Post by Immanuel Taylor on Jul 2, 2011 13:26:37 GMT -5
Mark Rivera usually always wears a suit when he is visiting New York City. His choice, in particular, is the turtleneck with crocodile-skin loafers. Rivera liked it so much that he wore it on the latest episode of Sunday Night Vengeance and made sure to TiVo the show in order to watch himself and take careful notes in regards to his posture, attitude, and movement in and out of the ring. Rivera honestly enjoyed watching himself. He did it all the time. He was doing it when he was staring in the mirror just before the bi-weekly product of The Asylum began. He did it in his comfortable office at the Asylum headquarters in San Francisco at 1337 Mission Street.
Today, however, Rivera had to settle for a bland purple Polo shirt along with a pair of black dress pants and shoes. It’s the day immediately after the June 26th edition of Sunday Night Vengeance and Rivera, after a night spent firstly in a hot bath and then in bed with his blonde female Hungarian escort at his exclusive suite, is in the reception area of the prestigious New York Marriott Marquis. There is a mass of faceless individuals making their way into and out of the hotel, into and out of the innumerable elevators, and it is for this reason that Rivera took longer than usual to locate Vitali Khodorkovsky.
“Comrade Vitali” said Rivera in a mock Russian accent.
“Mr. Rivera” Vitali replied with an eloquent English accent. Vitali is wearing a suit himself and both Rivera and he do not stick out when it comes to the flashy pomp of the Marriott Marquis. “Thank you for meeting me so suddenly”
“Thank me? Vitali, I’m paying you for your presence and work. I have to admit though, you are the first employee of mine to personally catch a flight to a live show of Sunday Night Vengeance. I’m assuming you’ve got something juicy for me, yes?”
“Yes”
“Good, let’s talk outside.”
Vitali and Rivera made their way outside the Marriott Marquis and into the endless momentum of Times Square itself.
“First time to New York?”
“Yes”
“Good for you. Now let’s get into business. You’ve come to report the progress of your investigation of Immanuel Taylor. Speak freely, my son”
Vitali took out the high school class photo of Immanuel Taylor at the private Gillman school and handed it to Rivera. There was a circle around the head of one of the students. Rivera eyed it. A passing bystander bumped into Rivera as he was doing so.
“Watch it, asshole” Rivera barked at him.
“What?”
“I said watch it, asshole. And judging by your response I’d say you have to hear it, too”
The anonymous, faceless and rather well-toned pedestrian went for a counter-reply and perhaps a physical confrontation when he suddenly noticed Rivera’s companion, Vitali, standing next to him and giving him a dirty look. The bystander stared down Vitali who stared back at him. The bystander shrugged, spit at the ground and walked away.
Rivera and Vitali continued their walk as the endless neon signs scattered around Times Square continued to glow. It is morning though and thus the lights did not interfere or make their presence too intrusive.
“I don’t get it”
“He’s the African-American kid in the photo”
“Yes, Vitali, I was able to decipher your super secret code. I’m waiting for an explanation on how a European-white skinned Immanuel Taylor may have been an African-black skinned kid in his high school years. Or do you want me to feign complete confusion and have you lead me to an answer?”
“This is from a private school, Gilman, in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s where Immanuel supposedly went to high school and…”
“Supposedly?” Rivera interrupts. A young female passerby passes between both men and continues on.
“Yes. As in he is documented to have been in that school. As I was saying, this was from his eleventh grade group photo at Gilman School at the Roland Park neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. You can tell from the Left-to-Right name categorization at the bottom of the photo.”
“So the asshole went to a private school? Figures. It’s always the spoiled ones who grow up all emotional and…”
“Supposedly went to a private school, Mr. Rivera”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Vitali, I hired you to do a simple investigation and you keep giving me all these puzzles and riddles. Jesus, it’s like an episode of the Murdoch Mysteries.”
“Well, Mr. Rivera, what I’m about to say next will be direct and straightforward. When I returned to San Francisco I went to a café that Immanuel frequents and I asked the waitress over there about him and she gave me the name he gave her. Jonathan Harker. He uses an alias.”
“Thank you, Vitali. That’s very direct and straightforward” Rivera sarcastically exclaims as both men stop at a McDonalds. Rivera instructs Vitali to wait as he goes inside. Vitali uses the intermission to formulate his argument better as Rivera gets a cup of coffee and makes his way back outside. Rivera sets the cup of coffee on a mailbox, tears open a sugar packet and sprinkles it on the coffee before beginning to stir.
“Vitali” Rivera isn’t looking at him. “When I finish preparing this, I want you to explain a couple of things to me. What the fuck Immanuel is doing in San Francisco, how you stumbled upon him there, whether he saw you or not, whether you followed him or not, and lastly, if there is anything flawed in what you found about Immanuel. By that, I mean the Gilman photo and the Jonathan Harker alias.”
Rivera finishes stirring and reinserts the covering cap on the plastic cup before continuing his walk with Vitali. They pass by the Coca Cola sign imprinted on the Renaissance New York Hotel and wait for the stop sign to appear in order to keep going left. Rivera takes his first sip.
“Good coffee. I’ve at last found something worthwhile in McDonalds.” Rivera says as Vitali nods. Rivera doesn’t bother to apologize to Vitali for not asking if he wanted to get him one. “Ok. Now explain the things I brought up and do them chronologically”
Vitali Khodorkovsky, the tattoos on his knuckles showing, raises his right hand and covers his mouth when coughing. After that's done, along with some minor mental preparation, he goes to explain all that Rivera asked him to.
“It seems Immanuel Taylor is living in San Francisco, perhaps since he had a trial match at your headquarters in that same city. I stumbled unto him at the Mission District just around the Mission Dolores. He did not notice me and I followed him to a café behind the Mission itself. I followed him again after he left but lost him when he went into a grocery store. I waited outside and he didn't come out. It turns out the store had two entrances and he must have used the other one. Now…”
“Was it intentional?”
“Hm?”
“Did he lose you or did you lose him? You said he didn’t notice you but how do you know?”
“Because I followed him into the café and noticed that the waitress there, Nadine, greeted him warmly indicating that he frequents the cafe repeatedly. If he had noticed me following him would he have took me to a regular place? When he left the café, I continued following him at a distance and he made no unusual movements or such.”
“Ok. Proceed” Both men cross the street and turn right at Howard Johnson’s and move past the Duffy Theatre.
“Ok. Now in regards to what I’ve found about him. The group photo could simply be a simple mix-up but I strongly doubt that. The birth date was the exact same as in his EUW biography and, interestingly enough, it was red-flagged and designated to be removed.”
“By whom?"
“Didn’t say. The technical consultant kept a shadow copy anyways. I still think there is a slight chance that this could simply be a mix-up. However, the alias sticks. The young waitress seemed sure of the name he gave her.”
“Is he fucking her?” Rivera said very nonchalantly after taking a sip of his coffee.
“The waitress?”
“No. The Queen of England.” Rivera took another sip. “Yes, Vitali. The fucking waitress. Is Immanuel or Jonathan or whatever his name is involved in an intimate relationship with her?”
“No”
“You talked to her, yes?”
“Yes”
“And how did she use her words? Was she naïve?”
“Yes. I doubt she suspects anything suspicious in Immanuel. She described him as shy.”
“And how would you describe him, Vitali?” Rivera eyed an attractive young woman walking in front of them. They made eye contact when she dropped her purse and went to pick it up.
“I don’t think he’s crazy” Vitali muttered. “The man is 41 years old. If he was, he would have walked into a McDonalds with an Uzi by now. If he was some kind of damaged war veteran, he would have blown his brains out by now.”
“I agree with you that he’s not that kind of psycho, but there are many kinds of freaks in this world. Trust me, I’m in the professional wrestling business. I’d describe the cocksucker as an unleashed freak, Vitali. That’s how I’d describe that idiot. Do you know what he did yesterday on Sunday Night Vengeance?”
“I don’t watch wrestling, Mr. Rivera”
“He stole a title belt. You believe that shit? He fucking stole the Hardkore belt after he got his ass whipped for it by Tyreke Bell. And do you know what he did after he stole it? He went back to the ring, wrestled his match like nothing happened, and then made his way out of the arena. Just like that, off he strolled.”
“Can’t you fire him for that?”
“I tried this morning. My secretary told me that he registered it in the EUW Headquarters Storage Facility under his name. Our rules of conduct state that a belt must be registered by an official EUW wrestler but doesn’t stipulate that he or she has to be the current titleholder. Asshole found a loophole.”
Vitali Khodorkovsky and Mark Rivera kept moving forward as Rivera took another mouthful of his sugar-filled black coffee. He stopped to check out his own figure in the reflection from one of the momentous glass buildings. They continued on.
“I don’t get this guy, Vitali. I mean, from day one I cannot put my finger on what’s wrong with Immanuel Taylor. I know he’s hiding something, I know there’s something in his head. I just can’t figure this cocksucker out.” Rivera finished his coffee and threw the plastic cup in a trash bin. He smacked his lips together and continued.
“Maybe that waitress is right. Maybe Immanuel is just bizarre”
“Tell that to the trainer he crippled in his trial match and then tell that to yourself after you found out he’s using an alias. His contract expires on the 29th of December this year and then as his one-year guarantee clause is over and I can fire him. The problem is, we’re clocking into July and it’s a full six months left. Anything can happen in six months and the asshole has already crippled a trainer, stolen a title belt on live television, and now seems to have a complicated and non-liner past thanks to your detecting skills. I don’t even want to know what he’ll do next, intentionally or not. So what’s the next step?”
“I’m thinking of focusing on the race. The group photo shows an African American but just by looking at him and his now I can tell he’s somewhere from Europe. Not Western Europe. Eastern to Central.”
“Well, you’re ex-KGB. Don’t you have friends back in Russia who know how to do some hi-tech facial analysis to determine his name or age or what he had for dinner or whatever?”
Vitali kept quiet as both men stopped at the Hard Rock Café, standing near the entrance. Vitali was pondering something, sticking his nose up to the air. Part of it was a bluff since Vitali was not a part of the KGB service in the Soviet Union and had lied to present himself in a more favorable light to his employer. Vitali, however, was a Vor and he knew and knows people till this day, some with deep connections to the Kremlin and the FSB, who can get things done.
“I do know someone back in Nizhny Novgorod. If I get her proper and revealing footage of Immanuel Taylor then there is some kind of process that can be done to pinpoint Immanuel’s race.”
“That's it?"
“It’s something and it’s a start that can be used to trace his roots. If you pinpoint someone’s roots then you can work your way to a name. I'm going to need more footage of Immanuel though."
"That's easy. We keep recordings of all your shows. I'll have all his matches compressed into one DVD and you can come by the headquarters to pick them up. And while you're there, you can get one of my stooges to charge that plane ticket of yours to the Asylum treasury. Anything else?"
"You want me to keep an eye on the café in case Immanuel comes back? Maybe follow him back home?"
"No. I don't want to risk it. Focus on the lead you have and move on from there." Rivera stopped to take a glance at that very same woman whom he made eye contact with earlier, his facial expression compressed indicating he is under some form of self-inflicted pressure. Rivera is waiting for something and it comes as soon the woman he’s watching goes to hail a cab. "Ok, Vitali. This will be it for our little debriefing meeting. Is there anything else you need to bring up?"
"No"
"Beautiful. Keep up the good work”
Mark Rivera, not bothering to say goodbye, walked away and stood a couple of steps away from the young woman, a brunette in a revealing dress, he was knowingly following while discussing business with his hired thug, Vitali Khodorkovsky. A yellow cab, hard to get one for yourself in the midst of the madness of New York City, pulled over and found itself in-between Rivera and the brunette. He smiled and suggested sharing the cab. She smiled back too and agreed, being taken aside by Rivera’s expensive casual attire and that vibe of wealth and power emitting from him.
The cab made its way into the endless New York traffic as Vitali stood there, having witnessed the entire experience. Mark Rivera is an idiot and if he wasn’t showering Vitali with all this money then Vitali wouldn’t have accepted the assignment, let alone shown a punk like Rivera all this respect. But he did take the job and he is here, a small-town communist in the heart of an ideology that he once found disguising in a city that he doesn't belong in or understand, chasing down a man with a past that seems to be getting weirder and more dangerous by the second.
The money he makes is good and, in a free market, Vitali was able to accrue a lot of it by doing a skill he acquired in prison back home. Vitali pondered on this point as he walked back to the Marriott, surrounded by the excess of Times Square, eventually to reach his room, to reach the JFK airport in New York, to reach San Francisco, and then to take another plane back to a country that he knows little to nothing about. Vitali grew up in the USSR, not Russia. But it’s not anything special or unusual to Vitali. Just another place, one of many and many, that Vitali Khodorkovsky does not belong in.
Today, however, Rivera had to settle for a bland purple Polo shirt along with a pair of black dress pants and shoes. It’s the day immediately after the June 26th edition of Sunday Night Vengeance and Rivera, after a night spent firstly in a hot bath and then in bed with his blonde female Hungarian escort at his exclusive suite, is in the reception area of the prestigious New York Marriott Marquis. There is a mass of faceless individuals making their way into and out of the hotel, into and out of the innumerable elevators, and it is for this reason that Rivera took longer than usual to locate Vitali Khodorkovsky.
“Comrade Vitali” said Rivera in a mock Russian accent.
“Mr. Rivera” Vitali replied with an eloquent English accent. Vitali is wearing a suit himself and both Rivera and he do not stick out when it comes to the flashy pomp of the Marriott Marquis. “Thank you for meeting me so suddenly”
“Thank me? Vitali, I’m paying you for your presence and work. I have to admit though, you are the first employee of mine to personally catch a flight to a live show of Sunday Night Vengeance. I’m assuming you’ve got something juicy for me, yes?”
“Yes”
“Good, let’s talk outside.”
Vitali and Rivera made their way outside the Marriott Marquis and into the endless momentum of Times Square itself.
“First time to New York?”
“Yes”
“Good for you. Now let’s get into business. You’ve come to report the progress of your investigation of Immanuel Taylor. Speak freely, my son”
Vitali took out the high school class photo of Immanuel Taylor at the private Gillman school and handed it to Rivera. There was a circle around the head of one of the students. Rivera eyed it. A passing bystander bumped into Rivera as he was doing so.
“Watch it, asshole” Rivera barked at him.
“What?”
“I said watch it, asshole. And judging by your response I’d say you have to hear it, too”
The anonymous, faceless and rather well-toned pedestrian went for a counter-reply and perhaps a physical confrontation when he suddenly noticed Rivera’s companion, Vitali, standing next to him and giving him a dirty look. The bystander stared down Vitali who stared back at him. The bystander shrugged, spit at the ground and walked away.
Rivera and Vitali continued their walk as the endless neon signs scattered around Times Square continued to glow. It is morning though and thus the lights did not interfere or make their presence too intrusive.
“I don’t get it”
“He’s the African-American kid in the photo”
“Yes, Vitali, I was able to decipher your super secret code. I’m waiting for an explanation on how a European-white skinned Immanuel Taylor may have been an African-black skinned kid in his high school years. Or do you want me to feign complete confusion and have you lead me to an answer?”
“This is from a private school, Gilman, in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s where Immanuel supposedly went to high school and…”
“Supposedly?” Rivera interrupts. A young female passerby passes between both men and continues on.
“Yes. As in he is documented to have been in that school. As I was saying, this was from his eleventh grade group photo at Gilman School at the Roland Park neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. You can tell from the Left-to-Right name categorization at the bottom of the photo.”
“So the asshole went to a private school? Figures. It’s always the spoiled ones who grow up all emotional and…”
“Supposedly went to a private school, Mr. Rivera”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Vitali, I hired you to do a simple investigation and you keep giving me all these puzzles and riddles. Jesus, it’s like an episode of the Murdoch Mysteries.”
“Well, Mr. Rivera, what I’m about to say next will be direct and straightforward. When I returned to San Francisco I went to a café that Immanuel frequents and I asked the waitress over there about him and she gave me the name he gave her. Jonathan Harker. He uses an alias.”
“Thank you, Vitali. That’s very direct and straightforward” Rivera sarcastically exclaims as both men stop at a McDonalds. Rivera instructs Vitali to wait as he goes inside. Vitali uses the intermission to formulate his argument better as Rivera gets a cup of coffee and makes his way back outside. Rivera sets the cup of coffee on a mailbox, tears open a sugar packet and sprinkles it on the coffee before beginning to stir.
“Vitali” Rivera isn’t looking at him. “When I finish preparing this, I want you to explain a couple of things to me. What the fuck Immanuel is doing in San Francisco, how you stumbled upon him there, whether he saw you or not, whether you followed him or not, and lastly, if there is anything flawed in what you found about Immanuel. By that, I mean the Gilman photo and the Jonathan Harker alias.”
Rivera finishes stirring and reinserts the covering cap on the plastic cup before continuing his walk with Vitali. They pass by the Coca Cola sign imprinted on the Renaissance New York Hotel and wait for the stop sign to appear in order to keep going left. Rivera takes his first sip.
“Good coffee. I’ve at last found something worthwhile in McDonalds.” Rivera says as Vitali nods. Rivera doesn’t bother to apologize to Vitali for not asking if he wanted to get him one. “Ok. Now explain the things I brought up and do them chronologically”
Vitali Khodorkovsky, the tattoos on his knuckles showing, raises his right hand and covers his mouth when coughing. After that's done, along with some minor mental preparation, he goes to explain all that Rivera asked him to.
“It seems Immanuel Taylor is living in San Francisco, perhaps since he had a trial match at your headquarters in that same city. I stumbled unto him at the Mission District just around the Mission Dolores. He did not notice me and I followed him to a café behind the Mission itself. I followed him again after he left but lost him when he went into a grocery store. I waited outside and he didn't come out. It turns out the store had two entrances and he must have used the other one. Now…”
“Was it intentional?”
“Hm?”
“Did he lose you or did you lose him? You said he didn’t notice you but how do you know?”
“Because I followed him into the café and noticed that the waitress there, Nadine, greeted him warmly indicating that he frequents the cafe repeatedly. If he had noticed me following him would he have took me to a regular place? When he left the café, I continued following him at a distance and he made no unusual movements or such.”
“Ok. Proceed” Both men cross the street and turn right at Howard Johnson’s and move past the Duffy Theatre.
“Ok. Now in regards to what I’ve found about him. The group photo could simply be a simple mix-up but I strongly doubt that. The birth date was the exact same as in his EUW biography and, interestingly enough, it was red-flagged and designated to be removed.”
“By whom?"
“Didn’t say. The technical consultant kept a shadow copy anyways. I still think there is a slight chance that this could simply be a mix-up. However, the alias sticks. The young waitress seemed sure of the name he gave her.”
“Is he fucking her?” Rivera said very nonchalantly after taking a sip of his coffee.
“The waitress?”
“No. The Queen of England.” Rivera took another sip. “Yes, Vitali. The fucking waitress. Is Immanuel or Jonathan or whatever his name is involved in an intimate relationship with her?”
“No”
“You talked to her, yes?”
“Yes”
“And how did she use her words? Was she naïve?”
“Yes. I doubt she suspects anything suspicious in Immanuel. She described him as shy.”
“And how would you describe him, Vitali?” Rivera eyed an attractive young woman walking in front of them. They made eye contact when she dropped her purse and went to pick it up.
“I don’t think he’s crazy” Vitali muttered. “The man is 41 years old. If he was, he would have walked into a McDonalds with an Uzi by now. If he was some kind of damaged war veteran, he would have blown his brains out by now.”
“I agree with you that he’s not that kind of psycho, but there are many kinds of freaks in this world. Trust me, I’m in the professional wrestling business. I’d describe the cocksucker as an unleashed freak, Vitali. That’s how I’d describe that idiot. Do you know what he did yesterday on Sunday Night Vengeance?”
“I don’t watch wrestling, Mr. Rivera”
“He stole a title belt. You believe that shit? He fucking stole the Hardkore belt after he got his ass whipped for it by Tyreke Bell. And do you know what he did after he stole it? He went back to the ring, wrestled his match like nothing happened, and then made his way out of the arena. Just like that, off he strolled.”
“Can’t you fire him for that?”
“I tried this morning. My secretary told me that he registered it in the EUW Headquarters Storage Facility under his name. Our rules of conduct state that a belt must be registered by an official EUW wrestler but doesn’t stipulate that he or she has to be the current titleholder. Asshole found a loophole.”
Vitali Khodorkovsky and Mark Rivera kept moving forward as Rivera took another mouthful of his sugar-filled black coffee. He stopped to check out his own figure in the reflection from one of the momentous glass buildings. They continued on.
“I don’t get this guy, Vitali. I mean, from day one I cannot put my finger on what’s wrong with Immanuel Taylor. I know he’s hiding something, I know there’s something in his head. I just can’t figure this cocksucker out.” Rivera finished his coffee and threw the plastic cup in a trash bin. He smacked his lips together and continued.
“Maybe that waitress is right. Maybe Immanuel is just bizarre”
“Tell that to the trainer he crippled in his trial match and then tell that to yourself after you found out he’s using an alias. His contract expires on the 29th of December this year and then as his one-year guarantee clause is over and I can fire him. The problem is, we’re clocking into July and it’s a full six months left. Anything can happen in six months and the asshole has already crippled a trainer, stolen a title belt on live television, and now seems to have a complicated and non-liner past thanks to your detecting skills. I don’t even want to know what he’ll do next, intentionally or not. So what’s the next step?”
“I’m thinking of focusing on the race. The group photo shows an African American but just by looking at him and his now I can tell he’s somewhere from Europe. Not Western Europe. Eastern to Central.”
“Well, you’re ex-KGB. Don’t you have friends back in Russia who know how to do some hi-tech facial analysis to determine his name or age or what he had for dinner or whatever?”
Vitali kept quiet as both men stopped at the Hard Rock Café, standing near the entrance. Vitali was pondering something, sticking his nose up to the air. Part of it was a bluff since Vitali was not a part of the KGB service in the Soviet Union and had lied to present himself in a more favorable light to his employer. Vitali, however, was a Vor and he knew and knows people till this day, some with deep connections to the Kremlin and the FSB, who can get things done.
“I do know someone back in Nizhny Novgorod. If I get her proper and revealing footage of Immanuel Taylor then there is some kind of process that can be done to pinpoint Immanuel’s race.”
“That's it?"
“It’s something and it’s a start that can be used to trace his roots. If you pinpoint someone’s roots then you can work your way to a name. I'm going to need more footage of Immanuel though."
"That's easy. We keep recordings of all your shows. I'll have all his matches compressed into one DVD and you can come by the headquarters to pick them up. And while you're there, you can get one of my stooges to charge that plane ticket of yours to the Asylum treasury. Anything else?"
"You want me to keep an eye on the café in case Immanuel comes back? Maybe follow him back home?"
"No. I don't want to risk it. Focus on the lead you have and move on from there." Rivera stopped to take a glance at that very same woman whom he made eye contact with earlier, his facial expression compressed indicating he is under some form of self-inflicted pressure. Rivera is waiting for something and it comes as soon the woman he’s watching goes to hail a cab. "Ok, Vitali. This will be it for our little debriefing meeting. Is there anything else you need to bring up?"
"No"
"Beautiful. Keep up the good work”
Mark Rivera, not bothering to say goodbye, walked away and stood a couple of steps away from the young woman, a brunette in a revealing dress, he was knowingly following while discussing business with his hired thug, Vitali Khodorkovsky. A yellow cab, hard to get one for yourself in the midst of the madness of New York City, pulled over and found itself in-between Rivera and the brunette. He smiled and suggested sharing the cab. She smiled back too and agreed, being taken aside by Rivera’s expensive casual attire and that vibe of wealth and power emitting from him.
The cab made its way into the endless New York traffic as Vitali stood there, having witnessed the entire experience. Mark Rivera is an idiot and if he wasn’t showering Vitali with all this money then Vitali wouldn’t have accepted the assignment, let alone shown a punk like Rivera all this respect. But he did take the job and he is here, a small-town communist in the heart of an ideology that he once found disguising in a city that he doesn't belong in or understand, chasing down a man with a past that seems to be getting weirder and more dangerous by the second.
The money he makes is good and, in a free market, Vitali was able to accrue a lot of it by doing a skill he acquired in prison back home. Vitali pondered on this point as he walked back to the Marriott, surrounded by the excess of Times Square, eventually to reach his room, to reach the JFK airport in New York, to reach San Francisco, and then to take another plane back to a country that he knows little to nothing about. Vitali grew up in the USSR, not Russia. But it’s not anything special or unusual to Vitali. Just another place, one of many and many, that Vitali Khodorkovsky does not belong in.