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

by Kyra Davis

  When I got up to Leah’s room I knocked but there was no answer so I let myself in.

  “Leah?” I called out as I stepped inside. All the lights were on but Leah didn’t seem to be there.

  Leah always turned the lights off before going out. Always. “Leah?” I said again. I looked over to the bathroom. The door was closed but if she was in there she would have heard me come in, right? And I didn’t hear the shower.

  “Leah?” I called out again, this time louder. Again, nothing.

  And then I saw Leah’s purse sitting on the desk. Just sitting there unattended. Kinda like how Anatoly’s money clip had just been sitting there right before I discovered a dead body in a closet.

  A wave of nausea washed over me. I reached into my handbag and pulled out the gun. I put my hand on the closet door and said a quick and fierce prayer before throwing it open.

  Nothing in there but clothes.

  I exhaled…but still…

  Terrified I let my eyes slide back to the closed bathroom door. I called out her name and again got nothing for my efforts. I slowly approached the bathroom, gun raised.

  She has to be okay, she has to be okay, she has to be okay.

  And then I heard a thump of something falling to the ground and my sister cried, “Oh dear Lord!”

  I cocked the gun, threw open the door and jumped inside ready to shoot.

  Leah let out a bloodcurdling scream…from the bathtub. The bottle of conditioner she had apparently knocked over rolled on the floor and her earbuds were firmly in place and attached to her iPod. As she quickly grabbed for a towel I noticed that there was a battery-operated octopus in her hand.

  “Sorry!” I squealed and rushed back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

  Two minutes later Leah stormed out, wrapped in the white hotel robe. “What the hell were you doing?!”

  “I’m so, so sorry.” I was sitting on her bed with my head buried in my hands. “I just heard you and…well, I’ve never heard anyone say Oh dear Lord while having an orgasm before and--”

  “Sophie!”

  “I’m sorry! I mean, I’ve heard oh my God and--”

  “I get it!” she snapped. “Are you really critiquing how I--”

  “No, no! In fact I think the best thing is for us to both pretend I didn’t see or hear anything.”

  “I don’t even like sex toys!” She pushed a wet strand of hair away from her face. “But…but…”

  “But each tentacle has a different function,” I finished for her. “I was rather impressed by that too.”

  Leah’s skin was a little darker than mine but I could still see that she was blushing. “Look,” I said, trying very hard to be the mature one, “this is not a big deal. Every woman has at least one sex toy.”

  “I don’t. Or I didn’t until today. I’ve never even owned a vibrator.”

  “Really?” I asked, honestly shocked. “Well in that case, Congratulations! You finally have what you need to…um…unwind.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “Please Leah, in the beginning of the twentieth century they were selling vibrators in the Sears Roebuck catalog. It’s normal.”

  “It’s not a me thing to do,” she insisted. “It’s a you thing to do. You’re the one who faces down dangerous criminals, who goes to Vegas on a moment’s notice, who marries someone you’ve been dating a month. You’re the one who gets it on with octopuses and rabbit vibrators!”

  “Oh come on! I don’t even own a battery operated octopus or a…well, I don’t own an octopus!”

  “When I lost my husband…when he died less than a day after I discovered he was cheating on me…well, I went a little crazy.”

  “I remember,” I said quietly.

  “I…I got a belly button piercing, I got burgundy highlights in my hair, I slept with a man I barely knew…a man who was practically a member of the Black Panthers!”

  “Um, no, just because someone occasionally makes a fist and doesn’t wear Ralph Lauren Polo…that doesn’t actually make him a Black Panther.”

  “Well, all right, I’ll give you that…but still…I barely knew him.”

  “I remember,” I said again.

  “I was out of control.”

  “A little bit.”

  “It was fun.”

  I didn’t answer that time. I sort of thought Leah had already had this particular epiphany, although as far as I could tell she forgot it within months of having it.

  “I knew you weren’t going to marry a stranger…no matter how drunk you got.”

  I shifted my position and sat cross-legged on the bed. “Then could you tell me why you’re here?”

  “Because I wanted to come to Vegas!” she burst out. “Why were you so adamant that I stay home? Why didn’t you want to include me?”

  I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t even considered that possibility…then again, I had been distracted.

  “I want to have fun too, you know! I’ve never been to a sex toy trade show! Didn’t it ever occur to you that was something I might want to do before I died?”

  “A sex toy trade show,” I repeated slowly, “that was on your bucket list?”

  “It wasn’t on yours?”

  I stared at her, too baffled to come up with an answer.

  “And then that show…”

  “Puppetry of The Penis?”

  “I haven’t seen anything like that in years.”

  I laughed. “Leah, I’ve never seen anything like that. Not many have.”

  “I mean a man’s penis.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have a horrible life!” She cried.

  I shook my head quickly to clear it of the confusion that was gathering there. “Leah, you realize that I’m in the middle of a life or death situation here, right? The Russian mafia might be after me.”

  “Oh, there you go again, making everything about you,” Leah snapped, then hearing herself, she blushed a little harder. “I know you have a lot on your plate, but when you told me not to come to Vegas all you were dealing with was a breakup.”

  “You told me you wanted to come just so you could chaperone me!”

  “You’re saying that if I had phrased it differently you would have wanted me to come?”

  “Look, our friends are downstairs--”

  “Your friends,” Leah corrected. “That’s how they would define themselves.”

  She was right. Marcus, Dena, Mary Ann…they would all say that Leah was their friend’s sister. It was also true that Leah was always considered an attachment to somebody or something. She was Jack’s mother, Bob’s widow, that crazy woman’s daughter (although, to be fair, we were both stuck with that one). God knows she sat on enough boards, promoting the opera, the symphony, the cultural WASPification of San Francisco (which was quite a feat for a black, Jewish woman), but her social connections never seemed to extend past the planning meetings. Leah had come here because she had wanted to be part of my Vegas getaway and when she had arrived and realized that things had taken a dark turn she could have left. But she had stuck by me. Leah often drove me nuts but she loved me and she was loyal…

  …and I wasn’t always nice to her.

  “I’m glad you got the octopus,” I said quietly. “And I’m glad you got to see men play with their penises. You deserve it.”

  Leah giggled. “You think?”

  “I know.” I ran my fingers back and forth over the duvet. “Look, I don’t really know what I’m doing right now. I don’t even know what I should be doing, but while I figure that out you should try to…to fully experience Vegas.”

  Leah eyed me warily. “What do you mean, fully experience Vegas?”

  “Tomorrow morning I’m going to come up here at…let’s say, 9 a.m. and we’re all going to order a room service breakfast with Bloody Marys.”

  “I can’t drink at 9 a.m.! I have to maintain some sense of propriety!”

  “Propriety? Five minutes ago you were sitting in the bathtub wit
h an oversexed octopus! This is Vegas. Fuck propriety.”

  “But--”

  I held up my hand to stop her. “Once you have a little vodka in you take Mary Ann down to the casino. Shoot a couple games of craps or something. Then go to the last day of the sex toy trade show before hitting the clubs...preferably clubs that feature men in various stages of undress as entertainment. Live a little.”

  “And if you need help?”

  “I promise to ask for it as long as you promise to have fun until I do.” I glanced at her robe and dripping hair. “I’ll go and let you put yourself back together…or whatever.”

  As I got up and walked to the door Leah called out to me. “Sophie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you tell anyone about the octopus you won’t have to worry about the mafia. I’ll shoot you myself.”

  I smiled. Of all the threats I had been dealing with that was the only one that seemed justified.

  CHAPTER 15

  The best revenge you can reap on the “other woman” is to let her have him.

  --Death Of The party

  The next morning Dena, Mary Ann and I had a Bloody Mary breakfast up in Leah and Mary Ann’s room. Marcus chose to sleep in. Dena also agreed to accompany both Mary Ann and Leah down to the casino for a bit of gambling before escorting them back to the trade show. She was clearly irked with me for going to see Alex without tell her (Mary Ann and Marcus had ratted me out) but she didn’t make a big thing out of it. I figured she had basically given up on the idea of talking sense into me…or maybe she was just trying to be nice because it was clear I was in a bit of a funk. Anatoly was in danger and I had no idea what my next move should be...worse yet, he was probably with his wife. I chose to stay in Mary Ann and Leah’s room and continue to pick at my breakfast instead of going down with them.

  I sat on Leah’s bed and tried to come up with a plan. The best way to find Anatoly was to find Natasha. Would she be at the Hotel Noir again? What about this information that everyone seemed to think Anatoly had on a storage disk somewhere? Did it exist and if so where would he hide it?

  There was a knock on the door. I smiled as I stood up. Marcus no doubt…unless…

  My heart caught in my throat. Anatoly? Had he come back?

  I practically flung myself at the door but then stopped right before opening it…what if it wasn’t Anatoly or Marcus. What if it was someone…bad.

  “Hello?” Please, please, please let it be Anatoly. I leaned my ear against the door and waited for a response.

  “Hello to you too. Do you still have my gun?”

  Alex. I took a step back. Should I be afraid? How did he know about this room? I went back to my purse and pulled the gun out. I took a steadying breath and opened the door. “Yep,” I said, pointing the gun at his chest. “Got it right here.”

  Alex smiled. “Can I come in? You can continue to hold me at gunpoint if it makes you feel better.”

  I waved him in, keeping the gun trained on him. He smiled and closed the door behind him before taking a seat in a chair by the window. “I thought I’d make it easy for you,” he explained. “If you shoot me it’ll be easy to clean my blood off the glass.”

  “Funny,” I sat down on the bed and gave him a blatantly fake smile. “So, how’s Fawn?”

  “Ah, so you know.” Alex sighed and shook his head. “I should have told you she was my sister. I just…I had heard a little about your history with her…”

  “You mean the history in which she tried to kill me? That history?”

  “Fawn tries to kill everyone,” he said offhandedly, “you shouldn’t take it personally.”

  “Believe it or not I didn’t…until she called from prison to tell me about Anatoly.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that too.”

  The light from the window was reflecting off his hair giving him an almost angelic quality…of course they say Lucifer was once an angel too. “You heard about it?” I asked, “or you were behind it?”

  Alex only hesitated a moment before answering. “Both.”

  “Oh my God, you’re in league with Fawn!” I stood up and held the gun with both hands. “I should shoot you right now!”

  “No,” he said without the slightest note of fear or anger.

  “No? No what?”

  “No, I’m not in league with Fawn and no, you’re not going to shoot me. I put Fawn up to that call because the Ignatovs instructed me to do so. They’ve been bugging your house, you know.”

  “What? You mean in addition to tapping into my phone?”

  “No point in doing a half-assed surveillance job,” he pointed out. “Usually the mafia doesn’t have a hard time making people talk. But Anatoly is different. They thought if you confronted him he might tell you things that he wouldn’t tell them even under threat of torture. Especially if he thought he was at risk of losing you.”

  “Wait, you’re saying that the goal was to piss me off so that I would confront Anatoly and he would…what? Confess to helping the FBI infiltrate the mafia? Why would he confess to something like that when all I was questioning him about was his relationship to Natasha?”

  “To be honest, I’m surprised he didn’t,” he said, his brow wrinkling with confusion. “Don’t you think you would have been more inclined to forgive him if he had told you that he was helping the FBI take down the mob? Instead he told you, what was it? Ah, yes, I understand he told you that he had worked for the mafia because he wanted American citizenship and the chance to sleep with Natasha. And he was surprised that didn’t go over well?”

  He had a point. I took a second to really look at Alex. He was completely relaxed. I might as well have been pointing a banana at him. “I don’t trust you,” I said simply. “You say you’re a legitimate businessman but you cover up murders for the mob…”

  “I told you, I don’t see it that way,” he interrupted. “I’m a hotelier. I want my guests to be happy and no one’s happy when dead bodies show up. So I just make sure they don’t.”

  “Wow,” I breathed, truly impressed. “You’re a master! You’re, like, the David Copperfield of bullshit!”

  Alex rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I think I’m going to take that as a poorly phrased compliment.”

  “It was a compliment…of sorts, and I phrased it perfectly. You seem to have convinced yourself that you’re a law-abiding citizen. You treat covering up a murder like it’s jaywalking or letting the registration slip on your car.”

  “I’ve never let the registration slip on my car.”

  “You’re not a law-abiding citizen. You’re dangerous.”

  “Not really, certainly not to you.”

  “Well no, not as long as I’m the one holding the gun.”

  Alex laughed. The guy actually laughed in the face of death. “You’re really considering shooting me with my own gun?”

  “Happens all the time. It’s one of the main arguments used by gun control advocates.”

  There was a definite twinkle in his green eyes. “You don’t want to shoot me.”

  “What I want are answers and since I have the gun what I want counts for something. That’s the argument used by pro-gun advocates and at the moment I find it so appealing I’m seriously considering donating to the NRA.”

  “It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Power,” he said softly. He stood up, his eyes still trained on mine. “Danger.” He took another step forward

  “Don’t move,” I whispered.

  He took yet another step and then another. Gently he put his index finger against the barrel of the gun. “I like danger too,” he said, his voice was softer now, seductive and absolutely terrifying. He let his finger slide along the barrel, then the handle and then to my shaking hand. “You are definitely a force to be reckoned with.”

  I jerked away and glared into his smiling eyes.

  From his jacket pocket I heard a phone ring. He pulled it out without bothering to ask if that was
all right. “This will be quick,” he promised as he glanced at the screen.

  I walked away from him and leaned against the dresser. The gun really wasn’t having the effect I had hoped for.

  Alex answered with the standard “hello,” but what came next was a string of rapid Spanish. Not Russian, Spanish…which reminded me of Anatoly.

  I had only discovered a few months ago that he also spoke Spanish. It had been a disturbing revelation and not because I had anything against his being fluent in three languages. That was sexy as hell.

  Oddly enough the problem was that it was sexy as hell. When a guy speaks three languages he usually lets you know by the third date. It made no sense that he would hide something like that from me.

  And yet he had, only inadvertently letting it slip after we had been living together for over a year. Why had he done that?

  Alex got off the phone and stuck it back in his pocket. “Someone from my staff,” he explained. “Vegas is an international city, helps to be multilingual.”

  I didn’t answer. Obviously it was useful for a hotel’s GM to be fluent in as many languages as possible. But there was something more than that going on here.

  Alex flashed me another grin. “Now, I believe you said you had some questions for me?”

  “Yeah, why didn’t Anatoly want me to know he spoke Spanish?”

  What happened to Alex’s face then was…interesting. I had expected him to burst out laughing or just look at me like I was crazy. He did both of those things but there was a split second before that…the moment when his face registered the question and at that moment he looked…cornered.

  “Oh my God, you actually know the answer.”

  “How could anyone know the answer to that?” He peeled off his jacket and carefully draped it over the chair by the window. “I like these chairs but I wonder if they’ll seem a little dated in a few years.”

  “Alex, why didn’t Anatoly want me to know he spoke Spanish?”

  Alex continued to study the chair as if it was the most fascinating thing in the room. “It’s possible,” he said eventually, “that he used some of that Spanish while working for the family.”