Sophie Katz 06-Vanity, Vengeance and a Weekend in Vegas

by Kyra Davis

  Again, Anatoly hesitated. “I’ll do what I need to do to keep her on my side. No more no less.”

  “Oh fuck that.” I jumped out of bed, completely naked and started the search for the clothes I had been so anxious to get out of just a short time ago. “I’m not leaving Vegas. I’m not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs while you play Bonnie and Clyde with a Russian psychopath.”

  Anatoly sat up and pulled on his boxer briefs and jeans. “Sophie we don’t have a lot of options here.”

  “I thought you said there was no we!” I snapped as I yanked on my own clothes.

  Leisurely he walked over to the mini bar and pulled out a small bottle of vodka and a cranberry juice and poured it into a glass. “You’re being unreasonable.”

  “I’m being unreasonable?” I turned away from him and pounded my fist against the wall three times before facing him again. “You just told me you’re going to take one for the team with Natasha! Tell me, how many orgasms are you going to have to give this woman to make it worth it for her to double cross the mafia? That’s unreasonable! Paying $30 for a mini-bar cocktail is unreasonable. What I’m being is hysterical!”

  Anatoly handed me the $30 cocktail and I downed it in three consecutive gulps.

  “You’re putting words in my mouth,” he said. “I didn’t say I was going to be sleeping with her.”

  “You didn’t say you weren’t either! What you did say is that you were going to take off with another woman!”

  “If I thought there was another way to do this there’d be something to talk about.” He said, taking a seat on the bed.

  I took a deep and very shaky breath. He wasn’t hearing me. I had to find a different tone…and maybe a different volume.

  Slowly, I sat down beside him and clasped my hands together in my lap to better keep them from whacking him upside the head. “I understand that you’re trying to protect me but what I don’t think you understand is that there is no way in hell that I’m going to let you out of my sight until we resolve this. If you even think of trying to leave here without me I’ll barricade the door, I’ll scream so loud every mafia thug in the country will hear me, I’ll-- ”

  “I got it,” Anatoly said resignedly, “and I knew you’d say that.”

  “Right well…I’m…I……” Something was wrong. My thoughts were becoming jumbled. “I’m dizzy,” I murmured

  “You just had a glass of vodka.”

  “No, no, not vodka dizzy,” I clarified. The room wasn’t just spinning it was spinning at an odd angle…and everything was getting fuzzier. “This…Anatoly this is different.”

  I was having a hard time focusing on his face…it was almost like there was two of him. But in his four eyes I thought I saw a trace of sympathy. “I think what you’re reacting to is what I put in your vodka….other than the cranberry juice.”

  “You…you drugged me?” I slurred.

  “You’re just going to fall asleep for a little while. I can’t have you following me.”

  “Wha…” I could barely think. There was something I should do now…something…I needed to….do something very, very bad to Anatoly.

  “Go back to San Francisco,” I could hear him say as he eased me back on the bed. “I’ll call you when things are taken care of. It may take awhile but I will fix this.”

  “Anatoly,” I whispered as my eyes fluttered close, “when I wake up…”

  “Yes,” I heard his voice through the haze, tender…even loving.

  “I am going to kick your ass.”

  And then the haze overtook me.

  When I woke up Dena was sitting by my side shaking me and Leah was leaning over me flicking water into my face. Behind her I could see the slightly fuzzy figure of Marcus and…someone else…probably Mary Ann, a little further behind him.

  “Look, look! She’s waking up!” Leah said, flicking so much water in my face I had to turn away to avoid drowning. “She’s not in a coma!”

  “What…where…” I blinked several times until the room came back into focus. “Is he here?” I asked groggily.

  Marcus shot Dena a worrying glance. “Sweetie, are you okay?” he asked. “We were just about to call 911. We’ve been trying to wake you up for several minutes now.”

  “He drugged me,” I mumbled.

  “Wait,” Dena sat up a little straighter. “Someone was here and they drugged you?”

  “You mean like, with a roofie?” Marcus gasped.

  “Oh my gosh, I know what a roofie is!” Yes, that was definitely Mary Ann in the background. “There was this Lifetime movie and this woman was given a roofie and…oh, Sophie! What did they do to you?”

  “I don’t’ know if it was a roofie,” I muttered. “Maybe.”

  “Oh dear God,” Leah whispered.

  Marcus kneeled down by the bed. “Sweetie, who did this and…do you know if they…did anything--”

  “It was Anatoly…he…he was here and we had sex.”

  “What!” Dena was on her feet now. When she stood without her cane she always seemed slightly off kilter, her weight never exactly distributed evenly. But at that moment I could see that if Anatoly had been on the other side of the room she would have had the wherewithal to slam his head into the window.

  “No, no,” I corrected quickly, alertness beginning to come back to me. “I mean we did have sex but he didn’t have to drug me for that. He drugged me because I wasn’t going to let him leave.”

  Marcus paused for a second and then let his head fall into his hands. “You tried to kidnap him?” he groaned. “And he had to drug you to escape. Sweetie, I’ve seen this storyline play out on General Hospital.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic.” I rubbed my eyes. The haze hadn’t fully cleared yet. “I didn’t kidnap him. He came to me! I just tried to hold him hostage.”

  Dena stared at me for what might have been a full minute before she exploded. “Have you lost your motherfucking mind?!”

  Leah was clearly on Dena’s side because she stopped flicking me with water and just dumped the whole glass of water on my head. As I sat up sputtering she paced the room. “You could already be a suspect in a murder investigation, Sophie!” she snapped. “Isn’t that enough!”

  “He made love to me and then he told me he was going back to his wife! I had to do it!”

  “No, you really didn’t.” Leah countered. “You know I came here to make sure you didn’t marry some random idiot, but getting yourself shot might actually be worse!”

  “Might be worse?” I asked. I raised my fingers to my temples. My head was killing me.

  Marcus sighed. “I think it depends on the idiot in question.”

  Dena was tapping her cane on the ground…actually it was a little more than a tap…if the people in the room below us were in they were bound to register a complaint shortly. “You should be trying to get away from Anatoly,” she said. “Far away. No man is worth all this. Let’s buy you some adult bath toys and get the hell out of Vegas.”

  “It’s worth considering,” Marcus agreed.

  “Excuse me, guys?” Mary Ann stepped forward almost timidly. “Sophie seems to have a pretty big headache. Why don’t you leave me with her and you can go out while she recovers.”

  “I can’t leave her alone again!” Leah spat. “Every time I do she does something insane!”

  “Um, Leah?” Mary Ann said softly, “you told me we were coming here for my bachelorette party but there was never a party planned. Even if everything had gone the way you wanted it to you still would have been lying to me. You sort of owe me?” She phrased it as a question although there really was no question about it. Leah looked appropriately chastened.

  “And,” Mary Ann continued, “the rest of you sort of owe me for not wanting to include me in the weekend to begin with. I mean a sex toy trade show in Vegas?” She shrugged. “Leah’s right. This really should have been my bachelorette weekend.”

  Dena stopped banging her cane. “Mary Ann I—”

>   “No, no, it’s okay,” she said, holding up her hands to stop Dena’s impending apology. “You can all make it up to me by giving me some alone time with Sophie. Would that be okay?”

  There were a series of shrugs and muttered apologies.

  “You could go get dinner or something?” Mary Ann suggested.

  “Dinner?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you guys be having lunch?”

  Dena gave me a sideways glance. “We did, four hours ago.”

  “What!” I twisted toward the bedside clock. Sure enough it was after 6.

  “We came in here to check on you a few times,” Marcus confessed sheepishly. “But you seemed to be sleeping so peacefully we didn’t try to disturb you. But when we came back this last time and you were still zonked out we knew something was wrong.”

  “So you’ll give us some time?” Mary Ann pressed.

  “Puppetry of The Penis starts in two and a half hours,” Dena pointed out.

  “Puppetry of…” Leah’s voice faltered.

  “It’s a show where men turn their penises into puppets,” Marcus explained. “But we only have three tickets.”

  “I’m really not up for it tonight,” I said. There was only one dick I wanted to look at and he had just gone back to his wife.

  Leah sucked in a deep breath. “If you and Mary Ann really want some time together maybe…maybe I should go to the show in your place.”

  “You?” Dena took a step back and gave Leah a quick once over. “Have you been possessed by some demon who actually likes having fun?”

  “I just don’t think we should waste the ticket,” Leah said defensively. “And we…we have to keep up appearances.”

  “By going to a penis show.”

  “Of course I have no interest in seeing men wave their…their peckers around but--”

  “Excuse me,” Dena interrupted, “but we’re not talking about woodpeckers here. They’re cocks. It’s a cock show.”

  “I don’t know, Dena,” Marcus mused. “When in action they do use the same motion as a woodpecker banging a tall, dark and sturdy piece of bark.”

  “Whatever!” Leah snapped. “If we don’t use the tickets we already bought it will look suspicious!”

  “Leah’s right,” Mary Ann said. “Have fun at the pecker show.”

  Dena looked like she wanted to protest but apparently she couldn’t think of anything to say, so with a heavy sigh she led the way out. “I can’t believe I’m going to see Puppetry of the Penis with The Church Lady.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Dena, I’m the Jewish Church lady,” Leah hissed as she walked out behind her.

  Marcus flashed us an apologetic smile. “Call when you want to join the party,” he said and closed the door behind him.

  Mary Ann sighed and went over to the mini bar. “There’s a bottle of Advil here…did you leave these out?”

  I shook my head.

  “Anatoly must have done that for you. That was nice of him.” She opened the bottle and took out two pills for me. “He left out some pretzels too.”

  “Mini-bar pretzels?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so…oh and I think he left a note!” She unfolded a piece of paper by the Advil, took a second to read it and then dumped a third Advil into her hand before handing them to me along with the pretzels and a bottle of water.

  “What does the note say?” I asked as I downed my three pills.

  “It’s a boarding pass,” she said as she took a seat by my side. “You have a seat on Southwest’s 10:00 pm flight to Oakland…and he left a little note on the bottom saying he charged it to your Capital One Visa.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I grumbled as I started snacking.

  “He’s just trying to protect you,” Mary Ann assured me. “Dena, Marcus and Leah…they don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “What it’s like to be madly in love.”

  I thought about that for a second, nodded my agreement and handed Mary Ann a pretzel as a reward for her astute observation.

  “Dena thinks it’s silly that I’m so excited about my wedding but she doesn’t understand…Monty he’s like…like my everything now! He’s my world!”

  I smiled and offered her another pretzel. Anatoly wasn’t my everything. But he was a large percentage of my everything so I understood her point.

  “If I thought someone was going to take my world away from me,” Mary Ann continued, “I’d do anything…I’d risk my life to get it back. That’s what you do for true love.”

  “Sooo,” I said after washing down the pretzels with a little water, “are you saying I shouldn’t leave Vegas?”

  “You can’t leave Vegas,” Mary Ann said. “You have to stay here and rescue your Prince. And I’m going to stay and help you do it!”

  I spent the next twenty minutes clearing my head. Whatever Anatoly had given me it was wearing off quickly…if you could count four and a half hours as quick. Now I wanted to see Alex. But I didn’t want to wait until 9ish as he had requested. I wanted to take him off guard. In fact, if I could get to that address before he left work I might have a chance to do some reconnaissance.

  “I want to go with you,” Mary Ann pleaded.

  “You can’t. I need you at the Hotel Noir.” I did a quick image search for Alex Kinsky, Hotel Noir GM on my Android and showed her a photograph of Alex. “That’s what he looks like. You remember where I told you his office is?”

  Mary Ann nodded.

  “Okay, but he might not be in his office. He might be just walking the casino or something. Go to the front desk first and ask for an application for employment. Ask a few casual questions about the hotel, ask about the GM and ask if he’s still there. Again, make it casual. You’re just trying to get a sense of the place. If they say he’s left text me. If they say he’s there, find him, spy on him and text me. And then, when he does leave the hotel, text me, wait a half hour and then go to the address in a town car. Park…maybe a block away or so. Wait there for no more than an hour and a half. If I don’t come out to you by then call and if I don’t pick up…call the cops. Oh, and we should have a code word in case I pick up but still need help…like I’ll say see you later gator. If I say that call the cops.”

  “But you never say that.”

  “That’s the point. If those words come out of my mouth I’m in serious distress.”

  “But…didn’t you say you needed to keep the cops out of this?”

  “I do. But if I can’t get out of there by then I’m in the kind of trouble that the police can’t make worse under any circumstances.”

  “I don’t know about this…” Mary Ann hedged as she studied Alex’s picture. “You don’t know what this address he gave you is…”

  “That’s why I’m going early, to find all that out before anyone’s prepared for me. And yes, it’s a little risky but I’m going to great lengths for the man I love. You approve of this kind of stuff, remember?”

  Mary Ann nodded. It was obvious she was having second thoughts but not enough to get in my way. She looked at the picture on my Android again. “Okay, I’ll look for him...you’ll be careful?”

  “Totally,” I said. Of course careful meant different things to different people.

  And as if to prove it, I carefully put my MacBook in its carrying case and draped it over my shoulder. This was coming with me.

  CHAPTER 11

  “New studies suggest that, contrary to popular wisdom, IQ scores can change over the course of one’s lifetime. I’m pretty sure mine drops twenty points every time I fall in love.”

  --Death Of The Party

  My Jamaican cab driver was all smiles and chatter as he drove me away from the strip and toward Alex’s home. I liked the sound of his accent. At that moment any accent that wasn’t Russian was comforting.

  The address took us outside the main part of town. Way out of it. We passed rows of houses, half of them in foreclosure. God I missed San Francisco. I missed the smell of the sea air, th
e tightly packed houses...hell at this point I even missed the homeless and the hookers in the Tenderloin. Anything familiar would have been comforting. But this was a suburban desert inside a city. I didn’t know anything about this.

  I got a text from Mary Ann:

  He’s here. He seems to be having a meeting with someone at the café.

  I texted her back a thank you and stared out the window. As we continued our journey the houses got nicer. The foreclosure signs were replaced by For Sale signs and soon even those became less prevalent. With each block the homes got bigger. There wasn’t enough land for places like these in San Francisco. But here? It was as if they had so much land they felt the need to fill up as much of it as possible. So they just kept adding pools and guesthouses. One house even had a tennis court. The home we pulled up in front of was modest by comparison but would still shame most houses in Pacific Heights. It also had a security gate.

  Was this Alex Kinsky’s home? My $250 wouldn’t even pay for his air conditioning.

  “Do you want me to drop you off here or should I give a name,” the driver asked waving at the little box where we were supposed to announce ourselves.

  “Drop me off here,” I said. I reached into my bag and took out the fare plus $50. “I don’t think anyone will ask if you saw me but if they do…”

  “I didn’t,” the driver said with a wide smile as he took the money. “Always happy to help a sister out.”

  I smiled nervously. It was tricky this instinctive communality between people of the same minority group. Sometimes it held up. Other times it encouraged a level of trust that hadn’t been earned or deserved. Just ask the Jews who invested with Bernie Madoff.

  I stood on the side of the road as the car drove off and then carefully walked up to the gate. Could I climb it? It seemed unlikely. Still, I was anxious to peek inside the windows before Alex arrived. He said there were things he could tell me, but at the moment I was more interested in what he wouldn’t tell me. I walked along the sidewalk as if just going for a stroll. No one in the front yard that I could see. It was a little hard to tell because it was dark, the only illumination coming from the streetlights and…from what I could tell, a porch light. Plus the yard was…well, huge. Neatly trimmed trees shaded benches nestled between rose bushes. It was right out of a Jane Austin novel.