If the articles about Kladivo’s reach into the very bottom levels of street crime are correct, I have no doubt that a thousand links up the food chain from Emil and Libor, I’ll find him. My little stunt was just my way of knocking on Kladivo’s door.
Outside, it’s still Prague, but more suburban here. After just ten minutes, we pull off the street and into the back service entrance of a structure that stands out among the low apartment buildings and shops in the neighborhood. It’s a grand mansion abutting the river, three stories of gray stone that looks well over a hundred years old. There’s a distinctly Austro-Hungarian-Empire vibe to the place, and we stop in front of a plain door that might once have been used by the servants. Emil and Libor hustle me up the stairs into a gleaming commercial kitchen.
The waitstaff, in bow ties and vests, very pointedly refuse to acknowledge our presence, as if there were nothing remarkable about two men in Puma track suits and a woman with a nearly bald head passing through their kitchen. Emil throws open the door and leads me into the next room.
I’ve never been in a casino and have only ever seen them in movies. But my impression that they were noisy places filled with flashing lights and old people wearing fanny packs is evidently wrong. This is a James Bond–style casino with crystal chandeliers, men in jackets and ties, women in dresses. I’ve seen no sign advertising this place out in the front of the mansion, so apparently people—the right people—just know of its existence. I hear laughing, the clacking of chips, the shuffling of cards, the clickety-click-click of the roulette wheel.
We linger outside the door for a moment like awkward party crashers, enduring pinched-nose looks from patrons who glance over at us from their seats. A barrel-chested man with thinning dark hair heads toward us quickly. The combination of his tuxedo and comical run-walk makes him look like a penguin in a hurry. With a hiss, he sends us all back into the kitchen.
He and Emil exchange sharp words in Czech as he corrals us down a hallway and through the door of a decidedly less fancy room. There are others here, five or six guys, variations on the tracksuited-thug theme, who mill around as if this room were their clubhouse. They hang out on beat-up leather couches and barstools too ratty to keep out on the casino floor.
The man in the tuxedo circles around an old wooden desk stacked with folders and ashtrays and coffee cups and drops into a chair that groans beneath his weight.
He and Emil argue heatedly in very fast Czech. The drift of it seems to be that the man in the tuxedo is furious with Emil for bringing me here, while Emil is trying to explain. The other guys in the room look on, curious but staying out of it.
The boss snaps his fingers twice and points to me. “Your name,” he says in English.
“Sofia,” I say.
“I am Miroslav Beran, but everyone calls me ‘the Boss.’ Do you know why they call me the Boss, Sofia?”
“Because you’re the boss?”
“Just so!” he says with the false enthusiasm of the chronically put-upon. “Tell me, please. Where are you from? Armenia? You a Gypsy?”
“Russian.”
“My young colleague here, Emil, says you were conducting a gambling operation in Praha 1,” he says wearily. “Sofistikovany is the word he used to call your game. Sophisticated. All gambling in Praha 1 is Emil’s business. It is his thing. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say.
“For this crime, and also for smashing his head to the street, Emil believes you should be shot,” Beran the Boss says. “Emil must come to me before shooting anyone, you see. It’s a new rule we have because of what happened last time. Isn’t that right, Emil?”
Emil says something in protest, but the Boss raises a finger and Emil goes quiet.
The chair squeaks as the Boss rises and circles back to me, arms folded over his chest. “We are not unreasonable men, Sofia. Thieves and Gypsy pickpockets we tolerate—everyone must make a living. But gambling operations in Praha are in direct competition to our interests. Do you know what is the punishment for running something in direct competition?”
“No.”
The Boss leans in, touches my face gently, and turns my head as if appraising a show dog. “First time, off comes a finger. That’s for the men. For the women, something else. Do you want details?”
I twist my head away. “It wasn’t gambling,” I say. “It was a con. A trick.”
“Emil says it was a game of cards.”
“It’s called three-card monte. It looks like a card game, but it’s not,” I say. “You can’t win. Not the way I play it.”
The Boss says something in Czech, and one of the tracksuits scrambles to retrieve a deck of cards from a desk drawer.
“Show,” the Boss says.
The attention of the room is piqued again, and the crew leans forward with curiosity as I remove the jack of clubs, the jack of spades, and the queen of hearts and bend them lengthwise. I instruct the Boss to follow the queen and start the shuffle along the edge of the desk, slowly at first, letting him easily follow the cards’ movements from position to position. Then I stop and give the Boss a nod.
“She is exactly here, of course,” the Boss says. As I turn the queen over, he gives a satisfied smile to the room, drinking in the laughter. He slaps me on the shoulder. “Maybe this can fool Emil, but not me.”
“Then bet something,” I say.
“Pardon, please?”
“If you’re so confident, bet something.”
A hand slaps a fat roll of euros fastened with a rubber band onto the desk. I follow the hand up the arm to see Emil at the end of it.
“I bet the girl,” Emil says to the Boss. “She wins, she walks away with my money—three thousand euros. I win, she belongs to me.”
The Boss smiles. “What does ‘belongs to you’ mean, Emil? You keep her as pet?”
Low whistles from Emil’s friends. I can hear them whispering excitedly behind me. The Boss seems amused with the prospect and scans the room to read the general consensus.
The fear mounts in me, every rational cell of my body up on end, straining toward the room’s exit, screaming get out, get out.
A nod from the Boss. “Agreed,” he says to applause and low whistles.
But silence falls over the men as I pick up the cards and begin juggling them, sending the queen left, then right, slipping her under the jack of spades, throwing the jack down in her place.
Emil’s watching with laser focus, so I pick up the speed. This isn’t a game, I repeat to myself, it’s a con. So as I shuffle, I let the queen fall faceup, making as though it were an accident. Then I pick her up again but very quickly replace her with a jack. I finish with a flourish, tossing the cards onto the table. The concentration in Emil’s face is evident, and he studies me for clues. But I’m made of stone and show not a thing.
Too easy, he’s thinking, she’s tricked me. Then he thinks again, maybe not and it’s exactly as easy as it appears. He glances up at the Boss, but Beran is a casino pro and as unreadable as I am.
Emil extends his index finger toward the card on my left, then switches suddenly to the card in the center.
“Is that your answer?” I say.