The dedicated reader of Kyiv Unedited may recall that we last observed expatriate American poet Steve Kowalski leaving the editorial offices of The Cantankerous Curmudgeon [Ed.: In “Kowalski’s Beat”], an English-language newspaper that is presumed to operate in modern-day Kyiv.
Kowalski’s troubled tenure as a cub reporter at the Curmudgeon was graphically detailed in the KU report of January 24.
The Curmudgeon would appear to be a competitor or alternative print news source to the city’s much-trumpeted “Window to the World”, the Kyiv Poster. But this is only conjecture at this point in time.
What’s more certain is that the editor of the Poster, Bret Boner, was blown up by a bomb back in 2016, after becoming embroiled in a widely reported sexual harassment scandal. No one knows Boner’s exact whereabouts to this day. However, a rather unflattering photo of Boner addressing the newsroom in shapeless cotton trousers and a Christmas sweater was recently published on the paper’s website. The authenticity of the photo has yet to be confirmed.
Kowalski’s personal security is no less precarious, as KU sources in the above-cited report describe him as the target of double surveillance, which is to say that the one-time English teacher was observed being observed by agents who were themselves under observation [Ed.: “Kowalski’s Beat”].
Any conclusions drawn from existing intelligence are at best tenuous, as reporting is ongoing and the case is an open book.
Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that Kowalski is a one-time associate of The Half Guinea, a shadowy figure from The Checkout section with a long rap sheet on this site. There’s some evidence to suggest that The Half Guinea may have links to organized crime. In any case, he and Kowalski appear to have parted company as far back as 2015.
So why has Steve Kowalski been such a regular fixture in KU reporting since then, one might reasonably ask? For example, intelligence from early 2016 details an attack he endured at the hands of The Ferret in a place called the Whiskey Cellar. And there were follow-up reports, too.
But here’s the interesting bit: None of these reports are properly headlined on the site so as to highlight their intelligence value, much less actionability. Both the report of Kowalski’s ass-kicking and the one on the payback meted out to The Ferret shortly thereafter by Kowalski’s (presumed) girlfriend were buried in worthless traffic about surveillance of a Chinese restaurant.
I mean, the whole thing looks like a coverup. And the conspiracy begins at least midway up the food chain.
Someone reported that attack with great accuracy and plenty of detail. There was surveillance inside and outside the bar, which we know from the mention of The Ferret first throwing a brick through the window of a nearby café before his assault on Kowalski.
We also get motive: “The Ferret, noticing that Kowalski, whom he immediately hates instinctively, is alone and just oozing with simplistic gullible faith in humankind, a sort of foolish accepting trusting stupidity and a childish naivety that is annoying in the extreme…”
But, despite this and an eyewitness action-packed narration of events that shows The Ferret “punching wildly at Steve Kowalski’s head,” and, “ripping up his literature books,” … despite all this, the reports aren’t signed. That is to say that they’re signed, but not by anyone who works on this site.
Instead, the reader gets pseudonyms, essentially anonymous sourcing, such as “Filed by Missing in Action” or “O. Boy with help from John Doe.”
And that can only mean one thing… maybe two, but no more than that.
A detective was assigned to tail The Ferret that night, and that’s all right and well, the way things should have been done. The Ferret had not yet been implicated in the brutal slaying of Smith’s wife but he’d left a trail of blood behind him going all the way back to the murder of Saint Stephan and possibly even earlier, predating published intelligence on this site.
We don’t know which detective got the assignment – Step, Dickerson, Smith… or possibly someone else – but let’s put that aside for now. Whoever it was did his job and did it well… Better than someone up the food chain had wanted… That’s “thing one” – the first possibility.
“Thing two” is that this same detective filed a great report on The Ferret’s beating of Kowalski, but for some reason buried it in trash about a fictitious visit to Kyiv by David Lynch (of all people!) and a Chinese restaurant, so that nobody would notice it, or, if they did notice it, would write it off as nonsense, fiction… Kyiv comics.
So where does this lead us with respect to Kowalski, who never appears in our reporting as anything more than an innocent bystander, in the wrong place (i.e., the Whiskey Cellar), or the wrong company (i.e., The Half Guinea). But then – wait for this, folks – how do we explain more buried reporting from that same year (2016), in which Kowalski is portrayed as a potential rapist?
There’s no evidence to suggest that the fledgling poet turned cub reporter has ever committed sexual assault, but who knows what he did before arriving in Kyiv. The reporting relies on written evidence apparently taken from one of Kowalski’s journals. Is this what The Ferret was trying to destroy during his assault on Kowalski in the Whiskey Cellar?
We don’t know. But we do know that besides the Curmudgeon, Kowalski moonlights as an English-language dispatcher for The Love Hotel, where he pretends to be a girl to keep foreign men on the phone with dirty talk.
“The Love Hotel, may I help you,” Kowalski purrs into the headset.
“Hello, my name is John Smith. My wife was recently murdered in Kyiv, and so I am interested to pursue a new romantic interest. It may seem strange that I would choose the very place where my dearly beloved was literally chopped into pieces, i.e., Kyiv; however, there is a certain drama in such a proposition that I don’t find entirely unpalatable. Please do tell me about yourself. Perhaps we could meet in a local café to start things off. Only serious offers of a relationship nature will be considered. P.S. I’m a detective.”
The line goes dead, followed by a long, hollow busy signal. The agent presses the red “stop” button on the reel-to-reel, takes off his headphones and begins to remove the tape reel. He then takes out a blank adhesive strip and writes “Kowalski” on it, taping it to the reel.
Filed by Dirk Dickerson from Podil, February 9, 2018