“Yes, sir.” He ducked back out the door.
Elijah exited the room, leaving me alone to wonder what the hell was going on between the two of us.
Vegas
40
We stood out like a couple of purple giraffes in the zoo as I parked the car in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, home to the largest Russian community outside of Russia. Dotted along the avenue were cafes, coffee shops, pastry shops, and stores selling authentic goods that made the locals feel like they had never stepped foot outside of the old country.
“Leave your piece in the car,” I told Orlando, placing Bonnie and Clyde in the glove box.
I reached for the door, and he placed a hand on my arm to stop me. “You sure about this?” he questioned, no doubt wanting to turn the car around and drive back home. One glance outside the car at the hulking Russians watching us from the corner and I understood his concern, but we had bigger issues than them.
“Bro, you have to trust me. I know what I’m doing,” I said in my best big-brother voice. “You walk in there strapped and you’re as good as dead.”
“I just don’t know.” He still hadn’t moved his hand off my arm. “I mean, Pop always dealt with—”
“Look, Pop did things one way, and he dealt with all these cats his age who did things a certain way, but we’re a new generation. That means our way of doing things is going to be different, and the cats we deal with are gonna be our contemporaries. You feel me? Sometimes you have to be willing to change things up.”
“If you say so.” A look of solidarity passed between us as we got out of the car and walked past the group of men staring at us.
I led Orlando a few doors down into the Baklava Bakery. Olga, the woman who had probably held court behind that counter for the past forty years, stared hard as we entered. An older Russian man who looked to be hiding a shotgun, with a scowl that said he was not afraid to use it, stood up from his rear corner seat, blocking the entrance to the back room and making sure we now saw the shotgun. He didn’t hide his displeasure at seeing us. Neither did the customers who filled the small tables situated around the room.
I turned to Olga. “I need to speak to Boris.”
“He is busy,” the old man barked in a thick Russian accent, expecting that to send us scurrying back out the door.
I ignored him, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a crisp hundred-dollar bill. I placed it on the counter and looked directly at Olga. “You must be his mother, Olga. He speaks very highly of you and your meat pies.”
“How do you know my son?” she asked as the hundred-dollar bill disappeared into her apron.
“We spent some time Upstate together. He said if I ever needed to speak to him, I should come here. Can you please tell him that Vegas Duncan is here to see him?”
“Wait here,” she ordered and then turned and walked to the back of the shop. She whispered in the old man’s ear, and he slipped into the back. Olga returned to the counter, and we ordered the sour cherry baklava and some caramel cakes, more to stay busy and not look like two pussies while we waited.
By the time we finished paying for our goods, the old man returned and directed us to the back. We left our pastries on the counter and followed him through the back door, into a room where there were at least five sets of tables filled with men playing cards.
The old man pointed at another door, where we found Boris. He was working in a converted storeroom barely big enough to fit all three of us. Orlando glanced at me, and I knew what he was thinking right away. Boris did not look like a person who could help us out of our current situation. He had no idea who Boris and his family were.
“Vegas Duncan.” Boris spoke with a deep Brooklyn accent, his Russian almost non-existent, since he’d spent the majority of his youth in America. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”