I put the book away in my briefcase after we passed under the white-and-blue sign welcoming us to my least favorite city in the world. I had been here once before, back in the early 80s. Now, it was as if the whole place were addicted to crack and coke, skinned to the bone by addiction. While the others drank and chattered, I watched the streets go by, noting just how wasted and broken they looked. It had always been the most miserable playground in America, but now, the streets around the casino were some of the most desolate on the East Coast: a wasteland of broken lots, stripped cars, unconscious crackheads, and nervous streetwalkers. And it was our fault. We were one of the groups that had brought this drug to the USA. It was what Semyon had died over, maybe what I would die over, if Jana’s intel was good. The truth of it—and the faint, clinging ammonia reek that seemed to hang around the cabin of the limo—settled into my guts and wouldn’t let go. Yuri's spiel might have been a metaphor for all this... I'd heard Edenic terms used to describe Colombia before.
“Maybe he got the same offer. Maybe he said ‘yes.’ He was tired of being somebody’s bitch. What about you?” Despite my best efforts, Yuri's words stuck with me. There was no way he had literally been offering me an actual fruit from the tree of Genesis. It was a myth, at best. But when I searched back to solicit Kutkha's opinion, I encountered only a wall of silence. This was something he wanted me to work out myself.
If there was a Hell, I always suspected it would be a dark mirror of the Earth without beauty or life. In that hell, the Taj Mahal casino would replace the actual Taj Mahal. It was an insult to the beautiful Mughal mausoleum for which it was named, a tawdry mockery built for love of money instead for the love of a dead Sufi princess. The smell of the place hit me as soon as I stepped out into the muggy heat and flashing red and orange lights, a nauseating, sweet, fake cloud of perfume that bore into my sinuses. Underlying it was the scent of the city itself, metallic and unpleasant.
The other car was already waiting for us. Lev and Vanya waited inside the entry, smoking together with another pretty girl with no name. Vanya hadn’t brought his wife, of course, that poor woman. Lev was alone, and he glanced archly at us as we approached in a gaggle.
“Vassily Simeovich, Alexi Grigoriovich.” Lev greeted us by first name and patronymic with reassuring handshakes, the women with a kiss to the back of the hand. “And the lovely Katerina and Crina Pavloevna.”
Crina was lovely, I thought. She had decided on a Chinese-style black-and-red silk dress which was both modest and deeply flattering. For all that I felt more like her brother than her boyfriend, I found myself assuming the postures of chivalry. When I caught Vanya staring at her chest, I stared back at him until he looked away.
“I’m pretty sure this wasn’t here when I left,” Vassily said to no one in particular. He arched his eyebrows at the overhead displays and fountains and alabaster onion domes. “Looks new.”
“Yeah, it’s somethin’, ain’t it? Thank Mr. Trump for that, haha.” Vanya never seemed to talk without laughing. He was both fat and beaky, like some strange cross between Jabba the Hutt and a bald eagle. I’d said so once, while Vassily and I played chess at Mariya’s. He laughed so hard then that he’d choked his milk tea over the chessboard.
I tuned out as Vanya began to extol the virtues of the place to Vassily on our way inside, breathing in a cloud of cold artificial perfume from the threshold. I surveyed the high ceilings and the narrowing entries to the main gaming floor, where the endless tinny ringing of the slot machines danced like Pop Rocks on my tongue. Vanya could coo all he wanted over the German crystal chandeliers, but all I saw was artifice. My eyes picked out the slightly uneven joins in the carpet, the chips and variances in the thin marble cladding. The whole thing was a confidence trick. Under the thin veneer of luxury was a well-greased, artfully constructed scam. The only authentic features were the hundreds of cameras that dotted the ceiling and walls. Every single one was able to zoom in on our faces, and the people behind them? They were a button away from dispatching the police, who would no doubt be delighted to find Vassily—a convicted felon put away for tax evasion and suspected money laundering—shaking hands with George Laguetta.
I also took some time to watch the bouncers. There were lots of them: patrolling, chatting, standing around, boredly loitering by banks of machines. I had a rough mental approximation of their procedures and personas. A minority of the guys who did security at places like this one were real hardcases, former club bouncers, ex-cops, and veteran soldiers who treated the gig like a retirement resort. The rest were mall cops at best, men and women who’d done two weeks of training and hoped they never got into anything the other guys couldn't handle. They did a whole lot of customer service, while the old soldiers trounced the troublemakers. Straggling behind Vassily, I idly played out various scenarios in my mind, from the most extreme ones where someone ended up shooting someone else, through to the mildest, where one or more of my party was asked to leave for being too drunk. In all scenarios, I concluded that resistance would lead to disaster. There were too many guards here. The cameras would be linked to a communications center, and every single bouncer could converge on the same location within a few minutes. I hoped the Laguettas were as steady as gossip made them out to be.
Lev fell back, and before I knew it, he was walking close to my other elbow, his mouth lifted in a secret smile. “How are things going, Alexi? We haven’t had a chance to catch up since you fell down the stairs.”
He had to know about the attempted hit today. I considered asking him about Vincent. My hand tightened on Crina’s forearm. “Things are certainly going, Avtoritet. It’s been an exciting few days, but I’m… confident things will settle down.”
“Excellent,” he replied. "Have you made any progress?"
My stress ratcheted up another notch. "Of course. I'll talk with you later."
Mikhail had fallen into line with him like a ghost, Katerina chattering to Vanya from his other arm. For a moment, I was reminded of Carmine’s hounds.
“Chet,” I said to Kutkha, mentally. “That’s the word I want to master. The barrier. Some kind of energy shield.”
“It isn’t the word so much as the intent, my Ruach,” Kutkha replied. His presence was a low rustling of feathers and dark, cold water. “Master the intent. Use the word to gain mastery.”
Chet. I tried to focus on the meaning of the word as we walked, but there was too much distraction. The machines, the lights, the murmuring crowds, the heat of the gaming floor, the pistol tapping my ribs under my suit’s jacket. Call me paranoid, but I couldn’t help but think about Nacari’s face being ripped off. Just like his brother’s.
“Are you all right?” Crina said, keeping her voice low.
“Can’t you smell it?” Her voice shook me out of my reverie. We were passing the slot machines with their scattered patrons. One here, one there—old men and women gambling their pensions, hookers on their breaks trying to win the next hit of crack. “The whole building smells like desperation.”
“Mein Gott,” she said and huffed. “Tell me about it.”
That wasn’t all that was troubling me. Vassily had barely said a word to anyone, though he was examining his surroundings with interest. I nudged Crina’s elbow and pointed at a figure tiled into the ceiling. “You see that image of the woman and the five-pointed star? That’s an embedded invocation to one of the faces of Venus, Lakshmi. This whole room is enchanted.”
“Lakshmi? The Indian goddess of money?” She squinted up at it. “That seems quite blatant. What’s it for?”
“Luck,” I said. “But luck for the casino, not the patrons.”
Lev was our ticket to the Chairman Club, where we’d be laundering Nic’s money in irregular quantities, buying chips one, three, seven thousand at a time, and then changing them back in. We had to take an elevator up to get there. The Club was screened off into semi-private smaller rooms for poker, blackjack, roulette, and baccarat. It had a restaurant and gaming table service,
lounges, a bar, a nightclub. The reception to the gaming area was a seashell-shaped hall with a marble desk and a mirrored ceiling strung with sharp crystal decorations. If the flimsy-looking bolts ever gave way, the stylish receptionist would look like an elegantly dressed possum kebob. She flashed a magazine-perfect smile at our group, and if she was concerned about working under an armory’s worth of dangling swords, it didn’t show. “Good evening, Mr. Moskalysk. A pleasure to see you.”
“And you, Yulia. You are as lovely as dream, as always,” he replied in heavily accented English. It was the first time I’d heard Lev speak English in years. He already had his wallet in his hand and discreetly showed her the black card and his ID inside. “Do you happen to know if the Mr. Laguetta is waiting for us yet?”
“Yes, sir. He’s already checked in to the Salon Privé,” Julia said. She didn’t even have to check her logbook.
“Ah, kharosho, excellent. Then please arrange for us one bottle of Coche-Dury Meursault, and one of eighty-four Dom Perignon Rosé?” Lev’s English was thick, but his French was perfect.
“Of course.” The woman replied as if the bottles of wine Lev had just ordered weren’t worth more than her entire week’s paycheck. “Anything else?”
“No, no, is all I could ask for from such a beautiful woman. Thank you.” Lev smiled gracefully, polished polite as he split from the desk and led the way forward.
Mikhail tracked Julia wolfishly on the way past, and Vanya whispered something into Vassily’s ear that made him laugh. I was the one who looked back to see the smile gone in an unguarded moment while Julia wrote her reminders on a well-used jotter. The brief exchange, in all of its formal artificiality, left me strangely cold on the trip upstairs.
“Someone walk over your grave, soldier?” Vassily’s low voice disrupted my reverie.
I hadn’t even noticed him, but he had fallen in by my elbow just outside the elevator while the others walked ahead. Crina was talking about something at Sirens with Katerina, just ahead of us.
“It doesn’t feel very real,” I replied uncomfortably. I wasn’t certain Vassily understood, but I wanted him to. “This place.”
There was a thoughtful pause between us. I glanced over and found Vassily looking off into the distance.
He nodded. “Yeah… I know what you mean.”
My mood lifted a little. “That, and there’s too many cameras here. Approximately one every three feet, not counting each gaming table.”
“Don’t worry, man. We’re just here to play.” Vassily grinned, flashing teeth, and for a moment, the old sly light came back to his eyes. “It’s Lev’s chips, anyway.”
It was technically Nic’s, but who knew? The gracious concierge who offered to take our luggage, the gaming host who greeted us at the door, the cage cashiers—everyone there had a vested interest in us changing and spending their money. They didn’t give a shit where it came from, as long as we kept playing and tipping.
We emerged into the orange-lit parlor at the end of the corridor and immediately beheld the well-dressed Laguetta entourage, who had taken the tables and sofas that commanded the best view of the door. Eight men, three of them already tipsily playing roulette with whoops and laughter. Only one man was under forty. When they saw our group enter, the seated men rose and turned to face us.
“Well, look who it is! Old Sly himself, and our young Mister Lovenko. Welcome back to the free world, Vassily.” George Laguetta was an old grizzled lion of a man with a slow sloping grin, and he pronounced Vassily’s name like “Vazli.” He held out a ringed hand as we closed in: Lev shook first, and then Vassily. Vanya hung slightly back, obviously keen for attention, but only getting it after the Avtoritet and the nominated heir of the leadership had their turn. I watched wryly from the back, hanging behind with Mikhail. We were the bulldog and the doberman, nameless unless introduced.
There was no house security was in here, just me, Mikhail, and George’s bodyguards. The youngest man had a curly mullet and was cut and tanned like a competitive bodybuilder, and he was definitely on duty. The other soldier was a sallow, black-eyed wiseguy with a heavy five-o’clock shadow and a sagging Saturnine face. His smiles were dark and fleeting, placidly masking great attentiveness. I marked him as a good shot and a fast draw. He wore an open suit jacket that was a size too large, the lining weighed down with spare clips of ammo.
Besides us and Georgie’s crew, the salon had other guests. A tired-looking Chinese man walked back and forth between tables eight and six, chain-smoking cigarettes from a red pack as he checked his bets on baccarat. A group of young women decked out in Gucci laughed and talked around one of the rear blackjack tables.
“…no, I’m telling you. Alexi back there kicks my ass at poker.” I tuned back to the assembled when I heard my name, just in time to see Laguetta and his friends look over at me and Crina interestedly. “And he’s totally playing baccarat tonight. I bet he’ll be up ten thousand before the first hour’s out.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“Yeah, you got the eyes for poker. Shark eyes.” George grinned broadly. “What d’ya think, Alexi? Reckon you can up Vassily here by ten grand?”
Everyone from the Organizatsiya laughed. Vassily was the best gambler out of the entire Yaroshenko crew, and they knew it. Beside me, Crina flashed an exaggerated cat’s smile. I almost turned him down, demurred, and bought into the joke at my expense, but I spotted something bright and real in Vassily’s eyes. His fingers moved by his thigh in a wave pattern. With a shock of pleasure, I recognized the old signal. Vassily wasn’t making fun: he was giving me an in. It was as good as an apology, and I smiled as I was meant to. “Eleven thousand.”
“Ohoh ohhh!” Laguetta clapped Vassily on the arm. “That sounds like a challenge to me. I’ll wager on it.”
“You’re on.” Vassily’s face suffused with a wicked smile.
Mikhail and Vanya stirred restlessly at this sudden re-inclusion. They didn’t look pleased as I left Crina and took my place at Vassily’s right side, where I hardly came up to his jawline. He clapped me on the shoulder, and we got started on the game.
Four hours later, my sinuses were gummy with perfume and cigarette smoke, but I was up ten thousand and was playing at Laguetta’s table, with Lev on my left and the hawkeyed Laguetta bodyguard on my right. His name had turned out to be Lazarus, and he was wholly relatable—quiet, serious, and cunning, if not book-smart. Everyone else but the two of us was heading towards being cheerfully drunk by the time I called my last bet. Nursing a cup of coffee and a stack of chips, I found that for once in my life, I didn’t feel like a complete pariah as the dealer shuffled and then laid out his own hand face-down on the table. “Place your bets, gentlemen.”
Vassily came up behind me, and I caught the faint smell of whiskey and lime from over my shoulder. Lev was leading the bet, and regarded the others demurely as he pushed forward two five-thousand-dollar chips. My mouth twitched to one side, and I counted three of the heavy chips from my own stack, nudging them across. Vassily whistled.
“Bozhe mir. They don’t call you Molotchik for nothing, do they?” Lev remarked.
“Haha, I’ll match it.” Vanya, sweating profusely, slapped down the same amount at the other end of the table. “Bring it on.”
If I could appreciate any game in the world, it was the elegant simplicity and nearly-even odds of baccarat. If you had an eye for patterns and could card count, it was a little more than even odds. The dealer dealt us our cards while the others watched and then turned out his own onto the table. A two and a five.
“Oh, here we go.” Vassily took a drink. “Did you just throw fifteen grand in the hole, Lexi?”
“Did we?” Crina leaned in over my shoulder as I thumbed back the very corners of my hand. When she saw the same thing I did, she put her hand to her mouth and then waved it like she was fanning herself and had a draft of champagne from her flute as laughter bubbled up around her.
Lev won with his hand, to the cheers of the t
able. I was next and turned both cards over neatly, pushing them toward the dealer. “Three and seven. Perfect hand.”
George thumped the table, and Vassily whooped behind me, cheering as I collected my new chips and sat back in my chair. It put me sixteen grand up from the starting bet. Lazarus laughed unhappily when he flipped his cards and turned up six, while Vanya pushed his losing hand—double twos—towards the dealer and left in disgust as he scraped the lost chips into the dealer’s stack.
“With that streak, you should consider going all in.” Lev looked at me sidelong, heavy-lidded and sly.
“Really, Avtoritet. We have all night to lose,” I replied.
“You some kind of pussy, Jew boy?” Lazarus said on the other side.
Like smoke, my tentative regard for him vanished. I felt my face drain of all expression and saw the light fade in the other man’s black eyes, an echo of my own deepening disregard. Neither of us were drunk. Both of us were proud, blooded predators.
“Now now,” Lev chided. “No hard feelings, Mr. Valenti.”
Something ghosted past me, creeping through my suit to the skin, but the wisp of energy bypassed me and engulfed Lazarus in a gentle, suggestive embrace. He blinked.
“Yeah, no hard feelings. I always was a shitty loser.” He barked a laugh and extended a hand.
I uncomfortably accepted, and we shook, glove to glove. Lev had a sip of his Cognac like nothing had happened, and I remembered Jana’s fear, her furtiveness. She had a right to be scared. Lev’s magic terrified me in a way Carmine’s could not. Carmine was fire and brimstone: Lev was poison gas crawling through cracks in the wall. A man with sufficient will and ambition could hold the world to ransom with that power. Maybe he was already planning for it. The back of my neck crawled.
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