Chapter 5 – The Proposition
“Do you know what I did for the six months I was in jail?” Blistov said. “I thought about how nice winter is in Charleston, and how lousy it is in Saint Petersburg. Do you have any idea how cold it is there in February? Do you know that spring doesn’t come until June? Do you know how boring winter is there, having to stay inside all day for months on end?” Everyone at the table realized these were rhetorical questions, and everyone used the designated pause to sip some wine. Blistov continued, “I also thought a lot about economics, about what is happening in Russia and the rest of the republics over there, and what is happening now in the United States. Everything is upside down. Lots of money has evaporated, and lots of money has appeared out of nowhere. Poor people now are rich, rich people are poor, big houses are falling apart, big new houses are being built in new places. Airplanes are full of people going here and there, everything is twirling around like crazy.” Blistov looked at Roger and then looked at Gwen. The Junes looked back and said nothing.
“All the time I was in the jail I tried to figure out where all the money is. No matter how hard I tried, or how many hours I thought about this, I couldn’t figure it out. One day I thought about this for fifteen hours straight, which hurt my head, and no luck. I know the money is out there, because I’ve seen it, in Russia, and in America. It’s definitely out there, believe me.” Blistov sipped, Gwen sipped, Roger sipped. The waiter came back with the menus, and Blistov again gave him the evil eye, the guy practically running away. The waiter wasn’t too worried about the food service because he knew he was going to get a good tip just off the two very expensive bottles of Bordeaux. He wanted to go to the table to see the woman, who was beautiful, but getting near the scary guy made it just not worth it. He wasn’t going over there until he was called. Blistov began talking again: “After I gave up trying to figure out where the money is, I tried figuring out where the money could go, if I gave it some help getting there. I tried figuring out if some of the money that is floating around out there could end up in the same place as me. And guess what, the answer came to me after thinking about it for six weeks. The answer was, Yes.” Blistov smiled, first at Roger and then at Gwen. Gwen was surprised that a guy whose beard grew back around the sides of his neck, and who wore shoes like he did, could have a nice smile.
“Guess where I am now?” Blistov said. Roger looked at Gwen, Gwen looked at Roger, then they both looked back at the Russian. “I’m in Charleston, South Carolina, United States of America. That means the money has got to come here. Lots of money. Lots. So that’s my proposition. You help me get the money here, and you get some of it. I don’t know exactly where it is, but I do know something about the people who have this money. Some of them are Russians, and some of them are Americans.”
Both Roger and Gwen realized they were talking with a Russian criminal about money, and who now sounded like he might be associated with Russian mobsters. They also knew they were flush with money themselves right now, flush enough to eat in nice restaurants and drink very good wine. They liked having money, and always were aware of the need to acquire more of it, so they looked at Blistov with open minds, if not open hearts. Blistov sensed their receptivity, even though he also sensed Gwen’s only slightly veiled hostility. Hostility didn’t bother Blistov. Blistov’s nanny was hostile, so he had grown up sucking hostile tit. And while he was very surprised to learn that an American woman packed heat while eating dinner in a French restaurant, this didn’t bother him. In fact, it gave him a good feeling about choosing a business partner who behaved this way. Also, he knew what the word fuck meant and that it was a curse word, but he didn’t know what a munchkin fuck was, so this didn’t really bother him, and his nanny had talked much ruder than this, anyway.
Roger looked at Gwen, got the go ahead vibe, and gestured for Blistov to continue. Unlike most people who get more loquacious when alcohol takes effect, Blistov got more succinct, which suited the Junes. “I see three cities here, and two commodities, and our partnership, and then a bunch of other people, some Russian, some American. If we put all those things together, we get money. Lots of it. The money right now is with two groups of people. It is with rich Americans who are scared of the stock market, and it is with rich Russians who got it from all the oil the European oil companies are pumping out of the Russian ground and the Russian seas. The Europeans get a little of the money, but Putin sees that most of it stays at home.
“There are Russians in Saint Petersburg who have some of this oil money, and they want to spend it. And, they don’t like Russian winters any more that I do. I want to get some of these people to come to Charleston for the winter, and bring their money with them. When they come here with their money, we take some of it.” Blistov again sat back in his chair, and again sipped some wine, and again smiled at Gwen and Roger. There actually was a perceptible twinkle in his eye, the eye of this short, squat criminal who wore the world’s worst shoes, but who had a nice smile. Gwen realized it wasn’t easy for a guy to shave the sides of his neck back behind his ears, so she cut him some slack on this point, figuring if Blistov became rich, he could hire someone to do this for him.
One of the qualities Gwen loved about her husband was his ability to get to the point, which he did now. He said, “What are the commodities involved in this little scenario?”
Blistov smiled and answered, “Antiques and French wine.”
Roger thought about this and asked, “What is the third city?”
Blistov said, “Paris.”
Gwen and Roger acted like Siamese twins. Slowly they sat back in their chairs, turned their heads towards each other, smiled, turned back to Blistov, picked up their wine glasses, and held them up in a gesture of a toast. Gwen went so far as to put her purse down on the floor, which Roger realized meant she no longer felt like dropping this guy right there in the restaurant, and might not again refer to him as a munchkin fuck. Gwen thought for a moment, stood up, found the waiter across the room, and motioned him over to the table. When he arrived (the waiter was thankful it was the babe who had called and not the short scary guy), Gwen said, “Bring the dinner menus, please.”
Aristocratic Thieves Page 5