Prostitution was doing fine, too, mostly because of what Gregory thought of as a built-in advantage. Ukrainian girls were very beautiful. Many of them were tall and slender and very blonde. None of them had any chance of advancement at home. In the old country they had nothing ahead of them except a lifetime of mud and drudgery. No fine clothes, no high-rise apartments, no Mercedes-Benzes. They knew that. So they were happy to come to America. They understood the paperwork was complicated and the process expensive. They knew they would have to reimburse their helpers, for the upfront outlay, just as quickly as they could. And definitely before they moved on, to whatever it was that came next, which would hopefully involve fine clothes and high-rise apartments and Mercedes-Benzes. They were told all of that was coming soon. But first there would be a brief period of employment. Only afterward would they get access to all those glittering opportunities. But not to worry. There was a system already in place. It was well organized. It was pleasant work, and very social. Mostly just mixing with people. Like public relations. They would enjoy it. They might even get a jump on meeting the right kind of guy.
They were graded on arrival. Not that any of them was ugly. Gregory had a wide choice. There were always a hundred thousand ready to jump on a plane. They were all fresh and flawless and fragrant. Surprisingly the most valued were not the youngest. Not at the top end of the market. Certainly there were plenty of guys willing to pay to get blown by kids younger than their granddaughters, but experience showed the guys with the really big bucks found that kind of extreme a little creepy. Experience showed such a guy preferred a slightly older woman, maybe even twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a faint air of sophistication and worldliness about her, with a hint of approaching maturity, maybe a smile line or two, so he wouldn’t feel like a molester. So he would feel like he had a junior colleague in his room, maybe a rising executive, seeking advice or a raise or a promotion, any or all of which she might get, if she played her cards right.
Such a woman usually stayed about five years in that role. Somehow she never made it to the fine clothes and the high-rise apartments and the Mercedes-Benzes. Somehow she never quite paid off her debt. No one had thought about interest rates. Sometimes such a woman would do another five years, if she was wearing well, on the mature page of the website, and if she wasn’t wearing well, then her price would be dropped a couple hundred bucks an hour, and she would soldier on as well as she could, for as long as she could. After that, she would be taken off the website altogether, and sent to one of their many backstreet massage parlors, where the shortest appointment was twenty minutes, and where she would be dressed in an abbreviated version of a nurse’s uniform, and rubber gloves, and put to work sixteen hours a day.
Each such parlor was managed by a parlor boss, who was assisted by a deputy parlor boss. Like the women who worked under them, they were generally not the pick of the litter. But on the plus side their job was very straightforward. They had only three tasks. They had to deliver a set number of dollars every week. They had to maintain enthusiasm among their staff. They had to maintain order among their customers. That was it. Such a specification attracted a particular type of candidate. Nasty enough to get the dollars, tough enough to subdue the customers, bent enough to enjoy the staff.
At one particular parlor two blocks west of Center their names were Bohdan and Artem. Bohdan was the boss. Artem was the deputy. So far their day was going well. They had gotten a text about a guy to be on the lookout for. With a brief verbal description, mostly about his size and weight, both of which seemed impressive. They had scrutinized their stream of customers. No such guy. But plenty of other guys. So far all well behaved. All satisfied. No issues with staff, either, beyond a small thing in the morning, when one of the older ones was late, and then not sufficiently apologetic about it. She was offered a choice of forfeits. She chose the leather paddle, as soon as she came off duty. Bohdan would administer the punishment, and Artem would video it. It would be on their porn sites an hour later. It might have earned a few bucks by the morning. A win-win. All good. So far their day was going well.
Then two customers came in who looked different. Darkish hair, darkish skin, sunglasses. Short dark raincoats. Black jeans. Almost like a uniform. Which happened. Mostly because of the university. There were all kinds of folks in town. Mostly they dressed like where they came from. Hence these two. Maybe they were scholars, visiting from overseas. Maybe they were sampling the illicit charms of their host nation, purely for research. Purely to achieve a better mutual understanding.
Or not.
They pulled matching guns out from under their matching coats. Two H&K MP5 submachine guns, with integral suppressors. By coincidence the same brand and the same model the Ukrainians themselves had used the night before, outside the liquor store. Small world. The two guys gestured Bohdan and Artem to stand together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder. They each fired a round into the floor, to show their guns were silenced. Two spitting bangs. Loud, but not enough to bring someone running.
They said in bad Ukrainian, with heavy Albanian accents, that they were offering a choice. There was a car outside, and Bohdan and Artem could go get in it, or they could get gut shot right there, right then, with the guns just proved quiet enough to bring no one running. They could bleed to death on the floor, twenty minutes of agony, and then they could get dragged out by the heels, and put in the car anyway.
Their choice.
Bohdan didn’t answer. Not right away. Neither did Artem. They were genuinely uncertain. They had heard about Albanian torments. Maybe getting gut shot was better. They said nothing. The building was silent. Not a sound. The massage cubicles were all in a line, on a long corridor, the other side of a closed inner door. The front of house area could have been a lawyer’s waiting room. Some kind of under the table compromise with the city. Out of sight, out of mind. Don’t frighten the voters. Gregory had done the deal.
Then the silence was broken. There was a sound. The faint click of heels in the inner corridor. Tap, tap, tap. Five-inch spikes, like they all had to wear. Clear plastic, sometimes. Stripper shoes. The Americans had a word for everything. Tap, tap, tap. One of them was moving, maybe from the restroom back to her cubicle. Or from one cubicle to another. From one client to the next. Some girls were popular. Some got requests.
The heels kept on coming. Tap, tap, tap. Maybe she was headed for a cubicle all the way up front.
Tap, tap, tap.
The inner door opened. A woman stepped through. Bohdan saw it was one of the older ones. In fact the one due to get the paddle when she came off duty. Like all of them she was half-wearing a half-size shiny white latex version of a nurse’s uniform, complete with a little white cap pinned up top. The hem of her skirt rode six inches higher than the tops of her stockings. She raised her hand, one finger vaguely ahead of the others, like people do, simultaneously as an apology for an interruption and the introduction of a question.
She never got there. Whatever mundane issue was on her mind remained unexpressed. More towels, more lotion, new rubber gloves. Whatever it was. The door swinging open was in the left corner of the left-hand guy’s eye, and he fired instantly, a neat quiet stitch of three into her center mass. No reason for it. Some kind of hyper state. Some kind of fever pitch. A twitch of the muzzle, a twitch of the trigger finger. There was no echo. Just a long, ragged, plastic, fleshy thump as the woman went down.
Bohdan said, “Jesus Christ.”
It changed the argument. Getting gut shot was no longer a theory. Visual aids had been introduced. Ancient human instinct took over. Stay alive a minute longer. See what happens next. They got in the car voluntarily. By chance they crossed Center Street and entered Albanian territory at the exact same moment the woman in the nurse costume died. She was alone on the floor of the parlor, half in and half out of the back corridor. All the clients had fled. They had jumped over her and run. Likewise her co-workers. They had all done the same thing. They were all gone. She died alone, in pain, uncomforted and unconsoled. Her name was Anna Ulyana Dorozhkin. She was forty-one years old. She had first come to the city fifteen years earlier, at the age of twenty-six, all excited about a career in PR.