“Jana’s house.” I listened carefully for his response.
“I...” he trailed off. “How did Jana have him?"
"You didn't know she was a spook?"
"No. No... but I suppose that... makes sense in retrospect.” I could almost hear him frowning. "What did you do to her?"
“She's...” I nearly said 'dead', and then I remembered the absent white hole on her bedroom floor. "She's around."
“Alright. Something to discuss in private, later in the night. Did we solve the mystery of Vincent's family story?”
“He was disowned by his dad when he was still a teen, apparently.”
The pause this time was longer, broken only by Lev’s tense breathing over the receiver. “I see. Look, Alexi. Are you still able to come into the office for that meeting with our Pakhun?”
“I can.” I was immediately wary and glanced at the glass case, and the hammer. He wasn’t telling me something, but there was no mistaking the surprise in Lev’s voice. “But I’ll be late.”
“Good, and that’s no problem. Come in at ten. Sergei won’t be here until midnight, at least, and if you could bring Vincent and Vassily with you, that would be… advantageous.”
“Vassily won’t be able to make it. But I can bring Vincent.” I rubbed my fingers on the edge of my bathrobe, over and over. Unaccountably, sweat beaded on my upper lip.
“Are you sure?”
“He’s sweating off a fever.”
“Not good. But bring Vincent. It will boost morale.” Lev sighed. “I was able to talk us out of any arrests at the Taj Mahal, but there is bad talk over here, Alexi. Watch your back. There’s wolves about, and they want our blood.”
I hung up and moved away from the desk into the living room, unhappy and unsettled. Vincent was a white lump in the center of my sofa, and his breath filled the room with an ammonic reek. A dark head of hair protruded over the edge of the blanket bundle. It reminded me of Vassily, and with a pang of guilt, I realized I hadn’t even thought about him before Lev brought him up. I needed to go and visit, but Lev would kill me if I left Vincent alone. I chewed a flake of skin from my lip as I pondered my decision and couldn’t settle on any one thing. I was still exhausted. There was no time for sleep, though, no time for anything, except maybe food.
The smell of frying dumplings and butter was enough to rouse Vincent and pull him out of the living room. While he stared from the entry to the kitchen, I wordlessly dished out four eggs, two to a plate, alongside fried pelmeni and onions. The coffeemaker was on, and for the first time in a week, the kitchen smelled like normalcy. I heaped a large dollop of sour cream onto our eggs before taking the plates over and set one down in front of Vincent.
“Thanks.” Vincent still sounded as tired as I felt. He poked curiously at the pelmeni. “Hey, I’ve heard of these. Russian pasta.”
“Veal and cheese.” I cut into my eggs and folded half of one over my fork. “So, you knew Lev was a Phi— a mage?”
“Nah. Figured it was likely, though.”
I finished swallowing. “You know, for all that magi are supposedly rare, I seem to have encountered a lot of them in a very short period of time.”
“Yeah, well. Like attracts like.” Vincent pushed the onions aside and crammed an entire pelmeni into his mouth. “Who knows, man. I think there’s some energy happening in the world or something. That’s my opinion. But speaking of supernatural shit, what do you think Carmine wants with this thing? The Fruit?”
I wasn’t sure I cared anymore. The more time passed since the vision of the White Woman, the less enthused I was about pursuing the lead. Whoever she was, she had ruined me in some past life, or fucked up my psyche to the point where I fully believed she had. The visions, the dreams... they felt like railroading. All I wanted was to return Vincent, get the meeting done and dusted, and then go to Mariya’s. She and Vassily were all I had left, and nothing else really mattered to me anymore. “I have no idea.”
“Me either.” Vincent’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at his food. He was picking the egg white off from around the yolks. “I know that if I found a horkin’ great big spiny thing bobbing around in the ocean, I wouldn’t fuckin’ pick it up. You know? Logic would kinda dictate something like that is bad news.”
“Reason isn’t the greatest strength of most men in our lines of work.” I arched an eyebrow, fork partway to my lips.
“Yeah, but it ain’t just the Families. People are dumb. It’s how I’m making a mint off my business.”
As I watched him devour the meal, his first in several days, it occurred to me that this man was, in part, responsible for Vassily’s addiction. He was one link in a long chain stretching between the American continents. “Is it a messy business? The coke trade?”
“Jesus. You got no fucking idea. The stuff might as well just be made out of dead bodies.” Vincent’s appetite seemed to increase as he got into the spiel. “They gotta joke down there, translates to something like: God made Colombia the closest thing to Paradise. When other countries around the world started asking him: ‘Hey God, wait a sec, what’s the deal? Why do they get this fucking amazingly beautiful country and we get this shithole over here?’ He tells them: ‘Yeah sure, it’s pretty, but wait until you see the motherfuckers I put there.’”
“Hmph.” I snorted.
“I mean, Colombia is fucking gorgeous, but yeah. It’s a bloody trade, and unless you’re really tight with your suppliers, they’ll fuck you over as soon as anyone else. Georgie’s lucky he’s got me and the Twins. If you don’t know somebody down there, you’ll get to see some of the prettiest forest in the world for maybe a couple days before you’re dead in a firefight or having your ass robbed bare. A guy I knew, they put a bomb on his plane and blew him and three hundred other people out of the fucking sky. Just to nail one man.”
I wanted to judge him, the ways in which his trade had ruined the lives of so many, but what ground did I have to stand on? I killed for money. Fact is, nearly everything we owned in this country—TVs, clothes, drugs, sex—came in at someone else’s expense. It was as Jana, speaking through Yuri’s corpse, had said: we were nothing but small cogs in a grand, capitalist machine. Between that and her deceptions—layers and layers of them—I wondered if that was how she’d gotten so deep under my skin. She'd spoken the truth. Even her lust had been sincere.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel hungry anymore. I scraped the rest of my eggs onto Vincent’s plate and took mine, now empty, to the sink. “Finish up. We have to head out. Sergei Yaroshenko has come back to America, and you and I have a meeting we must attend.”
Chapter 20
The meet was being held in the Sirens VIP rooms. I dressed for business and gave Vincent one of my old college suits. It was too small for me nowadays, but it hung loose across Vincent’s narrow shoulders.
By the time we drove in, it was close to ten p.m. Two dark-tinted town cars were in the guest lot, the engines still ticking. Petro was guarding the staff entry, lounging against the doorjamb with his radio piece loose and his arms crossed over his chest. He waggled his eyebrows at me as we came up on him, shoulder to shoulder. “That your new boyfriend? I was wondering why we were a man short tonight.”
“I wasn't aware that any other men worked here.” I walked past him without waiting for his reply.
“Ouch.” Vincent chuckled when we were clear of the door. “That sounded like it felt good.”
I led Vincent through the front of the club, up the stairs to the salon entrances. The suites were not usually manned by guards, but tonight, two unfamiliar men flanked the polished oak doors in identical Italian suits. They weren’t even bothering to conceal: both of them packed machine guns on shoulder straps, resting their elbows on the stocks with the nonchalance of old soldiers.
Vincent and I followed Sergei’s distinctive rolling laughter down to one of the salons, which also had a guard posted. He was a square-jawed man with the round head and swarthy cast of someone from the Balkans, a
nd he opened the door to let us inside.
Lev looked up when we stepped in, and rose abruptly with an expression of plain relief when he saw Vincent, his glass of whiskey in hand—but it was Sergei who commanded Vincent's immediate attention. Sergei Vladimirovich Yaroshenko didn’t look a day older than fifty. By all rights he was pushing seventy, but he was still a monster of a man, towering over the room from a black leather love seat like a red-haired, blue-eyed king. He was swathed in a Cossack-style fur wrap over a red suit, apparently immune to the lingering summer heat. His gaze bore down on me, and I lost track of everyone else as Sergei half-rose from his seat in greeting, his face a mask of carefully controlled delight.
“Well, look at you!” he boomed. “Alexi, you’re not an inch taller than you were ten years ago, but I dare say you’re looking well.”
A man could choke to death on Sergei’s charisma. Here was the man who had started me on my path: who had put me through school, through college, had supported me until I found my feet. My mouth stretched in an awkward smile as I went to shake his hand. “Pakhun. It is good to see you again.”
Sergei engulfed my gloved fingers with his callused, tattooed paws, shaking with one hand clasped on my wrist. I let him pull me in to kiss cheeks, and then he waved me to the seat beside him: the one on Lev’s left. The empty chair on his right was usually reserved for Vassily. “Excellent, yes. You’ve done us good work tonight, Alexi Grigoriovich. I think you deserve a drink. Go get this man a double shot of Kors, eh?”
“Of course.” I didn’t drink, but refusing a drink from Sergei was tantamount to throwing it in his face.
From the side of the room, one of the salon waitresses moved over to the bar as the tender poured, and Sergei turned his attention to Vincent... but while they sorted out their niceties, my attention was drawn past him to the drapes which framed the private pole and stage. Sergei’s ever-present shadow was never far away from his side: Vera Akhatova, the only woman in the Organizatsiya who was neither call girl or family member. She was a lean silhouette from where I stood, half-hidden by the glare of the studio lights that framed the settee. Sergei was eccentric; Vera was eerie. Some said she and Nicolai were brother and sister, and that was how she had gotten into the business. I didn’t believe it. While there was a certain similarity between their hard, thin faces and dry wiry builds, Vera was the dark to Nic’s pale. She was sinewy and strong, with taut, freckled arms, a short bob of dry brown hair, and dead chocolate brown eyes. I’d heard a lot of gossip about her over the years. Most of the younger men wondered what she was about, if not a girlfriend, sister, or whore, but I never doubted. I had seen her shoot, only once, when one of the old-old crew from my father’s day got up at a meeting and pulled a knife at the table. Sergei had motioned by his leg, and Vera had drawn her pistols and put two bullets in the guy’s head, one in each eye.
The door opened again, and Nic stepped through, his hands deep in the pockets of his old BDUs. He grimaced lopsidedly when he saw Sergei and Vincent together and went over to shake his hand and kiss cheeks with our Pakhun, a ritual repeated with Lev, and finally, with me. I wondered if his hand was a little tighter than normal, if the gesture was more perfunctory. I stopped wondering when Nic casually dropped down into the chair I knew was reserved for Vassily, absent but accounted for. It chilled something in me, deep inside.
“So, now we only await the illustrious presence of Vanya, seeing as our youngest Lovenko is incapacitated,” Sergei said in Russian, resting his hands on his thighs. When he next spoke, it was in thickly accented, but perfectly fluent English. “And you, Vincent Manelli. Our million-dollar baby. I trust your time in enemy hands wasn’t too hard?”
“It sucked enormous fat donkey balls.” Vincent blinked rapidly as he accepted his drink and threw back half the glass. “Absolutely sucked. Your guy here got me out in one piece, though. I uh... I lost track of Yuri. Sorry.”
It was my turn next. I took the glass of Kors and sniffed. At twenty-four grand a bottle, it should have smelled like something other than vodka, but no. It was still just vodka.
“It is the reality of war that soldiers are killed in the line of duty.” Sergei fixed his gaze on him, and under it, Vincent seemed all the smaller. “His memorial is tomorrow. One of three. Two more men have died as of this evening. Our own Maximillian, and Mr. Laguetta’s Captain, John Scappeli. They both met their ends at the hands of unknown hitmen.”
I said nothing. Vincent made a spitting sound of frustration and a silent solo toast to their names.
“Of course, we have no intention of giving in to your estranged relatives. Joint monopoly on the world’s most popular recreational substance—barring alcohol—is nothing to trifle with.” Sergei grinned. It should have been friendly, but Sergei was never friendly: not really. His smile was the rictus of a predatory animal, broad and toothy as a shark’s. “And history is built on a foundation of corpses, as they say.”
“Yeah. They sure do say that.” Vincent sipped his whiskey and tried to smile back.
The door opened again, and this time, it was Vanya. He looked unwell, pale and pasty and tired. The week’s events had been hard on him, poor thing. I eased back, as much as I was able to, and as Lev lifted his glass, I joined him and had a mouthful of vodka. It was like drinking a ghost: a searing cold heat that burned down to my gut, nearly tasteless and vaguely sweet. A thousand U.S. dollars, down the hatch. If I managed the rest carefully, I could avoid having to accept another glass.
“Well, this is lovely,” Sergei said. “Back together again, just the five of us. If only we could have Grisha and Syoma, Semyon and Rodion back again, eh? And Mikhail, bless his loyal soul.”
That brought some uncomfortable glances to bear on me as the toast was made, and Vincent beamed innocently at one end of the table as he lifted his glass. He had no idea, and as far as I was concerned, no business knowing.
“It is good that you were able to make it here, Alexi,” Sergei said. “But Vassily? Now there is a problem. How is his leg?”
“To my knowledge, it is fine. Painful, but fine.” The muscles of my neck and shoulders wound taut. As one, the faces at the table had turned to look right at me.
“But the fact remains that he was shot, and he cannot be here tonight. And you were his bodyman at this event, at the casino?”
“Yes, Pakhun,” I replied. I did not like where this was going. “I was.”
“How was he shot, then?” Sergei spread his hands wide, like a magician unveiling his latest trick.
No matter what I said now, I failed. I could protest that I was outdoors, and the question would be “why were you outside?” I could say that we fought and Vassily stormed in a fit of pique to snort ten K worth of coke, and I’d be turning Sergei’s ire on Vassily. I was angry with him, but not so angry that I’d rat him out. “I was not beside him, Pakhun.”
“Just as well you weren’t the one protecting Lev then, eh?” Sergei’s eyes flashed angrily. The grin never left.
“So does my bringing Vincent back to you mean nothing?” I jerked my head at Vincent, whose eyes widened at the sound of his name. Even if he spoke Russian, he didn’t speak this sort of Russian: the rough vulgar slang that grew out of the prisons and Communist industrial wastelands of the whole GRU. “Because I might have failed with one hand, but I succeeded with the other.” It was their turn to be surprised. Lev’s eyebrows rose, and even Nicolai looked up from his glass. Sergei’s face drained of humor, but only for a moment before he slapped his leg and laughed uproariously, a sound which needed no chorus to fill the room.
“Yes, yes... you earned that one, Alexi Grigoriovich,” he said. “You have grown these ten years, eh? Our resident starets. You can look me in the eye and say your piece. I respect that. Now, speaking of Vincent, let’s figure out what to do with him.”
I was all too happy to have his attention turned on something and someone else. The night had barely begun, and I was already feeling the trap tightening around me. While the
captains fell to talking about Vincent, the coke trade, and how they were going to avoid incidents like this in the future, I sat back with my glass of vodka and pretended to drink it while watching their hands and faces. Nicolai seemed particularly animated, but he had the grayish complexion of someone masking illness.
“Hey, uh... Alexi, man. What are they saying?” Vincent whispered aside to me. “I keep hearing my name.”
“You’re being put up in a safe house, with a bodyguard.” I dropped my voice. “That’s all.”
“That’s it? I mean, I’m hearing a whole lot of ‘Vincenti this, Vincenti that.’”
“It is decided, then.” Sergei lifted a hand, breaking the bubble with his thickly accented English. “Vincent, my friend: I hate to interrupt your evening out, but we are going to send you to a safe house now, while the night is young and hunters are still sleeping. Do you agree?”
“Uh, sure.” Vincent’s voice was a little strangled. “That'd be great, actually. I could do with more sleep.”
“Good, good. And couldn’t we all.” Sergei motioned to Vera. “Vera here will take you to the security office. You are getting two of our very best to keep you safe in your bed.”
“Thanks. But this suit is—”
“Don’t worry about the suit,” I said. “I don’t need it.”
Vera broke from her static position, boots whispering on the plush carpet, and crooked her fingers to Vincent. Cheerful but shell-shocked, he followed her out like an eager puppy, stumbling a little over the points of his shoes. He was a childish, clownish man. It made me wonder, exactly, why the Santos Twins liked him so much.
Once they were gone, Sergei clapped his hands together. “Now we have time to relax before business. Lev has been telling me about his collection of beauties for years now, but I am yet to see a single one.”
“You have only been here a few hours, Pakhun,” Lev said. “They’re merely a phone call away. What are you all looking for? Blonde, brunette...?”
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