Chapter 9
A Private Conversation
(Ó 2007)
Early the next morning, David Todd and Noel Jaworski were busy setting up all the video equipment needed for what would turn out to be three days of recording, and listening to, the detailed confessions of both Raul Ortega and William Freeman. However, at that same moment miles away in a diner on Ohio Street in downtown Chicago, two women were having what they at the time believed was a private conversation.
They sat across from one another in a booth, next to the window that looked out onto the street.
Romana Alexiev and Ellyian Krupskya, two women who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union. Both women had come to the United States some three years before seeking a better life after the fall of communism in their former homeland.
Both women worked at the same five star hotel located on Michigan Avenue. Ellyian, being from Moscow, adjusted better to the city life of Chicago. She was a beautiful woman, and being that she was fluent in the English language, she worked her way to a position at the reception desk quickly. She was also in line to be a concierge.
Romana was from a smaller town known as Grodno, which was near the border of Russia and Poland. She herself was an attractive woman; however, she still lacked the skills of the English language that her friend had mastered. Therefore, for the moment, she worked in the housekeeping department of the hotel.
Romana had a husband, but he was a dissident toward the communist regime and became a victim of the Soviet prison system. After the fall of communism, she tried frantically to locate him but to no avail. He was missing and presumed dead. She now had to face life alone and raise her young son by her presumed deceased husband alone. With that, she immigrated to the United States, with the determination to make a better life for her son, with the faith that if her husband by chance were still alive, he would find them both.
It was Romana’s now ten-year-old son, Nicholas, her only child, which was the topic of their discussion. Romana was very distraught, worried over the welfare and well-being of her son.3
The diner was very busy with the morning breakfast crowd. The air was filled with the mumbled sound of hundreds of different conversations from the patrons. However, to insure their privacy, Romana and Ellyian conversed in their native Russian tongue.
Tears began to well in Romana’s eyes as she said to her friend, “I do not know what to do, and I get more suspicious every moment. A mother feels these things when her child is being hurt. I am so frightened Ellyian, I am so scared for Nicholas.”
“How do you think he is hurting Nicholas?” Ellyian asked.
Romana looked to her friend with a frightened expression, her lips quivering, “I think that he is hurting him in the worst way a man can hurt a little boy.” She then looked down to her hands and they were shaking.
Ellyian quietly gasped, “Romana! Are you saying that, - - - you think he - - - is?”
“Forcing my son to perform sex with him, yes.”
“Romana that is a very serious accusation. His father owns MB Media, and he is in line to take it over.”
“That is what makes this so difficult. He is a powerful man, and his father is even more powerful. Me? I am just a maid in a hotel. If I say anything, then the next thing I know, Nicolas and I will be back in Grodno within hours of my speaking out.”
“Do you have any proof Romana?” Ellyian asked, taking her friends hands in hers.
“Nicholas is the only proof I can get. But he doesn’t say anything.” She answered. “Like I told you, a mother, she knows when her child is being hurt. I know he was a happy, beautiful boy before he became involved with that man’s foundation. He now sits in his room, he does not want to go anywhere or play with his friends. He avoids talking to me. And, I know of these things from back in Russia, when the communists were in power, they believed they could get away with anything. And many of them did, the ones who are like this man, who crave little children. They got away with it there. I have seen it.”
Ellyian looked at the heartbreak on the face of her good friend, “What are you going to do Romana? What are you going to do?”
“I do not know. Right now the only thing I can do is to keep him away from that man, that monster.” Romana then began to weep, “You have seen my Nicholas. Ellyian, he is a beautiful boy. That is what everybody says to me when they first see him. They do not say he is handsome, they say he is beautiful. They say I should have photographs of him taken to show to the modeling agencies. I brought him here to have a good life. I did not bring him here to be used for the pleasure of some perverted animal.”
Ellyian stood up from her side of the booth to sit with her friend on the other. She put her arm around her and let her cry on to her shoulder, “It will be alright Romana. I do not know how, but something will come of this, I do not know what. But somehow, it will turn out alright.” She grabbed some of the paper napkins so that she could wipe her tears and clear her nose, “Here, put yourself together, it will turn out right somehow.” - - -
- - - He sat finishing his coffee with his copy of the morning Chicago Sun-Times. He was reading the main story with the headline, “SUSPECTS IN SERIAL RAPES TO CONFESS”. The small sub-heading followed, “Both suspects admit to rape spree, will stay hospitalized for ‘indefinite period’”. In the center of the page was a large photograph of detectives David Todd and Noel Jaworski. He studied the faces of both men for quite a while, and read the reports in the papers a few times.
There was another smaller story that also had his attention, “‘Dark Man’ Who Hospitalized Rape Suspects Still at Large”. There was a sub-heading that read, “Urged to turn self in”.
He was engrossed in the newspaper reports since he woke that morning, with that being the main story on the morning news on both his television and radio. He studied and listened to every word, noting that the only mention of him was of him being referred to as the “Dark Man” and the plea by the authorities to turn himself in that he had nothing to fear from them.
To him that meant that they had no idea who to look for, or any idea or clue to who the person was that had brought to a stop the terrorization of the two rapists.
However, something now distracted him from his newspaper. It was the conversation of the two women in the booth directly behind him. They were speaking in Russian. One woman, her tone worried and frightened, the other woman, trying to comfort and consol her.
His briefcase was on the seat next to him. He picked it up, placed it in front of him and opened it. He closed his newspaper and placed it neatly inside the case. He then took from it a small pad of notepaper and removed the top sheet, and replaced it back in its proper place. He then closed and locked his briefcase and set in back down on the seat next to him.
His suit jacket was also neatly set on the seat next to the briefcase. He picked it up to retrieve his pen from the inside breast pocket. He then wrote on the piece of note pad paper:
Father -
MB MEDIA
Son- next in line
Foundation?
He folded the piece of paper twice and inserted it into the breast pocket of his shirt. He then reached over to get the check for his breakfast that his waitress had set there a few moments before. He stood, picked up his suit jacket and put it on. He then picked up his briefcase, left a five-dollar bill on the table for the waitress, then stepped over to the cashier to pay his bill.
He never looked over to the two women who sat behind him. He paid his bill then went to the entrance of the diner. Once outside he reached into the other breast pocket of his suit jacket to retrieve his sunglasses. He placed them on; the dark lenses concealed his eyes. He turned to the left and began to walk slowly up the street. He looked through the window of the diner as he passed by and looked briefly at the two women, one still consoling the other.
He walked up to the corner, which was La Salle Street. He stopped to turn right, but he couldn’t cross because of the red light. As he waited, the crowd of pedestrians around him began to grow. In a minute, the light turned green and all began to walk. He disappeared into the morning flow of all the other people on their way to their various jobs.
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