In Brighton Beach, entire lives could be spent by people shopping in Russian stores, eating in Russian restaurants, speaking only Russian, even to the specially trained and assigned police and other City personnel. If you didn’t know you were in Brooklyn, near Coney Island, the former beach playground of Americans for well over a hundred years, you would think that you were someplace in Russia.
At the western edge of Brighton Beach, was Coney Island. Stretching from there, past Brighton Beach, for a very long distance, was a beachfront, edged by a wooden boardwalk where people strolled, exercised, took in the sun, gamboled, and socialized. Here, every morning, or almost every morning, Sascha Ulanov—when he wasn’t flying to Romania, or meeting with Uri—came to exercise, and swim in the summer. Ordinarily, such activities would keep one healthy, except if, like Sascha, you drank to the point of drunkenness every night, smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and snorted cocaine between smokes.
As she walked, Irina didn’t see Sascha. She glanced into Beach 29th Street, where Sascha ordinarily parked, pretty much in the same spot, next to the fire hydrant, whenever he came to the boardwalk. This morning, however, his car was not there. Irina stood near the railing, searching in each direction, then searching the beach, glancing at all the people passing by. She looked at her watch. It was eleven-twenty. The sun was warm. Baby Elena had fallen asleep. Irina turned the stroller away from the sun and sat on a bench, tilting her face up into the warmth. Every few moments, she would look at the beach, the boardwalk in each direction, then tilted her face back to the sun again. After a while, she saw someone she didn’t know, someone with black, slicked-back hair and a moustache, a sports shirt, and ample pants in the new style that many of the immigrants from Moscow were wearing. He was quite young, handsome. The stranger was looking around for many minutes. Irina looked at him. He looked at her. They weren’t sure.
“Dmitri’s wife?” he said to her tentatively, in Russian.
“Da,” she replied.
“Irina?”
“Da.”
“You know Sascha?” he said.
“Da. I am waiting for him. He was supposed to meet my husband at eleven.”
“Yes, exactly. He will not come.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” shrugged the young man. “He asked me to come to tell Dmitri that he cannot come. I see Dmitri can not come either,” he laughed.
“Da. When will we see him, Sascha? I need something for my home.”
“I don’t know. He just said to tell you he can’t make it now, that he would get in touch with Dmitri later, maybe tonight. That’s all I know.”
“What’s is your name?”
“Marat,” he said, smiling into her eyes. “Nice child. How old?”
“Fifteen months,” said Irina with a mother’s pride.
“Pretty. Like the mother.”
Irina smiled at Marat. “You a friend of Sascha? I haven’t seen you before.”
“I only know him a little while. He is a friend of my family, really. You come here often, to the boardwalk?”
“When the weather is good,” she said, turning the stroller to walk back toward her home.
Marat walked next to Irina. “Me, too. I like to take the sun. Maybe I’ll see you,” he said.
“Maybe so.”
“What time do you usually come?” he smiled broadly.
“Between two and three.”
“Any particular day?”
Irina shrugged. “Wednesday, Thursday.”
“Wednesday, Thursday,” he repeated. Marat waved as Irina pushed the stroller down the ramp to the street.
Very handsome, she thought as she walked away. A little forward, perhaps, but that’s the way they are when they first come from Moscow. Irina saw baskets of flowers hanging from lampposts as she walked; her thoughts turned to flowers. She needed flowers. People were calling her all day long looking for flowers. Lately, business had increased dramatically, and, in direct proportion, the supply of flowers had diminished. When she saw Dmitri, she told herself, she had to tell him that they had to increase their flower order from Sascha so they could supply more flowers to the customers.
Irina looked down at the baby in the stroller. She was still asleep. While looking down, her eyes caught sight of the ruby ring she wore on her finger. She had bought the ring last week from the jeweler on Brighton Beach Avenue. While there, she had noticed that there was also a matching bracelet. She smiled to herself. The jeweler was not far out of the way on her walk home. She would pass by and tell the jeweler to hold the bracelet for her. Might as well look at diamond studs while she was there. The ones she had at home were too small.
As Irina reached the front of her building, she saw Adan Rubinovski, a young man who had recently become a flower customer, pacing in front of the building. He saw Irina and waved. Adan was the nephew of Vasilov Bougashlavili, one of the big men in Brighton Beach. Some magazines said he was the Russian Godfather. There seemed to be many people who were supposed to be the Russian Godfather. Whether or not he was the Godfather, Bougishlavili was well known and well respected throughout the area. Having his nephew as a customer didn’t exactly hurt Irina’s flower business.
“Hello,” Adan said in excellent English. “I’ve been waiting for you. I called and there was no answer. I figured you probably went to the store or something.”
“Nyet problem,” said Irina. “Except,” she added in a whisper, “I have nothing for you.”
“You’re kidding?” said Adan.
“I wish I was,” said Irina. “It’s just that everybody wants, and things aren’t … just aren’t, you know? I just went to see somebody. I thought I was going to get more, you know. But he didn’t even show up. Sent somebody else.” For a moment, Irina thought about Marat. Did they make an appointment for Wednesday or Thursday? she wondered. He was very attractive.
“When do you think you’ll have something?” Adan said with concern. “This is very serious. I really need.… something, you know?”
“Of course I know. Different kind of serious, but serious for both of us.”
“I can’t go without … something as easy as you can, if you know what I mean?” he said.
“Nothing I can do,” said Irina. “If I could, you know I’d take care of you, for sure. There will be plenty soon, in a couple of days. That’s what I was told. Then you won’t have a thing to worry about.”
“Until then? Maybe you have just a little something, perhaps?”
Irina shrugged. “Maybe if I look upstairs, Dmitri maybe put something aside for us, you know, we party a little on the week-end. Maybe there’s something. I’m not promising.”
“Anything you can do … I mean it. Anything. I’m okay right now, but tomorrow, and the next day, what am I going to do until then, you know what I mean?”
“Wait here, I think I can find you something, very little, but something. But remember, Adan, this is all there is until the new flowers arrive.”
“I understand.”
Uri Mojolevsky drove slowly under the elevated train structure on Brighton Beach Avenue in the brand new champagne colored Lexus he had bought two weeks before. It was polished to a high shine. Russian CD’s blared out of the moon roof.
“Uri, I love this car,” said Olga, a black haired young woman sitting in the back seat. She was rocking to the music, smoking a cigarette. Anna, Uri’s nominal girlfriend, wearing her leather biker’s cap, her chin jutting forward and back to the music, sat in the front passenger seat, smoking, watching the people walking on Brighton Beach Avenue.
“It likes you, too,” Uri said, happy, high, bouncing to the music. “Here we are,” he announced as he stopped at the curb in front of a restaurant called “Kot Chorni”. The two girls alighted from the passenger doors. They both wore leather short-shorts and knee length patent leather boots. Uri walked around the car, just as the valet parking attendant came out of the club.
“I’ll take it, boss,” said
the attendant, taking the car keys from Uri.
“Make sure the roof is closed and everything is locked,” Uri called back just as he stepped into the club.
“Okay, boss.”
“Uri!” smiled the restaurant owner, a little man with a bald head and a beard. They cheek-kissed three times. “Good afternoon, good afternoon,” he greeted each of the women.
“How’s it going, Georgi?” said Uri.
“Good, good, now that you’re here. I’ve got your favorite table,” he said, leading the party through a beaded curtain that separated the bar from the restaurant, toward a booth, actually a small alcove, situated in the back, away from the other tables. “You going to eat?”
“I only want soup,” said Anna.
“Me, either,” said her friend.
“Eat whatever you want,” said Uri as he sat back in the booth and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. “You see Sascha, yet?” he asked the owner.
“Nyet.”
“If you see him—”
“I’ll send him right back, of course.”
The valet parker came into the rear area and walked toward Uri. “You want I should hold the keys?”
“Of course, you hold them. What? You came here to ask me that, or get a tip? You think I’m going to run away or something? You must be playing the lotto?”
“No, no, it’s not that—”
“Of course it is. Here.” Uri handed him a ten dollar bill.
“Thank you, boss.”
“Champagne?” the owner asked Uri.
“What else?”
“Not the French stuff. It’s too sour,” said Anna.
The owner looked at Uri.
“Whatever the ladies want,” Uri said indifferently. He put his arm around Anna, who was sitting to his left.
“It’s too warm,” she frowned, shrugging his hand from her shoulder.
The owner glanced from Anna to Uri, then turned, instructing a waiter what to bring to the table. As it was early afternoon, there were only two or three other tables occupied. The other people looked occasionally at Uri’s table when there was a burst of laughter, loud talking, or when the waiter popped another cork from a champagne bottle.
From time to time, Uri’s cellular phone would ring, and he would glance at the caller I.D. Sometimes he would answer; most of the time, he did not. Other times, his beeper would sound, and he would check the number, and make a call on the cell phone as the women drank, smoked, and talked loudly beside him. Once in a while, Uri would stop his phone conversation to tell them to be quiet. Then he’d continue, and they would immediately resume being loud.
Sascha Ulanov walked quickly toward the Kot Chorni. He looked as if he had just awakened from a drunken stupor—which he had. When he reached the door, he flipped away his cigarette and plunged into the club. The bartender, polishing glasses behind the bar, said hello. The owner, seated at a small table near the bar with two other men, nodded Sascha toward the back. Sascha pushed aside the beaded strands, looking around. He did not see Uri until he heard Anna’s high pitched laughter coming from the small alcove in the back. Uri was on the phone, smoking a cigarette. He waved to Sascha, then pointed toward the front of the restaurant. Sascha turned, but saw nothing. Uri signaled Sascha to wait a moment. When he finished his phone call, Uri stood and squeezed past Anna. “Come, I want to talk to you,” he said to Sascha.
Sascha followed Uri to the men’s room. Uri checked the room, opened the door of the toilet, then zipped down his fly in front of the urinal.
“Listen, it’s time for you to do something, go somewhere again, you know what I mean?” Uri motioned Sascha closer. “This time, the trip is for us. We are going into the business for ourselves with the black people. We’re moving up in the world.”
“Romania, again?” Sascha whispered. “Why don’t you go?”
“You know I got no papers,” Uri whispered back, his words slurred a bit by champagne. “Otherwise, I’d go. You got a travel permit. Me, I got nothing. We need something. We’re out—which, of course, is very good.”
“Fucking Romania. It’s a pain in the ass,” said Sascha.
“Shhh.” Uri looked toward the doorway.
“I make the three thousand extra, just to go and come back?”
“Of course,” said Uri. “But this time you’re going to be part of the deal.”
“Meanwhile, I need spending money.”
“That, too. Expenses, tickets, and everything.”
“When do I have to go?” asked Sascha.
“As soon as I get you a ticket. They will meet you at the airport when you get there.”
“I know. What, this is my first time?”
“I’m just making sure you remember, you fuck,” said Uri. “You drink—you do too much of everything. I don’t know what you remember.”
“I remember what I have to remember. Don’t worry.”
“If I was worried, I wouldn’t have you go,” said Uri.
“Same set-up. I give them my luggage? They give it back to me the next day? I come home?”
“That’s it.”
“I can use the three-thousand?” said Sascha. “I’m broke.”
“You’re sticking too much of that shit up your nose.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I told you, I’m not worried.”
“Okay, then,” said Sascha. “You got some money for me now?”
Uri frowned. “One-thousand now,” he put his hand in his pocket, then thought the better of it. “when I drive you to the plane. Otherwise, you might be too fucked up to go. The other two thousand, the minute you get back. Right at the airport, when I pick you up.”
“Give me a couple of hundred now.”
Uri pulled out a roll of bills and gave Sascha two-hundred. “Anna is going with you,” Uri added, glancing at Sascha’s face.
“Anna? What the fuck for? You think I need a watch-dog? Especially Anna! I don’t know how you can stand that bitch. The trip all by itself is bad enough. But with Anna—”
“Don’t worry. When you get there, she’s going by herself to meet her girlfriend for a couple days. She’s a good cover, makes you look like honeymoon people.”
“Honeymoon? With that crazy—all respects, but your girlfriend is fucking crazy.”
“She fucks like crazy too.”
“I can fuck her? You don’t mind.”
“If she let’s you near her. Just don’t go to sleep. She’ll cut your thing off.” Uri laughed.
Semanon’s : July 22, 1929 : 2:30 P.M.
“What did this guy say?” Greg Diamond said in his native Sicilian dialect to Charlie Jones. Diamond’s true name was Gregorio Biondi, but, except for very few people, he was known in the street only as “Greg Diamond ”. They were seated at a table in the back of Semanon’s. Except for a commissioner and his secretary nursing coffee cups at a table near the front, and a couple of other people standing at the bar, the restaurant was empty.
“He said he could get me whatever I served in the joint at better prices than I was paying,” Charlie Jones also spoke in Sicilian dialect. Charlie’s true name was Carlo Luca, born in America to a family that immigrated from Altavila Silentina, south of Salerno, Italy. His family’s native dialect was Neapolitan, but Charlie had learned Sicilian, along with his older brothers Antonio and Giuseppe, hanging out with Sicilian friends in New York’s Little Italy.
“What did you say to him?” Diamond was small, slim, olive-skinned, with slick, dark hair now hidden under a wide brimmed fedora that was cocked down on one side. He was dressed in an expensive suit and tie.
“I played stupid, like John the Gomb, just listening.” Diamond nodded, winking one eye softly. “He said I should think about it,” Charlie continued. “In addition to good booze and good prices, he said I’d also have good friends. I said to him, like a ‘strunz’, really? That sounds good. I like good friends.”
“Good. Good,” said Diamond slowly, his eye
s narrowing, his mouth an angry slit. “Sons of whores. Trying to muscle in on us. You told him to come back, no?”
Charlie nodded. “He said he would bring back some of his friends, so I could be friends with his friends.”
“Let the pieces of shit come around, you hear? We’ll let the sons of whores make friends. Make nice nice with the bastard, Charlie. Play along. Let him think you’re a dunce, that you’re not with anybody. Buy some stuff from him. This way we’ll watch the bastard when he comes here to deliver, follow the truck, and then we’ll hit him and all his friends in the head.”
“Not in here?”
“Charlie—”
“We’re having such a nice run. We don’t want to spoil anything, right?” Diamond assured Charlie with a calm look. “By the way,” said Charlie, “here’s a little something.” Charlie took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and handed it under the table to Diamond.
“Not too little, Charlie,” Diamond laughed, slipping the envelope into an inside pocket of his own jacket. “You know how the big guy and Charlie Lucky are?”
Greg Diamond was a Capo in the gang of Don Giuseppe ‘Joe the Boss’ Masseria. Charlie Lucky Luciano, the Under Boss, had sent Diamond to make the rounds of the various joints under their protection to take up the weekly collection that would be divided up amongst the friends Charlie already had.
“No, a good size envelope, Greg, as usual. That’s what I’m talkin’ about when I say we don’t want to spoil a good thing.”
“Don’t worry about these pieces of shit, Charlie. They’re probably some grease balls from uptown or Jersey or some shit like that, trying to horn in on a good thing. They can’t befriends of ours, Charlie, otherwise they’d know you’re with us. We’ll teach them a lesson they won’t forget.” Diamond paused at an inner thought momentarily. “When we’re finished, they won’t be able to remember nothing. “He laughed grimly. “But that’s something else, Charlie. And it won’t be around here, okay?”
“You want a little something to drink, eat? I made a nice pasta fagioli for myself in the back.”
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