Oksana marched through the massive gray skyscraper’s revolving doors into the frigid air. She leaned against a limestone pillar, pulled a cigarette from the pack in her right coat pocket, and lit up beneath the giant news ticker affixed to the building’s facade. The spot was shielded from the wind and as good a place as any to figure out her next move.
Fascists, the lot of them! The editors had refused to buy the photos. Worse, the blond, bifocaled brat behind the counter—the same woman who had eagerly written a check for Melissa’s skin care regimen—had the audacity to suggest that her taking the pictures warranted calling the cops.
American laws were so hypocritical, Oksana fumed. The country couldn’t care less about privacy when it concerned the living. It let companies tailor advertisements based on personal emails and permitted devices that listened in and recorded people without their consent. People could walk around videotaping an entire street via internet-connected glasses, for God’s sake. But try to sell a picture of a dead body—show a person who couldn’t possibly care anymore what anyone thought of them—and that was a violation. That was the sacrilege!
Fortunately, Oksana knew that America’s true religion was capitalism. Its golden rule was that demand must be supplied. Give the people what they want, with legal caveats indemnifying the deliverer, of course.
Folks would want to glimpse the end that had befallen a famed director, to see secondhand that even the so-called beautiful people died ugly. Internet sleuths would want to examine all the little details she’d been sure to include in the shots, each a potential clue as to whether Nate had killed himself or was murdered. The picture was the human version of a five-car highway pileup. Who would be able to resist following a link with the headline Nate Walker’s Blood-Soaked Last Scene! It was clickbait on crack.
Oksana took a long drag, pulling the cigarette smoke deep into her lungs. Every puff of nerve-calming nicotine came laced with cancer-causing chemicals, but she didn’t care. Fate had to have other plans for her than an oxygen tank. She’d probably die far earlier from something unexpected, a hit-and-run accident or a fall down the stairs, ignored back pain that proved the early warning sign of something more sinister. What killed you was rarely what you saw coming. It was something you’d missed.
What was she missing? Oksana wondered. Other than the money that should have been fattening her pocket.
The money! That was it! The perennial motive behind so many actions. The newspaper probably hadn’t bought the photos for fear that its advertisers wouldn’t want their products associated with a near-severed head. But there would be other companies that didn’t care about selling ad space alongside articles, firms that charged people to see exactly what they were looking for.
Oksana exhaled the smoke in a long, swirling line and then stubbed the cigarette on the limestone column. She slipped it back into the box in her coat pocket. There was no sense in wasting good tobacco, she thought. But she needed to make the call before her cousin went to sleep.
She connected her cell to the building’s guest Wi-Fi, clicked the WhatsApp icon on her screen, and called up Grygoriy. Three rings later, he answered, his voice thick with fatigue and vodka. He thanked her for calling and asked how she was, both formalities. Their relationship was transactional. They each called the other when something was needed.
“You remember that site you told me about?” Oksana asked, her native language buzzing on the tip of her tongue. “You said they paid in crypto. Explain for me.”