“Come on, Vasya. Alexi can take a little shit.” Petro smirked around his next cigarette, cupping a hand around the end as he lit it. “We’re all grown-ups now, even if he ain’t exactly the man his daddy was.”
"I’m twice the man that suka[4] ever was.” I ground the words out bulldozer-flat, and stared at him until he met my eyes. “And putting him out of my misery was the best thing I ever did.”
A toxic silence descended over the room. Vassily’s head turned sharply, eyes wide with genuine surprise. “Wait, what? You killed him?”
I stared at Petro. “Yes.”
Petro’s bravado flickered like a candle, briefly flaring before he turned back. Maxy’s silent scorn faded, and he began to toy nervously with the dominoes in front of his fingers.
I’d screwed the pooch. There was one guiding social force within the Organizatsiya: respect. To be respected, you built a dual reputation as being both useful and dangerous. If you maintained a suitable ratio of competence and intimidation, people didn’t have to like you, so long as they respected you. Being useful without being intimidating got you trampled; being a bully without being useful led to people getting a lethal grudge. Waver in either quality, and someone was always waiting to shove a pistol in through the chink in your armor. As usual, I was off the mark. My retorts were always either too slow or too sharp.
Vassily looked back and forth, mouth twitched to one side. “So uh... is Nic in his office?”
“Yeah. Fuckin’ slackass.” Petro did not look at me. “Boozing it up before he goes on the floor.”
I didn’t look away from him; instead, I made a point of staring at the side of Petro’s face, counting the pulse that jerked rapidly in his throat.
“Well, I better go in and pay a visit before shit hits the fan here.” Uncertainly, Vassily glanced back to me. “Meet up afterwards?”
“Yes.” I pulled my gloves up higher on my wrists, tight enough that they creaked around my fingers. I bowed from the neck. “Excuse me.”
Maxy looked like he was about to say something smart, but seemed to think better of it. I swept out of the room, and once I was alone, ground my teeth until they groaned. Dammit, Vassily. He hadn’t meant to, but he had just cost me a lot of face. And what the hell did Nic think he was playing at, defying Lev’s orders? Gossiping with Maxy and Petro, of all people.
Resignedly, I ate another peppermint. To get to the offices, I had to walk out past the dressing rooms, cut behind the main stage, and go up the stairwell. I headed backstage around the end of the stripper’s catwalk and was greeted by the sound of pandemonium from beyond the heavy velvet drapes. The lights beyond were flashing, lighting up the star dancers who rested their feet while they waited on their sets. Quite suddenly, I felt my mood lift. Perched on one of the stage boxes in her corset and feather-tufted heels was the Woman. Crina Juranovic was smoking a black clove cigarette in a long holder, wrist cocked back, her eyes closed. She was tiny and curvaceous, with a hard-planed, boxy little face on a long slender neck. Her hair was very dark, her skin only a few shades deeper than cream. Had she been blonde, we could have passed as brother and sister.
“You look tired.” Speaking from down below the back of the stage, I had to raise my voice so it was loud enough for her to hear me over the music.
Crina opened her eyes to look down, her expression softening with relief. Like me, she spoke Ukrainian, but her accent was interesting: part Balkans, part Germany. “Alexi, thank God. Please tell me you're bouncing tonight.”
“Unfortunately not. I’m only here for a quick meeting.” I looked towards the exit door and ran my tongue over my teeth. Lev wouldn’t miss me for five more minutes.
Crina smiled tiredly as I pushed myself up to sit on the edge of the stage, resting by her ankle. I stayed a modest distance from her bare leg.
“Drecksnest.” She chuffed, leaning back on her hands. “It’s a bad crowd. End of exams, so all the frat boys are out, dicks in hand. My ass is going to look like a glazed donut by the end of tonight.”
Solemnly, I lay my hand over my heart and bowed my head. “I pray their wallets are well stocked and their seminal aim is poor.”
She laughed, rocking back on her rump. Crina was a magnificent person, everything I knew I should be attracted to in a woman: clever, bookish, well-educated. Because no attraction existed beyond a meeting of minds, we had become friends, and we played beard for one another. Crina was near the end of a degree in English language and comparative linguistics, and she appreciated being able to tell people like Petro that she was not available. I had only tried to date seriously once in my life and had no desire to make a second attempt. It had been a humiliating disaster.
Crina leaned forward towards me, her eyes glittering with conspiracy. “So. Have you heard that Jung’s family is finally releasing Das Rote Buch? Not that I’m hinting or anything, but the library at my college might have pre-ordered a first print copy..?”
My breath caught. The Red Book: C.G. Jung’s handwritten masterpiece, rumored to be a dialog between the psychologist and his own soul, and supposedly one of the greatest Occult tomes ever written. I straightened, and my mood lifted a little more. “Have they, now? And how much is this book worth, exactly?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.” Crina’s hand flew up in excitement, hovering near her face. “Can you believe it?”
“I certainly can,” I replied. Twenty thousand or twenty million: it didn’t matter. The Red Book was a priceless Occult text written by one of the most insightful psychonauts in modern history.
Crina bit her lip, swinging her ankles out over the edge of the stage box. “Well, I could, in theory, sneak it out when it comes in... and could, in theory, share it with a certain gentleman, if he’s interested?”
I nodded slowly, feigning consideration, and rolled the mint around my mouth. It took the edge off the nausea brewing in the pit of my gut. “I think that would be quite acceptable. And if the lady wished to bring it to the gentleman’s home…?”
Crina blossomed like a magnolia before my eyes, her face suffused with pleasure. “Let’s make it a date. How about Tuesday?”
I snorted. Her choice of words made something deep inside my chest tense warily, but I was mostly grateful. “Me? Date? Come now.”
“You know what I mean. We both know the date’s with Das Rote Buch.” She flashed me a little crooked smile. “Dirty bibliophile.”
“No date,” I replied. “And you have a deal.”
She reached down to me, fingers poised like a dancer’s. I clasped Crina’s small hand and shook it carefully. She giggled, and I wasn’t certain if she was making sport of me, if I’d done something inappropriate, or if she was just pleased.
“By the way, my friend Vassily was released from prison today,” I said. “He is sleeping over and will still be in the house by next Monday, I assume. So, perhaps you could…”
“I will be a perfect stuntwoman.” Crina laid a delicate hand across her heart. “Cooing and makeup and everything. Pat my thigh a couple of times and give me a glass of wine in front of him. Don’t worry about a thing.”
We shook on that, too. She had literally been a lifesaver. A man without a woman on each arm is greatly suspect in our world, and if there was one thing that would seal my outcast status with the rank and file, it was my distinct lack of activity with the opposite sex. There were some things about me none of the men needed to know.
My skin vibrated in the relative silence of the elevator on the way upstairs, humming against my clothes. Yes, the dream bothered me. Nacari bothered me. Lev’s growing reliance on my services bothered me. He was competent, but not popular. I was similarly competent and unpopular, and he was reeling me in, perhaps trying to win me over to his inner circle. The problem, however, was that unpopularity in the underworld is often terminal for more than one’s career.
Chapter 5
The Sirens VIP Lounge was a whole other world compared to the pigpen below. The entry hall had grayish-purp
le carpet so deep it scrunched under my shoes. They kept the music low and rhythmic, the perfume expensive, and the decorations tasteful. I heard the raucous laughter of a small party of drunk men from one parlor, and dimly, the moans and cries of people screwing from behind another closed door. The double doors at the end of the hall guarded the manager’s office, which had been Sergei’s lair, then Rodion’s, and which was now sparingly used by Lev. Our Avtoritet was not a strip club sort of person: he spent most of his time in Manhattan overseeing his legal firm, another important subsidiary which kept the money flowing, our men out of prison, and the words ‘Russian Mafia’ out of the press.
Before I had a chance to touch the intercom box outside Lev’s office, the lock clicked. I let myself in, and a hush fell around my ears. Always cool, the room was decorated entirely in muted tones of aquamarine, turquoise, and pearl. A copy of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus took up most of the opposite wall. Lev’s desk was glass-topped, like most of the furnishings. Lev was already standing, the fingers of one hand elegantly splayed over his desktop. He looked up from them, smiling. He really looked like the kind of guy you’d find doing your taxes, not managing the second-largest gun- and drug-running operation in New York. “Good evening, Alexi. Did Nicolai brief you for the meeting?”
“He did not, Avtoritet. I didn't have a chance to speak with him.” I waited until he offered his hand before we shook. Lev had a firm grip for such a small man. Like Nicolai, his hands were covered in old smoky-blue tattoos. “His message implied there was a problem.”
“A very inconvenient problem indeed.” Lev considered me with piercing scrutiny. For all his physical softness, he had the intensity of a hunting tiger. I realized, almost as an afterthought, that he was coldly furious over something, the anger tamped down under a shivering veneer of calm control.
Maybe he knew Nic had been gossiping. “Have the Manellis learned about Nacari?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge. Possibly. This is a related but separate matter.” Lev folded his hands behind his belt. The arch of his lower back was stiff with anger. “It’s a lot more important.”
I crossed my hands in front of me, and waited.
“Our primary lead into the cocaine market was meant to be here by six,” he said, the words a little too crisp. “The man who cracked Colombia for the Northeast Coast. He’s been absolutely reliable for the entire three years we’ve worked with him, but he didn’t show up tonight. I am... concerned. No response to phone calls. I sent someone to his house. Nothing. I need you to find him.”
My gut began to crawl with an uncomfortable sensation that had nothing to do with my sensory overstimulation. This was something new, and I didn’t like it. I had never, ever been asked to bring someone in like this. “Well, Avtoritet, I will, of course, but...”
“But?” His gaze sharpened a little.
“Generally speaking, I don’t bring men back to you alive, and if he’s run... well, sir, I’m not a private investigator.”
“But you will,” he said.
There wasn’t a lot I could say to that. “Yes, sir.”
“Then I will tell you what I know of him.” The charge between us ebbed slightly. “The man you will be searching for is named Vincent Manelli.”
My eyebrows arched. It was not unheard of for people to move from one organization to another, but it was much rarer for blood family members to do so. “Manelli? A relation?”
“Yes. John’s youngest son. Vincent humbly defected from his family in eighty-eight and became a critical ally of George Laguetta. He is a personal friend of the Santos Twins, the brothers who run the cartel in Cali that supplies our operation.” Lev rose again, pacing aimlessly. “The likelihood of Vincent's return to his father is very low. George is the sole confidant of whatever sensitive matter drove Vincent out from his family in the first place, and he assures me that his return is impossible.”
"I see. When did you last speak to him?"
Lev paused, and briefly, his expression fell. “I only talked to him recently, yesterday. He was concerned about his safety, so I had my contact put him up with protection.”
My eyes flicked over Lev’s face, then down. While I was thinking about these things, I couldn’t watch people’s faces. “When you sent someone to his house to find out what was going on, was his bodyman absent?”
Lev’s whole face sharpened. “Yes.”
“Out of interest, was it Yuri? Yuri Beretzniy?”
Lev’s gaze bored into me with renewed focus. I could feel it, even if I wasn’t looking directly at him. “I know we call you Charivchik for a reason, Alexi, but didn’t know your ability extended to fortune-telling.”
“It doesn’t. If he disappeared from his home, it's natural that his bodyguard would either have been killed or taken with him. Otherwise, he’d have informed you straight away.” Staring at the painting, I chased the breadcrumb trail of events with a sense of faint exhilaration. “Yuri was your bodyguard before Mikhail, a trusted resource. He is supposed to be on shift. The only reason he would accept a work assignment was if his charge was coming with him. Vincent was scheduled to meet with you while Yuri was on the floor, and they would have gone home together.”
“When you put it like that, it seems obvious, doesn’t it?” Lev’s voice held a hint of genuine regard. He folded his arms across his stomach. “Yes, you are correct. Yuri was guarding him, and neither of them were at Vincent’s house when the driver went to pick them up. He was to be assigned a safe house tomorrow. Do you think you could find him?”
It wasn’t really a request, and my reply wasn’t entirely truthful. I hate lying, and the honest answer was really ‘maybe’, but Lev was fishing for one answer, and one answer only. “Yes, sir.”
“Yes.” Lev smiled a tense smile. “You’ll be well paid for it. And incidentally, I should mention... Sergei will be back later this month.”
Lucky us. Even so, I was surprised to hear it. Lev seemed... glad. If I were Avtoritet in place of a ten-year-absent landlord, “glad” is not the response I would see myself having. “I see.”
“I intend to put in a good word for you to him.” Lev dipped his chin. “There will be something of a reorganization when I return the leadership.”
My heart lurched. That was as much a threat as a promise. Regard from Sergei was worth a great deal, and if anyone could wrangle it, it was Lev. By the same token, if I failed... well. I’d failed Sergei once, and only once, and that had been enough for me to never want to do so again. “How much is Mr. Manelli worth?”
“Three hundred thousand to find Vincent. Another ten for Yuri.”
I blinked, once, and managed to control my expression. It was difficult. I didn’t care much for money—not, say, compared to something like Das Rote Buch. I’ve driven the same old Mercedes since Sergei gifted it to me on my eighteenth birthday. But three hundred grand was nearly ten times my normal fee. It was enough to pay off my father’s debs and end his influence on my life, forever.
“Well...” I cleared my throat in the pregnant silence that followed. “That is generous of you, Avtoritet. I will begin with the contact who helped arrange the money and safe house, if you will give me his details.”
“Her name is Jana Volotsya,” Lev said, as he went around the desk and took his seat. “Of Moskalysk, Volotsya and Goldstein.”
Chapter 6
The waiting room of Moskalysk, Volotsya and Goldstein enfolded my senses with cool, perfumed solace. I’d gone home after the meeting, tried and failed to sleep, and ended up throwing back three antacid pills with a cup of coffee and calling it a night. Mentioning Lev’s name got me a nine a.m. appointment, which left plenty of time to talk to Jana and hopefully get a proper day’s sleep.
The lawyers at Lev’s firm were rarely available to the public. He and the other two partners were constantly booked, with waiting lists that accepted no new clients. Their client list—Sergei, our bankers, and high-level American trustees—filled up their time with more than ju
st court appearances.
Jana had a private consulting suite, and the door had a brass plate bearing her name and a shortened list of her degrees. Tetyana Volotsya, J.D. I read her full name over as I knocked, leather-covered knuckles thumping on wood. Six syllables that tripped nicely over the tongue.
“Let yourself in.” Her voice was faint through the walls.
Jana’s office was immediately, overwhelmingly white—white and cream and light beech wood. Poised, pale, and elegant, the attorney stood by a small beech-and-glass flower stand, dressing and arranging a bunch of fresh lilies, their waxen buds and petals still untouched by the heat of the day.
“Good morning, Mr. Sokolsky, a pleasure.” She turned her head and paused in what she was doing, smiling gracefully. Jana had a strangely proportioned, but not unattractive face, heart-shaped and strong-jawed, with green eyes a shade brighter than Lev’s. Her Russian was thick, a prominent American accent coloring her words. “Come in and take a seat. I won’t be long.”
I inclined my head stiffly and took the edge of a chair in front of her desk, cataloging the details of the room. It had the sterile feeling of a doctor’s office, with high shelves laden with books on criminal law. Everything was built of light-colored wood; her desk was topped with a cream leather desk pad, and it was immaculate, no ink stains or pencil smears. Jana herself wore a pantsuit of the same eggshell color, with sharp shoulders and solid, low-heeled shoes. I found myself watching the back of her head while I waited for her to finish. Her flossy blonde hair was braided up in a coil like a girl’s, a tight halo around the back of her skull held firm with a tortoiseshell pin.
“There we go. Sorry... you caught me just as I had them out of the paper.” Jana took her seat in the other guest chair across from me like a counsellor, rather than behind her desk. The scent of the flower arrangement followed her passage, spreading the thick smell of lilies throughout the room. With her knees pressed together, her hands folded in her lap, she mirrored my pose. This piqued my interest immediately. I was dealing with someone who had trained in the art of manipulation for many, many years.
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