Marco doesn’t respond He just asks the girls how their evening went. How much money they made is what he really wants to know and he doesn’t do much to conceal it.
The salon has about twenty girls that he calls ‘money’ girls. That means they ‘work’ most of the day and night and they don’t get out of their rooms much. As well as the money girls are his three ‘VIP’ girls. Top-priced escorts, Marco told me proudly when I arrived. “Top shelf,” he laughed when he introduced me. They’re pretty sour to me most of the time.
Finally, alone in the dark of my room and I can’t stop myself thinking about the Russian club boss. Remembering the heat of that huge killer and the frightening scent of him makes me tremble and clench. The image and the memory of him, of his weight as he crushed me against the rough dirty wall, my god. And his size. I try to make the memory go away.
The remembered flashes of him, too close, make me turn on my side and I can’t sleep. My body writhes trying to forget. But I know it was trying to reach the memory of him as much as I tried to shake it away. My treacherous body wanted to stretch wide. To open up. To suck him in. Drink him down and swallow him whole.
Except that he’s too big. Damnit. He’s too big and hard. He would stretch me til I tore and then ripped, like a thin piece of wet silk yanked hard.
I want a blade.
t last I park the Maserati in front of the club. Arrive by the street entrance. Always a thrill. Greet Armando and Ras, the two doormen, in charge, at ease and immaculately suited. See that everything is going well. The door is the place to get the pulse of the club. Take a read on the room. Feel the beat of the night. A happy line usually means a happy club.
Meet and greet a group of beautiful, sexy girls, expensively glittery and mussed, here for their first night at the club. Smile a welcome. Show them into the glass elevator for the twenty-story rocket-ride to the top.
After Mikhail, as the doors are about to close, a short man in dark glasses, bald as a bullet slips in behind him. He faces the glass as the elevator rises so all I see is the back of his smooth, close-cropped head.
At the very top, the doors slide open to reveal the smoke, the music and the sweep of the glass stairs. I conduct the girls as honored guests into the magic swirling twilight of the club lights. The short man slips away like smoke. I make a mental note to watch for him on the security videos.
I ascend the wide glass steps that lead up into the decadent energy that buzzes from the space-age speakeasy. Gorgeous people chill, lurk and prowl around the bar. Milo, the cocktail mixologist, long-limbed like a spider makes a show with flashing blades as he chops limes and lemons in mid-air. He spins, juggling spirit bottles and shakers, and pouring streams neon colored liquids from impossible distances. He looks up to give me a smile as I pass through the bar.
Striding through the beautiful people and the majestic swell of the music, make an entrance to Vassily’s and you feel like the king of the world.
Way up in the sky, glass all around the outside, and dark glamour pulses to beckon and lure you inside. The sparkling fantasy of Manhattan is spread below and behind. Ahead, a night at Vassily’s. Scents, sights, and sensations. Beautiful people spread open to welcome you. The air is electric with possibilities.
That’s how I designed it. To make every guest feel fabulous when they arrive.
I’m thinking again about how it would be if the elevator doors parted and Marco’s girl came down the staircase with that sway in her hips. For VIP guests, it would certainly light a spark in the sense of occasion. Make the arrival feel that bit more… huge. Images of her now were an unexpected and unwelcome distraction, however lovely the images might be.
She has no legitimate reason to be in my head now. I have problems to solve. Business to fix.
I wave the party of girls into the club and wish them a great evening, and I tell Jose to make their first order special and on the house. When Mikhail and I get to my office on the top floor, I call my head of security. “Dima. Bring all the heads of teams up here right now.”
I tell them to be ready for an attack. As of right now. Someone was expected from the old country and they probably would not come alone. Naturally, they wanted details. Of course, I have zip.
“Be extra, hyper-vigilant. Anybody comes to the door who you don’t know, look at them hard. Watch them from the monitor nest, check on the databases. Follow your instincts. Stay on the side of caution. Anything you see that aren’t sure of, call me. Anytime.”
I dismiss them all except for Mikhail and Dima. “We need to throw everything we’ve got at figuring out who’s been backing Vovo. Was it really someone from the old country or is that just a cut-out? We saw money move from Panama. Can we link it to anything that we know about? Anything at all.”
Mikhail says, “All that we’ve really had to go on is the trips that Vovo made to St. Petersburg and his visits to Panama.”
“We could get around the building contractors, Boss. And the lighting and sound guys.” Dima says. “The guys who fitted Vovo’s pretty much all do work for us, and we’re the big client.”
“True. Especially now,” Mikhail adds.
They both look weary. I’m feeling it, too. I rub my forehead with the tips of my fingers. I have to find a thread to pull. There is always something that I can shake or tug loose. “Most of them would have been paid in cash, wouldn’t they?”
Dima and Mikhail’s heads shake slowly, “Mm.”
“Yup.” This isn’t going to be getting us anywhere nearer to the source of the money.
I tried it from another angle. “So, who else could have known about his backer? Who other than himself and them?”
Dima’s mouth tightened. “Like Mikhail said, the banker who put it together.”
Mikhail said, “When he got his building permit, Boss, we were all pretty surprised, you remember?”
“Right,” Dima agreed, “He came out of nowhere. Off the boat more or less. And suddenly he had City Hall eating out of his hand.”
“Sure.” Mikhail is not convinced. “We just assumed he came carrying a boatload of grease. That his glad hands were gladder than the average hand.”
“But it was the same zoning manager who Marco was trying to get a permit from for his roof garden, right?”
Dima and Mikhail looked back at me. I nod. “Dima, you may have something. If Marco couldn’t sway or schmooze the guy, then Vovo really must have had some special sauce.”
Mikhail nodded, “I’m on it.” He was getting out of his chair and dialing on his phone screen. Moving to stand by the tall window, his voice was breezy. When he got an answer, he put a smile in his voice. “Burnside? Hi. It’s Mikhail. From Vassily’s… yeah. Oh, you do remember. It’s not too late, is it? That’s great. Listen, I’ve got a little special something here that I know you’re going to love whenever you can find your way here.” He pauses. Listening. Then he laughs.
“You’re too smart for me, Burnside. There is something, yes. Just a thing that I’ve been wondering about. A little piece of gossip to settle a bet, but I’ll be happy to reward you for it.” Another pause. More laughing. “The kind you like, and just the way, uh-huh, uh-huh… you want to come right now? The girls will be excited. Wait till I tell them.”
~~
The room at the side of my office has an outstanding view. It’s one of the few rooms with a window that will actually swing open. It’s a nice enough room but functional. Easy to clean. Not too much furniture. The big desk, two chairs. A cabinet of drawers by the door. The lights are low.
Mark Burnside fidgets in the straight chair across the desk from me. He’s wearing a business suit that probably cost him a lot more than it should have. His pink face colors up as he looks around. Mikhail stands behind him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a little thing, Burnside.”
“But it’s confidential.” His eyebrows reach up as he looks around, pleading at me. “You’re a businessman, Vassily. You understand.”
I le
an my elbows on the desk and lower my voice. “I understand that your duty of confidentially ended at about eleven fifteen this morning. It died in a horrible mess with Vovo in the back of his limo.”
A sheen of perspiration glosses Burnside’s face. I lean back in the chair.
“We did promise you a treat, Burnside. We’d much rather have this as a friendly exchange.” I give him a moment. It’s hard to help stupid. Whatever options he thinks he has are all going to take him places he doesn’t want to go.
“Vassily,” he holds out his hands. He still thinks he’ll get through this by acting like it’s a business conversation. The hypocrisy of this corrupt fucking wallet-stuffing City Hall placeholder is making me furious.
“How’s the wife, Burnside? Are the family well?” I’ve never laid eyes on the lard-assed fuck before but I’ve done my homework.
He holds on to the superior detachment in his voice but his face looks like I slapped him with a wet sturgeon. He knows exactly what I mean. “You don’t mean to threaten me?”
“Of course, I don’t, Burnside. I’m just making friendly conversation while you come to the right decision.”
I can see he’s not there yet. I give him a little more. “That kind of thing, veiled threats and implications of evil deeds, that’s the kind of thing our Italian and Sicilian friends are known for. We Russians aren’t like that.”
Burnside smiles. Comforted. Softly I tell him, “We’re more likely to start snipping triangles out of your ears,” Smiling I sit back in the chair. “Snip, snip. First one, then the other.” He’s trying to keep still. Not show a reaction. Tough guy.
“Like a haircut. If you could feel along the length of every single hair.” He nods. Like, Of course. That would be about right.
“Some people are tough,” I tell him. “One guy, you remember, Mikhail?” Mikhail grunts. A laughing snort. I shake my head. Give Burnside a moment to picture it. “Seven snips to get one lobe off. Six for the other. “Tried to keep still and tough it out. Couldn’t do it by the end, though, right, Mikhail?”
“Awful mess, Boss. Horrible. Really.”
“And why?” I’m talking to Mikhail, straight over Burnside’s head. “After the tools were out, where did he think it was going to go?”
“Right Boss.” Mikhail’s laugh is filthy. “Like we’d stop and say, ‘Oh, looks like he doesn’t want to tell us,’ right?”
“Right, Mikhail. After the first ear, maybe. ‘Ah, well. Guess we’ll have to think of something else.’ Right?”
Burnside fidgets. I look away, thoughtful. Like we’ve forgotten that he’s there. In case he needs more, Mikhail says, “One finger joint was enough though.”
I laugh. “I guess playing the piano really was important to him.”
Mikhail moves to the back of the room. To the cabinet by the door. “That or he didn’t want to wait while we snipped off all twenty-seven of the rest of them.”
“That would have been a long night.”
Burnside’s face is white and red around the edges, like a freshly pulled tooth.
I lean toward him. A hand outstretched. “None of that kind of nonsense is ever going to happen between us though, is it, Burnside? We’re going to be great friends, you and I.”
Honestly, at this point, I almost hope he doesn’t crack, just so I can open the fucking window and dangle him outside. Let him enjoy the evening breeze and the view down twenty-two floors. Fucker needs a reality check.
He’s still hesitating. I blink slowly. “In that spirit of companionable chat, Burnside, I wonder if you’re aware that brandishing or threatening with a deadly weapon is an indictable crime, not so much less serious than the actual use of said weapon.”
Rivulets of sweat run from his hairline. They trickle down his temples to his cheeks. His eyebrows store and hold the moisture until, like a blocked gutter, it floods and runs. As he shakes his head, his eyes bulge and they flick left and right.
“I mention it only in passing. A little piece of trivia, Burnside. It means that if a Russian shows you, say, a box cutter or a spike in circumstances that could be seen as threatening, then it isn’t a threat, Burnside. It means that he’s definitely going to use it.”
Burnside pulls his hand under the table. I can’t tell whether it’s to hide the fingers away or just to cover the shake that he’s developed. I wait.
He blinks a few times, trying to clear the sweat from his eyes. He wipes his face with his hands. Pulls his fingers through his stringy hair. I don’t know whether he’s trying to show himself how brave he is or if he is just paralyzed inside like a very chubby, shaved rabbit in the headlamps. He doesn’t speak, though.
I shrug. Give him sad eyes while I flatten my chin in resignation.
Mikhail noisily yanks open a drawer. Takes something out. Makes a sharp bang, putting it down on the top of the cabinet.
“Burnside, you’re going to tell us. Then we’re going to give you what we promised you.” And then, I thought, We’ll own you completely. but you don’t think ahead about things like that, do you, Mister Placeman?
“Alright,” Burnside is bouncing in the chair as he shouts. “What do you want to know?”
It’s almost as much of a relief for me as it is for him.
Afterward, while he shakes in a heap after confessing all his darks sins and secrets, he’s going to get his reward. He’s too short-sighted to realize that it’s only going to make me own him even more completely.
I stand by Mikhail. “Is there really a girl in the club who’ll put up with this sniveling fuck?”
“Tatiana. She’s crazy about him.”
“Tatti?” I’m astounded. “Burnside’s a sub?”
Mikhail grins as he nods.
I shake my head in amazement. “I’m surprised he didn’t let us snip a couple of wedges then.”
“No offense, Boss, but you don’t look a bit like Tatiana.”
“True.”
What Burnside told us was all bad and the direction it took shocked me.
ext morning when I wake up, images of him still drift in my head.
I knew some men who made me want them. There were times I throbbed ready to howl and burst for the intimacy, the closeness and the wild release of a thrashing bout of raw, bucking lovemaking. Other men made the blood in my veins all stop still at once. Men who terrified me so hard it was like an ice-storm inside of me.
The Russian killer is the first man who has made me want him and who terrifies me, all at the same time. I feel myself start to get afraid as soon as his eyes swivel toward me. At the same instant my nipples sting and harden and my thighs quake. The heat in my core makes me feel like I’m going to suffocate.
Maybe it’s my feelings that I’m afraid of. All I know is that I can’t stand to think about him. And I can’t stop thinking about him.
Smells of coffee and bacon hurry me through the shower and call me down to breakfast.
In the salon kitchen, the three VIP girls are already there, yawning and stretching. Talk stops as I walk in. At first, I thought the reason they tried so hard to be cruel to me was that they hated me intruding. Soon I saw that they were just as horrible to the money girls and to each other. I decided they just didn’t have anything in their lives to be happy about. Nothing had any meaning for them except all the things that the three of them hated.
I wanted them as allies, but I didn’t see any way we would ever be that for each other. They were like the kinds of prisoners who get all their self-esteem from the inmates they hated on. There was no sisterly feeling there and no other solidarity for me to build from.
Vassily: Perfect Pain - a Bad Boy Mafia Dark Romance Page 7