“Valter sent me. My name is Yuri.”
“Oh, yeah. It's that time again, isn't it? So who's that?” Ray tipped his chin in Will's direction.
“My lawyer.”
“Funny.” When Yuri did not laugh, Ray eyed them warily, trying to decide if he should be concerned. “Would you two mind stepping into the hallway for a minute? I'll get the money.”
“I'll stay here,” Yuri said, drawing himself up.
“Oh, what the fuck,” Ray said, “but would you at least send that guy out in the hallway?”
Yuri was content to allow Ray this small, face-saving concession. He nodded to Will, who exited.
The corridor was dimly illuminated by the lights from the main room. At the end of the hallway, a door opened and closed in a burst of fluorescent light. A tall stripper with big hair and a curvy figure was briefly silhouetted in the doorway, calling to mind the ideal of female beauty immortalized in chrome on mud flaps. Because her eyes were probably adjusting to the dark, Will was pretty sure that she couldn't see him.
The door slammed shut and the stripper approached, swaying a bit on her stiletto heels.
When she was a few feet away, he heard her sharp intake of breath. She had spotted him. Close up, she appeared younger than he had guessed, perhaps midtwenties. She was a big girl with color-treated red hair, heavy thighs, and large, silicone-enhanced breasts. She was wearing rhinestone pasties and a red thong. Her youth and outsized endowments probably made her a star in that mildewed corner of the entertainment industry.
“'Scuse me,” she said in a metallic Midwestern accent, turning sideways to get past Will.
“Sure,” Will said, backing up against the wall.
The stripper stepped past him with a flurry of clicking heels, like a skittish horse. Then the rhythm of her steps grew more irregular; the sideways motion was causing her to lose her balance. She tried to plant one heel, then the other, to right herself, but it was too late.
As the girl swayed woozily in front of him, her artificial breasts, with their pastied nipples thrust forward, looked like two eyes frozen in an expression of surprise. With one final, failed stab of her heel, she toppled toward him.
Instinctively (and Will would later question precisely which instincts were at work here), his hands flew up and he caught the stripper. For one long, strange moment, Will stood clutching the woman by the breasts, marveling at the superhuman firmness of the silicone creations. These were indeed world-conquering breasts, indisputable proof of American superiority in the field of plastics technologies.
Will's reverie was interrupted when the stripper regained her balance and brought her knee up into his groin with practiced precision. Will released her and began to slowly fold in on himself like a punctured balloon in the Macy's parade. Will had not experienced this kind of pain since he had collided at crotch level with a tennis net post while playing dodgeball as a second-grader. The pain was dull and nauseating, rolling through him like the pealing of a bell. He slid to the floor with his back to the wall, so that he might lie down for a while and remain very, very still.
The stripper looked down at him indifferently as he rolled on the floor, clutching his genitals, and then yelled, “Bobby!”
The blond bouncer came jogging heavily down the corridor. Will watched him advance, too immersed in his own suffering to apprehend the threat.
When Bobby reached them, already breathing heavily through his mouth, the stripper pointed accusingly at Will and said simply, “He grabbed my tits.”
“Okay, buddy,” Bobby said, grunting as he pulled Will up roughly. “Time to go.” Bobby slammed Will against the brick wall for emphasis. Will felt a sharp pain in his shoulder blade.
Taking a lesson from the stripper, Will brought his knee up into Bobby's groin. A second later, Bobby released his grip on Will's shirt, his attention elsewhere.
“Now you know how I feel,” Will said to Bobby as he crumpled to the floor.
The door to Ray's office opened and Yuri stepped into the hallway with another manila envelope in hand. To his amazement, Will was actually relieved to see him.
“Bobby,” Ray said. “What the fuck?”
“This guy . . . grabbed Amber's tits.” His voice didn't seem to have any breath behind it. “I was . . . just showing him out . . . and the fucker kneed me in the balls.”
“Bobby, didn't they say they were here to see me?”
“Well, yeah.” Bobby slowly picked himself up on one knee.
“He's with Yuri. And we're doing business with Yuri, aren't we? So you shouldn't have been putting your hands on him.”
“Sorry, Ray.” Bobby managed to stand up and glowered at Will.
“Don't apologize to me,” Ray said, gesturing at Will. “Say it to him.”
Bobby stared balefully at Will and muttered a wholly insincere, “Sorry.”
Yuri stuffed the envelope inside his leather jacket. “See you next month, Ray.”
Ray smiled dimly. “Regular as death and taxes.”
“C'mon, Will,” Yuri said. “No more titties for you.”
When they were back outside on Columbus Avenue, Yuri turned to Will, struggling to suppress a smile. “So you like the titties, Will?”
“She fellâ”
“No, no, you don't have to be embarrassed.”
“I'm notâ”
“Listen, Will. I've made my collections for tonight, so why don't we get a drink? Here,” Yuri said, pointing at a strip club next door, the Klassy Kat. “How's this? Plenty of titties here.”
They entered the strip club, which looked remarkably like the last one. Another dark room. Another brightly lit stage. Another boob job. Another dye job. Another pole. This time, however, the club's sound system was playing Soft Cell's “Tainted Love.” Apparently, the DJ had a sense of humor.
They claimed a table in the back of the room and ordered drinks, Yuri two Stolis on the rocks and Will an Amstel Light.
“So, Will, did you have fun tonight?”
“Not really, no.”
An almost-genuine look of hurt crossed Yuri's face. “I thought you said you wanted to see how the criminal element conducts its business.” Yuri made air quotes around the phrase
criminal element
.
“You know I never said that.”
“Look, I'm sorry you got roughed up back there, but you didn't have to grab that girl's titties . . .”
Will waited for Yuri to tire of his comedy routine.
Yuri pounded down his drinks and began searching for the waitress. Will watched the girl under the lights executing a complicated maneuver. She was supporting herself off the ground with her legs wrapped around the pole, arching her back as she leaned toward the audience. They could hear the amplified squeak of her thighs as they slid slightly down the pole, straining to support her weight.
The stripper was wearing a piece of heavy plastic jewelry around her ankle, which fell halfway down her calf when she was upside down.
“What's that thing she's wearing on her ankle?” Will asked.
“You don't recognize it? That's so the police can track her. She's under house arrest.”
“That is so depressing.”
“Hey, at least they turn it off during her work hours. She gets to earn a living.”
Will studied the stripper's glum expression with new understanding.
“Is Nikolai still doing his collections?” Will was afraid that Nikolai was going to join them later, but he didn't want to ask the question directly.
“How the fuck should I know?” Yuri said, his brow furrowing as he studied the dancer's unsuccessful efforts to gracefully extricate herself from her upside-down position. He added, conspiratorially, “You know, I don't know why everyone thinks Nikolai is such hot shit.”
“What do you mean?”
Two vodkas were set before them by a waitress. Yuri tossed his down immediately.
“Valter treats us as if Nikolai is the man and I am the sidekick. It is not fair. Not just. Sure, Nikolai had his grocery racket in Moscow, but consider this.” Yuri was half drunk and in a mood for sharing confidences, which made Will worry that he was going to hear something that he shouldn't.
Yuri thrust an index finger in the air. “First, Nikolai is Chechen. They have their own organized crime, which has nothing to do with
mafiya
. He is not a Russian. I am Russian!”
He raised a second finger. “Two. As you must have noticed, that unassimilated motherfucker doesn't even speak good English. How can you expect to do business in this country if you can't put two sentences together? Without me to act as his fucking UN interpreter, he wouldn't be able to get any of his ideas across.”
While using his other hand to signal the waitress for more drinks, he jabbed three fingers at Will. “Third, and I'm sure you have noticed this, as wellâNikolai is no great thinker. I am not saying that the man is simpleminded, but he has not had the benefit of my education. Sure, he is big, and that is good if you are busting balls and collecting the
dan
. But organized crime is a complex business these days. Do you think that Nikolai could have come up with the idea of insider trading? That was my idea. I will not always play second fiddle to Nikolai. Someday, they will see my value. Someday, I will become a
vor
.”
“A
vor
?” Will made a mental note that he might be able to use Yuri's grievances with Nikolai to divide the Russians if the opportunity presented itself.
“
Vor v zakonye
, it means a thief within the code, a godfather.”
“Sounds ambitious.”
“What is life without ambition, eh? Many steps up the ladder. Right now, I am at the bottom. If I do a good job on collections, then I'll become a
patsani
, a soldier. If I'm a good earner, I become an underboss, a
pakhan
, like Valter. Then, maybe, years from now, if I play my cards right, a
vor
.”
Will considered the fact that in all lines of work, including his own, being “a good earner” was usually paramount.
“I've already decided on my
klichki
.”
“Klichki?”
“Nickname! I've already told you that once. When you become a
vor
you go through a naming ceremony. You get to choose a new name for your new life.”
Will sipped his vodka.
“Aren't you going to ask me what my
klichki
will be?”
“Okay. What will it be?”
“The Dagger. See, I've already got the tattoo.” Yuri opened his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a long knife on his chest, the blood dripping from its tip rendered in bright red ink.
Because some response seemed to be expected, Will nodded appreciatively.
“Don't tell me you don't have ambitions,” Yuri said, his eyes still on the stripper.
“Yeah, sure. What's wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Yuri said, smiling triumphantly as if Will had just proven his point. “There is nothing wrong with that.” His gaze wandered drunkenly for a moment, and then he snapped back into focus, adding, “I'll bet there's somebody at your firm you fucking hate, somebody who's standing in the way of all that ambition of yours.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“I'm just trying to have a conversation with you. Me, I've got somebody standing in my way.”
Please don't tell me his name,
Will thought.
“His name is Gregor. Ever since Nikolai and I came around, he makes jokes at my expense. He never fucks with Nikolai, only me. I'd like to take that prick out, and maybe someday I will. But there are rules about these things. He would have to fuck up. And I would have to be in a position to do something.”
“In a law firm, we also have rules about those things,” Will said, thinking of the vote to fire Claire.
Now Yuri was staring gloomily at the stage, pondering his own troubles. Will watched Yuri eyeing the stripper and felt a hard, bright hatred for the Russian. Yuri was as thoughtless and destructive as a virus. Will resolved that he would not allow this stupid goon to destroy the life that he had worked so hard to build. His life was not a consumer item.
“So what happens if you fuck up?” Will said, trying to push Yuri's buttons.
“I can't fuck up,” Yuri said. “That's why you should never doubt for a second that I will do whatever is necessary.”
Yuri downed another vodka and set the glass down on the round Formica table with a click.
“How do you get to work in the mornings? Yuri asked. “You ride the BART train?”
“Sometimesâit dependsâwhy?”
Yuri seemed about to say something, then decided against it. “No reason. Forget it.”
“Wait a second. Why did you ask me that? You had a reason.”
Yuri downed another vodka. “Look, I'm going to tell you something, something that could save your life, but you can't let Nikolai know that I told you.”
“Sure, I won't say anything to Nikolai.”
“We know that there's going to be a terrorist attack on the BART trains. Many people are going to die.”
“When is this going to happen?”
“Not right away. But soon.”
“How? A bomb?”
“That's all I'm going to tell you. Just drive to work, okay? Take the bus. But stay off the BART trains.”
“Are you and Nikolai behind the attack?”
“No, no, of course not! Not directly, anyway. We are businessmen, not fanatics. But we are in a position to know.”
“Why are you telling me this?”