Hollywood Station

“Bitch!” Ilya said, as the two women, one on each arm, led her to the door.

“And you can use our bidet,” Budgie said. “Like the one I have at home. It’s called a sink. You jump up on it, but we’ll keep the stopper in.”

Brant Hinkle said to Viktor, “I think she might talk to you now.”

“How did Andi know?” Viktor marveled.

“She noticed right away and told me. No panty line, no thong line, nothing. She guessed that Roskova might want to get rid of them in a hurry first chance she’d get at privacy.”

“But the trick? To put her down in that position? How did she know that trick?”

“Viktor, there’re some things you and I didn’t learn at detective school that women just know,” Brant Hinkle said.

When Andi and Budgie returned with the cache of diamonds, Budgie said, “I’m sure glad I didn’t have to remove the evidence. I can’t even clean out my rain gutters for fear of spiders and other crawly things.”

Late the next day, after getting five hours’ sleep in the cot room along with a wardrobe change driven to the station by his wife, Maria, Viktor Chernenko completed his investigation by supervising a thorough search of the car and apartment of Cosmo Betrossian, as well as the house of Farley Ramsdale.

They found Cosmo’s Lorcin.380 pistol and the Raven that Ilya had carried during the ATM robbery. At Farley’s house they found some stolen mail, a glass pipe for smoking meth, and the usual litter and detritus that are found in the homes of tweakers. There were a few articles of women’s clothing, but it appeared that Farley Ramsdale’s companion had disappeared.

Viktor and two other detectives inquired at every house on both sides of the street but learned nothing of value. The next-door neighbor, an elderly Chinese man, said in barely understandable English that he had never spoken to Farley and never noticed a woman. The neighbor on the other side was an eighty-two-year-old Romanian who said that she only saw the man and woman coming in late at night and that her night vision was so bad she’d never recognize them in the daylight.

Interviews of other, mostly elderly, residents on the block were equally fruitless. Even when Olive’s old mug shot was shown to them, nobody could say that she looked very familiar. She was the kind of person, it seemed, who would live and die on the streets of Hollywood utterly invisible.

Upon reading the news accounts about Farley Ramsdale and the massacre at the Gulag, a very frightened Gregori Apramian called Hollywood Station early in the afternoon to offer information. And after that call, his junkyard was deemed a crime scene and was sealed and scoured by criminalists and detectives from downtown.

Gregori stood in front of his office next to a leashed Doberman who, despite the cast on his rear leg, was snarling and still ready to fight. And scaring the crap out of every cop who got within ten yards.

What Gregori said for the record and what was transcribed onto a police report was: “I just promise Cosmo to tow the Mazda that night. I don’t know about no robberies. Maybe Cosmo bring this guy Farley to my yard to destroy the Mazda? That is what I think. They are going to burn up the Mazda to do the covering up of robberies. But something happen. They get in fight and hurt my Odar. And Cosmo shoot the man Farley. I do not know Farley. I do not know the Russian woman you arrest. I only know Cosmo because we go to same Armenian church sometimes. I am trying to be a friend to a fellow immigrant and be a, how you say, credit to America.”

At the end of his long day, Viktor Chernenko played a tape of Ilya Roskova’s interview for the detective lieutenant and both area and station captains. Ilya had stopped saying nyet after the diamonds were excreted onto the squad room floor. She had then voluntarily removed the rest in the Hollywood Station bathroom where they were packaged and booked.

Ilya had been advised of her rights in both English and Russian, and she declared her understanding. The interview about her role in both robberies was long and tedious and self-serving. She kept claiming to have been totally in thrall to Cosmo Betrossian, calling herself a mental captive who lived in fear of him.

When one of the captains looked at his watch, Viktor advanced the tape to the portion dealing with the last pieces of the puzzle that remained missing: Olive and the ATM money.

Ilya’s voice said, “Olive was there when Farley did blackmail on Cosmo. When he gave big threat to tell police about the stolen letter. But Olive is, how you say, imbecile. Her brain is in a destroyed condition from drugs. I am very astounded that she have enough of the brain left to find the money Cosmo steal from ATM. Very astounded that she can take the money and vanish into thin smoke.”

Then Viktor’s voice said, “Do you think it is possible that Cosmo was holding back from you? Is it possible that Cosmo hid the money somewhere because he did not wish to share with you?”

After a long pause on the tape, Ilya’s voice said angrily, “Is not possible!” Then she obviously realized that she was blurring her portrait of enslavement and said, “But of course I was so much in fear that I may be incorrect about what Cosmo can do. He was very much clever. And had two faces.”

Viktor turned off the machine then and said to his superiors, “So far as I am concerned, we have hit a stone fence. I believe that Cosmo Betrossian took the ATM money from under the house of Farley Ramsdale on the night that the car was towed to the junkyard. I believe that Cosmo Betrossian has disposed of the ATM money with a friend, probably another woman. The Russian pride of Ilya Roskova does not wish to admit such a possibility-that he could have another secret woman and would be leaving her. I believe that Cosmo then tried to tell to Dmitri Zotkin a false story of Olive stealing the money, but Dmitri was too smart to buy it. And that’s when the shooting started.”

“You’ve been right on so far,” the area captain said. “So what do you think happened to this woman Olive?”

“I think she finally got scared enough of Cosmo Betrossian to run away from Farley Ramsdale. She is probably living now with some other tweaker. Or maybe just living out on the street. We shall find her dead sometime from an overdose. Truly, she is of no further use to this investigation.”

“Do you think we’ll ever find the ATM money?” the station captain asked.

Viktor said, “We have learned that Cosmo Betrossian loved Russian women. There is probably one of them shopping on Rodeo Drive with the ATM money. Right now as we talk.”

“Okay, it’s a wrap,” the area captain said. “When you do press interviews on this, just try to avoid mention of the missing money. The other pieces fit perfectly.”

“Yes, sir,” Viktor Chernenko said. “That is the only fly in the jelly.”