James Baldwin - Blood Hound

Vassily looked back and forth, mouth twitched to one side. “So uh… is Nic in his office?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ slackass.” Petro did not look at me. “Boozing it up before he goes on the floor.”

I didn’t look away from him; instead, I made a point of staring at the side of Petro’s face, counting the pulse that jerked rapidly in his throat.

“Well, I better go in and pay a visit before shit hits the fan here.” Uncertainly, Vassily glanced back to me. “Meet up afterwards?”

“Yes.” I pulled my gloves up higher on my wrists, tight enough that they creaked around my fingers. I bowed from the neck. “Excuse me.”

Maxy looked like he was about to say something smart, but seemed to think better of it. I swept out of the room, and once I was alone, ground my teeth until they groaned. Dammit, Vassily. He hadn’t meant to, but he had just cost me a lot of face. And what the hell did Nic think he was playing at, defying Lev’s orders? Gossiping with Maxy and Petro, of all people.

Resignedly, I ate another peppermint. To get to the offices, I had to walk out past the dressing rooms, cut behind the main stage, and get to the stairwell. I headed backstage around the end of the stripper’s catwalk and was greeted by the sound of pandemonium from beyond the heavy velvet drapes. The lights beyond were flashing, lighting up the star dancers who rested their feet while they waited on their sets. Quite suddenly, I felt my mood lift. Perched on one of the stage boxes in her corset and feather-tufted heels was the Woman. Crina was smoking a black clove cigarette in a long holder, wrist cocked back, her eyes closed. She was tiny and curvaceous, with a hard-planed, boxy little face on a long slender neck. Her hair was very dark, her skin only a few shades deeper than cream. Had she been blonde, we could have passed as brother and sister.

“You look tired.” Speaking from down below the back of the stage, I had to raise my voice so it was loud enough for her to hear me over the music.

Crina opened her eyes to look down, her expression softening with relief. Like me, she spoke Ukrainian, but her accent was interesting: part Balkans, part Germany. “Alexi, thank God. Please tell me you’re bouncing tonight.”

“Unfortunately not. I’m only here for a quick meeting.” I looked towards the exit door and ran my tongue over my teeth. Lev wouldn’t miss me for five more minutes.

Crina smiled tiredly as I pushed myself up to sit on the edge of the stage, resting by her ankle. I stayed a modest distance from her bare leg.

“ Drecksnest .” [15] ‘Asshole of the universe’. A poetically German way of saying ‘everything is shit’. She chuffed, leaning back on her hands. “It’s a bad crowd. End of exams, so all the frat boys are out, dicks in hand. My ass is going to look like a glazed donut by the end of tonight.”

Solemnly, I lay my hand over my heart and bowed my head. “I pray their wallets are well stocked and their seminal aim is poor.”

She laughed, rocking back on her rump. Crina was a magnificent person, everything I knew I should be attracted to in a woman: clever, bookish, well-educated. Because no attraction existed beyond a meeting of minds, we had become friends, and we played beard for one another. Crina was near the end of a degree in English language and comparative linguistics, and she appreciated being able to tell people like Petro that she was not available. I had only tried to date seriously once in my life and had no desire to make a second attempt. It had been a humiliating disaster.

Crina leaned forward towards me, her eyes glittering with conspiracy. “So. Have you heard that Jung’s family is finally releasing Das Rote Buch ? Not that I’m hinting or anything, but the library at my college might have pre-ordered a first print copy..?”

My breath caught. The Red Book: C.G. Jung’s handwritten masterpiece, rumored to be a dialog between the psychologist and his own soul, and supposedly one of the greatest Occult tomes ever written. I straightened, and my mood lifted a little more. “Have they, now? And how much is this book worth, exactly?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.” Crina’s hand flew up in excitement, hovering near her face. “Can you believe it?”

“I certainly can,” I replied. Twenty thousand or twenty million: it was a priceless Occult text written by one of the most insightful psychonauts in modern history.

Crina bit her lip, swinging her ankles out over the edge of the stage box. “Well, I could, in theory, sneak it out when it comes in… and could, in theory, share it with a certain gentleman, if he’s interested?”

I nodded slowly, feigning consideration, and rolled the mint around my mouth. It took the edge off the nausea brewing in the pit of my gut. “I think that would be quite acceptable. And if the lady wished to bring it to the gentleman’s home…?”

Crina blossomed like a magnolia before my eyes, her face suffused with pleasure. “Let’s make it a date. How about Tuesday?”

I snorted. Her choice of words made something deep inside my chest tense warily, but I was mostly grateful. “Me? Date? Come now.”

“You know what I mean. We both know the date’s with Das Rote Buch .” She flashed me a little crooked smile. “Dirty bibliophile.”

“No date,” I replied. “And you have a deal.”

She reached down to me, fingers poised like a dancer’s. I clasped Crina’s small hand and shook it carefully. She giggled, and I wasn’t certain if she was making sport of me, if I’d done something inappropriate, or if she was just pleased.

“By the way, my friend Vassily was released from prison today,” I said. “He is sleeping over and will still be in the house by next Monday, I assume. So, perhaps you could…”

“I will be a perfect stuntwoman.” Crina laid a delicate hand across her heart. “Cooing and makeup and everything. Pat my thigh a couple of times and give me a glass of wine in front of him. Don’t worry about a thing.”

We shook on that, too. She had literally been a lifesaver. A man without a woman on each arm is greatly suspect in our world, and if there was one thing that would seal my outcast status with the rank and file, it was my distinct lack of activity with the opposite sex. There were some things about me none of the men needed to know.

My skin vibrated in the relative silence of the elevator on the way upstairs, humming against my clothes. Yes, the dream bothered me. Nacari bothered me. Lev’s growing reliance on my services bothered me. He was competent, but not popular. I was similarly competent and unpopular, and he was reeling me in, perhaps trying to win me over to his inner circle. The problem, however, is that unpopularity in the underworld is often terminal for more than one’s career.

The Sirens VIP Lounge was a whole other world compared to the pigpen below. The entry hall had grayish-purple carpet so deep it scrunched under my shoes. They kept the music low and rhythmic, the perfume expensive, and the decorations tasteful. I heard the raucous laughter of a small party of drunk men from one parlor, and dimly, the panting cries of a woman from behind another closed door. The double doors at the end of the hall guarded the manager’s office, which had been Sergei’s lair, then Rodion’s, and which was now sparingly used by Lev. Our Avtoritet was not a strip club sort of person: he spent most of his time in Manhattan overseeing his legal firm, another important subsidiary which kept the money flowing, our men out of prison, and the words “Russian Mafia” out of the press.

Before I had a chance to touch the intercom box outside Lev’s office, the lock clicked. I let myself in, and a hush fell around my ears. Always cool, the room was decorated entirely in muted tones of aquamarine, turquoise, and pearl. A copy of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus took up most of the opposite wall. Lev’s desk was glass-topped, like most of the furnishings. Lev was already standing, the fingers of one hand elegantly splayed over his desktop. He looked up from them, smiling. He looked like the kind of guy you’d find doing your taxes, not managing the second-largest gun-and drug-running operation in New York. “Good evening, Alexi. Did Nicolai brief you for the meeting?”