Tea Leafing: A Novel (14 page)

As their eyes
progressed down the page, Sam’s hand shook. The spasm of the all too familiar
twitch attacked her eyelid muscle unmercifully. The cold from the wall seeped
through Sam’s skin and spread to her spine and extremities like burgeoning fear.
Birdie shivered next to her and dropped her hand from the page.

“What the
fuck
are we gonna do?” Sam whispered,
unable to tear herself away from the typed words on the page.

Birdie moved her mouth
closer to Sam’s ear, “Bloody mob. How could we ’ave missed that he’s part of
the Russian mafia? Seems so obvious when you fink about that greasy geezah.”

Twitch
. “He’s not part of the mob, Birdie, he
is
the mob. Russian, anyway.”

CHAPTER 23

Standing in front of
the wall of plate glass windows in the living room of his penthouse apartment,
Fedya stared out at the Atlanta skyline as it soared above the trees like quartz
crystals projecting from stone. The tony neighborhood of Buckhead sprawled
around the northern edge of his building.
To the south,
downtown Atlanta.

Fedya thought about
home. He had grown up the son of a factory worker in Yekaterinburg, nestled in
the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains. His father was a foreman at a
turbine factory while his mother hand-stitched opulent dresses at their kitchen
table for the wealthy wives of the vor, or Godfathers. They were doing okay by
Russian standards, but there weren’t many meals with second helpings. Every
night his father came through the door with a bottle of Vodka. It was cheap
entertainment and kept them warm when the furnace in their Soviet-era apartment
clanked and went cold.

The city wasn’t your
typical poor community. It was instead one of the centers for scientific,
cultural, and economic growth. Fedya started working when he was twelve. Poverty
disgusted him almost as much as the social hierarchy that was recognized by all
and questioned by none. From the time he was a child, he’d vowed to himself
that he would be the richest man in the Urals. That
he
would be the one to make the rules. The lack of moral code, made
it easier for him to do what was necessary to get where he wanted.

At seventeen, Fedya
joined the Red Army. More specifically, he joined the Special Forces known as
the Spetsnaz. These were the Soviet Union’s equivalent of the Navy Seals or the
Israeli 13th Flotilla. There, Fedya learned every kind of combat imaginable
– tracking, camouflage, assassination techniques, sabotage, foreign
languages, interrogation and a host of other useful but nasty talents. He rose
quickly through the ranks and was eager for assignments, particularly those
that involved assassinations.

Fedya’s first kill was
a diplomat who had stepped out-of-line in the eyes of the Kremlin. Nervous at
first, he found the task quite thrilling. He got a rush from stalking his
victim. Toying with him before delivering the deathblow. Remembering the look
in the diplomat’s eyes as the life drained from his body could still, to this
day, make Fedya smile.

Working as an embedded
agent in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Fedya made some valuable contacts with
the local drug czars. The USSR may have been fighting a war, but Fedya had
loyalty to no one but himself. When the war ended in ’89, the motherland was
flooded with young war veterans who no longer wanted to suckle at the teat of
Communism. Many suffered from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder. A
rebellious undercurrent began to change the fabric of Russian society. Patterns
of discontent and violence began to emerge. Positions of power opened for those
savvy enough to recognize and act on the need for structure in the chaos.

He remembered the day
the old guard stepped down from high atop the onion-domes of the Kremlin on
December 23, 1991. This was the day a new breed of criminal moved to the
forefront — filling the space previously occupied by the government.
Seeing the way of the future, Fedya left the ranks of the Spetsnaz and began
building his own empire. Using veterans of the war, he built a system of graft,
racketeering and protection for hire. Groups of gangs called “Bandits” had
begun to rape the area and terrorize the working class. The question wasn’t
whether one would pay protection, but rather to whom. Fedya’s power spread
quickly and he became the most powerful vor in the Urals, transiently, one of
Russia’s most wanted criminals.

Because of his highly
visible position, Fedya could no longer take the risk of indulging his personal
love of “wet work”. It was the single greatest loss in his life. From then on,
assassinations were always assigned to mob soldiers desperate to earn their
place within the organization. He missed the metallic smell and the feeling
warm blood on his hands. The sound of a congested whistle as the final breath
escaped from a dying man’s lips. Killing was the only real passion Fedya ever
had. He thought about the old days when he was free to feed his addiction with
the same fondness a parent might feel for a child. Devoid of compassion, he was
the most dangerous kind of person —
an
honest-to-goodness solid-gold sociopath.

Picking up the tumbler
of vodka he’d set on a large glass coffee table, he was lost in thought. His
eyes studied a falcon circling just above the treetops along Peachtree Road. A
rare sight this late in the year, the tough old bird must have stayed in the
foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains instead of joining the migration south. A
smooth, calculated dip into the skeletal branches of a tree earned the predator
a meal. Fedya felt proud. It was a sign. The sacrifice of the weak is necessary
for the survival of the strong.

CHAPTER 24

Mary Jane fiddled with
the tines on her fork. “Did ya’ll ever think about the amount of money that old
man is making off of us?”

“Gobs and gobs of the
stuff.” Grace produced a make-up remover wipe and began massaging her face.

“Seriously, let’s think
about this. Twenty-five dollars a head at the door and on an average night we
get what, fifteen hundred through the door? That’s $37,500.”

Sam started scratching
numbers on her napkin, “And a hundred dollar house fee from each dancer. We
average one hundred girls a night, not including day shift, that’s another ten
thousand.”

“We each give the DJ
ten percent of our earnings, who in turn pays the house twenty percent of his.
That’s a tricky one, how do we average what girls make?” Grace paused “I guess
if we figure each girl makes five hundred a night that should balance the girls
that have an insanely profitable evening with the ones who go home crying. So,
what did we say? A hundred girls at five hundred each
is
fifty thousand dollars. Ten percent of that is five thousand.”

“What the bloody hell
am I doing peeling every night if those fucking DJ Pillocks are making that
kind of quid?”

“Blood pressure Birdie.
You’re turning red.” Sam paused, pen poised over napkin.

Grace
continued
“So they give the Cat a grand a night and walk
with four large.”

 
“There’s a two drink minimum, but it’s
not a church pot-luck after all. These boys are doin’ some drinkin’ and we all
know most of those ladies could drink a guy under the table.” Mary Jane paused
to think. “I know my drawer averages between twenty and thirty thousand, but
I’ve rung as much as fifty-seven thousand on a shift. My register is one of
six, so let’s estimate the bars at $180,000.”

“What’er we at?”

Sam did a quick tally
and exhaled. “$228,500 a night not including VIP rooms and twenty percent on
the Pink Pay.”

“Thirty-five VIP rooms
at five hundred an hour for eight hours is . . . mmmmm...$140,000 plus tack on
the twenty percent fees for credit cards, adds to $168,000. For a grand total
of $396,500.00”

Sam studied the numbers
on the napkin, and then looked up at Mary Jane. “I knew they were doing great
business, but I could have lived out my days never knowing exactly how much. I
feel greedy.”

Mary Jane could feel
blood pulsing in her temples and her palms began to sweat. Just the thought of
all that money made her mouth dry out in what seemed like a random
redistribution of water in her body. When she carried her till into the office
for
check-out
every night she’d seen the stacks of
money in the safe. And the thwiffing sound the money counter made seemed
constant as it churned out neatly collated stacks of bills ready for banding.
It just hadn’t ever registered, so to speak, the quantity of money changing
hands.

 
“Cops, Feds, or some type of enforcement.”
Tanya’s ever present smile, shining above them, topping off cooled cups with
warm refills.

While the girls were
basking in the mental tractor-beam pull of the money, Tyrone, Tyrese and the
cluster of nearly naked women nestled into a semi-circular corner booth, very
nearly dry humping each other.

“They say they’re
dressed like they’re going golfing in Alpharetta, which means they’re staking
out. Nobody dresses like that to come to Buckhead at four o’clock in the
morning. Also, that sedan of theirs has government plates. Someone didn’t think
that through.” Tanya smoothed a stray hair that had wandered down from her
coiffed ‘do.’

“How do Tyrone and
Tyrese feel about you having a dick?” Birdie piped in.

“I was raised in South
Georgia, baby.
Little place called Tifton.
The boys
and their mama lived up here so by the time I blossomed into my glorious
Tanya-ness, they wasn’t fussed about it. As far as
their
friends know, I’ve always been a Tanya and we don’t correct anyone. I was a
sorry excuse for a
man,
except that God’s little joke
is that my extra parts are of porn-star proportions. Doesn’t it just figure?
I’m given something most men would kill for and I just can’t be bothered? I’m
sure it’s gonna freak those little Thai doctors out.”

Even Birdie was speechless.

Tanya finished clearing
the few remaining plates and
added,
“They think those
boys moved their car to the bowling alley down the street so ya’ll watch your
mirrors goin’ home.”

Still
speechless.

With a wink and a
little twist, she was off to take care of her tables.

“Til’ next time,
babies!” she called over her shoulder.

CHAPTER 25

 
“I’m scared. I don’t know where this
will end. FLW.”

Those were the last
words Lena had written in the diary. Silence had settled over the group as they
sat motionless. Grace, the one charged with the task of reading aloud, closed
the book and stared at the tattered cover. Running her fingers along the deep
creases in the leather binding, she wondered how Lena could have kept this from
them. How terrified she must have been holding everything inside not able to
talk about the twist her life had taken.

“What the hell are we
supposed to do with all that?” Sam wondered aloud.

“Make a bloody plan.”

Birdie hadn’t moved
from her sprawled position on the bed.

“Sooo… What is FLW?
Lena clearly wanted somebody to know about FLW in case she ever…” Sam’s voice
trailed off. If she didn’t say the rest, maybe it hadn’t actually happened.
“I’ve been turning FLW over in my mind for weeks. Ever since Amanda brought us
this thing.”

“Well, it’s got to be
Fedya, something, something,” Grace offered. “When Amanda was here we still
thought that Fedya was playing for the home team. So we missed it.”

“Now we know for sure
he is lining up on the other side of the ball,” Mary Jane added. “But we aren’t
all that much better off. Fedya LW. What is LW?”

“Let’s torture that
mother facker Fedya until he tells us who pulled the trigger. Let’s castrate
him and let ‘im bleed to death slowly. We’ll find the hit men and kill ‘em as
well. Let’s wipe the board clean. Oo’s gonna miss a group of misfit fuckup
thugs that are nothin’ but glorified drug-dealing, money laundering, arse hole
pimps.” Birdie had flushed red as her anger rose. The others stared in awe as
tears began to roll down her cheeks and speckled the front of her tee shirt.

“How the FACK does this
happen? How the FACK did she
wander
into that mess?”
Her voice cracking, she began to scream. Pure frustrated anguish rolled from
deep within her as she threw her head back and beat the toss pillows with her
fists. Her wild hair seemed to take on a life of its own as she shook her head
furiously.

Sam, Grace and Mary
Jane let her go. This had been a long time coming for her and they were all a
little relieved to see her finally blowing off the built-up steam. After
several minutes Birdie’s tantrum ended, as abruptly as it had started. A glazed
look was fixed on her otherwise beautiful face. Blinking, she reached for Mary
Jane’s cigarettes.

“I need a fag.”

“Yup.” Mary Jane pushed
the pack toward her.

“But seriously, what
are we going to do about these blokes?”

The look in Birdie’s
eye was saner than anyone had seen in weeks. She looked determined and
completely self-possessed. At times, the girls wondered if there were two
people, or more, living inside her skin. She tapped the filter end of the
cigarette against the lighter to pack the tobacco tighter in
its
casing.

“Well, I can’t murder
anyone. I know that for certain.” Grace glanced around the circle. “I cry when
I run over a squirrel. As much as I hate what happened to Lena, I couldn’t do
anything Old Testament.”

“Me neither.”