“But the fact remains that he was shot, and he cannot be here tonight. And you were his bodyman at this event, at the casino?”
“Yes, Pakhun,” I replied. I did not like where this was going. “I was.”
“How was he shot, then?” Sergei spread his hands wide, like a magician unveiling his latest trick.
No matter what I said now, I failed. I could protest that I was outdoors, and the question would be “why were you outside?” I could say that we fought and Vassily stormed in a fit of pique to snort ten K worth of coke, and I’d be turning Sergei’s ire on Vassily. I was angry with him, but not so angry that I’d rat him out. “I was not beside him, Pakhun.”
“Just as well you weren’t the one protecting Lev then, eh?” Sergei’s eyes flashed angrily. The grin never left.
“So does my bringing Vincent back to you mean nothing?” I jerked my head at Vincent, whose eyes widened at the sound of his name. Even if he spoke Russian, he didn’t speak this sort of Russian: the rough vulgar slang that grew out of the prisons and Communist industrial wastelands of the whole GRU. “Because I might have failed with one hand, but I succeeded with the other.” It was their turn to be surprised. Lev’s eyebrows rose, and even Nicolai looked up from his glass. Sergei’s face drained of humor, but only for a moment before he slapped his leg and laughed uproariously, a sound which needed no chorus to fill the room.
“Yes, yes… you earned that one, Alexi Grigoriovich,” he said. “You have grown these ten years, eh? Our resident starets. You can look me in the eye and say your piece. I respect that. Now, speaking of Vincent, let’s figure out what to do with him.”
I was all too happy to have his attention turned on something and someone else. The night had barely begun, and I was already feeling the trap tightening around me. While the captains fell to talking about Vincent, the coke trade, and how they were going to avoid incidents like this in the future, I sat back with my glass of vodka and pretended to drink it while watching their hands and faces. Nicolai seemed particularly animated, but he had the grayish complexion of someone masking illness.
“Hey, uh… Alexi, man. What are they saying?” Vincent whispered aside to me. “I keep hearing my name.”
“You’re being put up in a safe house, with a bodyguard.” I dropped my voice. “That’s all.”
“That’s it? I mean, I’m hearing a whole lot of ‘Vincenti this, Vincenti that.’”
“It is decided, then.” Sergei lifted a hand, breaking the bubble with his thickly accented English. “Vincent, my friend: I hate to interrupt your evening out, but we are going to send you to a safe house now, while the night is young and hunters are still sleeping. Do you agree?”
“Uh, sure.” Vincent’s voice was a little strangled. “That’d be great, actually. I could do with more sleep.”
“Good, good. And couldn’t we all.” Sergei motioned to Vera. “Vera here will take you to the security office. You are getting two of our very best to keep you safe in your bed.”
“Thanks. But this suit is—”
“Don’t worry about the suit,” I said. “I don’t need it.”
Vera broke from her static position, boots whispering on the plush carpet, and crooked her fingers to Vincent. Cheerful but shell-shocked, he followed her out like an eager puppy, stumbling a little over the points of his shoes. He was a childish, clownish man. It made me wonder, exactly, why the Santos Twins liked him so much.
Once they were gone, Sergei clapped his hands together. “Now we have time to relax before business. Lev has been telling me about his collection of beauties for years now, but I am yet to see a single one.”
“You have only been here a few hours, Pakhun,” Lev said. “They’re merely a phone call away. What are you all looking for? Blonde, brunette…?”
Sergei waved a ringed hand. “I’ll take your recommendation, Leva. Whatever one you like the best.”
Something about their choice of words rubbed me the wrong way. It reminded me of Jana, and of the black nothing of the pistol in her hand. I spoke up before any of the other men could. “Call up Crina for me, Avtoritet.”
“The small dark one?” Lev asked.
“I didn’t know you indulged, Alexi.” Sergei arched a brow. “You were always so virtuous.”
I smiled thinly. “Men will always be men, Pakhun. And yes, Crina is small and dark, Avtoritet.”
While they poured the second round and fell to small talk, I excused myself to the bathroom with my glass. The relief at finding Vincent and earning my crust was transient. Even if I paid out every cent of debt tomorrow, there was always going to be something I owed this man. He was already working the con: I could smell it. And I would not be able to fight back from my current place. Whatever Sergei spun tonight in front of Nicolai, Lev, Vanya… they would believe it. And nothing would change for me.
I wanted to be sick. Instead, I poured the rest of the vodka down the toilet and filled it with fresh water from the tap. It’s not like they’d know the difference.
When I went back outside, the girls had arrived and were adding their yellow and green treble to the dull grayish grind of male conversation. Crina was sitting beside Lev, listening with one deep scarlet lip rolled under her teeth, and she glanced across when I emerged. Her eyes lit up, and she patted his thigh before breaking off to join me.
“Let’s go to a booth.” I jerked my head towards the curtains and watched Sergei watch me as I slid my hand around Crina’s cinched waist.
Her eyes widened, but she made good on the giggling and teetering as I led her into relative privacy, the catcalls of the other men following us behind the hush of velvet and the lingering nausea of old cologne.
“What’s gotten into you?” Crina kept her voice down as she gently pressed me back and straddled my lap. She did it slowly, but her hands stayed on my shoulder and upper arms, her knees on the cushions, and her crotch held off mine. “You don’t—”
“Something is going down tonight,” I replied. “Something bad. I don’t know what’s coming, but you need to get out of town as soon as you can.”
She froze over me, her face deep in shadow. “What? Why?”
“I can’t give you a concrete reason right now, but there is dangerous talk out there. It’s a matter of time,” I replied. “Sergei is back, and… the Organizatsiya is a monster, Crina, and it’s hungry. Sergei has already criticized me over the casino incident. You were there. And they—”
She pressed a finger to my lips, looking back at the edge of the curtains. “All right, Alexi. I believe you. You’re right. Maybe about tonight, maybe not… but I can tell you that I lost three clients this week. Gunned down, shot, strangled. And I nearly lost you.”
I sighed. “I don’t want you involved in any of this.”
“I chose to be here.” Her eyes were hard and fierce in the dim light, gleaming like jet. “But I always have an exit plan. Don’t worry, okay? If you say things are going down, I believe you.”
Relief swept through my chest. “Thank you.”
“I’m a survivor,” she whispered. Her fingers dug into my shoulders. “And so are you. So you make sure to take your own advice. You cut town, tonight. You’re too good for these guys, Alexi. Don’t let their world kill you.”
Again. A wash of déjà vu passed over me, and for a moment, I remembered the flash of white hair, the smell of putrefaction and burning wax, the intense cold. My chest hurt with the remembered knowledge of everything dying, that I was dying, and that our only hope was to run for the sea and—
Crina must have felt my tension loosen because she leaned in closer, breaking off the ploy of lap dancing to hug me awkwardly, urgently, the same kind of one-armed hug I gave Vassily just before he went in to be sentenced for his bloodless crimes.