THIS ONE GOES TO MARKET
1
The young Russian, Ana Demidova, had not used to her real name for ten years. Tonight it was on her tongue, ready to roar.
She stood to leave her seat, but the man sitting next to her was quick enough to grab her by the wrist.
“Stay!” he shouted over the entire orchestra. The San Francisco Opera House was full of songs from the stage.
Again she stood.
He pulled her down with an interlocking arm. Through the grit of his teeth he hissed into her ear, “Don’t rush so soon from my love!”
She sat back. Instead of watching the show, she looked up at the theater roof.
The owl was high above her, flying in a circle.
She caught sight of the indoor owl before anyone else.
The image of the bird skipped frames, so she lost focus of it. For a moment the owl began to flicker, change, as it became a red-tailed hawk. Then, to be clear, it returned to a more constant owl form. This dramatic transformation didn’t register with the young Russian, for she didn’t even blink. But her eyes shuffled in color, switching from brown to blue to green, only to settle on some final blend of all three. Her eyes now possessed a shade so striking they promised to pierce the heart of anyone who made level with them for too long. Also, her head of hair, which was dark and cut sharp, started to move along to the pump of owl wings. Her straight hair tip went slightly into a curl.
When the owl made a low swoop, other people took notice. It landed, wings at rest, on a balcony railing. This stirred nearby audience members into a panic. It also got the attention of those seated below. Many actors on stage tried to ignore the chaos, still keep the scene. The audience, however, started racing out for exits. Finally, the actor in the lead role broke character. He addressed anyone in the crowd who would listen.
“Please keep calm. You can gather in the lobby while we escort this creature from the building. Refreshments will be served. By chance, are there any pest control officers among you?”
She stood in the lobby with Doctor Doogenheim. They knocked shoulders with the pack.
He began to scold her. With waves of chatter in the crowd, his harsh tone didn’t spike any concern.
“What is it, Katrina? The bathroom? Do you need a toilet?”
Katrina shook her head no.
“Then where must you go so suddenly?”
She didn’t reply. She was too busy scanning the lobby for ways to escape the building. The crowd was too thick.
He wiped the lens of his glasses on his sleeve before returning it to the bridge of his nose. Looking at his watch, he said, “How long does it take to wrangle a hawk?”
She said, “It’s not a hawk. It’s a Barn Owl.”
“Who cares what it is?” he snapped. “A goddamn bird.”
There was a short silence between them, and then he added, “Besides, owls don’t hunt during the day.”
She said, “That one does. Besides, the sun is down.”
“We’re talking twilight here,” the doctor said. “Besides.”
A voice came from behind, “Doctor Doogenheim.”
A new couple squeezed forward.
The doctor prepared himself to turn and shake hands. Katrina thought this moment might be a blessing to slip away and hide.
The introductions were done in a tight space.
“Katrina, this is Doctor Bell and his wife, Jane. And to you both, this is my soon-to-be bride, Katrina Madrid.”
Jane Bell had a way of showing her surprise with a slack jaw. She said, “Marriage? Doctor Scott Doogenheim!”
So Katrina said, “This is our first date.”
Doctor Frank Bell was eager to jump on the failed logic.
“Wait, so, you two are getting married, but this is romantic date number one? How does that work?”
Doctor Doogenheim rushed to explain, “What Katrina meant to say, this is our first date on American soil. You see, we met in Russia.”
Jane squealed in delight. “Oh, love in a foreign land. How rare!”
The wrinkles around her squinting eyes said: You’re one of those sneaky mail-order brides, aren’t you, honey? The kind who advertise themselves to men over the internet. You describe a love for cooking and cleaning and family, when all you really want to do is to live in a better country.
Katrina said, “We met in Moscow, at the International Marriage Agency. I was a translator. He needed my translation at the dating mixer. If you can’t place my English accent, so what, I’ve been many places.”
Jane still sounded aroused by a different culture: “Let’s hear you say something in Russian.”
Katrina Madrid smiled for the first time. She got close to Doctor Doogenheim, wrapping her arm around his waist. Then, in the Slavic tongue, she said, “This man is weak. No muscle. I have killed men three times his size.”
Jane said, “I just heard a string of consonants, no vowels, so I wonder what your words mean.”
There was a void to follow, as they all waited for some type of translation. Katrina offered them nothing, paying more attention to the alarm systems on emergency doors.
Doctor Bell cleared his throat. He said, “So, did anyone else see Romeo, in that last scene with Juliet, run off the stage for a towel? He had to wipe the bird poop off his face. Hey, we should do dinner after this, the four of us.”
Suddenly, there was a shift in the crowd. The doors to the theater opened again.
“Looks like the bird is gone,” Jane said.
“About time,” said Doctor Doogenheim. “Goodbye hawk.”
Katrina Madrid was already scouting the pockets of free space around her. Then she saw a clear path.
“It’s not a hawk,” she said. “It’s a Barn Owl.”
Doctor Doogenheim spun his head around with fury in his eyes. So Katrina snatched at his glasses, throwing his spectacles to the floor. The doctor was now nearly blind.
She ran.
She ran to the double doors that led her out to streetlights. Then she ran two miles, block after block, until she arrived at Golden Gate Park
Here, she stopped to regain her wind. And to look at the night sky.
Still above her, the owl flew at tree top level.
The Common Barn Owl issued a screeching bird call. The screech sounded like a door creaking open on a sharp hinge, but for Katrina, it was familiar music to her little ears.
The bird gave her a warning sign by a dip of its wings. The warning was of fire.
Katrina left the park.
Back on the city grid, she ventured through part of the Richmond District known as Little Russia. When she finally found the street she was looking for, a police officer stopped her at the corner.
“House fire,” he told her. “Can’t go down that way.”
“But I have an appointment on that street,” she said. “I must keep it.”
He waved her backwards, saying, “Not safe.”
The night sky, like always, should have been dark.
The burning house gave the night a strange illumination and a terrific orange glow. A massive floodlight from a network news van went on the hunt for any last shadow.
Katrina Madrid ran up the alley. The alley was lit along the way by flames. Her short figure cast a slight shape on the wall. She was fast, but her shadow was faster.
She emerged from the alley, only to then slide past a police barricade. She jumped over a fire hose. Just ahead, the main valve on a fire hydrant exploded, sending a burst of water onto the sidewalk. Had Katrina Madrid been closer, the flow would have made her wet from the waist down. Avoiding any splash, she kept running. The heat was still on her backside, but she began to cool with some distance. The coastal wind was sure to carry the blaze to another house and follow her.
The big house at the end of the street had the same Victorian design as so many other houses did in San Francisco.
The Gothic steeples.
The gargoyles on guard.
There was also a sign. It said: READINGS BY ROXANNA.
Katrina climbed the porch. On the front door, she rapped the iron-claw knocker.
An old gypsy woman soon opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I’m Katrina Madrid. I’m your eight o’clock.”
“My last appointment of the evening,” said the gypsy. “Come inside.”
Katrina followed the gypsy into the house and down to the basement.
There were sounds of animals in the next room.
The chirp and the bark.
The hiss and the squawk.
The grunt and the growl.
As Katrina lifted a hand to split the drape of doorway beads, her eyes went around the room.
The animals greeted her with cage rattle.
“Please,” the gypsy said. “Join me at the table.”
So Katrina sat down opposite the old woman.
“I didn’t think you would come,” the gypsy said. “There’s a fire down the street. And a roadblock.”
“I know.”
“But you still found a way here. You did not cancel, why?”
Katrina shrugged her shoulders.
The gypsy tried to show she was wise to the meaning of that shrug. Then she said, “Now. About your fortune. I must tell you, I do not shuffle Tarot cards or read the lines of your palm.”
“I know how you do it.”
“You do. Good. Then we can begin. These pets of mine will act like a wild crystal ball.”
The gypsy pointed out the animals by their psychic ability.
“Meet the wild ones. The spider to your right, a Black Widow, her name is Fate. Going clockwise, you will notice the fresh water tank on the bottom has piranhas. They make up the Destiny School of Fish. The top tank has tropical saltwater. The shark you see there, all twenty-one inches of him, his name is Aftermath. Under my chair, a Siamese cat, just purring away. She is Consequence. Behind me is a Black Emperor Scorpion. His name is Domino because he points his stinger at unfolding events. In the cage over there, a parrot. Her name is Lucky, for the lottery numbers she calls out. Those two snakes are King Cobras. They go by the names Cause and Effect, but they look alike, so I never know them apart. That cage holds a Black Howler Monkey. I call him Chance. The rat on my lap, his name is Risk the Rodent, but the two snakes want to call him dinner. Somewhere you might find a butterfly or an odd hornet, a snapping turtle, a python, maybe a Komodo dragon, but they are still in training. We can ignore them. And so, finally, the Doberman Pinscher by your side. His name: Doomsday. Which brings us to you, my darling dear.”
The ugly woman, this mole-faced gypsy, now cast a screwed eye onto her guest. Then she addressed her pets: “Wild ones, I ask you to show me a sign. Show me by your supernatural animal instinct. Will Katrina Madrid have a long life of great health? Will she have a rich life of great wealth? Will she find love?”
The gypsy looked at each beast in the room.
To measure how they moved.
To gauge what noises they made.
To survey what they might predict.
But Katrina Madrid could not wait to attack. She tipped the table over. She kicked the old woman in the chest. The gypsy fell backwards from her chair. Katrina then pulled the woman across the floor to the closest cage, where she handcuffed the woman to a metal bar.
Katrina said, “Hello, Olena.”
The old woman was still in a daze when she said, “My name is Roxanna. Why have you done this?”
“Your name is Olena Kovalenko. You are the last Kovalenko.”
“Who are you?”
“I happen to be the last Demidova.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
2
Katrina lowered herself to squat, telling the old gypsy woman, “You are the last Kovalenko left in the world, so I will do this different. In the past, when I caught a Kovalenko, I would torture them with two questions: How many Kovalenkos are still alive? Where are they now? They would tell me and I would kill them. But you, Olena, you are the last one. So I don’t need answers from you. You are going to die. And when you do, it will be the end of my stalking your kind. However, before I decide on your death, I should probably consult your little animal kingdom here, since they are such good deciders themselves. I want them to weigh the merits of my revenge.”
Katrina Madrid stood up, walking slowly from cage to tank, from fish to fowl, from fangs to claws.
“Wild ones, let me tell you about Anastasia Demidova. At the age of five, Ana became the last living Demidova. The Kovalenko clan had killed everyone in her family.”
Then she said, “For the longest time, Ana only knew about two events that caused her loss. One event was a big explosion at a wedding party, a bomb that killed most of the Demidova clan. The second event was the funeral. When the remaining Demidovas went to mourn at the family gravesite, they were ambushed by the Kovalenkos again, shot down by machine guns. Little Ana had been at both events, and yet, only she survived. The next three years that followed in her life went missing from her young memory. She didn’t remember leaving Russia or how she got across Europe. But at the age of eight, she found herself somewhere in Spain. She became a curious case for the locals of each small village she passed through, since it was clear she was too young to be alone, speaking no Spanish, only Russian. So the city of Madrid became her new home. Several professors from the university tried to put together her true origin. They wanted to know how she went from Russia to Spain with no money. With the help of a translator, Ana told them she had simply followed a bird. She said a very nice bird would always be around to guide her. They all dismissed her bird story as the fantasy of a child who was still undergoing shock.”
She closed her eyes, saying, “I still remember some expert sitting me down in that empty lecture hall, in front of a large map. He pointed at the border between Russia and Georgia, a small republic to the south. This was the first time I heard him say the word “vendetta”, which he was gentle enough to define as a private war between two families. Then he called it what it was, a blood feud between the Kovalenkos and the Demidovas.”
Katrina opened her eyes. She wagged her finger at the gypsy, saying, “He told me blood feuds happen in places with a weak rule of law, places with no police to resolve the fights of neighbors. The country of Georgia, he told me, had been one of those places during a decade of civil unrest.”
Katrina shook her small fist. She said, “This expert got real animated over wild justice. About honor. About the duty to make any wrong done against your family right. About settling scores.”
“Your aunt started this!” the old gypsy woman interrupted. “She crossed the border to have affair with Boris, a man from my family, a married man!”
Katrina countered, “Your son killed my aunt for that minor transgression!”
The gypsy said, “Both our families were too big. The killing, back and forth, it would have gone on for years, no end. Your father for my son. Your mother for my daughter. Then cousins. Then nephews. We couldn’t dare leave the house. Not even to go to the market. We would have been prisoners in fear. Targets. Targets at the market.”
“So there you have it,” Katrina said, turning to the jury of exotic pets. “The Kovalenkos wanted to clean their entire plate with one bite. End the war before it got started. Death to the innocent. Because you thought we’d catch you at the market. Such a risky trip. That marketplace.”
Katrina stood for a moment, clenching her fingernails into her palm.
Then she said, “I don’t think these animals care. I don’t think they care what it was like tracking each one of you down. You know, Olena, I saved you for last. Not because you’re the grandmother or the matriarch of your rotten family. That would be too dramatic. Too symbolic.”
Katrina clucked her lips once. She said, “Truth is, I wanted you dead first. But your whole fortune teller act threw me off. Thought you might see me coming in some dream or some vision. Thought there might be something special about all these animals you travel with. But we both know how fake you are. You don’t see the future. Can’t see the future. And these animals are, what the Americans would call, a sideshow gimmick. Took me some time to figure that out.”
Katrina started a slow march back and forth. She said, “Because, in my life, there’s a bird that leads me when I’m lost. This bird lets me find all the bad people. I was a fool to think, since I have an animal guide, Olena Kovalenko must, too. Funny. I could’ve killed you so many times before tonight.”
Katrina stopped her pace. She said, “I’d tell you more about my bird, but I’m afraid the drama I wanted to avoid with you has sprung up. And I’m disgusted by it. Maybe I’ve enjoyed this too much. Now it should end.”
And with that, Katrina Madrid, born Ana Demidova, opened the first cage.
3
“What are you going to do?” the old gypsy woman cried out, yanking with full body weight on the handcuff.
Katrina tilted the glass tank on its side.
She said, “I’m not going to do anything. These things are going to do it for me. You will be bitten by many things. Many poisonous things. At some point, these things will get hungry. And you will be the only food around. Sure, I can come back later, confirm you dead, but there will be chunks of flesh missing from your cheek or an eyeball sucked out of your empty eye socket. And I have seen enough of you dead Kovalenkos. Right now, the only thing I care about is letting the most dangerous thing out last.”
“Please, don’t. There are more of us. Many more. I will tell you where they are. Please.”
“Not true. The Kovalenko countdown ends with you.”
Katrina used this lie often. Playing dumb, a tactic to gain more information.
So the gypsy said, “There are two more. Andre and Oleg. Twin brothers. Two sons of Boris and your aunt. Please, don’t. They exist. They both live in Oakland. Please.”
Katrina fake laughed, “Ha! Not true. You would list the friends of your family, even your neighbors, if you thought it would save you. Goodbye, Olena. The Demidova clan has won.”
Katrina ran past the old gypsy woman who tried to spit at her.
The young Russian bounded up the basement stairs, but the door at the top step was locked. A sudden fright set in.
Katrina called down: “Tell me where the key is for this door!”
The gypsy yelled back up: “I fed it to the rat. The same rat the snake just swallowed.”
Katrina had to go back down to the basement. She saw a variety of wildlife scurrying along the floor.
There was a door across the room that she had no other choice but to leap several times to reach. She tested the knob. Thankfully, it turned. The next room was an office with yet another door in the opposite corner. That door opened to a garage, a way out, but a tiger lay there, licking its paw. Right then, Katrina noticed the tiger was not chained down to anything. She froze for a moment. The big cat rose up.
Katrina made a sprint back through the office, knowing the tiger would soon chase and pounce.
The empty cage that had once housed the Black Howler Monkey was her last resort. She jumped through the cage door and pulled it shut with her fingers.
The tiger had not been on her heels as she previously thought, but it did slowly lurch into the room. It investigated the activity of the room with some caution. It made a sudden determination this gypsy was the most popular meal.
Safely behind cage bars, Katrina had to decide whether to run now while the tiger was distracted or wait for it to have a full stomach.
When the big cat put his back to her, Katrina bolted out from the cage.
She got to the office, shutting the door behind her, frantic and still shaking, almost forgetting to breath.
She heard Olena Kovalenko scream.
Katrina let go a huge sigh.
She could now push the button for the garage door to roll, and just walk down that driveway.
When she got outside a firefighter jogged up to her, up the front walkway. Katrina kept her head low as she strode past him.
He said, “Miss, we’re going door to door, having everybody in the neighborhood evacuate, due to a potential gas fire. A possible pipeline explosion. Is there anyone else still in your residence?”
Without looking back, Katrina Madrid said, “Nobody.”
Katrina was less than one mile away, about to wave down a taxi, when the danger the fireman had warned her about, that gas leak explosion, came true.
The sky lit up.
The ground shook.
She knew instantly that dozens of lives had just ended and that hundreds of homes had been destroyed. She struggled with what she wanted, to help anyone hurt, and her more opposite need, to avoid her most recent crime scene.
In the taxi, Katrina told the driver where to go. The Bay View Hotel.
The driver pushed the gas pedal over the speed limit, slowing only when the house flames were gone from his rear-view mirror.
Katrina measured the Asian man at the wheel for any hint he might later link her to murder.
There was a picture on the backseat divider, a photo of a missing female. Printed below that, reward money for finding her.
It struck the young Russian, now almost done with her hunt for Kovalenko blood, that she could use her tracking bird, not for revenge, but for the sake of a good deed. Katrina could find this missing woman. The idea moved her heart.
But as Katrina Madrid looked up from that cab window, the night sky was still bonfire bright, and she never caught sight of her bird anywhere in flight. With one more Kovalenko gone from the world, she began to fear she would never hunt alongside the eyes of that owl again.
Just then, the Asian driver interrupted her desperate search. He taunted her with a strange fact, one she’d never forget.
Over his shoulder, he said, “After the great earthquake, San Francisco officials decided to install fire hydrants that would never burst for any reason. But here they go now. Water exploding everywhere.”
As he turned the wheel, he said, “Look, another one. Following us for miles. Burst.“
4
The owl made a silent move in the night, flying through the trees of a redwood forest.
It perched on a high limb. Ready to ambush.
Hunting alone, the owl could hear a small mammal racing through the grassy undergrowth. It was a mouse. A little white one. Ground prey.
So the owl swooped down. Just about to grab the meal, the owl grabbed nothing. The mouse had dipped under a fallen log.
The owl started to soar up. But a giant net dropped down from the canopy. Caught under it, wings weighed down, the bird screeched a scary hiss.
Two big men. Andre and Oleg Kovalenko.
Twins.
They emerged from the dark into that moonlit clearing.
They had finally trapped the owl that had once haunted their gypsy campground as children.
The mouse poked out from that mossy hole. It climbed on the top of a Kovalenko boot. One of the twins lifted the mouse up by the tail, then he dangled it into his coat pocket.