Nod.
“Bet you don’t, if you’re asking,” he said, and his tone changed, the terrifying light-heartedness gone and what replaced it was somehow scarier. “The New Zealand Bratva did a number. He was a young kid, just a boy—fifteen?—and no one would come looking for him. He had no one.”
“They tattooed a noose on him, I know. What does that mean?”
“A noose?” The look of genuine surprise on Misha’s face sent chills down my spine. “What noose? He came back with ‘Good Boy’all capitals inked into his neck.”
The world stopped, and for a heartbeat, it stood still.
“Oh Vitali…” I whispered, the tears knocking.
* * *
About Russia:
kozel– equivalent of ‘asshole,’ but literally ‘goat’
vinegret– traditional beet salad
14
Sergei
“These aren’t the right numbers, Viktor. We have twenty three Ladas, the twenty fourth is agavnoMoskovic I can’t scrap because it’s rusted through, but Bolshinko won’t haul it out of the shop. Don’t count it.” The speaker was a man with the feel of a melted wax candle about him. He was round in a way that perfectly filled the chair behind his office desk. The bags under his deep-set eyes had their own bags, and somehow, he had graying bangs despite being mostly bald.
“I have nine of them in the warehouse on Pravda street, all papered, but bringing Finnish imports through the city center won’t work, so we have to move the Ladas, or scrap them,” a lanky man with perfectly parted, plastic-looking hair said.
“Shame.” The man behind the desk rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I have a soft spot for those models. Nostalgic, you know? Did you talk to that doctor—the uh—the one with the wife in the licensing office? How much does he want for the lease?”
“The lease is not a problem, but Mikhail said the entrance isn’t wide enough. It’s an old building and we’d have to extendit by a meter, and there’s a curb.”
“Blyad.” The man whom I assumed to be Sergei pushed a pair of glasses up his nose and scowled at me. “I apologize, didn’t realize we had ladies present. Misha, what’s the timeline on an engineer if we move forward with that one?”
“Ehh,” Misha shrugged, “March, probably. Just for the assessment.”
“Right. And you must be Katya Petrovna.” He stood (without taking the chair with him, impressively) and walked around the desk, extending a hand. “I’m Sergei Stepanich. Thank you for making time for me today. I understand it’s not very convenient, being New Year’s Day and all. As they say, business doesn’t stop moving.”
“Nice to meet you?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but this was far from what I expected. Finding out Vitali wasn’t a warehouse manager directly contradicted the stacks of paperwork on his boss’s desk.
“I won’t keep you all day. I heard you had a long night and probably want to get some rest. Does no good to start out the year on a bad foot. Please, sit.”
The three of us took a seat around the desk, and who I assumed to be the accountant gathered his papers and settled on a low couch on the other side of the room, eyeing the numbers.
“Katya,” Sergei began, “I was surprised to hear your name come up because I’d never heard it before, but it sounded to me like you’ve known Vitali Konstantinov for a while now. How long has it been?”
“Since August… well, September, really,” I said. The circumstances of our first meeting didn’t quite fit the criteria.
Sergei turned to the man beside me. “Ah. Misha, how long has Vitali known Katya?”
“A bit longer,” Misha said, grinning. “Longer than he knew Vera.”
Who was Vera…
“I suppose that makes sense, it was around that time—to my surprise—he told me‘no, I can’t go to Latvia, I have a date.’” Sergei steepled his hands. “See, I thought he was joking. When I found out he wasn’t, I told him to find a bitch in Latvia and stick his cock inside, because he was going whether he liked it or not. Even offered to give him some numbers for the clean ones. Of venereal and heroin. Not that it matters what they’re sticking in their veins as long as they’re not sticking it in their cunts.”
The lease is paid up. The accounts are balanced. Let me give you a number for a prostitute on heroin. Tighten up the budget for the next fiscal year.
Misha’s face twisted, but he eyed the pen and paper laid out by Sergei’s right hand.
