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© Alice May Ball 2016-2018
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is purely coincidental.
All the people portrayed in this story are over the age of eighteen, and entirely imaginary. If you think that you know some of them, or that you may be one of them, then you should consider writing fiction yourself.
Cover Design by Signs of Desire for TzR Publishing
t won’t be long now. Less than half an hour.
I waited here, crouched on the sidewalk for just fifteen minutes. Not long enough for anyone to get too interested. My weapons are concealed under the blanket. Enough nasty-looking covers are draped over me so that nobody wants to come near.
Tall heels clack on the flagstones. A wealthy couple, dragging themselves back from a very late night. His face is perfectly tanned, his hands are in the pockets of a long, loose black coat. Big woolen collar, a patterned silk scarf. Ferrari sunglasses.
She’s either a ten-thousand-dollar whore or a five-million-dollar wife. I’m thinking she’s professional because she’s still got the walk. She has inserts in her high-heeled Christian Louboutins to give her hips that extra sway. She’d have stopped putting herself through that if the deal was sealed. Probably.
I feel kind of sorry for him. Walks by with the shoulder nearest to me raised up. He doesn’t feel lucky enough to drop a couple of bucks or even some coin for a shivering beggar. Not even so he can look good for the girl. Dumb, miserable fucker. Some people here live such empty lives. Not like the old country.
I’m on the cold Park Avenue sidewalk, up against the cream painted cement, down a piece from a polished mahogany and glass door with a long blue awning, braided with gold tassels. Waiting.
I’m huddled under fuzzy, dark gray blankets. This low to the ground, the traffic noise is as ugly and grating as the fumes. Wedged tight against the wall, I’m far enough away from the door that the uniformed doorman can’t do anything about it. Not that it stops him trying.
His long maroon coat with the brass buttons and braid flows as he strides over. Gold piping down the seams of his black pants. He squints down from under the shiny black peak of his cap. Raises a white-gloved finger.
“You can’t stay here.” Like he’s talking to a dog.
He is way outside his little jurisdiction and he knows it. So do I. When I raise my eyes to him and growl, he realizes. I showed him my teeth. To fix the idea in his mind. He backs away with a look like a tiger roared at him. It was all I could do not to laugh. But I don’t want him to see or remember any more of me than he has already. He’s got a job to do, although he doesn’t need to be an ass about it.
If the doorman were any damned good at his job, he would have noticed my Patek Philippe aviator watch that poked out of my sleeve. Out of character by about forty thousand dollars for the bum that I’m pretending to be, the bum that he imagines he can shoo.
I have a job to do, too. If he had any idea about it, he would just run and not stop. If he saw the Uzi under the blankets, for instance. The Uzi isn’t my taste in a gun. Too sneaky and covert for one thing. Too light and too short. Hard to keep it accurate over more than a couple of feet. It’s small, and that’s what I need for today.
If the girls from last night saw me now, they’d scurry by without a glance past the heap of dull rags I’m hunkered under. They would never recognize me in the pile of dark, dusty blankets. They look stinky. Enough that nobody wants to come near to check.
Busy Sunday morning. Halfway along the block a small crew are setting up a camera on a heavy tripod with some reflector boards. Men and young women in puffy jackets and furry boots stamp their feet, holding steaming coffee cups near their reddening faces. Boxes on wheels are hinged open. Screens and controls are inside the lids. Crew adjust the heavy black tripod and fix their bulky black camera on top.
A girl in a dark blue scarf and hat helps a guy to sling on a bulky black cage with a camera harness. Big guys in shades with Avirex and Harley leather jackets prowl, glowering at passersby. They’ll be the muscle. Making space. It’s too big a crew to be amateur, not big enough for a movie. Probably a documentary, or reality TV, or some web series. The girl’s trying to impress the camera guy. He’s pretending not to notice.
Soon they’ll come to try and move me along. I’m not what they want in their shot. I saw the looks that flicked in my direction. They’re hoping I’ll move of my own accord before they’re ready to shoot. No-one wants to come and confront me. They could be in luck. I may be done before they get to it.
Through the morning clouds of subway mist on the pavement, I see it coming. Black, sleek and slow. Here’s the limo. Showtime.
~~
New York is the most wonderful town on Earth, and America is the greatest country. Where could it be better to be free and single, have money, be master of your destiny? From here you can rule the world. this is a place where can build a great life for yourself.
I have. Anybody can do the same. You work for it, you can get it. I came here from Russia with nothing, so I know a thing or two about hardship, deprivation, having to fight for your food and drink.
Anybody with the will can make a great life for themselves here. And I will help anybody if I see them really trying.
Regrettably, there are too many people here who think the way to have a great life is to steal it from somebody else. Vovo is one of those people.
~~
Now it’s all in slow motion. The car slides to a slow stop and I rise. Moving with precision, I shove past the walking couple. The doorman sees me coming and I have to barge him away. His face reddens as he staggers backward. He thought his bulk would stop me. He’s in mild shock. I’m not what he thought I was.
The driver has opened his window. He shouldn’t have done that. It’s against procedure. Lucky thing for him that he did, though and I’m glad. Fyodor is a good family man.
The blankets drop off me and waft to the ground, billowing down into an untidy pile. Now only the dark, hooded sheet covers me. Before Fyodor glances up or around, I bang the handle of the Uzi hard under his ear. He slumps forward against the wheel.
I reach in the open window and point the Uzi while my eyes are adjusting to the dark inside the rear of the car. I can only see shapes as I aim at the first of the two passengers. The bodyguard, Vovo’s lieutenant. His right-hand man. He will be fastest to raise a weapon. A silver Glock is in his hand already. I squeeze the Uzi. A Brrap for less than half of a second and the three shots are enough to be sure. Perfectly grouped, they bloom into a bubbling red rose in the dead center of his forehead. He pitches forward like a twitchy rag doll.
I have five live rounds left.
My eyes have adapted and I look in Vovo’s eye. His face is red and he’s frantic, yanking inside his suit coat. Struggling to pull out his gun.
“Why, Vovo?” I ask him. “Who set you up? Who sent you?” I give him half a second. I know he’s recognized me.
He won’t tell me, but I have about two and a half seconds. It’s worth a try. When he pulls the gun out of his coat, I give him all five bullets. He jerks and flaps in the back of the car, bounc
ing and spraying blood and bits.
He’s still twitching but it’s over. Fyodor stirs. I lay the side of the weapon against his head. No need to move or open your eyes, friend. Let me leave my knife up my sleeve. He understands the feel of the hot Uzi. He stays still.
I’d planned up to four shots for the bodyguard and four for Vovo, so right I’m inside my range. The next eight are blanks.
Now the dangerous part. I raise my arm and fire straight into the air. I slowly turn and I keep my gloved free hand over the bottom of my face. All of the people on the sidewalk gawp – the cameraman, the nice looking script girl, the shiny couple, they all turn the other way and run. Most important, they stop looking at me.
The doorman backs into the building with his cellphone up to his ear. When my eyes meet his he lifts his spare arm. Spreads the fingers. He hastens and stumbles. Falls back. I keep the Uzi on him. He drops the cellphone. He thinks I’m ready to eliminate him. I have other options if I need them.
A dark blue van pulls up alongside the limo. I move backward with my eyes still on the doorman. The van door is open. I’m in and we’re gone. I shrug off the rest of the shroud and brush off my black suit coat. In the mirror, I check my hair and my bow tie, shoot my white shirt cuffs to pull out the ruby cufflinks.
Two blocks and one turn. The van slows in the side street, next to my Maserati. Nobody is on the street watching.
The van is gone as I slide into the leather seat of my own car, look in the mirror to roughly straighten my hair and fire up the engine. I’m in good time for the wedding.
y Christian Louboutin stilettos click smartly on the Russian cathedral flagstones. Echoes rise up into the stone vaults. The snap of my silk couture dress is making plenty of first impressions right now. About half of those impressions are on the men who head the top New York crime organizations. The other half are on their expensively pampered wives. Those impressions will be somewhat less favorable, I’ll bet.
This is my entry into a new society. The debut that my owner requires. Heads turn. Some furtively, some enviously. Eyes light up. Some smolder with lust, others burn with hatred. The dress is perfect. It shows enough, cut low but not too tight or too low at the front, and with a deep enough slash at the back to see that I’m not wearing a bra. Yes. They really do hold up like this. Big, firm and pert. And natural. The bodice and the skirt hug tight across my curves.
You get one chance to make a first impression. That’s what people tell me, here in New York. And what better place to make an impression than the wedding of the year, the marriage between the favorite children of two of the biggest Russian crime families in America.
A wedding like this is every girl’s dream. Not only in America, but in Russia, too. Everywhere. Little Katya won’t let her heart race. But it wants to and I feel it.
I have the key. Gripped tight in my hand.
The aristocracy of the Russian mafia, a congregation of the mighty, gathered to witness and bless the union. Every one of them is dressed and poised like a page in Vogue. Garlands of flowers tumble and cascade from the altar and along the backs and the ends of every pew. Swelling fanfares from the organ fill the scented air.
When the bride, Irina, walks up the grand aisle of this fairy-tale gothic cathedral, she will be a princess in almost every sense. She will stir the hearts of the women and the pulse of the men will thicken. I’ve seen her in the dress so I know. I helped her to choose it. I was with her for every fitting. Every throat will catch. Every woman will envy her, every man will want her.
I squeeze the key. Harder.
I will never have a wedding like this. I may have a wedding but whether it’s in a cathedral or a tiny church or even a registrar’s office, it won’t be like this. Not a wedding where two people have that light in their eyes, that glow on their skin and that eagerness in their faces when they walk toward each other. Two people who can’t wait to run to one another. I won’t be either of those people.
Not ever.
A show like this? That’s quite possible. I may have that. And if I do, it will be all the more aching and empty for what it’s not. I might end up being be paraded, displayed. In a cathedral, as likely as not. Maybe even this one.
But even if all of that happens, it will never be more than a sham. A charade. A staged and rehearsed parade to demonstrate and signify the power and importance of my owner. Yes, there’s every chance that I’ll get to star in a show like that one day.
I can move the point of the key to jab into the muscle of each finger. One at a time.
To be the princess, the beauty who makes the congregations’ eyes water, the one to snatch at the breath of the strong, handsome groom, the flower who makes his heart pound as he turns to sneak a glimpse when she makes her walk up the aisle? No. Not me.
My days of being a princess are over a long way back in the dim and distant past. That was little Katya, not me. Not the Russian doll, the matryoshka.
I can’t scratch the key into my wrist. Not without leaving an obvious mark. The best move I have is to prod the sharp tip under the big muscle on my thumb. The trick is not to draw blood. Bleeding is not a good look. Not now.
On the groom’s side, in the front pew is the groom’s father, Medved Kirotchka. He owns little Odessa. Marco told me. Owns it. By his side, sleek and wiry Rudolph Blavatnik. He controls all of the weapons that come in from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Balkans. On the bride’s side is her father, elegant, majestic Konstantin Kirovsk. He is the Czar. Nothing happens in the five boroughs, nothing draws a breath without his permission and approval.
His dark scowl is carved deep into his stony face and makes it easy to believe.
Medved is a fat bullet of a man. He has the kind of a loose, blotchy face that makes a Versace suit look like rumpled sacking. His hair could have been groomed on Park Avenue half an hour ago, it wouldn’t matter. It’s always going to look like a bale of straw that fell off a truck. He and Rudolph Blavatnik, his sly companion, seem close as their heads lean together. Both men appreciate my curves as they chat, the same way their eyes might narrow and their nostrils would flare at the arrival of a rare peppered steak.
Konstantin, he is a lion. Huge, aristocratic, and powerful. Even while he is sat in a pew, his presence is commanding. The kind of a man you would want to take you. By force even. If you had a choice.
When you don’t have a choice, they’re all the same. Every man who wants to take a woman against her will is just a slavering dog, and exactly like every other. Some muscle, some hardness, a scent, and some need. One may be crueler, another may be more of a coward, but there’s no real difference.
I press the key hard into the mound of my thumb as I wonder why I would think of Konstantin that way, why I might still have such a childish idea. It must be his hair. That and the way he leans his head back. It reminds me of Father.
I walk in front of the congregation to the pews at the side. I’m early enough that it isn’t rude or disrespectful. Only just, though, as reflected in the tightening lips and sliding eyes of the wives. Marco wanted me to make an impression, and I think that part of my day’s work is done.
Now I can sit alone and relax for forty minutes while I endure a Russian Orthodox wedding of two powerful families.
The man who Marco most wanted me to impress, I think he is not here. Not yet. Every glance I get of Marco, he’s looking around, his quick eyes flicking over the shoulder of whoever he’s talking to. I did what Marco asked me, told me, to do. Not that it will stop him being furious if it doesn’t all work out the way that he wants it to, but I’ve done everything that I can.
He hasn’t told me what he really wants out of today, but I have a strong suspicion he has it in mind to sell me. Not just to rent me out, which I’m sure he also hopes to do, to take money from some of these gangsters to ‘spend time’ with me. The ‘girlfriend experience.’ Or a ‘party’ as he often says. No, that’s not right. At the salon, when he says one of the girls is going to ‘party’ with
someone or even several girls, it means they’re going to have sex.
I jab the key at the base of my fingers. First, second, ring, pinkie. Again. First, second, ring, pinkie.
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