear window before dropping her foot on the pedal, sending the car quickly through the intersection and down the road.

“I’m telling you,” Angel says with assurance, “the cop is more inclined to think Katz has lost his mind than, you know, the truth.” She follows it up with a soft chuckle.

That little GPS tracker did the job. Yelena and Angel had been taking turns following him around for the last several days. It allowed them to locate the shithole motel he’s been living at and map out a basic schedule of behavior which mostly involved binge drinking at the bar around the corner. It also allowed Yelena to identify the woman who slipped him those internal documents from the foundation. Her name was Elizabeth Cavendish. She had met Ari yesterday at a downtown park. Cavendish was the lone voice against Yelena on the board of directors and a regular thorn in her side, likely because the bitch would prefer to see herself as chair and CEO.

Yelena will deal with her soon.

“So what next,” Angel asked as she tossed the wig in the back seat. It landed next to a bag filled with various outfits and hair pieces, everything a pair of amateur CIA agents could need. They really went hard on this whole spy vs spy game. Yelena could have hired any number of private investigators to scope out Katz and keep tabs on him, but that would have simply clued in more people on her interest in him.

Yelena looked away from the road with a sinister grin.

“Next, my darling, is the fun part.”