STAYED NEXT TO Vesper as Vassily took us to his private office. His regulation goon size must have been XXXL. The two who trailed behind us were even bigger than the ones on the door. His office had a breathtaking window and was big enough for a library.
“Mischa,” he told one of the flunkeys, “Check the fire exit. Make sure it’s been properly closed.” The goon crossed the room and left through a small door on the far side. As Vassily took his place behind the huge, ornate desk, the other goon made to search me.
“Your arms. Up, please.”
I hit his throat with the heel of my hand. Glassware shook as I slammed him against the big bookcase. His eyes blazed, even as he spluttered and choked. He was going to take some more subduing, I could see it. I was ready to body slam him, low.
“Armand,” Vassily’s voice was smooth. “I don’t think we need to worry about whether or not our friend is armed.” The bodyguard relaxed immediately and even offered me a gentle smile.
Vassily said, “If he wanted a gun, he could probably just use yours. Let’s let him be.”
“Of course.” He straightened his tie. His eyebrow arched as he told Vassily, “He’s good, this one, no? I like him.”
Vassily smiled a little at that and nodded in reply.
Armand said, “Can I kill him, boss?”
Vassily paused and his sly grin held for a moment. “Not at the moment, Armand.” And he looked at me. “Maybe later.”
I patted Armand’s cheek. “You can try, Armand.” And I smiled. “Any time you like.” He smiled back.
Vassily invited Vesper and I to sit and we took the nice leather padded chairs in front of the desk. They were just noticeably smaller than the one behind it where Vassily swiveled and grinned.
“I gather you have a card of mine. May I see it?”
I handed him the card. He ran his thumb along the edge and over the corner. “You don’t mind telling me how you came by it?”
“Carmine Monreale gave it to me earlier this evening. But I think you knew that.”
“Yes, I knew were the card came from.”
“He told me to ask you about the boilerhouse project.”
Vassily’s face froze. His smooth smile was still in place, but it as like the light went off and there was nothing behind it anymore. His eye stayed on me as he reached into the desk. Instinctively my upper body locked and my hand hovered, ready to grab my gun. Vassily lifted a phone and tapped the screen before holding it to his ear.
His smile came back to life as he said, “Carmine. What a pleasure.” He pushed back in his chair and he smiled as his voice lowered. “I hope that you are well this evening.” He listened a moment.
“Of course. And that gentleman is with me now. With his beautiful companion.” His eyes focussed with a locked intensity as he looked over Vesper’s curves. The urge to grab a weapon was so strong that I had to take a breath.
“Is she now?” His brow lifted. “I shall have to watch her very carefully.” Then, “The gentleman mentioned something.” He waited. “That’s right.” He nodded as he listened a while. “Well, if you say so, Carmine. I just wanted to be sure we all sat around the same table.” He smiled and nodded. “Of course, my friend. And you. A la prossima. Ciao.”
“Well now,” he put the phone back in the desk drawer and closed it. “You two are a surprise.”
Vesper said, “What can you tell us about it, Vassily?”
Vassily tapped the card on his desk as he looked from Vesper to me and back. “You,” he looked in my eye, watching as he spoke. “Not very much. You’ll understand.” Then he looked at Vesper. “Her? Very much less, I’m afraid.” When he said that I had an urge to grab him. Slap him around. Make him deliver. Something. Even though I knew it wouldn’t work. And, if I acted in a rage like that, his goons would be on me like a landslide.
Their training probably wasn’t as good as mine, and their skills may not have been as sharp, but if I gave in to an outburst of temper, it would slow me down, make me sloppy. I sat back and concentrated of being calm. Breathe deep. I was immediately annoyed with myself.
The frustration, I knew, came from having my priorities skewed. If I grabbed Vesper by the arm, marched her outside and left her there with a guard, Vassily would tell me a whole lot more. He had said as much.
So I stood. The goons reached for the insides of their jackets. Vassily’s smile sharpened as he raised the fingers of one hand and the goons relaxed. I took Vesper’s hair and pulled her up. Dragged her to the door. Opened it and shoved her outside. The feeling of her hair, soft and warm, bunched tightly in my fist, made me think of that night. I pushed the thought back down, though it wouldn’t go all the way. As I dragged Vesper, I tried to manoeuvre to get a look in her eye, give her a glimpse of mine. But she wouldn’t lift her eyes.
No matter. I shoved her outside and grabbed the nearest goon by the smooth lapel of his expensively tailored suit coat. I pulled him so my nose was against his. “I’ve counted all of her bones, none of them are broken. If I come back and there’s a even a hair out of place, I’ll tear you in two.”
I shoved him outside with her, slammed the door behind me and returned to face Vassily across his desk.
“So. Tell me.”
His eyes sparkled, as though he had appreciated the show. “Drink, American?”
“Bourbon.”
He got two glasses and pulled a bottle from a shelf and poured two decent shots. He took his time, letting me watch that he served the drinks. He didn’t click his fingers. And giving himself time for whatever he was going to tell me. We drank.
Vassily told the goon with his hands prettily folded, “Check the fire exit.” And motioned back over his shoulder with his thumb. “Wait there till I call you.”
The goon nodded and stepped behind Vassily and out of a door at the back of the room.
“Okay. This boilerhouse thing.” He sat back. I was very surprised that Carmine even told you that much.” His eye was steady on mine. “Nobody has even heard that word.” I felt he was telling me the truth. Still, I was sure that he was a pretty expert liar. “Nobody outside the group knows that it exists. Nobody who’s still breathing that is.”
“You’re saying I’m in danger just by knowing. Okay. Wait up while I tremble.”
He was in no hurry. I waited.
“Carmine telling you, that didn’t put you in any danger.” He took a sip of the bourbon. “The man who you said came after Carmine, the guy who got a text message about your pretty pet Fed out there?” his eye gleamed. “Tovarich, if he’s after you, you can’t get any more dead than you are already.”
“So. Nothing you tell me is going to make that any worse.”
“If it got out that we had this conversation, I’d be on his list too, American.”
“Okay. But we’re here now. So it can’t get any worse for me, and it won’t get any worse for you either. Where has that got us?”
He was going to tell me something. I wouldn’t have been twitchy and impatient if Vesper wasn’t outside the door. Two days ago I was ready to kill her and I would have relished it, but she was steadily becoming my fatal weakness.
“Okay.” He sat forward with his hands clasped together on the desk. “There’s a group. It’s a very tight group and it gets things done. Everyone in the group will do whatever another member needs, but its main purpose is to get things from the places of power. Politicians. Lawmen. Security services.”
Thinking about what happened at Carmine’s place gave me an idea. “Military contractors?” I asked him. He paused. Then he nodded.
“It’s not a big group, but it has one fucking hell of a reach. City Hall, the Senate. All of the agencies there’s somebody. All of them. You want something and you got the right connection, you can get it done. Plus you need the buying power, of course.”
“Travel permits?” I asked him.
His mouth pursed as he looked at me. “All of those girls.” I tipped my head back, towards the door.
“Them?” he laughed. “You don’t think I find beautiful girls like those in some stinking, smoky hole in Bosnia? Promise them they can work as waitresses, come her and live like queens?”
“I believe it happens.”
“Girls are told stories like that, then they get bundled into crates. Next thing they know they’re on the quayside in Baltimore, or they’re locked up in some fleapit in New Jersey. Little Odessa maybe.” His head shook. “Those are not my girls. My girls, they’re from the Kirov ballet school or they’re Ukrainian show jumping champions. They don’t wait for a sugar daddy to sweep them out of this. They competed to come here. They want it. Spend their time with rich men, older men. They make great money, and they learn.”
“So they aren’t looking for a ticket out?”
“They wouldn’t take one.” I must have looked a little skeptical. Vassily leaned forward. “Those beautiful Russian girls? They break your heart. Spend a couple of hours with one of them, she make you fall in love so hard it hurts.” His eyes misted for a moment. “Happened to me. Sometimes it happens three, four times a month. Sometimes every day. God, when they make love.” He looked away for a moment. “Those girls, they’ve got sad Russian poetry that runs like a cord through their souls. Make you ache like winter, my God.”
I remembered how beautiful the women in the club had been.
Vassily shook his head. “With those girls, it’s real love and they really know how to make it.”
“So, all of your girls climb over each other to come here and work for you. They love it, they love you and you love them back. Everything in the garden is lovely. So. What do you need the boilerhouse for?”
“Actually, it is immigration and visa issues more than anything. Simple bureaucracy.” He took a nip of his bourbon. “All of it would work out through the normal channels, or nearly all, but it would take so long.”
“And time is money.”
“If it costs me twenty, thirty thousand dollars, to get a girl here, believe me, she’s going to make it back for me in a couple of months at the most. Usually half that time.”
“So why are you talking to me?”
“Good question, American.” His eyes shone as they narrowed. “My instinct should be to hand the two of you over.”
“Or neutralize us.”
We both took a drink. I didn’t think Vassily was playing me, but he was as tough to read as any of the Russians, I’d come across. Still, I couldn’t see what reason he would have to tell me anything that would hurt his involvement with the ‘boilerhouse project,’ and I couldn’t think of a thing I could do to apply pressure or anything I had that could give me leverage, so I waited him out.
“Any association like the boilerhouse,” he said slowly, “Different people with different interests. The frictions that already exist in the outside world, from time to time, perhaps they’re bound to follow people around.”
“The hit on Carmine?”
“It doesn’t sit well with me, American.”
“And the Bonaventura twins?”
His chin lowered.
“The purpose of the group is to help people function. Not as a tool to use against each other. Collaborative. Not competitive.”
The track he was taking, I could see where he was headed. Or at least, I could sense the shape of it. He left a long pause. A Russian mobster in the slammer did that. Spoke softly, like he was being confidential with you. Then he’d stop, say something to make you think that it’s going somewhere, but then it just stops. Leaves you swinging. Makes you feel like you ought to fill the space.
Again I wished that Vesper was in here, not outside. She would be better at this game than I was. Subtle interrogation wasn’t exactly my strong suit. Generally, I’d ask a guy a question. If I didn’t get what I needed, hit him. Ask again. Didn’t usually take too many rinse and repeats.
But something about just being with Vesper had made me understand. Vassily wanted to tell me something, and I had to wait. Give him space to do it. Maybe it was something that he shouldn’t be telling me. Or perhaps it was something untrue and he was feeling me out, looking to see how to present his little package. It could be that he was baiting a trap.
Watching him, my instincts said that any or all of those things could be true. What I had learned from Vesper, just from her little party tricks, it served me well in the joint and especially in dealing with the Russians. Of course it’s never good to generalize, but they were some cold and ruthless bastards.
It wasn’t ever wise to second guess them and get it wrong. I waited some more.
“Somebody in the group is trying to pick off the heads of the Italian families.”
I left it a moment before I responded. “Only them?”
Vassily thought a moment. “No. You made me remember something. The first time my nose started to itch, was an accountant at a big city law firm. He thought he was about to be investigated. We all heard about it and I think everybody offered him somewhere to stay or a quiet route out.”
I nursed my bourbon and watched him. He said, “Next thing, he turned up dead. Suicide, the paper said.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“I spoke to the man that afternoon. I said to him that I had an easy escape ready for him. He was going to take it, he said, and he didn’t sound like he was worried at all. By nine o’clock that night he’d painted his brains on a hotel wall.”
As I watched Vassily I wondered whether to ask which law firm. From a couple of floors below, there was a dull thud and the floor shook. Instinctively I grabbed my gun and sprang to the door. Pulling it open I reached for Vesper. Her long barreled weapon was out already. The goon who had been waiting with her was headed down the corridor that led back into the club.
Gunshots and two bigger bangs came from that direction.
Vassily called me from the office.
“Go out this way.” He pointed to the door behind his desk. “There’s a fast elevator, you’ll be out at the back of the building.”
The noise grew louder, nearer as I put a hand on his shoulder. “I thought you said that people come here to relax.”
“Probably someone didn’t like how Orso spoke to him at the door. Or his Martini wasn’t the right temperature.” He twinkled. I could relate to a man who relished a fight. He patted my shoulder back. Then he held on. “You know Noah Braxton, tovarich?”
I thought a moment. Where did I know that name from?
“Go on,” he said. “I have guests to attend to.”
It sounded like his guests were starting a war. His face was alight with relish.