Yes, it was possible Vincent was worth enough to the various underworld high rollers that Yuri stood to gain more by handing him over to someone than by protecting him for Lev. But in that case, who? Vincent’s blood family?
“Who is this guy, then? Vincent?”
“One of Manelli’s boys, oddly enough.” I made the decision to talk it out, no matter what Lev thought. If I could trust one person in the Organization, it was the man sitting across from me. “Vincent Manelli.”
“Blood family? Never heard of him. There’s Lou Manelli, Celso Manelli, and his little brother, Joe. They all work out of a big chicken factory over in Jersey. Elite Meats, something like that.”
“Perhaps because he’s the youngest of the sons? He defected to George’s team.”
“No shit? And he went missing on our watch? Well, bad as it sounds, at least Yuri went missing with him. If he fucked up, it’d be more than just his head in line for the guillotine. How much are you getting out of it?”
“Three hundred thousand.”
Vassily’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. “Lexi, that’s a lot of cash for one guy. Too much cash.”
The observation sat with me uncomfortably because it was true. It was a lot of money, though I’d managed to rationalize it somewhat. Vincent made the Organization millions of dollars in trade. The Twins hadn’t run shipments to anyone except Mama Perez in Miami until Vincent talked to them.
Vassily seemed to notice my struggle and shook his head. “Seriously. That’s too much. I don’t mean that in the ‘you suck and you shouldn’t be paid that much’ way. I mean in the ‘that’s a lot of fucking money that’s being used to hide something from you’ way.”
“Not compared to what he’s worth.”
“After your car got rigged this morning? I don’t have to be a wizard to work it out, my friend.” Vassily looked away, his jaw working. He was down to only a few spares now. “There’s something we’re not seeing.”
“You’re right,” I said, after a minute or two. “But I want to do it. Lev will put in a word for me to Sergei.”
“He shouldn’t have to. We’re blatnoi,[17] we were made for this. Sergei should be back here and paying attention to his own men.”
“He will be. Lev thinks he’ll be here by the end of the month.”
“And that just makes me twitch harder over the whole damn thing.” Vassily tch’d and opened his mouth to speak again just as Mariya arrived with tea and plates of food.
“Here we go,” she said cheerfully. She’d brought crepes for Vassily, salad and chicken cutlets for me. “You eat everything, now. The pair of you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
Vassily changed tack, cheerfully masking his fatigue with a grin and a wave. “Sure thing, Mom.”
Mariya slapped him without force, and he sputtered in protest. “Vassily Simeovich, I spent five damn years worrying about your skinny ass. Don’t you give me cheek. What would your grandmother say?”
“She would have said I needed to lay on the bullshit better.”
I made a motion with my hands, silent agreement. Lenina Lovenko had been a fearsome, pipe-smoking Ruska Roma[18] hellcat with more tattoos than her son and grandsons.
Mariya rolled her eyes. “Impossible. Are you two going boxing this evening?”
“I will be going to bed,” I said, as I took up my knife and fork.
Vassily swatted his sister away from his chair. Mariya shoved her brother’s head forward, and he made a rude gesture back at her. She motioned at him with two fingers. Come get it.
“I will. I feel pretty good, actually. It’ll be good to box around a ring without someone huffing over my shoulder.” Vassily chuckled and started furtively on his early dinner, glancing aside at her. “Sisters, man, I’m telling you. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.”
Mariya scowled. “I’ll take that plate back, Vivy.”
“The hell you will. These are amazing. Don’t call me Vivy.”
I watched them both contemplatively, folding salad onto my knife and fork. I often envied Mariya her simplicity and strength. She had lost parents, grandparents, and three brothers over the span of a decade. She took charge of her household when no one else could or would, a self-made and self-taught matriarch. As the years had gone by and more Lovenkos had died, she became increasingly fussy over us. Now that I had the time to look at her under yellow light, I thought her deep-set eyes were a little shadowed.
It was good Vassily hadn’t told her about the explosives. And it was good she and Vassily both didn’t know that tonight, I would not be going to bed. Instead, I would be jacking a car, finding a way into Vincent’s house, and looking for clues to his whereabouts.
It was time to begin the hunt.
Chapter 7
Vincent Manelli’s mansion on Turner Drive was faced with high fences that protected lawns so large and lush they looked like golf courses. The pavement here was new and uncracked, the cars clean, and my overall impression was that the whole street was strangely sterile and vacant. Vincent’s house was a huge Colonial villa that loomed over a winding gravel driveway lined with solar lamps. They cast muted light over the empty driveway and the clean-raked paths leading up to the front porch.
B&E is the one time you will ever find me in anything other than slacks and collared shirts. Some men do all black, but it’s a color that stands out under the muggy New York summer sky. Charcoal and brown work better. I like sportsgear for this: riding breeches, a light tracksuit jacket, and shoes with restaurant tread for extra grip. In this wealthy part of town, the outfit doesn’t stand out too much, either.
I have a toolkit especially for this kind of work, and none of it is particularly supernatural in nature. The problem with B&E is that thresholds of all kind—walls, doorways, and especially circles—have strange power of their own. They are built with the intent to keep outside things out and inside things in. Intent is the basis of magic, and the focus which underlies the construction of any barrier acts as a weak enchantment of sorts. On the physical level, walls and locks don’t mean a whole lot. Without wards, the worst you get is the skin-prickling, uncomfortable sensation which accompanies trespass, the ghostly understanding that you are somewhere you do not belong. However, walls and doors that don’t belong to you make even easy magic harder than it ought to be. Lockpicking, for example: I can pick a practice deadbolt with magic, but not a deadbolt mounted on someone else’s door. I’ve never been that good. For this kind of work, I have effective, but mundane tools.
After the drive-by, I parked down the road and covered the distance on foot. The front gate was unlocked, so I let myself in and had a look over the barriers to entry. They were formidable: The front facade was separated from the rear yard by a high brick-and-steel spiked fence. The front door was locked, the windows closed and locked with roller shutters. There was going to be an electronic security system, maybe even cameras.
The gate into the backyard was locked with a classic cylinder deadbolt. I set my messenger bag down there and crouched, removing a ring of keys. They were evenly notched along their lengths, crafted with deep, regular cuts. Three of the keys had small rubber O-rings fitted near the head. To use bump keys, you match a key to the size of the lock and insert it, slowly, while tapping it with a heavy object. I took my knife from my pocket, fixed my eyes ahead on nothing, and used the key to feel for the tumblers and bump them open. One, two, three, four. It clicked, and I was in. Sticking to the shadows, alert for the sounds and smell of dogs, I made my way down the white pebbled path that led into the rear yard.
17
Blat’ is the Russian term for ‘face’ or ‘honor’: a very important concept in most Eastern European and Asian countries. Blatnoi are people who have ‘face’—who are socially important and able to leverage favors. Vassily maybe being a bit ambitious here.
18
Russian ‘gypsy’. Gypsy is a racist pejorative for Roma people; Alexi is inclined to describe Vassily’s Roma heritage in respectful terms.