Gift From The Bad Boy

“So, Ben, tell me: what is it that brings you here today?” Ivan’s eyes were glinting an icy blue. He picked up a switchblade knife from his desktop, flicked it open, and began shaving down his fingernails.

I glanced down at my hands in my lap before clearing my throat and launching into the spiel we’d rehearsed. “We’ve been giving this some thought, Ivan,” I began. “We think that there’s been, let’s say, a little bit of unrest in the city as of late. Nothing major, nothing to be too worried about, but definitely some tremors here and there. Little upstarts. Guys edging in on each other’s turf. Some illicit business that no one in charge ever condoned.”

The things I was saying were true, to a certain extent. There’d been a prostitution ring shipping in hookers from Eastern Europe that got some unpleasant attention from the local PD with the full backing of the feds. I looked down on that as much as the next man, but the fact of the matter was that any extra focus on organized crime put a crosshair on the back of me and the men in my MC. We preferred to stay under the radar rather than star on the six o’clock news.

Along with the heavily publicized bust of that particular organization, there’d been the usual spate of shootings, stabbings, and bodies left to hang as some of the lower level gangs duked it out for control of one or two city blocks.

Taken altogether, it was nothing too far out of the norm, but Jay and I had agreed that this was the best angle to drum up. We had one goal in mind for this meeting, and it depended on us convincing Ivan that he needed us as much as we needed him.

“Sure, sure.” He nodded. “And?”

“It makes us a little, oh, I don’t know…uncomfortable,” I continued. “I like the status quo. I don’t want to see it changing anytime soon.”

Ivan blinked and waited for me to go on.

“The real straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was this theft. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. For some reason, it was kept very quiet.”

His eyebrows shot up. I had his attention, but this was the tricky part, the one most liable to get us in a hot, heaping load of trouble if we triggered the wrong reaction. “Do tell,” he said.

“Someone—no one knows who—stole an awful lot of money from the Wild Kings.”

“James Sanders’ crew.”

“Those’re the guys.”

“Not the most, eh, friendly of men is James?”

“He is the farthest thing from it. Devil spawn, if you ask me, but you didn’t, so I won’t say that.”

Ivan didn’t laugh this time. “Ben, what does this have to do with you and me?”

I steeled my gaze. “Given the unpleasant history between James and myself, we’ve got a suspicion that he thinks we’re the ones responsible for robbing him blind. That, combined with all the other troubling things going on in every damn corner of this city, got us to thinking we could do with an ally right about now. Someone to watch our back while we watch theirs. Call it a defense pact, if you’d like.”

Ivan eyed me for a long few seconds, then went back to carving off the ends of his fingernails. I had no choice other than to sit and wait. He was the kind of man to take his time before speaking. And when he said things, he said them once only. Every word was final.

Finally, he set the knife down, steepled his fingers, and looked at me again. “I like you, Ben,” he said. “Hell, my wife likes you, too. When we have done business before, it has gone very well for both of us, and what is there not to like about making money?”

My heart sank. I knew this couldn’t be headed in a good direction.

He wagged a finger sadly in the air between us. “But I cannot say yes to this right now. Perhaps even you were the one to take James’s money. I have no way of knowing, and I will not insult you by asking. What I do know is that there is much bad blood between James’s club and your own. That was very bad business that took place those few years ago, very bad, indeed. I do not like to be mixed up in such things when I have no skin of my own in the game, you know? I am very sorry, friend, but I cannot help you.”

The teenager returned with a bottle of vodka and two glass tumblers in hand, looking like he’d just run up a dozen flights of stairs.

“Here you are, Ivan,” he mumbled as he set the items down in front of his boss.

“Ach!” Ivan said. He smacked the boy in the back of the head and the kid recoiled, then stood there shame-faced. “What good are you? Taking hours and hours just to find the goddamn drinks? Get the hell out of this room. I don’t want to look at you.” He turned to me and gave me an apologetic shrug of the shoulders. “My apologies, Ben. My son is often useless. You have no children of your own, no?”