“One of the partners in his firm, Jana Volotsya, warned me after she overheard him from her office. It’s not a hundred percent certain, given it’s hearsay, but it’s looking more and more likely.”
Vassily blinked. “Yeah, it is. Well, fuck. Let me ask around a bit—I might be able to confirm or deny it. Ovar’d probably know. I’ll ask him and Nic for you, all right?”
“You could, but it’s getting harder to know who’s on the chopping block, and why,” I said. Now that I was awake, I could see Vassily was still haggard, pale, and jowly, but the fierceness was back in his voice and in his hands. “I don’t trust them.”
“We have to be able to trust somebody.” Vassily tossed his hands in the air. “Oy. Go ring up your girl, man. We have to go.”
The exclamation didn’t have his usual ring of humor, and it didn’t seem worth trying to explain what had happened with the other Nacari today. I hobbled away to my office as fast as my knee allowed. I got fresh clips for the Wardbreaker, fumbled with the phone and my wallet, and found Crina’s card. It was plain red, matte, with her name and number embossed in black. It smelled of Charlie Gold perfume and clove cigarettes.
“’llo?”
“Crina, it’s Alexi.” I leaned on the ledger with my hand in my hair. “I apologize for calling you at this hour, but I was wondering if I could cancel your visit for tomorrow—”
“Oh, Alexi. That’s fine, no problem.” She cut me off, a little breathily. I wasn’t certain, but she sounded disappointed.
“No, wait. I was wondering if you’re free now.” I exhaled thinly through my nose, massaging my scalp. “We’re going to Atlantic City tonight.”
“Atlantic City? I’d love to. I’m just eating breakfast… what time is ‘tonight’?”
I winced. “In about forty minutes.”
She laughed, a bright burst of yellow sound. “Forty? Alexi, my goodness. You really don’t date, do you? Okay, I’ll do it. But not for free.”
“All expenses paid,” I said. “And you can borrow as many books as you can carry.”
“Deal.”
Thank the Universe for small mercies. “I’ll arrange to drive by and pick you up. Where should we meet you?”
“Outside Sirens. We all know where that is.” I could hear her grin.
Forty minutes might be pushing it for her, but it was usually enough for me. I looked over at the hammer ruefully. I wanted to take it. After watching a gun eat a man alive, I was beginning to feel a bit superstitious about carrying one.
I reached out and pulled down my dictionary of Kabbalah, taking it with me on the way back to my closet. Nothing in there could stop car bombs, demonically possessed golems, or a hopped-up super-Guido and his pet hellhounds, but at least I’d look suitably wizardly while I figured out how, exactly, I was going to live out the week.
Chapter 14
Mob drivers are generally willing to do pretty much anything, provided you tip freely and well. Stopping by Sirens to collect Crina added an extra twenty minutes and twenty bucks to the three-hour trip to Atlantic City, but her presence was priceless. She was the only sane person in the car, as far as I was concerned. Kutkha was there in the back of my mind, which also helped. Even without a verbal reply from my Neshamah when I sought contact, his secret presence was reassuring.
I was seated to one side of the car. Vassily was in the middle, and his escort for the night to his left. Mikhail had the other door, chewing gum like a Jersey cow, while Crina was pressed in knee to knee with the blonde Russian girl from Vanya’s place, the one who had answered the door naked. She was already drunk, braying with laughter at everything Mikhail said, while the other two women shot each other sympathetic glances. Crina had one of her PhD texts out, a first edition copy of Kolyma Tales. A fine pair we made, withdrawn from the conversation, books in our hands.
For my part, I focused on creating an impenetrable shell of concentrated brooding, trying to study words of power from the grimoire. Books are useful things for spooks. If someone looks over and glimpses a dense wall of text and unfamiliar symbols, they tend to lose the itch to make much chitchat. Maybe it was the added weight of my Neshamah’s subliminal presence, but it seemed to work better than usual. Vassily’s eyes shot across now and then, but he quickly looked away.
We skimmed two and a half hours of the finest scrubby pine barrens New Jersey had to offer on our trip down the parkway. The only good thing about Atlantic City was that it was neutral ground. Atlantic City gangs were small and localized, the Mob nearly nonexistent. No one faction controlled the powerful casino union, and the only guys running rackets were the Chinese. They were good hosts. A polite call ahead to one Mr. Leung and an expression of willingness to spend money at “his” casino was more than enough to grease those particular wheels.
I put the book away in my briefcase after we passed under the white-and-blue sign welcoming us to my least favorite city in the world. I had been here once before, back in the early 80s. Now, it was as if the whole place were addicted to crack and coke, skinned to the bone by addiction. While the others drank and chattered, I watched the streets go by, noting just how wasted and broken they looked. It had always been the most miserable playground in America, but now, the streets around the casino were some of the most desolate on the East Coast: a wasteland of broken lots, stripped cars, unconscious crackheads, and nervous streetwalkers. And it was our fault. We were one of the groups that had brought this drug to the USA. It was what Semyon had died over, maybe what I would die over, if Jana’s intel was good. The truth of it—and the faint, clinging ammonia reek that seemed to hang around the cabin of the limo—settled into my guts and wouldn’t let go. Yuri’s spiel might have been a metaphor for all this… I’d heard Edenic terms used to describe Colombia before.
“Maybe he got the same offer. Maybe he said ‘yes.’ He was tired of being somebody’s bitch. What about you?” Despite my best efforts, Yuri’s words stuck with me. There was no way he had literally been offering me an actual fruit from the tree of Genesis. It was a myth, at best. But when I searched back to solicit Kutkha’s opinion, I encountered only a wall of silence. This was something he wanted me to work out myself.
If there was a Hell, I always suspected it would be a dark mirror of the Earth without beauty or life. In that hell, the Taj Mahal casino would replace the actual Taj Mahal. It was an insult to the beautiful Mughal mausoleum for which it was named, a tawdry mockery built for love of money instead for the love of a dead Sufi princess. The smell of the place hit me as soon as I stepped out into the muggy heat and flashing red and orange lights, a nauseating, sweet, fake cloud of perfume that bore into my sinuses. Underlying it was the scent of the city itself, metallic and unpleasant.
The other car was already waiting for us. Lev and Vanya waited inside the entry, smoking together with another pretty girl with no name. Vanya hadn’t brought his wife, of course, that poor woman. Lev was alone, and he glanced archly at us as we approached in a gaggle.
“Vassily Simeovich, Alexi Grigoriovich.” Lev greeted us by first name and patronymic with reassuring handshakes, the women with a kiss to the back of the hand. “And the lovely Katerina and Crina Pavloevna.”
Crina was lovely, I thought. She had decided on a Chinese-style black-and-red silk dress which was both modest and deeply flattering. For all that I felt more like her brother than her boyfriend, I found myself assuming the postures of chivalry. When I caught Vanya staring at her chest, I stared back at him until he looked away.
“I’m pretty sure this wasn’t here when I left,” Vassily said to no one in particular. He arched his eyebrows at the overhead displays and fountains and alabaster onion domes. “Looks new.”