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“Are you takingkrysha?”
“Not yet. Most of the territory is already portioned out. We’ll have to move in on someone else to take ground.”
Sabrina scowls, trying to understand the current system.
“There’s a High Table,” she says, “but the Bratva aren’t one group.”
I shake my head. “They never have been. There’s no centralized authority, no head of the snake you can lop off. The High Table represents a half-dozen of the biggest bosses in Moscow, but it’s a loose alliance, and loyalties change all the time. It’s supposed to prevent the outright warfare we had in the nineties.”
“Chaos is bad for business,” Sabrina says.
“That’s right. Moscow was madness then—every day it was car bombs, drive-by shootings, boss after boss gunned down and then buried in monumental tombs that would cost a hundred year’s wages for a normal Russian.”
“I want to see them,” Sabrina says.
“The tombs?”
“Yes.”
I laugh. “If you’re imagining white marble, think again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Russian gangsters aren’t exactly known for subtlety. The headstones are massive, glossy black, with life-size portraits of the dons. Sometimes with their favorite cars or their favorite women. Dripping in gold chains, drinking wine, and eating lobster.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not even exaggerating. Whatever you’re imaging, picture bigger, uglier, and tackier.”
Sabrina laughs, delighted at the picture in her head.
“What stopped the wars?” she asks. “The cops cracked down?”
“They tried under Yeltsin, without much success. Putin is smarter.”
“How so?”
“He turns a blind eye to the Bratva, as long as we remember that the Kremlin is the biggest gang in town. He’ll even contract us from time to time.”
“You work with the government?” Sabrina frowns.
“It’s not a matter of choice. To use a term you Gallos would recognize, they make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
Sabrina considers this, fiddling with the straw in her drink.
“So you’re saying of all the people you don’t fuck with in Russia, the politicians are at the top of the heap.”
“It’s the underworld and the overworld. And all the normal people caught in the middle.”
“So what’s your angle?” she asks, her eyes fixed keenly on my face. “Where do you intend to stake your claim?”
I shrug. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Vice is a booming industry, competition everywhere you look. To expand in any particular area risks conflict with those already present.”
I incline my head toward each table in turn, rattling off the names of gangsters and the territory they control.
“There’s the Chechens over there. They’ve got a new boss, Ismaal Elbrus.”
Sabrina eyes the fleshy figure in the center of the group.
