The Bookie (Chicago Bratva 6)

I love handling the money. In addition to the poker games, I run sports bets and general loan shark shit.

Ravil also gives microloans to Russian tenants in his building. Start-up loans for their businesses, shit like that. If they default, I don’t bust noses and break fingers. Maxim, Ravil and I go in to look at their businesses and make changes to bring them to profit. Do they have a choice in those changes? Fuck, no. We still own them. But we don’t use violence.

Does anyone try to screw Ravil over?

No. No one has yet, anyway. Everyone is usually so fucking grateful they would name their first born children after him.

This shit on the street isn’t my favorite thing. In the past, the danger and need to please Ravil would be enough to keep me from complaining, but the farther removed from the street we get, the less appeal it holds. Today, going out to score drugs and get info on sex-trafficking feels like a kick in the nuts.

It has something to do with Chelle Goldberg although I’m not sure what. I already knew she wouldn’t hang with a guy like me, even if she only knew my very best parts.

I guess this work feels like a confirmation of what she already believes about me, even though we’re only doing it as detective work to find Leon Poval. She thinks I’m a thug who has badly influenced her brother. Buying drugs on the street wouldn’t look good to her. It would confirm her belief that I’m not anyone whose life should dissect hers.

Oleg and I make a few visits before I get the name of a dealer who goes by Rattlesnake. I figure one snake name probably follows another. We meet him behind a gas station convenience store. He’s dressed in a leather vest and has a long, untrimmed beard. I’m guessing his organization is a motorcycle club. It’s obviously a very classy operation.

“I heard you work for Viper,” I drop casually as I hand over fifteen hundred dollars for twenty kilos of coke. It’s a waste of money because I will flush the shit. Ravil doesn’t allow any drugs into the Kremlin, not that I ever had a taste for it.

The guy has snake tattoos crawling up his neck onto the side of his face. He stares at me for a minute with a completely blank face then casually reaches for his pistol.

I force myself not to flinch. I’ve never had a death wish. Not like Dima in his reckless years when he wanted to die. But I don’t waste energy on fear either.

After getting shot this past summer though, it’s hard not to remember the fragility of this body. But I also learned its resilience. I know there’s no way Oleg will let me get shot again because he blamed himself for what went down last time. He’s close enough to this mudak that he could disarm and shoot him in the head before the guy could blink.

“You a cop?” the guy asks, pointing the gun at my head. His question significantly lowers my opinion of him. If that’s all he’s worried about, he has no idea how dangerous I really am to him and his organization.

“Not a cop,” I say smoothly. “I’m interested in some of your boss’ business dealings. I’d like to buy his other product.”

Rattlesnake looks at me unblinkingly for another minute, and I wonder if that’s where he gets his nickname. His stare is very snakelike. “Who are you?” he says at last.

“Nikolai Novikov.”

“You Russian?”

“Obviously.”

“Russian mafiya?”

I incline my head.

He splits a look between Oleg and me then puts his pistol away. “You want pussy?”

“We want to purchase. Not rent.” I keep the disgust from showing on my face.

“How many?”

I shrug my shoulders. “As many as you’re willing to part with.”

“You got a number?”

I pull out a card and hand it to him. It’s a simple one with just my name and a VPN number Dima set up that can’t be traced. My last name isn’t real either. I picked it when we joined the bratva and had to create new identities. I liked the ring of Novikov with my first name.

Dima thinks it’s utterly ridiculous to have business cards in this day and age with cell phones and digital data, but there’s a part of my job that involves schmoozing. I have to get people to bet with me and to come back again and again. Having a card to hand out comes in handy sometimes.

Rattlesnake takes my card and pockets it. “I’ll give it to the boss. I don’t know if he’s selling, but he might be.”

“Is he the...original owner?”

Rattlesnake pushes his lower lip out and shakes his head. “Nah. Some guy offloaded them a few months back. He dumped them real cheap, but they’re a pain in the ass.”