Hella Nation - Evan Wright [73]
“I told Olga,” Southland says, “ ‘This is my deal. This is what I got going on. If you want to come in and dance and help me out, then I’ll take care of you.’” According to Southland, when he started Olga dancing, she made $10,000 to $15,000 a month. “At one point, I had, like, seventy or eighty thousand dollars of hers in my safe.” Southland looks up and smiles expectantly, as if waiting for a pat on the back for saving so much of Olga’s cash. “So I took Olga’s money and bought the Porsche, because it’s an asset.”
I ask Southland about the $35,000 Ksenya gave him as an “investment” in Sea Castle. Britt has told me that when Simberg got out of jail in November, he took it upon himself to demand the return of Ksenya’s money.
“That was his blackmail,” Southland says. “He tells me, ‘You give me, like, fifty thousand or I tell the police you stole the HGH.’ That’s exactly, you know, what he told me.” For the first time, Southland’s cheery façade cracks. With obvious anger he says, “This kid’s a twenty-one-year-old. I mean, I could have killed him.” Southland, the suspected murderer, pauses to reconsider his choice of words. “Not ‘kill’ him, you know. But for this kid to, like, threaten me, it was a joke to me. This kid is nothing, he is nothing to me.”
Southland invites me to join him while he picks up his kids, Brandon, ten, and Britney, fourteen, at a local racquet club where they take lessons. Getting into his car, a $40,000 Acura SUV, he apologizes for the downscale ride. Joking about Britt’s zeal in pursuing asset seizures, he says, “If I was going to kill anybody, it would be that cop, Britt.”
Negotiating afternoon traffic in Scottsdale, Southland challenges the accuracy of reports made by the cops who surveilled him. He notes that in one report they misidentified the type of car he was driving. “They thought I had an Acura, when I didn’t have it, because I switched cars on them.”
“Why were you switching cars on the cops if you weren’t doing anything wrong?” I ask.
Southland ignores the question. “Mind if we stop by the fish store?” He turns into a mini-mall. Southland is an exotic-fish enthusiast. He managed to hold on to a few aquariums through Britt’s asset seizures, though he lacks funds to keep them stocked.
Inside the shop he spends about ten minutes talking to a salesgirl about proper salinity levels for his custom tank. Though he lacks money, Southland makes a big show of telling the salesgirl about all the fish he plans to buy. “Put that clown on hold for me,” he says, pointing to an eighty-five-dollar fish. “I’ll be back for him tomorrow. Is he gonna be okay with my fox-face fish?”
We pick up Southland’s kids at about four o’clock outside the Camelback Racquet Club. Brandon and Britney climb in the car chattering excitedly about their lessons. Brandon wears Coke-bottle-lens glasses that give him a resemblance to Harry Potter. Britney, confident and manipulative, treats her dad like a lovable dork.
“Dad, can’t you take me to my horse today?” she whines. “I want to go riding.”
“No, baby,” Southland says. “It’s going to rain.”
“But the sky is blue,” Britney says.
Southland hasn’t told her yet that her horse was seized as an asset gained through criminal enterprise, through Britt’s efforts. He switches subjects, gently scolding Britney for being late.
We drive to a mall. In greater Phoenix, with its brutal heat, air-conditioned malls are the town square, the center of social life as nowhere else in the country. Southland parks far from the entrance. “In the good old days, before the government took all my money, we used to valet,” he says. “Isn’t that right, Brandon?”
“Yeah,” Brandon says uncertainly. “Are you going to write how they took my dad’s money?” he asks me.
We get food at a Panda Express and sit at communal tables in the food court.
Southland pats Britney’s head and says that the government case against him has ruined her acting career. He explains to me that his ex-wife—the kids’ mother—used to fly