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21
Kirra’s Condo
THURSDAY EVENING
The six thousand five hundred dollars Kirra had paid to Booger Watts to identify the young tattooed gang member standing with Elson and Ryman Grissom on the deck of the Valadia in her father’s painting had finally produced results. Booger had warned her he might have to break into facial recognition databases she didn’t want to know about, and even so, after all these years he’d have to get lucky. “Took me forever to hack in,” he said to her. “I could have ended up in a Siberian gulag for the rest of my life if I wasn’t so good. I should have charged you more, Kirra, but hey, you’re a friend, so you got a discount.”
She’d met Booger at Clancy’s Bar in Washington’s Foggy Bottom the previous year and asked him where he got the name Booger, which earned her a toothy smile and no answer. He was nervy and funny and could outdrink her. They’d kept in touch and she’d called him, struck a deal. Even after he’d taken her money, he bitched and moaned on video calls complaining the frigging photographs she’d given him didn’t have enough detail, and if he got caught and sent away for the rest of his unnatural life, what would his mother do? Then he laughed and tugged on his thick red beard, pushed up his aviator glasses again, always in danger of falling off his nose into his pocket protector. He always called her from his castle in his mom’s basement, with piles of luggage and boxes sandwiching him in and a washer and dryer in the background.
She said, “You’re the best, Booger, and even with my friend’s discount, you’re a lot richer. Tell you what. I’ll take you to Clancy’s Bar in a couple of weeks, buy you beers until you pass out.”
“That shows gratitude, excellent. Now, Kirra, this guy is bad news, but you already knew he isn’t a saint. You stay away from him.”
Kirra looked down at a recent photo of the man that Booger had sent her as she walked into her living room and sat down with a glass of her favorite chardonnay. His name was Alexey Perez, and wasn’t that a lovely name for a drug-running killer? He was in his forties now, swarthy with black eyes and glossy black hair without a single strand of gray. He was slim and well dressed in tan slacks, a white shirt, and a cashmere sport coat that looked to be handmade, and dark loafers, definitely Italian. She easily recognized him even fourteen years older, the intense young man she’d seen in her father’s photos and the painting of the Valadia. Kirra pictured her father standing at his favorite spot on the shore of the Potomac, taking photos of boats as they passed by before he began painting them. That’s when he’d seen these men, taken their photos. Thank goodness he always kept the photos he used and she’d found those taped to the back of the painting in the shed, because she doubted even Booger could have found a match from only an oil painting of the guy’s face. But her dad had kept them and it was those photos and that painting and what he’d threatened to do with them that had gotten her father and mother killed.
Tears stung her eyes. The young Alexey Perez he’d painted that long-ago day was still alive and well, and her parents were dead. Her father had asked these men for money for his pictures with no idea what he was getting into. If he’d discussed it with her mother, Kirra knew she’d have talked him out of it, convinced him they’d find another way, but he hadn’t, and he’d signed their death warrant. And almost hers. These men had to know her uncle Leo had taken her to Australia straight out of the hospital to protect her from them. Evidently the Grissoms, father and son, and Alexey Perez must have decided they were safe when she didn’t come forward, that she didn’t know anything useful. She swiped her hand over her eyes.
She set her wine on the coffee table and scrolled through the three-page file from Interpol Booger had sent her. Alexey Perez was a native of San Salvador, a member of MS-13. He’d arrived in Los Angeles when he was fourteen years old. At thirty, fourteen years ago, he’d been a regional distributor for MS-13. Today it was believed he was one of the top MS-13 commanders in the world. Perez never stayed in one place for long. His family was well hidden, rumored to be currently living outside Miami under an assumed name. He was wanted in Italy and Spain for murder and drug distribution.
Kirra knew well enough identifying this third man wouldn’t prove who murdered her parents. Motive and opportunity weren’t nearly enough to bring any of them to trial for it after so many years, even if Perez was finally caught. At least now she finally knew who the third man was. It was the last thing her father’s painting could tell her.
It was up to her now. She knew she needed more, much more. She knew in her soul Ryman was one of her parents’ killers. The other? Another of Grissom’s thugs?
