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“Other gangs beg to work with us. Beg to know our Russian tradecraft.”
“And we should be proud?”
Sophie wiped down the table, took a deep breath, and studied her cousin. Masha was drunk, and maybe Sophie could get a confession.
She picked up one of the cut-crystal glasses and dried it off with a dish towel. The glass was thick and heavy. The towel was pretty. She wiped the glass and gently, casually asked her cousin:
“Did you do it? Steal her patients’ information? For Mikhailov?”
Jorge Mikhailov was Masha and Sophie’s oldest uncle. He lived in Las Vegas, a brother-in-law to their fathers back home. Married to an aunt.
Masha looked up and blinked, but said nothing. Then she looked down at her magazine again,Town and Country. She turned a page and took a sip.
“Did you?” Sophie pressed again. But she already knew the answer, or thought she did. “Fine,” she said. “Don’t admit it. I already know. Nobody else could be so brutal. Murder an old man in his bed, so close to death. It had to be him.”
Mikhailov now had a hundred Russians working under him in Las Vegas. He was laundering cash, Sophie knew, for bigger, more powerful gang members, and running a ring called Girls Unlimited out of Reno. She knew he’d started to traffic drugs, too: cocaine from Mexico into Texas, then across the I-10 into Miami, and across the Atlantic and into Marseille, where the French paid a premium. And he was spreading out into LA.
Masha blinked slowly with bloodshot eyes.
“I wish I had thought of it. It was smart.”
Sophie turned and cleared the Chipotle wrappers and bowls.
Nikolai was watching TV in the living room, half asleep, and Sophie was sure he had overheard nothing. Fine. They were safe in the pool house for now. At least for one night.
“New Russia, but old poverty…” Masha rained the last of the Stoli into her lowball. “An old iron’s bargain: capitalism with no law… capitalism run by criminals. That’s Russia now.”
Sophie turned. What was Masha talking about? She always talked this crap when she drank.
“It’s no different here. The Hollywood people and Silicon Valley. They’re as cruel as Mikhailov. All that money in offshore accounts and thousands of people sleeping with rats on the sidewalks, under the bridges.”
“No,” Sophie said. “It’s not true. It’s not the same. They don’t murder. They don’t torture.”
“They do,” Masha said. “Think about it. All that money. They could help us, but they don’t; people like us, a bad day away from the street. What happened last year—all the poor people died. No one rich…” She closed the magazine and rose. Picked up the bottle.
“That’s not true,” Sophie said.
“What do you know? You know nothing. You only believe in a fantasy tale about some God. There’s no God! God won’t save you. He didn’t save Ivan. Only money.” She turned dramatically and smashed the bottle into the sink. Sophie jumped back and hid her face.
CHAPTER 14
MASHA, DRUNK, STUMBLED and fell. She reached to the counter, righted herself, lumbered down the hall into the bedroom, and slammed the door.
Nikolai looked up from the TV.
He glanced at his mother, and Sophie slowly shook her head. She whispered, “Jesus, help my cousin.” Then louder she said, “She’ll be better tomorrow. She’s just sad.” She went to pick up the shattered glass in the sink. Nikolai then appeared from behind. Sophie jumped.
“It’s only me.” He put a hand on his mother’s shoulder.
“I’ll help.”
“Be careful.”
They’d done this before. Masha would drink, and she loved nothing more than to smash a bottle into a bathtub, onto the street, or against a wall, and watch it shatter.
The house was now lit by a low kitchen lamp and the flicker of TV. The alarm was set, and Boris sat outside, in the dark, watching through a low window.
He watched as they picked the shards of glass from the sink and counter. Sophie placed them, some small and sharp, others larger with dull edges, into a brown paper grocery bag.
