Beyond Suspicion

54

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It was almost midnight, and Yuri was ready to make a move. He and Vladimir had spent the last six hours in their favorite hotel on the Atlantic City boardwalk. The Trump Taj Mahal was renowned for its understated elegance-but only if you were a Russian mobster. To anyone else, it was flash and glitz on steroids. Fifty-one stories, twelve hundred rooms, and restaurant seating for three thousand diners, all complemented by such subtle architectural details as seventy Arabian-style rooftop minarets and no fewer than seven two-ton elephants carved in stone. The chandeliers alone were worth fourteen million dollars, and each of the big ones in the casino glittered with almost a quarter million pieces of crystal. Marble was everywhere-hallways, lobbies, bathrooms, even the shoe-shine stands. Miles of tile work had actually exhausted the entire two-year output of Italy’s famous Carrera quarries, Michelangelo’s marble of choice for his greatest works of art. There was even a ten-thousand-dollar-a-night suite that bore Michelangelo’s name. Fitting. It was impossible to walk through this place without wondering what Mich would think.

“Let’s go,” said Yuri.

“What’s your hurry?”

“Enough fun and games. It’s time we got what we came for.”

Vladimir grumbled, but he didn’t argue. Blackjack was considered a house game, and for the past two hours he’d conducted himself as the perfect house guest. He was down almost twenty grand at the high-limit table. He gathered up his few remaining chips and stuffed them into the pockets of his silk suit. Then he ordered another drink for the woman seated beside him, a statuesque redhead with globes for breasts and a tear-shaped diamond dripping into her cleavage.

“I’ll be back,” he said with a wink.

“I’ll be waiting.”

Yuri grabbed his elbow and started him toward the exit. They were in the Baccarat pit, a special, velvet-roped area in the casino where the stakes were high and drop-dead-gorgeous women sidled up to lonely men with money in their pockets and Viagra in their veins. No one seemed to care that most of the babes were planted by the hotel to encourage foolish wagering.

“You think she’s a prostitute?” asked Vladimir.

Yuri rolled his eyes and kept walking, making sure that Vladimir stayed right with him. He made a strategic decision to avoid the temptation of the craps tables by leading him through Scheherazade restaurant. It overlooked the Baccarat pit, making it one of the few five-star restaurants in the world where you could eat lunch and lose your lunch money at the same time.

“These guys aren’t the kind of people you keep waiting,” said Yuri.

“We’re not late.”

“Not being late ain’t good enough. You get there early and wait. It shows respect.”

“Sorry. Didn’t know.”

They hurried down the long corridor and ducked into one of the tower elevators just past the Kids’ Fun Center. An elderly couple tried to get on behind them, but Yuri kept them at bay.

“All full,” he said as he pressed the close door button. He punched forty-four, and the elevator began its ascent, the two of them admiring their reflections in the chrome door. Then Yuri turned and straightened Vladimir’s tie.

“Just do what I say from here on out, all right? This meeting is too important to fuck up.”

“What should I say?”

“Just answer the questions asked. That’s all.”

Vladimir rearranged his tie, making it crooked again. “I look okay?”

Yuri gave him a friendly slap on the cheek. “Like a million bucks.”

The elevator doors opened and Yuri led the way out. Vladimir seemed almost giddy as they walked briskly down the hallway.

“Bratsky Krug,” said Vladimir. “I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” said Yuri.

“I laid eyes on one of these guys only once before. I ever tell you that story?”

“Yes.” Only a thousand times, the guy who plucked him out of the Kamikaze Club in Moscow, the bare-knuckled fights to the death. Bratsky Krug was Russian for “circle of brothers.” It was the ruling council of the vory, a powerful alliance of Russian mobsters. It didn’t have the power or structure of the Italian Cosa Nostra, but it had been known to settle inter-gang disputes. Yuri hadn’t promised his friend that the council would settle the viatical disagreement between Miami and Brighton Beach. For someone as starstruck as Vladimir, he knew, the prospect of meeting one of these “brothers” was reason enough to make the trip.

The corridor was quiet. Door after door, the whole wing seemed to be asleep. Most of the rooms were under renovation and unoccupied, which was precisely the reason Yuri had chosen the forty-fourth floor for the meeting. He stopped at 4418 and inserted the passkey.

“You don’t knock?” said Vladimir.

“You expect them to pay for the room? Like I said, we get here early, they come to us. We’re the ones who wait.”

He pushed open the door, then stepped aside, allowing Vladimir to enter first. It was dark inside, the entranceway lit only by the sconces in the hallway. Vladimir took a half-dozen steps forward and stopped. Yuri was right behind him. The door closed, and the room went black.

“How about some lights?”

Yuri didn’t answer.

“Yuri?”

With a click of a lamp switch on the other side of the room, bright white light assaulted his eyes. Vladimir reached for his gun.

“Don’t,” said Yuri as he pressed the muzzle of his silencer against the back of Vladimir’s head.

Vladimir froze, then chuckled nervously. “What’s-what’s going on, man?”

Yuri watched the expression on Vladimir’s face as a man stepped out from the shadows. It was Leonid, the Brighton Beach mobster whom Vladimir had thrown out of his strip club.

“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Vladimir.

Two more thugs stepped into the light. Instinctively, Vladimir went for his gun again, but Yuri pressed the pistol more firmly into his skull.

“I wouldn’t,” said Yuri.

Vladimir lowered his arm to his side. All color seemed to drain from his face as the reality of the setup sank in.

“Yuri, what’s this all about?”

“Leonid told me about the meeting he and his banker from Cyprus had with you at Bare-ly Eighteen. Seems you were extremely rude.”

Vladimir squinted into the spotlight. “They canceled our contract for no good reason. We skimmed a little blood, used a virus they didn’t like. What’s the big deal? You don’t walk out on a deal over little shit like that.”

“I hear different. Seems the straw that broke the camel’s back was the Jessie Merrill hit.”

“We didn’t have anything to do with Jessie Merrill’s death.”

“No,” said Yuri. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. You, I’m not so sure of.”

“You were in charge of the hits, Yuri. Not me.”

A kick to the left kidney sent Vladimir to his knees. “You keep pushing it on me, don’t you? Jessie Merrill was the job of an amateur. You think I’m an amateur?” he said, giving him another kick.

Vladimir doubled over in the spotlight, his face twisted with pain. “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, you’re not an amateur.”

“That’s right. You’re the only amateur in this bunch, Vladimir. Piece of dirt from the Kamikaze Club.”

“I didn’t do Jessie Merrill.”

Yuri walked beyond the glow of the spotlight, faced Vladimir head-on, and then kicked him once more, this time in the groin. Vladimir cried out and fell face-down.

Yuri said, “You’re not thinking the way Brighton Beach thinks. If you didn’t hit Jessie Merrill, that means I did.”

Vladimir struggled for his breath. “That’s not… what I’m saying.”

“But that’s what they’re saying, asshole. If I don’t get the truth out of you, they pin it on me. Isn’t that right, Leonid?”

“That’s my orders,” Leonid said flatly. “If I don’t hear a confession out of Vladimir’s own mouth, both him and Yuri is in the shithouse.”

Vladimir tried to get up, but made it only to one knee. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. “I don’t confess to things I don’t do.”

Yuri grabbed him by the throat and pulled him up, eye-to-eye. “It was a perfect plan. AIDS patients die every day. All we had to do was find the right virus, and we were clear to call home as many viatical settlements as we wanted, no one the wiser. But Jessie Merrill was a healthy broad. You kill her and it’s all over the newspapers that she had a viatical settlement.”

“I totally agree with you. I would have to be an idiot to kill her.”

“A fucking idiot, Vladimir. Because only a fucking idiot would be stupid enough to kill her and then make it look like suicide. The insurance company doesn’t pay if she killed herself!”

“I know that. I swear, it wasn’t me.”

Yuri pressed the gun to the bottom of his chin, aiming straight for the brain.

“It wasn’t you or me!” said Vladimir. “If we did it, it would have looked like an accident for sure.”

“You’re lying!”

“No, I swear. When we found out she scammed us, all I did was scare her. I didn’t kill her.”

“Then who did?”

“I think it’s them,” Vladimir said, his voice cracking. “Brighton Beach hit her, and now they’re blaming us just as an excuse to get out of their deal.”

Leonid stepped forward, his eyes bulging as if he were about to explode. “You see what I’m saying, Yuri? It’s the same attitude I got at his club. The man’s rude.”

“I’ll handle this.” Yuri got right in his face and said, “So, you think Leonid is stupid enough to make Jessie’s death look like suicide?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I definitely heard you say that. You hear him say that, Leonid?”

“That’s the way I heard it. Fucking rude, I tell you.”

“If they’re so stupid, maybe I should show these boys in Brighton Beach what an accident looks like? What do you think of that, Vladimir?”

Vladimir blinked rapidly, as if on the verge of tears. “Yuri, please. I got kids.”

Yuri pushed him to his knees, then stepped away from the spotlight and into the darkness. He grabbed a two-foot pipe from the corner, then returned to Vladimir, tapping the pipe against his palm to the rhythm of each footfall.

Vladimir lowered his head.

Yuri stepped past him. Then he whirled on one foot, swung his arm back toward Vladimir, and slammed the pipe across the bridge of his nose. Vladimir screamed and fell over backward, blood gushing from his smashed nostrils.

“Ouch,” said Yuri, mocking him. “Did you see how hard that poor slob’s face hit the steering wheel?”

“Must have been going at least thirty miles an hour,” said Leonid.

Yuri stepped closer, took a good look at Vladimir’s bloodied face. In a blur of a motion he unloaded another hit, this time to Vladimir’s jaw. It was a quick one-two, the deep thud of pipe followed by the crisp cracking of bone.

“Looks more like fifty miles an hour to me,” said Yuri. Then he looked around the room, the wheels turning in his head. “You know, he wasn’t wearing his seat belt, either. Who’s got a fucking tire iron?”

“That’s enough,” said Leonid. “I want him to taste that river water.”

“Fine by me,” said Yuri.

Leonid gave a quick nod, and on command the two thugs lifted Vladimir from the floor. He was unconscious and bleeding on them, but they didn’t seem to mind the occupational hazard. They dragged him across the room to a room-service cart. Vladimir folded in half quite easily, but he was still too big to fit inside the lower food-warming compartment. Yuri walked over with the pipe, wedged it against the cart for leverage, and jerked Vladimir’s left shoulder in such a way that his left elbow could touch his right ear.

“Perfect,” said Yuri as he closed up the cart with Vladimir inside.

Leonid opened the door, and his men started out with the cart.

“Hey, idiots,” said Yuri. “Jackets, please.”

They stopped and saw that Vladimir’s blood was on their sleeves. They slipped them off and stuffed them into the cart with the body.

“Much better,” said Yuri.

They wheeled the cart into the hallway. The door closed, and Vladimir was gone.

Yuri tossed the bloody pipe in the corner. “We square now?”

“I never did hear Vladimir’s confession,” said Leonid.

“I just bashed my partner’s face in, and Brighton Beach still wants to hold Jessie Merrill against me?”

“Don’t worry. We’re fine on that score. I was just thinking that you worked him over pretty good, and he still didn’t admit it. He swears all he did is scare her.”

“So?”

“So, maybe he didn’t hit Jessie Merrill.”

“Which means what? Our viatical business is still on?”

“Sorry, Yuri. Too much heat around that. It’s over.”

“Damn it. Now whose fault is that?”

“Not mine, not yours. Could be nobody’s fault.”

“It’s always somebody’s fault. Someone needs to take the blame.”

Leonid shrugged. “You want to blame someone, blame whoever it was who killed Jessie Merrill.”

Yuri smiled thinly, as if it were a revelation. “You’re right. That’s exactly who’s to blame.”

“I’m always right. Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.”

They started toward the door, then Yuri said, “Hey, if you think Vladimir wasn’t behind the Merrill hit after all, you want to call back your men?”

He thought for a second. “Nah. I still say he’s rude.”

“King of the Kamikaze Club. No fucking class.”

They shared a little laugh, then Leonid held the door open as Yuri went back and switched off the spotlight.