Gangsters with Guns Episode #3

by D. B. Shuster

  “I wanted to talk with you about what happened the other night.”

  “Come into my office,” Aleksei said, his usual affable self. How could he be so sunny when his own sister had been raped upstairs? “I promised Becca candy. That’s okay, isn’t it?” He looked guilty. Because of the sweet or because of what had happened?

  Jack dragged his foot along the floor as he moved aside so that Aleksei could unlock the door. He didn’t manage to move the paperclips with him, though, and the unbent metal gleamed accusingly in the hall light.

  “Your father’s security guy came by last night,” Jack said. If he kept talking, maybe Aleksei would be too distracted to notice Jack’s makeshift lock pick winking at them from the dark carpet runner.

  “You mean Vlad.” Aleksei paused with the key in his hand.

  “Yeah, him,” Jack said. “He asked about the security cameras.” He felt like a child about to get caught at some mischief. But why should he feel guilty?

  Jack and Aleksei had agreed to have security cameras installed throughout the club. Now, when the cameras would have been most useful, after a rape and murder in the ballroom, Jack learned his brother-in-law had skimped on surveillance.

  Surely not because of the money.

  “What about them?”

  Before Jack could formulate his question, Becca inserted herself between them. She rubbed her little hands together. “I love candy!” she said and danced with the enthusiasm of a small child.

  “How could I forget?” Aleksei tossed her in the air and caught her in one arm. Holding her like a shield, Jack thought uncharitably.

  Aleksei opened the door to his office. He perched Becca on his desk and opened a crystal dish there with chocolate candies, giving her one.

  Aleksei unwrapped the candy for her, showing such affection and attentiveness that Jack suddenly doubted himself.

  Guilt compelled him to turn his head and glance at Katya and Aleksei’s wedding picture. He and Aleksei were drinking buddies, friends, business partners. Aleksei was the uncle to Jack’s children. Jack had come so close to getting caught moments ago. He would have ruined all of that and for what?

  Jack was merely shaken because of the crime that had taken place. He was letting his imagination get the best of him. He had no evidence, only suspicions that fear blew out of proportion.

  The crimes the other night were merely a stroke of bad luck, a once in a lifetime event. The odds of another crime like that one happening here at the nightclub were infinitesimally small. Right?

  What about the rest? Whether or not Aleksei was wrapped up in the crimes the other night, Jack couldn’t forget the weight of his other suspicions.

  Aleksei might be a good uncle, but Jack’s brother-in-law was hardly the partner Jack had expected.

  When Jack’s own restaurant venture had gone belly up last year, he hadn’t thought twice before jumping on Aleksei’s offer to open up a place together. His brother-in-law seemed to have a Midas touch with his own businesses. After all, Aleksei and Katya lived in a wealthy neighborhood in Manhattan Beach in a large house with a view of the ocean, full of the newest gadgets and luxurious gizmos. Aleksei spent money as if he printed it.

  Katya came from the same penny-pinching, cost-conscious background as Jack’s wife, Lena. She might make a very decent salary as an attorney, but she would never abide such frivolous spending unless Aleksei hit the numbers.

  Believing in Aleksei’s business acumen, Jack had conceded to him on every decision. If Aleksei wanted the waitresses to wear bootie shorts instead of slacks, that’s what they did. If Aleksei thought they should have scantily clad live entertainment, they did that too. They did everything Aleksei wanted until the party center Jack had envisioned, the kind of family place a person could come to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, had become the sort of sexed-up establishment where a rape could happen.

  Worse still, something in the business did not add up. How could they keep hiring waitresses and turn a profit when they had a straggly flow of customers and few events in the fancy party rooms in which they had invested so much capital?

  The uneasy feeling that had compelled him to plant the camera in Aleksei’s office didn’t ease, no matter how Jack tried to rationalize away his fears about his brother-in-law. He struggled not to look in the direction of the camera recording everything from its hiding place on the bookshelf, but he couldn’t help himself. His eyes flitted nervously past the teddy bear and fixed on the wedding picture hiding it. Katya beamed up at her new husband, her face radiant with love and excitement.

  Jack hadn’t seen his wife’s sister that happy in a long time. Last week, Katya had come to visit, had held the baby in her arms, and then suddenly burst into shoulder-wracking sobs. She wanted a baby, she had said, but she suspected Aleksei was having an affair. He was so secretive, and he was hardly ever home.

  Of course, his in-laws had told her she was crazy. They always discussed Aleksei in hushed, awe-inspired tones, as if he were the perfect man, the perfect husband, the opposite of Jack. How could Katya question Aleksei? Why, just look at how generous he had been with Jack, the American, the outsider.

  Sometimes Jack imagined a special place was reserved in Hell for his in-laws. Perhaps for Aleksei as well.

  Katya deserved so much better. Hell, so did Jack, when it came down to it.

  “Why don’t we have security cameras in the ballroom and the back hallway?” Jack blurted. “I thought that was the plan.”

  Aleksei hesitated, and Jack braced himself for one whopper of a lie.

  The lie didn’t come from Aleksei, though. Instead it came from his friend Mikhail. Jack hadn’t heard Mikhail enter, perhaps because he hadn’t been as attuned to his surroundings as he had been when he’d been worried about getting caught.

  “An oversight,” Mikhail said smoothly, jumping in to support Aleksei. He was dressed in the high style the Russians favored—fabric with an expensive sheen, pointed shoes made of fine leather, a thick gold chain at his neck, his hair sleekly styled but not oily, and a little too much cologne.

  “He told me everything was done, and I didn’t realize until…well, I didn’t realize that he’d taken the money but hadn’t done all of the work.” Although the excuse slithered easily from his tongue, the bruises darkening his jaw and cheek seemed to call his carefully orchestrated smoothness into question.

  “You don’t work here,” Jack said, not quite calling him out.

  Mikhail was here almost as much as Aleksei, constantly tempting him away from responsibilities. Aleksei did nothing all day other than hang out in his office playing cards with Mikhail and their buddies, ogling the waitresses, and smoking cigars. If Jack ever questioned or challenged him, he shrugged his shoulders and said he was working. What was Jack’s problem? Wasn’t there money in the till?

  There was. There was always money, enough at least to cover basic expenses. But where did it come from?

  His brother-in-law had a practiced line, a smooth excuse for every pretty waitress hired and every bookkeeping oddity. Jack had wanted to believe him. Now, he wondered if he’d willfully let himself be blind.

  Jack wasn’t the type to wallow in denial. His wife might accuse him at times of acting no better than a big kid, but he faced his problems like a man. He refused to be ruled by suspicions, doubt, or perhaps even unadulterated jealousy of a man who was easily successful when Jack struggled.

  “Don’t blame Aleksei. It was my fault. I recommended the contractor,” Mihail said. He plastered a small, self-deprecating smile on his face. Jack had seen that same expression before on the married men who hit on his waitresses and then apologized for being overcome by their charms. He wanted to gag.

  Just like that, all the guilt he harbored over spying on Aleksei and his friends solidified into a hard resolve. In this, he had done the right thing.

  “What did you bring?” Becca asked. Jack noticed then that Mikhail was holding a black plastic case in one hand. What was in it?
Money? Gambling chips?

  “Is it a present? I love presents,” his daughter said with flirtatious innocence.

  “It is a present,” Mikhail said, “but I’m sorry. This one’s not for you, sweetheart. I’ll bring you something next time.”

  “Really?” Her eyes lit up.

  “Really.” Mikhail chucked her on her chin, and she fell easily under his spell. She clasped her hands to her heart in a romantic gesture Jack had seen only in cartoons. Don’t fall for his tricks. His resentment and suspicion burgeoned to a rolling boil.

  “You should have told me about the security problem,” Jack said sharply. He directed his comment to Aleksei and ignored Mikhail. “We’ll have to have someone else in to install the cameras. Obviously, we need them. I’ll make a few calls.”

  “I didn’t want to disappoint you,” Aleksei said.

  True or false? It almost didn’t matter. In that moment, Aleksei seemed to believe his own words. He hunched his shoulders in apology and looked at Jack with such a boyish expectation of forgiveness. Was that how he made a woman like Katya forgive him again and again?

  “Too late for that.” Jack couldn’t hide his bitterness. Aleksei nodded as if to say he understood and there would be no hard feelings.

  “Here. Take some more candy for later,” Aleksei said to Becca, perhaps reaching for the approval and affection Jack had just denied him.

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” she sing-songed. She shoved a handful of candies into her pocket and then raised her plump little arms up to hug her uncle. Aleksei bent to her, and she gave him a big, wet kiss on his cheek. He gave her a brilliant smile and then surreptitiously wiped his wet skin with his hand.

  “Now run along. Mikhail and I have business we need to discuss,” Aleksei said to her.

  Jack bristled at the dismissal. He had wanted to discuss business with Aleksei, but his “funny business” with Mikhail always seemed to come first.

  Jack knew better than to protest. He scooped Becca into his arms, happy to be distancing her from the two charmers. He wasn’t going to get the answers he needed, not from Aleksei and certainly not from Mikhail.

  But maybe his hidden camera would.

  ALEKSEI

  AS SOON AS Jack left with his daughter, Mikhail pulled the door to Aleksei’s office closed. “Your brother-in-law asks too many questions.”

  Aleksei merely grunted. What could he say? Jack was his business partner and part of his family. Jack was also a far better man than Aleksei could ever claim to be. Jack’s disappointment in him left a bitter taste.

  “You okay?” Mikhail asked, but Aleksei knew that wasn’t his real question. What he really wanted to know was whether Aleksei had the balls to follow through on his plans to silence his head pharmacist.

  Stan had been caught on Troika’s surveillance video manhandling Inna and disappearing with her. Off camera, he had dragged her, drugged and compliant, to a meeting room upstairs at Troika, using her as bait for a member of the Georgian crew.

  The cops couldn’t possibly prove Stan had done anything wrong, especially since he hadn’t drugged Inna himself nor pulled the trigger on the Georgian. Nothing, other than his groping her, had been caught on camera. Yet, the cops had questioned him last night, and Stan had suddenly become nervous.

  Now he wanted to skip town. Not a problem, except for the blackmail.

  If Aleksei didn’t hush him with a million dollars, which he didn’t have and couldn’t possibly raise in the twenty-four hours Stan had given him, then Stan would tell the cops everything.

  By everything, Stan meant everything. The murder of the Georgian was only the tip of the iceberg.

  Stan would get nothing, provided Aleksei could find the fortitude to do what needed to be done.

  How hard could it be to shoot a gun?

  “I’m fine. You’re the one who looks like hell,” Aleksei said.

  “No thanks to you.” Mikhail fingered the dark bruises on his cheek and jaw.

  “Sorry about that,” Aleskei gave the expected responses. Yet, the bruises gave him an odd sense of satisfaction. He had left a mark of his anger, of his aggression. He had, he felt, claimed a small part of Mikhail in the process.

  “Yeah, well, it might have worked out for the best. Inna slipped past Vitaliy this morning. She made it to the shop before he could grab her. But I put on a good show for your father. Told him I’d been jumped and had held off her attacker long enough to let her escape.”

  “And you had the battle scars to prove it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You don’t think he’s suspicious? That he knows something?” He knew his father already suspected a setup at Troika. Despite Mikhail’s bravado, Aleksei worried that they were rank amateurs compared to Artur.

  Here they were, after all, hoping Artur would save them from their latest scrape, since they couldn’t save themselves. They had made the Georgian problem Artur’s problem by compromising Inna, and now they hoped they could provoke him to war so that he would neutralize the threat and save them from Dato and his infamous knives.

  “I predict he’ll take action soon,” Mikhail said.

  Aleksei noticed the evasion, as well as the tentative statement, so different from Mikhail’s previous over-assured confidence. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing.” Mikhail plopped down in the chair across the desk from him. “Except he fired me as Inna’s bodyguard and gave the job to Vlad.”

  “So?” What difference did that make? The important thing was that his father recognized a threat against Inna, one that might motivate him to move against the Georgians, and that Inna had protection in case the Georgians really did lash out against her.

  He couldn’t stand the idea that his little sister might suffer for his mistakes. Mikhail had promised him that the drugs she’d taken would keep her from remembering what had happened and assured him she hadn’t suffered, even with the rape. But she’d been a shadow of herself the other night at her home, and he couldn’t deny she was indeed suffering.

  “I brought this for you.” Mikhail plunked a black case onto Aleksei’s desk. Aleksei didn’t need to open it to know what was inside. He supposed Mikhail sensed his weakness and didn’t want to give him any excuse to back out.

  Both their necks were on the line.

  “I have a gun,” Aleksei said with empty bravado. He had a gun, but he had never shot it, except at the practice range.

  Mikhail hitched his shoulder. “This one’s unmarked. The police won’t be able to trace it to you.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” Inside he felt cold. He wished for a finger of vodka, for the warmth or maybe for the courage it would give him. The plan he had hatched last night when angry and half-drunk didn’t seem quite so brilliant or simple now.

  “Don’t forget to wear your gloves. You don’t want to leave any fingerprints.”

  “Right. Right. I’ll do that.” Aleksei had never killed anyone. He wasn’t sure he could do it tonight, despite how much was at stake.

  He couldn’t meet Mikhail’s eye. Mikhail had already killed to protect their schemes. If Aleksei couldn’t pull the trigger when it mattered, Mikhail would know the truth.

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  Did Mikhail know the rest? Did he know how his chiseled body invaded Aleksei’s dreams with dirty images no real man would tolerate?

  Yet, Aleksei, despite his shame, would close his eyes and relive the tangle of limbs in those dreams, the clutching, grabbing, thrusting urgency—even when he was with Katya.

  Especially when he was with Katya.

  More than the drug trade he ran from his pharmacies and Troika, this was his most closely guarded secret. No one—not his wife, not his best friend, not his parents—would abide this weakness, this affinity that proved he wasn’t a real man.

  Sure, Hollywood made it seem normal. But he didn’t live his life in Hollywood or even in metrosexual Manhattan. He lived in Brighton Beach with his f
eet firmly planted in the mafia world.

  Stop pretending to be a big man and get me my money. Stan’s taunts and threats replayed in his head, rekindled the anger that had set him on this course.

  Aleksei pushed to his feet and grabbed Mikhail’s black box. Time to face his next rite of passage. Stan would get exactly what he deserved.

  SVETLANA

  EVERYONE AT TROIKA was a poser.

  Svetlana watched the couple at the table in the window with disgust. Poor little Anya had gone to wait on the impossible pair. The wife was a complainer: this on the table wasn’t good enough; that was too cold; the drink didn’t have enough alcohol. She criticized in a whining voice and then turned her head to the window. Svetlana already knew they wouldn’t leave a tip.

  The balding husband ordered a drink and then surreptitiously pinched Anya’s bottom, hard enough to make Anya wince. Lecher! His wife, with her big diamond ring, pretended not to notice.

  Svetlana snapped her dishrag and scrubbed harder at the counter in front of her. Despite an i.d. card that claimed she was twenty-three, Anya could not possibly be old enough to serve alcohol let alone drink it. Much as Svetlana would like to intercede on the girl’s behalf, she couldn’t risk upsetting the customers and losing her job. Anya had tolerated the abuse with exceeding politeness—something neither her bosses nor her miserly customers deserved.

  Attendance at Troika had been anemic at best, limited to a new-money crowd willing to pay the inflated prices and desiring others to notice. The coatroom was occupied by fur coats, even when the weather was merely brisk instead of Arctic cold.

  The fancy décor, courtesy of Koslovsky Imports, certainly made the place seem swanky. While the sweet, young, and foreign waitresses all clad in tight little outfits didn’t exactly up-class the place, they did contribute to the novelty and perhaps to an illusion of high service. Still, the band and live entertainment were third rate, and the food, despite its high sticker price, was basically the same chow every other Russian restaurant in the area served.