Worth The Risk Read online

  “That was my first thought, too,” Nick said. “But I wonder if that’d complicate things.”

  Scott nodded. “I’d prefer not to get the cops involved. I don’t need that kind of hassle.”

  “Besides,” Tom said, “Katie doesn’t know.”

  Scott shrugged.

  “You gotta tell her, man,” Tom said. “She’s going to find out anyway, and better it come from you.”

  “No way,” Scott said as he shook his head. “She’d probably take both my eyes out.”

  Nick sighed. “So, what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Scott said. “I guess I’m hoping to stay away from Sergei until we get Valiera, then we’re out of here.”

  “Gonna be tough, with him working at the Chicken Shack and all,” Nick said.

  “I know,” Scott said. “But let’s take it one day at a time. He’s going to be here until ten. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  Tom shrugged. “Fine by me. Where should we go?”

  “How about that club we passed the other day?” Scott said. “You know, the one with the dolphins in front. We can have a drink and listen to music.” They had noticed a club on their way to a recommended restaurant a few days ago. The restaurant wasn’t anything to get excited about, but the club had looked interesting.

  The women walked up as Scott was talking. Katie put her hand on her husband’s shoulder and rubbed it. She hadn’t said anything, but Nick was sure she’d noticed Scott’s moodiness. Wives were good that way. At least his was.

  “Do you want to go to the Dolphin Club?” Scott asked her.

  She giggled. “Is that what it’s called?”

  “It is now,” Nick said.

  The women exchanged glances. “Sounds good,” Michelle said. “Just give me some time to freshen up. Should we meet back here?”

  Scott looked uncomfortable.

  “Let’s meet in the hotel lobby,” Nick said. He saw Scott relax slightly, then turn rigid again. Nick followed his friend’s gaze back to the bar.

  Sergei was staring at them, a malevolent look on his face. He was cleaning something with a cloth. As the two Americans watched, he finished rubbing and put the item down on the bar.

  It was a knife.

  The lobby of the Hotel Rostov was large and brightly lit, with a wide stairway curving up the back. Dark red runners graced the traffic areas, and it would have been classy except for the newsstand in the middle of the room. Magazines gave way to cigarettes which in turn gave way to essentials like toothbrushes and Band-Aids, the latter behind dirty glass for some reason. An older man with a gaunt face and a brown jacket a few sizes too large stood like a sentry behind the counter, waiting for customers. He stared impassively at the five Americans as they walked past him and up the stairs. Cigarette smoke drifted up lazily from the dirty ashtray on the counter.

  Their rooms were clustered together on the fourth floor. When they reached the top of the stairs, slightly out of breath, they found another sentry waiting.

  The fourth floor key lady sat sternly at her desk, almost daring them to pass without proper authorization.

  There was a peculiar constant in Russian hotels, at least the ones Nick had been in. Each floor contained what the parents called a key lady. Typically grumpy and older than employees should be, key ladies were tasked with knowing who was in their room at any given moment. They did this by storing all of the room keys in little cubby holes at their desks in the main hallway. When a guest arrived from outside, they gave the key lady a piece of paper with their room number printed on it. The woman exchanged it for the key to their room. Conversely, when somebody left they would deposit the key with the woman and get their slip of paper back.

  Perhaps it was a holdover from the Stalin era, when They wanted to know where everybody was at all times. Perhaps it was a Communist standard, so They could say They had full employment. Whatever the case, Nick didn’t mind it because it meant he just had to carry a piece of paper in his pocket when he was out, rather than a large Russian key.

  On the other hand, he didn’t appreciate it when they dialed up the local brothel after his wife left, in hopes of getting a kickback from a trick.

  Three people fumbled in their clothes for their papers, and three hands turned over the green slips for three rooms with some trepidation. Nick had forgotten to give his key to the key lady one morning, and she had landed on him without mercy. He didn’t need to know Russian to realize he had committed a cardinal sin.

  Unsmiling, she took all three papers and handed back their keys.

  “Spasiva,” Nick said. She looked at him for a long moment, face impassive. Finally she turned away and sat down at her desk, where she clasped her hands together and waited for the next troublemaker.

  The crowd of people outside the club looked happier than the key lady, although that wasn’t saying much. The sun had disappeared, and with that their inhibitions. Couples made out in the shadows, oblivious to the patrons coming and going within feet of them. Nick smelled the unmistakable odor of marijuana as he passed a group of guys. He wondered if they had as much trouble getting arrested for it here as they did in Oregon.

  They paid a few rubles to a large man in a sport coat at the door, and walked in to the crowded club. It felt much like a dance club anywhere in the world: loud music pounding up through the floorboards and into Nick’s legs; a variety of smells, from perfume to beer to sweat to who-knew-what-else; people in various stages of drunkenness, dancing or sitting limp at tables splayed around the outside of the large dance floor. It was a not-unpleasant assault on the senses that brought Nick back several years. He grinned.

  Two women passed the group at that moment, a blond and a brunette, both in skimpy sequined dresses with their hair pulled up and drinks in their hands. The brunette in the back saw his grin and smiled back, eyes lingering appreciatively over his broad chest. They passed and Nick turned, watching them slink away.

  Katie grabbed his arm. “A good boy, remember?” she said.

  Nick sighed. “Yes, dear,” he said.

  He turned back and almost bumped into a woman walking unsteadily past him. He caught a glimpse of brown hair. A green dress. When he saw her last she had been wearing lingerie and a white coat.

  Instinctively he reached out to steady her. She turned to him and

  made eye contact for a moment before she turned away. But it was too late.

  Even in the dim light he could see that her lip was cut and crusted over. Her right eye was black and blue, and she had a bruise the size of an apple on her cheek.

  Somebody had worked her over.

  Chapter 3

  The roaring began in his left ear, as it always did, and quickly spread to the right. Nick closed his eyes to compose himself.

  He opened them and shook his arm loose from Katie. “Please go find a table,” he said. His voice was low and hard, and Katie shrunk back from it. “I’ll catch up.” She saw the expression in his face and immediately left.

  Nick found an open chair at the bar and led the shaken girl to it. She sat down, hard, and he stood over her. A dark-haired woman in a dress stood, angry eyes on Nick. They looked silver in the light. The girl saw her and tiredly waved her away. Nick assumed she was another prostitute.

  “Zdrastvoitya,” he said. Hello.

  She nodded. Nick was sure she recognized him, but she didn’t say anything. Her one good eye was red from crying.

  He leaned towards her so he could keep his voice low in the din of the bar. “What happened?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Somebody hit you. Was it a customer?” Nick wasn’t sure why he grilled her. He knew he should keep walking. No way was that going to happen, though.

  She turned so she could see Nick out of her undamaged eye. “No. I was hurt because I came back with twenty dollars.”

  Nick sighed and swore softly. Much of the anger drained from him. “I’m sorry,” he told her. She shrugged.


  “It happens,” she replied. Her nonchalance made him feel worse.

  “What’s your name?” Nick asked after a moment.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d like to know. My name is Nick. Minya savoot Nick.”

  She smiled, a tiny one, but the first he’d seen from her, at his feeble attempt at Russian.

  “You know Russian,” she said.

  “You just heard almost all of it.”

  She smiled again, a little wider this time, and said, “Minya savoot Lauren.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lauren,” he said. An interesting name for a Russian, he thought.

  She ducked her head shyly, and they remained like that for several seconds, Nick feeling awkward because of questions he knew he shouldn’t ask her.

  She finally looked at him. “I came from baby home, too, you know.”

  Nick nodded. It made sense. He had read that unwanted kids were thrown out of the orphanages in their mid-teens, with nothing to sell except their bodies. “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Not here. In Taganrog, by the sea. Nice orphanage. Not so nice after that.” She shrugged again. She seemed to shrug a lot. “Now you know me, so now you leave.”

  “I want to know who did this to you.”

  “Why?”

  That stopped him. Why, indeed? It was none of his business.

  But in a way it was.

  “Because I need to tell him that you don’t hit women.”

  She shook her head sadly. “He will not listen.”

  “I’ll make him listen.”

  “No,” she said. “Please. No. Then he will hit harder.”

  Nick paused, thought about it, and nodded. “OK, Lauren. You’re right. I should leave.”

  She touched his arm. “You’re a nice man. Be good for your daughter.”

  Nick stared to reply but then saw fear touch her eye as he felt a presence behind him. Lauren pulled her hand back from his arm as Nick turned. A young man, skinny to the point of emaciation, with black tattoos on his forearms and crew cut blonde hair, stared at Nick.

  “I’m Maxsim. You want girl?” he motioned brusquely towards Lauren, as if she wasn’t there. “Fifty dollars.” He spoke English. Perhaps he had heard them talk, or perhaps Nick had “Made in America” stamped on his forehead. Nick tried to dress like a local, in ripped jeans and a faded dark blue t-shirt, but people seemed to know.

  Nick glared at the Russian for several seconds without speaking. Just the chance that he may have been the one who beat up Lauren made him hate the man on the spot.

  “Twenty, then,” the punk said, misunderstanding Nick’s anger.

  Nick shook his head. What he really wanted to do was shake Maxsim’s.

  The Russian seemed confused, then angry. “You don’t talk to my whores, you talk to me! You pay, you stay. Otherwise you go!” His eyes were bloodshot and he kept blinking. Alcohol, perhaps, but more likely drugs. Nick had seen that look before.

  Nick flexed his fingers, ready to go at it, but a thought made him pull back. Lauren looked at the two men towering over her, jerking her head from one to the other, fear in her eyes. Nick knew who would get the worst of it if he attacked Maxsim. Maybe not immediately, but soon. And she didn’t deserve another beating. She didn’t deserve the first one.

  He relaxed, lifting his hands up, palms out. “I have no money,” he told Maxsim. “I’m sure she’d be worth it, but I cannot pay.”

  Maxsim smirked. This put him on a level above the westerner. “If you cannot pay, then you cannot talk to my girls. Leave now.”

  Nick backed off, palms still out. “I’m sorry,” he said. His eyes were on Maxsim, but his words were directed to Lauren. She looked at him sadly as he walked away.

  Nick saw Scott waiting for him, several feet away, holding two beers. Nick took one gratefully and downed half of it on the spot. Katie must have asked Scott to go check on the crazy American.

  “Is that her?” Scott asked, motioning with his head towards the bar.

  “Lauren, yes,” Nick answered.

  “Was she hurt?”

  Nick turned to look back. Maxsim had grabbed Lauren’s arm and was leading her away roughly. Another man, larger than Maxsim and probably a bodyguard, glanced at Nick before turning to follow them out.

  “Yep,” Nick replied, glaring at Maxsim’s back. “She got beat up.”

  “Who’s the punk?”

  “Maxsim, her pimp,” Nick said. “He’s the one who did the beating.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Got that right.”

  They were silent for a second, then Scott said, “If he’s her pimp, he probably knows Sergei.”

  Nick nodded. “I’m sure of it. My guess is they’re part of the Russian mafia.”

  Scott didn’t look happy. “You think so? Maybe they just work for themselves.”

  “I doubt it. I read that the mafia controls most of the brothels in the cities. Sergei and Maxsim are probably just the, how did they put it, the enforcers.”

  “You read too damn much, Nick.”

  Nick sighed. “Don’t I know it. Let’s get back to the others. Not much we can do now.”

  The Americans had found an empty table on the far side of the dance floor and settled in. Nick and Scott plopped heavily into seats on either side of Katie.

  “I’m glad you came here with us, Nick,” Katie said. She leaned in to him and raised her voice to be heard over the beat of some anonymous song. “It’s good to get out.” She still looked concerned, but was obviously relieved that Nick was back with them.

  “Plus, Kelli asked you to keep an eye on me, right?” Nick asked. He was still in a sour mood.

  Katie looked sheepish. “Well, she did mention that we should stick together.”

  Tom leaned in and said, with a grin, “Sounds like somebody doesn’t trust her hubby,” he said.

  “And I should?” Michelle shot back playfully. “No way am I leaving you here alone.”

  “It’s not that she doesn’t trust Nick,” Katie said. “I’m sure it’s scary to leave your husband in a foreign country by himself. I’d hate to do it.”

  “I’ve been in a few foreign countries by myself,” Nick said. And here we aren’t shooting at each other.

  “Not with a kid,” Tom pointed out.

  Nick shrugged. “They won’t hand over Nonna until I leave, so she’s safe from my corrupting influence, at least for another week or so.”

  The others grinned and sat quietly for a few minutes, people-watching and sipping beer. Nick stewed about what just happened, but knew there wasn’t much he could do about it at that point. He knew he should just move on, but it was hard to get Lauren’s ravaged face out of his mind. He had the feeling it would be hard to move on from that.

  Eventually Katie, whom Nick had noticed abhorred silence, leaned over again and said, “I like Kelli. Where did you two meet?”

  Nick took a long pull on his beer and thought about how to answer. He didn’t really want to talk but it might be a good distraction. Besides, if he didn’t she’d likely just ask again. “After I got out of the military,” he said, “I moved to Bend, a small town in Oregon.” He left out that it took him several years to land in Bend. He had eventually picked the town because it was close to Portland, where his step-brother lived. Gary was Nick’s only family within 2,000 miles. He had never really known Gary, but he was willing to give it a shot. Unfortunately, he quickly discovered they had almost nothing in common. He found Gary living in a dirty, cramped house with his third wife, sponging off her job at the local Fred Meyer and indulging in his love of Budweiser. They saw each other a few times, but eventually their relationship fell apart from mutual apathy.

  He also picked Bend because it was far from most everybody else in America. After several years in the Marines, where he had seen fanatics repeatedly do nasty things to each other in hot climates, he decided to move where there were few people. It just seemed easier that way. He lived off his milita
ry pension and sporadic payments from odd and mostly unsavory jobs.

  He stayed away from people through a long, dark winter. Then, in the spring, he met Kelli. She was bright and colorful and full of life, all of the things he had been missing for several years. She ran her own business ferreting out computer crimes. Apparently she was quite good at it if she could make a living at it from Bend. As she told Nick, it didn’t really matter where you were, as long as you had a good internet connection and were willing to work long hours to make your clients forget your office was in the boonies.

  Nick shook his head slightly to clear it, and realized Katie was looking at him intently, a look of amusement on her face.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. He realized he had stopped talking.

  Katie laughed. “It’s OK, Nick. Thinking about Kelli?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, you’ll see her soon, with your daughter! And you have a son, too, right?”

  Nick smiled. “Yeah, Danny. We’re buddies. I think it’s because we’re at the same level intellectually.” Katie smiled back. She knew Danny, Kelli’s son from a previous marriage, was Autistic.

  Nick’s bond with Danny was one of the things that had cemented his relationship with Kelli. Nick had never been around Autistic kids before, especially severely affected ones like Danny, but they clicked immediately. Nick figured it was because they both loved cars, trains, anything with wheels, and going fast. Kelli wouldn’t let her son ride on Nick’s Harley, but the boys spent many hours cruising around eastern Oregon in her Honda Accord with the windows open, yelling “yeeeeee-ha!” and laughing.

  Nick always felt better after spending time with Danny. It was all so simple, so happy. The kid never stopped laughing. Sometimes he thought Autistic kids were the lucky ones.

  Nick smiled. Thinking of his family always made him feel better.

  Then Scott murmured, “Oh, shit.”

  Chapter 4

  Nick glanced at Scott. His friend was staring at a point behind Nick, a stunned look on his face.

  Nick turned in his chair and looked over his left shoulder. Sergei stood a few feet behind him, arms crossed over his chest, a scowl on his face. Nick started to stand and saw Sergei’s eyes flick to his right, behind Nick. Almost immediately a strong pair of hands pushed him back into his seat. Nick struggled briefly but had no leverage, so he gave it up and sunk back in the chair. The hands stayed on his shoulders.