Flashback

Nick had flashed his Rent-a-Detective badge with his name on it, so if she’d known Val’s real last name, Nick’s cover—such as it was—was blown. But Ms. Kschessinska hadn’t paid close attention. Nick had the feeling that she hadn’t paid very close attention to many things—including her recently deceased son—for some years now.

“You mentioned that your son William gave this missing boy, Val Fox—the one we’re looking for—a gun shortly before the… ah… incident at the Disney Center?” said Nick. He had a small notebook out and pen poised, but so far all he’d scribbled in it in his tiny cop script was She smells bad.

“Oh, yes, Detective… uh… Botham, William did tell me that not long ago. Yes.”

And you didn’t call the cops to tell them that your kid was dealing guns? thought Nick. He didn’t correct her on his name and was phrasing his follow-up question carefully when Ms. Kschessinska forged ahead.

“You understand, Detective, my William was always concerned about my safety, about his little friends’ safety, about everyone’s… why, this is a very dangerous city in which to live, Detective! Just look out the windows!”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Nick. “Do you remember what kind of gun it was that your son gave to the Fox boy?”

“Oh, the other policemen mentioned it. Just talk to them. It started with a ‘B,’ I seem to remember.”

“Browning?” said Nick. “Bauer, Bren, Beretta…”

“That’s it,” said Ms. Kschessinska, “that last one. Beretta. Pretty name. Would you like a little drinkie, Detective? I always allow myself a little one in the afternoon, especially in these terrible days since William was… was…” She threatened to dissolve into tears.

“No, thank you,” Nick said hurriedly. “But you have one, please. I know this is hard for you.” He didn’t point out that it was not quite ten o’clock in the morning.

She mixed and poured and stirred with a serious drinker’s full attention. “You sure you won’t join me, Detective? There’s plenty to…”

“Did you happen to see the Beretta, Ms. Kschessinska?”

“What? Oh, no! Of course not.” She returned to her favorite chair with a tall glass. “But William told me about it. He used to share everything with me. He told me that this friend of his, Hal…”

“Val,” said Nick.

“Whatever. He told me that this friend of his was part of their little club, their little boys’ club, but that this Hal, Val, whatever it was, wasn’t really a team player.”

“How’s that?” Nick asked quietly.

“Oh, just little things… like the fact that this other boy wouldn’t take part when the boys were doing their little experiments.”

“Experiments?”

“Oh, their little experiments into sex and such. All boys do it, you know.”

“You’re talking about experiments with sex with girls, Ms. Kschessinska?”

“Of course I mean with girls!” shouted the heavy woman with the painted face of melting clay. She was truly angry. “William would never… could never…”

“So you’re saying that this Val Fox boy didn’t take part when the ga… when William’s boys’ club had sex with one or more girls?”

“Yes, exactly,” Ms. Kschessinska said primly, still not mollified.

Nick wrote Gang rape on his notebook page. Even six years ago when he’d still been with the Denver force, male flashgangs almost always began with gang rape. They’d relive the violation of some girl, frequently a minor, over and over under the flash. Then the gangs usually moved up to physical violence: tormenting and brutalizing younger kids or winos or other flashback addicts found helpless under the flash. Then— most frequently—murder. Or murder after a brutal rape. The ultimate event to flash on. Two for the price of one.

“Did this Val boy not participate in their flashback use of these… experiments?” asked Nick.

“That is precisely correct,” said Ms. Kschessinska, taking great care not to slur. “William told me that this person wasn’t enough of a man to join in the experiment and wasn’t enough of a friend to join the others when they relived the event as part of their… rite of passage, as it were.”

“What did William say this boy did when they were experimenting?”

“Oh, various excuses,” she slurred, waving her hands as she tried to light a real cigarette, plucking the No-C stick out and flinging it away angrily. “Standing guard. William said the boy always lost his nerve and stood apart, saying he was going to stand guard for the others. That sort of nonsense. The boy was not a true friend of William’s, no matter everything my dear boy tried to do for him. No matter what wonderful gifts William gave him.”

She looked up and Nick thought of shell-less oysters again as the mottled, mucusy gray eyes within their pools of makeup tried to focus on him. “But if he did indeed murder my son, I guess it ghosts… goes, that is… goes without saying that he was no real friend. This Hal Fox was probably always planning to betray and murder William.” She inhaled deeply, held it, and then exhaled smoke through her nose.

“No idea, then, where this boy might be?” asked Nick.

“Nothing more than what I’ve already told your colleagues, Detective… was it Detective Betham? Nick Betham?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Nick. He’d already checked out the various overpasses and other flashgang hangouts that Ms. Kschessinska had told the LAPD and CHP about. It hadn’t been easy going to those places either, since Leonard’s apartment and the entire neighborhood near Echo Park had been first reduced to rubble and then burned down in the fighting. Aryan B gangs numbering in the hundreds had blown the walls at the Dodger Stadium Homeland Security Detention Center, flooding that entire neighborhood with more terrorists, killers, and self- proclaimed jihadists. The area around Chavez Ravine was not a safe place to spend time this week.

Checking out the storm sewer system, including the area still a crime scene under the Disney Center, had also had its nasty surprises. But none that had given Nick a clue about Val’s current whereabouts.

He’d left Galina Kschessinska Coyne smoking, drinking, sobbing, and hiccupping. With the investigation into the attack on Advisor Omura being called off—due not only to the press of current events but to Omura’s own request that it be discontinued—it was doubtful that any authorities would come to visit Ms. Kschessinska again. Or at least, Nick thought as he let himself out, until some patrol officers, responding to complaints of a terrible smell, someday entered the apartment to find her corpse.

Do you wish any more pepper tuna or sunomono or nabeyaki udon or tako su, Bottom-san?” asked Sato. “Or sake? ”

“No, no, no thank you,” said Nick. “Especially no thank you on the sake. I’ve had too much already.”

He was a little drunk. That would be fine if he were just going straight home to his cubie and bed after they landed in Denver in the next hour or so, but Nick wasn’t sure what Sato might have in mind.

“Sato-san,” he said, “tell me again when I’m going to see Mr. Nakamura?”

“You remember me saying, Bottom-san, that Nakamura-sama is scheduled to return to Denver tomorrow night. You are invited to come speak to Nakamura-sama as soon as he arrives home in the evening. He is most eager to hear what you have to say.”

To name Keigo Nakamura’s murderer, thought Nick. If I don’t know by then, I’m expendable. If I do have the murder figured out, I’ll be even more expendable.

“I brought these,” said Sato and set a nylon bag on the side of Nick’s table where it had just been cleared by the kimonoed flight attendants.

Suspicious, Nick unzipped the top. Ten vials of flashback cradled in foam, four of the vials obviously multihour flashes.

“Thanks,” said Nick, closing the bag and dropping it on the carpet next to his feet. It had been seven long days and nights since he’d last gone under the flash, but he found that the sight of the vials hadn’t excited him the