Marigolds, Chapter 42

42

            Jalena Orasac, aka Helen Moore had flown to Belfast where her brother Berislav aka Chris Moore, lives.  Dennis confirmed that a Helen Moore had rented a car at Belfast from one of the big companies. He booked me one from the same place.

            Her circuitous route and the mid-journey identity swap each gave credence to the idea that Jalena wished to avoid detection. If I could track her as easily as I did whoever was behind the other killings could too. It made me squirm in my coach seat somewhere over the deep dark North Atlantic that even if I found her I might be too late.  Or, worse, I surmised: perhaps the reason she is running incognito is not she was a potential victim, but because she is something else. I could not ignore the possibility that Jalena Orasac had blood on her hands.  There was certainly enough to go around.

            What the hell was I doing?

            With whom the hell was I doing it?

            “Excuse me, might I read that if you’re done?”

            A woman with lucent skin, freshly painted nails and silken legs crossed in my direction was smiling wide-eyed and pointing at the Time Magazine open over my thigh.  Her hair was snared tight in a long thick braid she had pulled forward over the right shoulder of her silk blouse. The knot at its end rose and fell gently over her breast. She did not look or smell as if she belonged in coach.

            “Sure.” I closed the magazine and handed it to her. “Come here often?”

            Her laugh had a startled edge to it as she took the magazine from me. I wondered if I looked as goofy as I felt.

            “All the time,” she said. “Much more often than I would prefer.”

            Although her brow was still furrowed, her smile was unthreatened and unthreatening.

            “You?” she asked.

            I pointed down through the window. “I’ve been on it and in it thousands of times, but this is my first time over it.”  Yeow, a good response, that.

            “I see.” She opened the magazine. “There’s an article in this issue about the truth and reconciliation commission in the Balkans.”

            “I read it waiting to board. Sad stuff.”

            “It is… but hopeful. I have friends from the UN who are involved.”

            “From the UN? Really? How?”

            “They were part of the team doing the forensic work that supports how we know who did what to whom, and how.”

“And knowing those two things usually answers the why questions, too,” I said.

“To be truthful, we mostly already know why when we start.”

 “Right. How do you know those UN people?”

“Colleagues. That’s what I do, too. I was working in Rwanda or I’d have been there with them.”

“No shortage of work for people in your field is there these days?” I had read General Romeo Dellaire’s book on Rwanda.

“Nope. No shortage.”

“May I ask you a question?”

There was a moment of silence. “Oh, you want me to answer that? Most times people don’t, you know? They just go ahead and… sure, go ahead. Ask.”

“How does someone who does what you do come down from it?”

“Do you mean the satisfaction when the puzzle pieces begin to go together or do you mean the nature of…the constant presence of the dead?”

“I guess I was thinking the former, but the latter is likely a better question.”

“Well, in this case for both I go to Ireland. There’s a dig in County Armagh run by a former professor of mine. I am dropping in on them.”

“Sounds like fun…”

“Oh, it will be.  It’s Ireland after all.”

Yeah, well, if the ancient Irish dead from…when?”

She moved her braid to her left shoulder so she could face me. “Appears to be seventh century.”

“Seventh century…if the dead are as chatty as the living you should learn a lot.”

“Right.” Her smile was unaffected. “Are you on vacation?”

I told Cynthia Washington, she had handed me her card while she was speaking, why I was en route.  It took about ten minutes to outline the tale. She wrote down the Croatian names spelling them all correctly.

“All that in Boston and New York? Wow.”

“And Portland, Maine. Why did you write down those names?”

“I’ll ask my colleagues who were there among the Croats and the Serbs if any of these names mean anything to them.  You said that there was a connection to someone in the diplomatic corps, didn’t you?”

“I did.” I gave her my card. “Would you contact me if it seems there is?”

“As repayment for the loan of your magazine?”

“As good a reason as any.”

Marigolds, Chapter 41

 41

            There are patterns in History.

The genocide that excised nearly one million Rwandans in the 1990s was as embarrassing as it was tragic. Whether they hacked each other to chards or shot Chinese, Eastern European and North American bullets into one another’s skulls, the blood-simple did so based on a manipulation courtesy of a long-dead king of Belgium.  Though one group was the clear aggressor, had the two groups’ roles been reversed, it still would have happened.

 King Leopold had created two classes in his central African private preserve: the haves and the want-to-haves. The enlightened Roman Catholic Europeans encouraged the Africans to hate and hurt one another to redirect their focus as the Belgians raped and plundered the land and the people who populated it.  It was tried and true: the Persians had done it, the Greeks, the Romans, the British, the French, the Italians and the Americans, too.  It’s just that in Rwanda the differences between the two groups of Africans were so artificial and so arbitrary that they fooled no one.  No one except the Hutus and the Tutsis, that is. And maybe the Irish and the component ethnic groups once known as Yugoslavs.

           

A North American tourist of Irish descent is visiting Belfast. In a pub one evening a local sidles up and asks his origins.

            “Well, I live in Chicago but my great grandfather got there through Montreal from Ireland.”

            “Aahh,” says his new companion. “So you’re Irish then are ye?”

            “I am. Both sides. One-hundred per cent.”

            “Well, then are you Irish Protestant or Irish Catholic?”

            “Um, well, I’m neither.  I happen to be an atheist.”

            “Ah, I see, then.”  The man squinted over the rim as he sipped his stout. “But are ye a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?”

            

Marigolds, Ch. 40

40

I called Michael with my travel plans and to see if he’d swap a trip to Logan’s international terminal for dinner at the Border Café. I would gladly pay you Tuesday for an airport run today.

“You’re going back to the Great White North, then, are ye Finn?” Michael spoke over the top of his paper coffee cup, steering with one hand on Route 1.

“I thought I would, but there’s no need now, Mikie. Besides, Nova Scotia really isn’t any farther north than most of Maine. Yarmouth is nearly due east of Portland, in fact. So its on to Belfast, I think.”

“Really, Belfast? Are you feeling, oh I don’t know now, torn? Conflicted?”

“What? Hell no. No, not even a little.”

“Hmm.”

“Whatever bad blood might still exist among some of the Irish is someone else’s bad blood. Christ, both sides of my family, the O’Keefes and the Milnes, have been in North America for generations. I’m more concerned about the bad-tempered Croats wandering the bogs than I am any son or daughter of William of Orange.”

“Just the same, I’ll be sayin’ a rosary for ye. ”

“Yeah?” Michael Devlin was returning a favor. “Can’t hurt I guess.”

Eureka! Fixed.

I have fixed the Chapter 15/15a problem I had created. Should be seamless now.

Refresher: Who's Who in Marigolds

If you have not started the story, you SHOULD NOT READ this page. But, do remember it's here.

Cast of characters from These Marigolds Grow Too Tall

Fintan O'Keefe – Boston-based Private Detective; narrator of the story

Michael Devlin – Friend and sometimes-boss; Owns Irish-I-Were-Pestfree exterminators

Johnna “Sparky” Law – Fintan's girlfriend; a federal agent

Ivana Grdesic (Gerdisitch) – O'Keefe is hired to find her. Shortly after he does so in Portland, Maine, her body washes ashore on a Massachusetts beach_

Ante Bukovats (Antay Bukovatch) – O'Keefe's client purportedly representing the Croation Exchange Enterprise and the Grdesic family in Croatia

MA State Trooper Armand Bevilaqua – lead investigator in the case in Massachusetts

Mislava Hrvat (Mishlava Hurvatch) – Weeks later, in same condo where O'Keefe found Grdesic; attempts to hire O'Keefe to accompany her to New York; AKA Mary Francis Flaherty

Spoiler Alert: Mislava is actually Ivana and vice versa

Niko Matulich – Man who meets with Fintan and his client in New York; “mover and shaker” with loose ties to Croatian Consulate
Bo Boban - Owner of a school of language in Boston; has ties to Hrvat and Grdesic

Marigolds, Chapter 39

39

“That’s great, sure. I appreciate the help.”

Bo Boban’s assistant was Jillian Gomez. I called her to be put in touch with the school’s travel agent. Bo told her to help me in any way I asked.

“OK, Mr. O’Keefe, here we go. It’s Ye Olde Mayflower Travel. Our contact there is Dennis. I’ll give him a buzz to tell him you’ll be in touch. Here’s the number.”

“Thanks, Jillian. No last name for this Dennis?”

“Nope. Not in the file.”

I killed the fifteen minutes before I called Dennis the best way I knew. I opened a Sam Adams and tossed two papusas into the warmed oven.

“Dennis? Hi, my name is Fintan O’Keefe.”

“Sure, Mr. O’Keefe, how may I be of assistance?”

“Can you tell me if you have arranged any travel in the last week or so for Yalena Orasac?”

“That I can. Let me look up the details right here in…”

The unmistakable sound of slow keystrokes was followed by, “Here it is.”

Orasac had booked flights, separate fights, to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then on to Belfast, Northern Ireland through Shannon, all the day before yesterday.

“Do you know why she might have done it that way as opposed to connecting flights?” I asked.

“I asked the same question. It was much more expensive to do it her way. She said, oh so politely, I should mind my own business.”

“Anything else out of the ordinary with this transaction?”

“Yeah. She paid for it with her own credit card. I reminded her the school has an account and all… she told me again to butt out.”

“Dennis, can you see if she made both of her flights?”

“Hmm, I was just looking at that…it seems she didn’t make the one to Belfast out of Shannon.”

“Did she book a hotel or a car through you in either city?”

“Nope. She wasn’t supposed to be in Halifax but a few hours. And…nothing in Ireland either. Oops, Mr. O’Keefe, I have another call. May I put you on hold?”

“Dennis if you’ll check when you are done if any flight to anywhere out of Shannon had a passenger named Helen Moore and call me back…”

“Got it. Will do.”

I finished my papusas and opened another Boston Ale. My cell phone did its dance on the table next to the brown bottle. Dennis confirmed that one Helen Moore had boarded a flight for Toronto out of Shannon that morning and then another for Belfast that afternoon. Pending Bo’s approval, I asked him to look into a flight to either or Belfast and Shannon for me.

I was feeling in full detecting flower. It lasted only as long as it took me to consider what now.

What now?

I called the cell number that Bo Boban left with me. He answered on the first ring. I told him what I had learned from Dennis.

“Shit, Fintan. Yalena must be somehow connected to this then, right?”

“Has to be. Bo, do you want me to go to Ireland? I imagine that even though she flew to Shannon she’ll end up in Belfast, or somewhere up there.”

There was a pause bracketed by an audible nasal intake of air and a noisy discharge of said air.

“Fintan, go to a town called Portrush. That’s where she’d go. That’s where Chris Moore is. It’s the only place she’d go.”

“Bo, was Yalena one of your off-the-books imports, too?”

“Yes. Years ago. Since then her presence in the country has been validated.”

“You sound like a seasoned spinner of bureaucratic bullshit, Bo.”

“Go to Ireland, Finn. Portrush, Northern Ireland. Have Dennis book it.”

“No one is to know, Bo. Right?”

“No will know Finn.”

These marigolds Grow Too Tall, Ch 38

38

Jalena Orasac was a translator. Her CV said she spoke Serbo-Croatian, German and English. Bo put people fluent in regional languages together with travelers who were not. Her file contained records of four lengthy trips to the former Yugoslavia in the last five years. It also showed how handsomely she had been paid for her services. No doubt about it, I got to learn me some new tongues.

Orasac’ small house rested on a slightly elevated plot of land not much bigger than the house itself in the west end of Malden. The neighborhood rescued from or pounded into a craggy hillside, was adjacent to the Fells Reservation where Malden, Melrose and Stoneham sidle into one another. There was no car in the pitched driveway and her phone was still answered by her disembodied voice.

Orasac’ down slope neighbor was laying in birch bark nuggets around a scraggly young spruce in his tiny front yard. He returned my greeting with a smile.

“You looking for Helen?” He asked.

Jalena could be the Slavic version of Helen, I surmised.

“I am. Our employer is a little concerned about her.”

“I haven’t seen her for a few days. Helen’s popular. Somebody else was here, too. A girl was here looking for her.”

“Yeah? Maybe sent here before me…”

He leaned his rake against the slate and concrete retaining wall, removed his heavy denim work gloves and walked towards me. He brushed the birch bits from his jeans.

“Yup. A wicked tall girl with a thick accent sort of like Helen’s was here three days or so ago, I guess it was. Sheila…?” He raised his chin and yelled in the direction of the second floor porch. A face, Sheila’s I’d wager, appeared behind the screen. The rest of her head was wrapped in a towel.

“Honey, when was that girl here looking for Helen?” He used his sleeve to dab his brow.

“Two days ago, and she was a woman Ralphie, not a girl.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Did she find her?” I asked.

“If she did she didn’t find her here.”

“Who’s this guy, Ralph?” Sheila’s question had an edge. She had removed the towel and was shaking out her hair, dotting the screen with droplets.

“He works with Helen. Their boss is trying to get in touch.”

Sheila seemed satisfied. She disappeared.

“Yeah, Helen’s popular alright,” said Ralph.

“The woman who was here a couple of days ago, is it possible she asked for Helen at first using a name you didn’t recognize?” I asked.

“Matter of fact she did, but we got it straightened out. What was…?” Ralph’s pursed lips and creased brow told me he was thinking. “It was Yalenia Oraclees or some shit, I mean, if I remember it right. She told me that Moore was her married name and she had known her well before she was married.”

Despite his overuse of pronouns, I thought I understood what Ralphie meant.

“Did she offer the name Moore or did you tell her that was the name by which you knew Helen?”

More pursing, more creasing: “Um, I told her, I guess.”

“I see. Well, thanks Ralph. When you see Helen, please ask her to call Finn.” I gave him a card with only my name and mobile number I had printed for just such an occasion.

“Fintan O’Keefe? Right, I will. Interesting name, Fintan.”

“Bye, Sheila,” I said loudly.

“Yeah, yeah,” tumbled down from the porch.