Vanity, Vengeance And A Weekend In Vegas (A Sophie Katz Novel) (12 page)

Reluctantly, Alex nodded at
Margarita.

“I will put the phones on the
table in the foyer,” she said woodenly. “Goodnight Mr. Kinsky.”

She left the room without
bothering to say goodnight to me.

Alex examined my MacBook and then
moved it over to a spot on the floor near a speaker and then turned on the
stereo. The slightly eerie, intriguing and intense (in an Evanescence kinda
way) music filled the room.

“Zola Jesus,” Alex said. “A
Russian, American singer. She’s known for combining goth, industrial,
classical, electronic and experimental rock influences.”

“That’s a lot of influences.”

“It is. She’ll also add a layer
of protection in case you
are
trying to record this.” Alex smiled wryly.
 
“Seems like we both could use a drink,
yes?”

I struggled with myself for a
second too long before answering, “No.”

“Are you always this bad of a
liar?”

I couldn’t help but smile at
that.
 
“Do you have vodka?”

He opened up the mini fridge and
pulled out what looked like a large bottle of cologne. It was beautiful. Clear
with perfectly elegant curves and a sparkling silver lid that came to a
graceful point.

“That’s vodka?” I asked. “It
looks like art.”

“It’s Kauffman Luxury Vintage
Vodka,” he said, holding the bottle out for my viewing pleasure.

I sucked in a sharp breath. I had
heard of Kauffman but had never actually seen it. It was almost impossible to get
in the States. It also cost $250 per liter.
 
“Is it as good as they say?”

“There’s only one way to find
out.”
 
He served me a glass, neat.
“Vodka this smooth shouldn’t be mixed with anything. It’s a sipping vodka.”

I had never heard of “sipping
vodka” before. I had been raised with the belief that vodka was for drinking
(relatively quickly) or consuming in shot-form. I watched as Alex poured
himself a glass, which he then raised for a toast. “To new friendships.”

I rejected that with a shake of
my head. “To answers.”

His eyes darted over to the piano
and for a split second he looked somber. “To answers.”

I brought my glass to my lips; I
had
never
tasted
vodka this smooth before. It was perfection and it made me trust him a little
more.
 
I had a bad habit of
trusting people who had good taste in liquor.
 
“So can we talk now? Have I appeased your paranoia?”

“I don’t see it as paranoia.
 
I see it as being cautious.” He sat
down on an oversized leather armchair.
 
“I think Anatoly and I have that in common,” he mused. “We’re both very
cautious men.”

I laughed until I realized he was
serious. “He rides a motorcycle, married into the mob and then ditched his gun
wielding wife for a life with me…and I’m not exactly known for my ability to
stay out of trouble. So in what dictionary does that fit the definition of
cautious?”

“He takes risks,” Alex conceded,
“but only after he’s weighed the odds and all that. Because of that he was a
huge asset to the family.”

“What family?”

“The Russian mafia…at least for
this syndicate.” He waved this revelation away as if it had no bearing on my
predicament.
 
“The only way to make
a cautious man careless is to play on his emotions. Last week, when they found
out that you had broken up with him—”

“Okay, stop right there.” I
scooted to the front of the couch. “How did you know I had broken up with him
before I came to Vegas?”

Alex ran his finger along the rim
of his glass. “You got a lot of calls from Anatoly in the days leading up to
your Vegas trip but…have you gotten any voicemails? I’m guessing no.”

“You’re beginning to creep me
out, Alex.”

“They tapped your phone and
they’ve been erasing his voicemails after they listened to them.”

It took me almost a full minute
before I found my voice. “So when you said my phones
might
be recording devices you meant
they
are
recording
devices.”

“No, they tapped the line, they
didn’t bug the phone and to be honest they’re not even listening into the calls
anymore. Anatoly knows better than to call you now so there’s no reason to
monitor your phone conversations. But not too long ago, there was.”

“Wow, that is just so James
Murdoch of you.”

“Not me,” Alex said quickly. “I
had nothing to do with it. All I do is run the hotel. I deal with the legal
side of the mafia’s investments.”

“The legal side,” I repeated.
“Does that include covering up murders that take place in your hotel…legally?”

 
“I like to call that crisis management.
 
That’s why I wanted your check. If…
they
weren’t
able to clean up their mess as quickly or discreetly as they hoped I could have
used your check to prove that you had the victim followed and then there would
have been a quick arrest and little damage to the hotel’s reputation.”

I gripped my glass with both
hands. “What are you saying?”

“If plan A didn’t pan out, which
it did, I was going to set you up for murder.”

“Being with a man who is
protective and caring is kind of like owning a gun. It gives you a sense of
security…right up until it’s unexpectedly used against you and shoots a hole through
your heart.”

--Death Of The Party

“
YOU WERE GOING TO SET ME UP FOR MURDER!”
I
repeated.

“I didn’t know you then.”

“Oh, and you know me now?”

Outside the wind blew hard enough
to sway the small trees that were against the house.
 
As Alex considered my question I could hear the gentle thump
of their branches against the walls.

Alex put his glass down carefully
on a coaster.
 
I wondered if he was
gay. He
had
to
be, right? Otherwise there would be a line of women waiting for their turn with
the I-use-a-coaster guy who shopped at Marc Jacobs and stocked up on the good
vodka.

“I know that you’re impulsive,”
he said slowly. “I know that you’re passionate about the people you care about
and protective of them even when they don’t seem to deserve it. I know that
you’re brave to the point of being foolish at times. I know that you’re scared
but are very good at hiding it and you don’t let fear get in your way. I know
that despite your impulsivity you don’t panic in a crisis. I know that there’s
enough money in your bank account that you can write a $250 check without
thinking about it. I know that you’re a size four, shop at Victoria Secret and
are wearing a black lacy bra. So yes, I’d say that I know you.”

“So you did look through my
underwear drawer.”

Alex looked surprised and then
laughed long and hard. “I also know that it’s hard to get anything by you. You
remember what’s been said and are always looking for contradictions.”

“Uh-huh. Stop looking at my bra.”

“I’ll make an effort.”

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t gay.
“You said the mob was playing on Anatoly’s emotions?”

Alex nodded and sipped his drink.
“They made him believe you were here…well you
were
here so that made it an easy sell.
Luckily for the mob you registered at the Encore under your friend Dena’s name.
 
When Anatoly checked to find out which
hotel you were staying at the only one that had your name on file was mine. He
came here to rescue you…and then was distracted by a blonde.”

“That blonde told him she could
take him to my room.”

“He could have found it without
her.”

I set my mouth in a thin line. I
sensed that Alex might be trying to turn me against Anatoly. Considering what
had happened earlier today that shouldn’t have been a tough task, but knowing
that someone else wanted me to turn on him made me hate Anatoly less not more.

“Why is the mob after him.”

“When Anatoly came to the States
it was with the understanding that he would only be doing a few jobs for the
mafia. But certain people in power liked him…Natasha liked him
a lot
.”

“Is she a person of power?” I
asked, rejecting the bait.

“Her father, Vadim Ignatov, is
and that matters in this world. So they kept trying to pull him in further and
further. Anatoly wasn’t very resistant at first but eventually I guess it got
to be too much for him.”

“How could anyone turn down the
opportunity to sell heroin to school children and kill people?” I asked.

Alex tensed. For the first time
that night it seemed I had hit a nerve. “Everyone
should
walk away from that. Eventually,
if I can, I’ll walk away from this God damned hotel. But the money and power
the mafia can offer…” Alex shook his head, “it’s hard for some people to
resist. They just can’t see past it, even when their lives are at stake.”

“Was Anatoly’s life at stake?”

 
“No,” he said after a long pause. “But he knew he wanted out.
It was assumed that was why he got on so well with the new guy.”

“What new guy?”

“Daniil,” Alex answered, his
voice growing colder. “There’s some disagreement as to who originally
introduced Daniil to the Ignatovs, it was either Anatoly or Kenya--”

“Kenya?” I was going to have a
hard time remembering all these names.
 

 
“Like the country. It’s not an uncommon Russian name. It
means, innocent.”
 
Again, Alex fell
silent as his expression became distant.

“Sooo, Kenya-like-the-country,” I
pressed, “he liked Daniil too?”

“Yes, Daniil was capable, eager
and seemed to be ready and willing to take Anatoly’s place in the organization.
Again, Anatoly had already gotten a promise from Vadim that he would be allowed
to walk away. Daniil just made it a little easier for Vadim to keep that
promise.”

“The promise of freedom,” I said
for clarification.

“Yes,” Alex’s mouth curved into a
smile that could almost be construed as sarcastic.
 
His fingers drummed against the deep brown leather of the
armrest.

“So Anatoly found himself a
replacement, what’s the big deal?”

“Oh it wouldn’t have been a big
deal at all…if his replacement hadn’t been an undercover FBI agent.”

“Oh…Shit.”

“Yep, you pretty much summed the
situation up right there.
 
Oh shit.”

“But Anatoly didn’t know!” I
stammered. “He couldn’t have!”
And why couldn’t he have?
A little voice in my head asked. Anatoly
didn’t have the same visceral reaction that I had to the police, which was odd
because of the two of us he was the only one with a hardcore criminal past. Why
would someone who used to work for the Russian mafia feel comfortable talking
to the cops unless he already knew that he had some kind of pass…the kind of
pass you might get for helping the FBI get information?

“There are a lot of people in
the...organization, who don’t think he
did
know. It’s a matter for debate.”

 
“What about Kenya? You said he might have been the one to
introduce Daniil to the mafia. What does he have to say about all this?”

Alex shifted his weight so that
he was looking into the fire. “Kenya’s dead.”

“Oh.” I swallowed hard, “because
of the FBI agent?”

“In a way, yes.
 
Daniil went to Kenya’s house. There was
a gas leak that
coincidentally
led to an explosion at that very moment. It looked better for the mafia to lose
one of their own at the same time the agent lost his life. Not that it fooled
anyone but they weren’t able to make an arrest and there’s been no admission of
guilt, not even to the rest of us affiliated with the organization. It was
just…one of those things.”

For a few minutes we sat in
silence, listening to the wind’s fruitless attempts to push itself inside and
the fire crackle and flicker as it struggled to stay alive. I still had a lot
of questions but the enormity of what I had just been told…well it was going to
take me a bit to wrap my arms around it.
 
And there was still a lot about this that didn’t fit.

“Why are they being so…so Dr.
Evil about this?”

Alex raised his eyebrows, clearly
confused by the question.

“If they want Anatoly dead why
haven’t they just shot him? Why the elaborate ruse to get him to the
hotel?
 
Why not just keep it simple
instead of staging this…this James Bond parody.”

“Well for one thing, killing
Anatoly in the hotel
would
have been simple.
 
The hotel is tightly controlled by people they can trust—“

“You.”

“And a few others,” Alex
conceded. “That makes getting rid of the body and altering security tape
footage exceptionally easy. A drive by shooting in San Francisco would have been
messy. Messy crimes usually end with someone doing jail time.”

“How about a gas leak?”

Alex smiled humorlessly. “We
can’t have too many of those, can we? It might make the
just-an-accident
argument go from
unbelievable to prosecutable.”

“So that’s the only reason?”

“No.” Alex put his glass down and
leaned forward. “Anatoly is a cautious man.”

“You said that.”

“Cautious men take out insurance
policies.”

The evidence Anatoly was talking
about. The reason they had taken my computer. I knew, in the most general
sense, what Alex was talking about but letting on that I knew would mean
admitting to seeing Anatoly. So instead I threw my arms up in feigned
frustration. “You know I’m not wearing a wire so if we can manage to leave the
metaphors at the door that would be great.”

“He made copies of certain
records,” Alex explained. “Transactions of the Ignatov family.”

“Records that they don’t want the
Feds to see.”

 
“It would be bad if the Feds saw them.” He took a sip of his
drink again and if I didn’t know better I’d say he was hiding a smile. “It
would be worse,” he continued, “If certain…business partners saw them. That’s
the problem with criminal organizations, you have to do business with other
criminal organizations. And if you’re dishonest in your business dealings, as
criminals so frequently are, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble.”

Now I really was confused. What
organization on earth could intimidate the Russian mafia? Maybe another Russian
mafia group? After all, there had to be lots of Russian mafia crime families,
right? It wasn’t a chain like The Gap where there were lots of little stores
but only one corporate headquarters that called all the shots. It had to be
more like a franchise….a really dangerous messed up franchise. Like, worse than
7-11 and KFC combined.
  

“How do we know that Anatoly even
has any records? Even if he had them once he could have destroyed them ages
ago.”

“He wouldn’t do that
because—”

“Because he’s a cautious man.”

Alex smiled and tapped the side
of his nose with his index finger. “When he realized he might be in trouble he
let it be known that he
does
have those records and that he’s willing to use them.”

“He could be bluffing. This is
Vegas, after all.”

“You think?” Alex asked, with
what appeared to be legitimate curiosity. “In that case if the Ignatovs just
kill him—“

“Or maybe he’s holding a full
flush,” I added quickly.
 
“Hard to
tell.”

 
“It always is with a good poker player.
 
If he does have the evidence then the
question is where’s it stashed?”

“Beats me.”

Alex studied me. “When I met you
last night it was clear that you still cared about this guy. If you know where
this information is you should get it because in the not too distant future you
may need to trade it for his life.”

The mafia would do a trade? That
didn’t sound likely. I glanced up at the clock. I had been here for too long.
In a moment Mary Ann would call and when I didn’t answer she’d call the police.

“I gotta go.” I got to my feet
and put the MacBook back in its case.

“Look, things are sketchy right
now. You’re welcome to stay here.”

I laughed as I slung the carrying
case over my shoulder. “Yeah, um, I’m gonna pass. But really, thanks for the
offer.” I picked up my purse and walked out into the foyer where I immediately
spotted the bag with my clothes and my phones on the key table.
 

“You’ll be safe here.”

“Bye-bye Alex.” I collected the
rest of my things and walked briskly toward the door, my heels clinking against
the hardwood floor.

“Sophie, wait.

I turned. “What?”

“If I’m wrong about your wanting
to reconcile with Anatoly and you’re looking for someone to…distract you--”

“Fuck you.”

Alex smiled. “I was rather hoping
you would after I bought you Marc Jacobs.”

I held out the strap of my tank
top for his examination. “It’s
Marc
for Marc Jacobs. No one gets fucked for bridge-wear!” I
whirled around but as I opened the door he reached over and closed it again.
Keeping my eyes glued to the door, I growled, “I swear to God if you try to
lock me in here—”

“Take my jacket.”

I turned slightly to see that he
had taken off his blazer and was offering it to me.

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because otherwise you can see
your bra through your shirt.”

I thought about that for a moment
and then pulled out my dirty messed up red tank from the shopping bag and put
it over the tank I was already wearing.
 
“There, problem solved. Keep the jacket.”