“A legitimate business run by a known crime lord,” she says, a little smirk on her face. “Tell me, how does someone like you end up working for Roman Orlov?”
I swallow hard. “I was there before he was,” I tell her. “Not the other way around.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
And there it is. I’ll bet she never even called an attorney for me. This is her way in to setting me up. We stare at one another for a few seconds, then she sighs.
“Let me be completely transparent here. Your father was a police officer for more than twenty years before he was killed during a traffic stop. With your mother having died of cancer some years before, that left you an orphan at fifteen. Still, you put yourself through school and managed to get good work as a business associate through Breck and Myers restaurants. You worked at one of their establishments? Schecky’s. Right?”
I suddenly feel very cold. The amount of information she has on me is staggering.
“Your boyfriend at the time,” she goes on, “causes you to be fired. In this economy, you probably had a hard time finding work, so you took the one job that would have you, where you’ve been manager ever since.”
“How… ?” I stop myself. I don’t think I really want to know how she knows all that. “What do you want from me? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
She frowns and shrugs nonchalantly. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m thinking we’ve at least got a conspiracy charge. That’s legalese for being guilty by association.”
“And yet, you haven’t charged me,” I say.
“Doesn’t mean we won’t,” she says, her smirk disappearing. “All we want is a little cooperation from you.”
“I already told you. I don’t know anything. I’ve got nothing to do?—”
“Did you know that search warrants can include financial records?” she says, crossing her legs. “Orlov certainly has a lot of men with rap sheets meandering around the club. Some of them appear to be working in an unofficial security manner. Wonder how much that costs?”
Nausea rises within me to the point where I can taste the bile at the back of my throat. Those damned ‘security’ payments. Shit, shit,shit.
“Listen,” I say finally, “I really don’t know anything that would help you. I… I asked Roman to leave me and the club out of anyof his… activities. He’s kept his word on that. There’s nothing going on at the club.”
She nods her head slowly. “Well, even if that’s true, I doubt it’ll be that way forever. You should keep an eye on him for us. Maybe if you see something that we can use, we might look the other way on any conspiracy charges that may come up when we take him in.”
I’m going to be sick. I know well enough what happens to people who snitch on big crime bosses. They end up in the bottom of a river or in pieces across different landfills.
“You want me to be a rat,” I say.
“That’s an ugly word.”
“But that’s what you want. You want me to rat on Roman Orlov.”
She uncrosses her legs and leans forward on the table, clasping her hands together like a school counselor. “All I want is for you to keep your eyes open and then report back to me with anything that you find out.”
Semantics. Bullshit. I look away from her as I try to keep the bile down.
“You’re in the prime position for it,” she goes on. “As manager of the club, you can access all his financial documents, be in on any meetings he might have.” She looks me up and down. “Maybe if you play your cards right, you can get close enough to him to give us more than just what’s at the club.” Her eyes look me up and down briefly. “You’re fairly young. What are you, about twenty-five or thirty? These older Bratva younger women. And it could be nice for you in the meantime. There are benefits to beinga boss’s girlfriend. I understand the older ones know their way around a bedroom.”
I scoff. “Great. Whore myself out in the name of justice.”
“At least you’d be on the right side of all this,” she answers. “I think your father would approve, personally. You’ve got to be conflicted in all this. A cop’s daughter working for a criminal. About to be put in jail herself over it. At least this way, you don’t smear his memory.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. I feel like all the air is being sucked out of the room.
“I’ll give you a little more time to think it through while I look for your lawyer. There should be somebody available now, I think.”
She gets up and with that same strange motherly smile, she leaves me alone again.
“Given your situation,”he says, “it’s the right call. You do not want to get mixed up with these guys.”
My attorney has finally arrived and we’ve been left alone to talk it over. It took Rastelli an hour to ‘find’ him. I suspect he was probably standing outside the whole time, drinking coffee and waiting for his cue to come in.
