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

by Kyra Davis

  “I’ll be leaving now,” she announced.

  “All right, before you go could you please take Miss Katz’ handbag, shopping bag and computer and put them away in the coat closet off the foyer?”

  “Wait a minute, what? She can’t take my things!”

  “They could be bugged too,” Alex explained.

  “Um, I’m not going to just leave my things lying around your house where I can’t keep an eye on them. What if you’re the one lying to me and there is someone else in this house.”

  “Fine, keep the purse on you, but you’ll have to let me search it.”

  I weighed my options for a moment before thrusting the purse into his hands. “The most dangerous thing I have in there is a Tweezerman.”

  I watched as he looked through my things, my lipstick, tampax and all the rest of it. It really wasn’t any more of an invasion of privacy than what you would expect at any airport security station but still, having him do this made me uncomfortable. Margarita continued to stand in the doorway, looking bored.

  Alex pulled out my cell phone and then Anatoly’s. “Two phones?”

  “One of them isn’t mine.”

  “They’re both going to have to wait in another room.”

  “Why don’t you want me to have a phone?” I asked nervously.

  “Because they can be easily tampered with in order to turn them into recording devices. For me to ensure you haven’t done that I’d literally have to take them apart. So your choice, you can give the phones…and that laptop to Margarita for her to store in the other room and I’ll tell you what I know or you can take your new outfit and leave. Seems to me you win either way but you may not see it that way.”

  I hesitated, my hand gripping the strap of my MacBook case. “Yes to the phones, but I want to keep the MacBook with me.”

  “Very well. It was nice of you to stop by, Sophie. Hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Vegas.”

  I exhaled loudly. “You really have information that will help me?”

  He shrugged. “I have information that you want. Whether it’s helpful or not depends on what you choose to do with it.”

  I thought about it for a moment and then carefully took the MacBook out of its carrying case. I put it on a side table near the chair Alex had been sitting in and opened it. “Examine it if you like. Assure yourself that it isn’t on while we talk. It can be by your side for as long as I’m here. But I just had my home computer stolen along with all the storage devices that I had my latest manuscript on. I’m not letting this thing out of my sight now. You and I know I can’t make a MacBook into a recording device if it isn’t on.”

  Alex hesitated, clearly not pleased with the compromise. I stepped forward and took my phones from him and placed them firmly in Margarita’s hands and then handed her my bag of clothes. “Go ahead and put those in the foyer.” I turned to face Alex. “See? We’re both making compromises here.”

  It was a compromise I wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t already noted where the landline phone was in the room. Besides, Mary Ann knew that if I didn’t answer my phone she should call the cops, so if Alex’s plan was to keep me from calling for help he was in for a surprise.

  Reluctantly, Alex nodded at Margarita.

  “I will put the phones on the table in the foyer,” she said woodenly. “Goodnight Mr. Kinsky.”

  She left the room without bothering to say goodnight to me.

  Alex examined my MacBook and then moved it over to a spot on the floor near a speaker and then turned on the stereo. The slightly eerie, intriguing and intense (in an Evanescence kinda way) music filled the room.

  “Zola Jesus,” Alex said. “A Russian, American singer. She’s known for combining goth, industrial, classical, electronic and experimental rock influences.”

  “That’s a lot of influences.”

  “It is. She’ll also add a layer of protection in case you are trying to record this.” Alex smiled wryly. “Seems like we both could use a drink, yes?”

  I struggled with myself for a second too long before answering, “No.”

  “Are you always this bad of a liar?”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Do you have vodka?”

  He opened up the mini fridge and pulled out what looked like a large bottle of cologne. It was beautiful. Clear with perfectly elegant curves and a sparkling silver lid that came to a graceful point.

  “That’s vodka?” I asked. “It looks like art.”

  “It’s Kauffman Luxury Vintage Vodka,” he said, holding the bottle out for my viewing pleasure.

  I sucked in a sharp breath. I had heard of Kauffman but had never actually seen it. It was almost impossible to get in the States. It also cost $250 per liter. “Is it as good as they say?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” He served me a glass, neat. “Vodka this smooth shouldn’t be mixed with anything. It’s a sipping vodka.”

  I had never heard of “sipping vodka” before. I had been raised with the belief that vodka was for drinking (relatively quickly) or consuming in shot-form. I watched as Alex poured himself a glass, which he then raised for a toast. “To new friendships.”

  I rejected that with a shake of my head. “To answers.”

  His eyes darted over to the piano and for a split second he looked somber. “To answers.”

  I brought my glass to my lips; I had never tasted vodka this smooth before. It was perfection and it made me trust him a little more. I had a bad habit of trusting people who had good taste in liquor. “So can we talk now? Have I appeased your paranoia?”

  “I don’t see it as paranoia. I see it as being cautious.” He sat down on an oversized leather armchair. “I think Anatoly and I have that in common,” he mused. “We’re both very cautious men.”

  I laughed until I realized he was serious. “He rides a motorcycle, married into the mob and then ditched his gun wielding wife for a life with me…and I’m not exactly known for my ability to stay out of trouble. So in what dictionary does that fit the definition of cautious?”

  “He takes risks,” Alex conceded, “but only after he’s weighed the odds and all that. Because of that he was a huge asset to the family.”

  “What family?”

  “The Russian mafia…at least for this syndicate.” He waved this revelation away as if it had no bearing on my predicament. “The only way to make a cautious man careless is to play on his emotions. Last week, when they found out that you had broken up with him—”

  “Okay, stop right there.” I scooted to the front of the couch. “How did you know I had broken up with him before I came to Vegas?”

  Alex ran his finger along the rim of his glass. “You got a lot of calls from Anatoly in the days leading up to your Vegas trip but…have you gotten any voicemails? I’m guessing no.”

  “You’re beginning to creep me out, Alex.”

  “They tapped your phone and they’ve been erasing his voicemails after they listened to them.”

  It took me almost a full minute before I found my voice. “So when you said my phones might be recording devices you meant they are recording devices.”

  “No, they tapped the line, they didn’t bug the phone and to be honest they’re not even listening into the calls anymore. Anatoly knows better than to call you now so there’s no reason to monitor your phone conversations. But not too long ago, there was.”

  “Wow, that is just so James Murdoch of you.”

  “Not me,” Alex said quickly. “I had nothing to do with it. All I do is run the hotel. I deal with the legal side of the mafia’s investments.”

  “The legal side,” I repeated. “Does that include covering up murders that take place in your hotel…legally?”

  “I like to call that crisis management. That’s why I wanted your check. If…they weren’t able to clean up their mess as quickly or discreetly as they hoped I could have used your check to prove that you had the victim followed and then there would have been a quick arrest and
little damage to the hotel’s reputation.”

  I gripped my glass with both hands. “What are you saying?”

  “If plan A didn’t pan out, which it did, I was going to set you up for murder.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “Being with a man who is protective and caring is kind of like owning a gun. It gives you a sense of security…right up until it’s unexpectedly used against you and shoots a hole through your heart.”

  --Death Of The Party

  “YOU WERE GOING TO SET ME UP FOR MURDER!” I repeated.

  “I didn’t know you then.”

  “Oh, and you know me now?”

  Outside the wind blew hard enough to sway the small trees that were against the house. As Alex considered my question I could hear the gentle thump of their branches against the walls.

  Alex put his glass down carefully on a coaster. I wondered if he was gay. He had to be, right? Otherwise there would be a line of women waiting for their turn with the I-use-a-coaster guy who shopped at Marc Jacobs and stocked up on the good vodka.

  “I know that you’re impulsive,” he said slowly. “I know that you’re passionate about the people you care about and protective of them even when they don’t seem to deserve it. I know that you’re brave to the point of being foolish at times. I know that you’re scared but are very good at hiding it and you don’t let fear get in your way. I know that despite your impulsivity you don’t panic in a crisis. I know that there’s enough money in your bank account that you can write a $250 check without thinking about it. I know that you’re a size four, shop at Victoria Secret and are wearing a black lacy bra. So yes, I’d say that I know you.”

  “So you did look through my underwear drawer.”

  Alex looked surprised and then laughed long and hard. “I also know that it’s hard to get anything by you. You remember what’s been said and are always looking for contradictions.”

  “Uh-huh. Stop looking at my bra.”

  “I’ll make an effort.”

  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t gay. “You said the mob was playing on Anatoly’s emotions?”

  Alex nodded and sipped his drink. “They made him believe you were here…well you were here so that made it an easy sell. Luckily for the mob you registered at the Encore under your friend Dena’s name. When Anatoly checked to find out which hotel you were staying at the only one that had your name on file was mine. He came here to rescue you…and then was distracted by a blonde.”

  “That blonde told him she could take him to my room.”

  “He could have found it without her.”

  I set my mouth in a thin line. I sensed that Alex might be trying to turn me against Anatoly. Considering what had happened earlier today that shouldn’t have been a tough task, but knowing that someone else wanted me to turn on him made me hate Anatoly less not more.

  “Why is the mob after him.”

  “When Anatoly came to the States it was with the understanding that he would only be doing a few jobs for the mafia. But certain people in power liked him…Natasha liked him a lot.”

  “Is she a person of power?” I asked, rejecting the bait.

  “Her father, Vadim Ignatov, is and that matters in this world. So they kept trying to pull him in further and further. Anatoly wasn’t very resistant at first but eventually I guess it got to be too much for him.”

  “How could anyone turn down the opportunity to sell heroin to school children and kill people?” I asked.

  Alex tensed. For the first time that night it seemed I had hit a nerve. “Everyone should walk away from that. Eventually, if I can, I’ll walk away from this God damned hotel. But the money and power the mafia can offer…” Alex shook his head, “it’s hard for some people to resist. They just can’t see past it, even when their lives are at stake.”

  “Was Anatoly’s life at stake?”

  “No,” he said after a long pause. “But he knew he wanted out. It was assumed that was why he got on so well with the new guy.”

  “What new guy?”

  “Daniil,” Alex answered, his voice growing colder. “There’s some disagreement as to who originally introduced Daniil to the Ignatovs, it was either Anatoly or Kenya--”

  “Kenya?” I was going to have a hard time remembering all these names.

  “Like the country. It’s not an uncommon Russian name. It means, innocent.” Again, Alex fell silent as his expression became distant.

  “Sooo, Kenya-like-the-country,” I pressed, “he liked Daniil too?”

  “Yes, Daniil was capable, eager and seemed to be ready and willing to take Anatoly’s place in the organization. Again, Anatoly had already gotten a promise from Vadim that he would be allowed to walk away. Daniil just made it a little easier for Vadim to keep that promise.”

  “The promise of freedom,” I said for clarification.

  “Yes,” Alex’s mouth curved into a smile that could almost be construed as sarcastic. His fingers drummed against the deep brown leather of the armrest.

  “So Anatoly found himself a replacement, what’s the big deal?”

  “Oh it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all…if his replacement hadn’t been an undercover FBI agent.”

  “Oh…Shit.”

  “Yep, you pretty much summed the situation up right there. Oh shit.”

  “But Anatoly didn’t know!” I stammered. “He couldn’t have!” And why couldn’t he have? A little voice in my head asked. Anatoly didn’t have the same visceral reaction that I had to the police, which was odd because of the two of us he was the only one with a hardcore criminal past. Why would someone who used to work for the Russian mafia feel comfortable talking to the cops unless he already knew that he had some kind of pass…the kind of pass you might get for helping the FBI get information?

  “There are a lot of people in the...organization, who don’t think he did know. It’s a matter for debate.”

  “What about Kenya? You said he might have been the one to introduce Daniil to the mafia. What does he have to say about all this?”

  Alex shifted his weight so that he was looking into the fire. “Kenya’s dead.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed hard, “because of the FBI agent?”

  “In a way, yes. Daniil went to Kenya’s house. There was a gas leak that coincidentally led to an explosion at that very moment. It looked better for the mafia to lose one of their own at the same time the agent lost his life. Not that it fooled anyone but they weren’t able to make an arrest and there’s been no admission of guilt, not even to the rest of us affiliated with the organization. It was just…one of those things.”

  For a few minutes we sat in silence, listening to the wind’s fruitless attempts to push itself inside and the fire crackle and flicker as it struggled to stay alive. I still had a lot of questions but the enormity of what I had just been told…well it was going to take me a bit to wrap my arms around it. And there was still a lot about this that didn’t fit.

  “Why are they being so…so Dr. Evil about this?”

  Alex raised his eyebrows, clearly confused by the question.

  “If they want Anatoly dead why haven’t they just shot him? Why the elaborate ruse to get him to the hotel? Why not just keep it simple instead of staging this…this James Bond parody.”

  “Well for one thing, killing Anatoly in the hotel would have been simple. The hotel is tightly controlled by people they can trust—“

  “You.”

  “And a few others,” Alex conceded. “That makes getting rid of the body and altering security tape footage exceptionally easy. A drive by shooting in San Francisco would have been messy. Messy crimes usually end with someone doing jail time.”

  “How about a gas leak?”

  Alex smiled humorlessly. “We can’t have too many of those, can we? It might make the just-an-accident argument go from unbelievable to prosecutable.”

  “So that’s the only reason?”

  “No.” Alex put his glass down and leaned forward. “Anatoly is a ca
utious man.”

  “You said that.”

  “Cautious men take out insurance policies.”

  The evidence Anatoly was talking about. The reason they had taken my computer. I knew, in the most general sense, what Alex was talking about but letting on that I knew would mean admitting to seeing Anatoly. So instead I threw my arms up in feigned frustration. “You know I’m not wearing a wire so if we can manage to leave the metaphors at the door that would be great.”

  “He made copies of certain records,” Alex explained. “Transactions of the Ignatov family.”

  “Records that they don’t want the Feds to see.”

  “It would be bad if the Feds saw them.” He took a sip of his drink again and if I didn’t know better I’d say he was hiding a smile. “It would be worse,” he continued, “If certain…business partners saw them. That’s the problem with criminal organizations, you have to do business with other criminal organizations. And if you’re dishonest in your business dealings, as criminals so frequently are, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble.”

  Now I really was confused. What organization on earth could intimidate the Russian mafia? Maybe another Russian mafia group? After all, there had to be lots of Russian mafia crime families, right? It wasn’t a chain like The Gap where there were lots of little stores but only one corporate headquarters that called all the shots. It had to be more like a franchise….a really dangerous messed up franchise. Like, worse than 7-11 and KFC combined.

  “How do we know that Anatoly even has any records? Even if he had them once he could have destroyed them ages ago.”

  “He wouldn’t do that because—”

  “Because he’s a cautious man.”

  Alex smiled and tapped the side of his nose with his index finger. “When he realized he might be in trouble he let it be known that he does have those records and that he’s willing to use them.”

  “He could be bluffing. This is Vegas, after all.”

  “You think?” Alex asked, with what appeared to be legitimate curiosity. “In that case if the Ignatovs just kill him—“