29 June, 1:00 PM, Czernograd, Casino Royale
Igor had to wait ten minutes for Slavo, the mountain of a man who most days of the week doubled for the head of security at Czernograd’s Casino Royale, the only officially licensed gambling house in the capital, and in the whole country. Some said that Slavo used to be in special forces, but Igor always thought the guy was too large to be a commando; others whispered about his alleged past as an enforcer for either the local, Russian or Chechen mafia, depending on who was telling the story. Igor was more inclined to believe the latter, less savoury story, but past was past and Slavo was good for information – if it did not compromise the business, if he was in a good mood, or if the casino needed to get a good hearing in print media after another violent brawl. Igor did not know which one it would be this time, though he was hoping it would be one.
He was whiling away his time in the corridor outside the offices, watching waitresses in short leather skirts carrying drinks to private gaming rooms. One of them,with a tray of empties on the return leg, smiled at him and he was about to stop her and chat her up when the door opened and one of Slavo’s minions beckoned him in with a stiff movement of his head.
The conversation inside was short.
“Doesn’t look like a regular.” Slavo was a man of few words, most of them unprintable. He glanced briefly at the photo before handing it back to Igor.
“Thanks,” Igor put Maciar’s 12 by 6 back in his coat pocket. He would not risk telling Slavo to take a longer look.
“Seems familiar though,” said Slavo. “Isn’t it that blood sucker who staked himself a few days ago?”
“You read newspapers,” Igor said. “I’m impressed.”
“Whenever I find a spare moment in between wasting my time talking to sarcastic, arrogant little cocksuckers.” This was the longest sentence Igor has ever heard Slavo say. Probably a sign it was the right time to say good-bye.
“Don’t get mixed up with that shit,” Slavo’s farewelled him, while rubbing his ear with his knuckles, which made him look like a primate. A very large and well dressed primate. “Vamps… nothing good comes out of that shit.”
“Some of your best patrons are non-human, I’ve heard,” said Jake, his hand on the door.
“Some of our greatest pains in the ass are non-human,” Slavo replied as his flunky ushered Igor out. The corridor was empty, no waitresses in sight.
He waited until he walked out of the casino, where the reception was better, and he dialed Alicia’s number again. Again he got the message bank. Again he hang up.
The next stop took him fifteen minutes away to the north-western outskirts and the Zolota racetrack, on the other side of the railways line, past the light industrial district and past the working class neighbourhoods with their dark charcoal five storey apartments blocks fronting narrow, treeless streets. The bookies he knew there also proved of no help. None have recognised Maciar as a punter, and none, it seemed, have even read the papers, except perhaps for the sports and racing pages.
By the mid-afternoon Igor has managed to visit two of the major betting agencies, knowing full well it was a very long shot. He was correct. After that his pit stops started to get increasingly shady, ending up in a small office, tucked away at the back of a courtyard off a quiet side street, just north of Krakovska Avenue.
There was only one reason why Taras would see him: they were cousins, sons of two sisters from Ternoslav, an industrial city of some one hundred thousand people and a few non-people. Their hometown was a featureless outpost of modernity on a featureless northern plain that bred despondency, respiratory diseases, a powerful sense of claustrophobia, and an equally powerful urge, particularly among its youngsters, to escape somewhere else, preferably to a big, real city, like Czernograd, and a career as a journalist, or a career as an illegal bookmaker and a fixer in that blurry borderland between the organised and disorganised criminal enterprise.
There was no physical similarity between them – Taras was big and blond and expansive – in that regard they must have taken after their fathers, but in other ways they were more similar than Taras would like to think, if he had bothered to think about it, and than Igor would want to admit, for he had thought about even if he preferred not to. They grew up together, and Taras, three years older than his smaller but wily cousin, always felt protective of Igor. Igor returned the favour by staying away, most of the time. The paths they have chosen in their late teens, like electric wires, were dangerous if crossed. Each could harm the other, even – or particularly – inadvertently, and so they have learned to tread carefully around one another and not to know too much about the other’s affairs.
“Haven’t seen him and the name doesn’t ring any bells,” Taras was looking at the now worn out and creased picture, “but it doesn’t mean much. He could have used intermediaries, he could have used aliases. He could have lost all that money online to some people in Brazil or Australia with a few clicks of his mouse and there would be no trace of that anywhere in RiG except for an internet bill.”
Taras was right; all the dead ends that Igor had hit so far today might have meant nothing. The absence of proof is no proof of absence, as they said. He would never be able to disprove the palace’s story of addiction leading to self-destruction. Unless...
“How difficult would it be to have a look at his bank accounts?” Igor asked.
“Difficult. But not impossible,” Taras leaned back in the chair and took a swing from a bottle of beer. “But way beyond the means of a modest journalist like yourself. And way too much trouble.”
“You mean you wouldn’t make it happen as an early birthday present for me?” Igor asked, turning his bottle in his hand.
Taras took another sip.
“That would be the only way to find out,” Igor persisted.
“Not really,” Taras said. “Even if you could track down all his bank accounts you still wouldn’t know even half of it. Accounts under other names. Offshore accounts. Silent investments. Real estate. Valuables. We’re talking about a bloodsucker here, Igor. He’s had centuries to build and hide his wealth. Immortality and the power of compound interest,” he chuckled, “what a fucking fantastic combination. For all we know he could have been the richest guy in RiG, particularly if he was smart, and from what you were telling me he seemed like a smart one.”
“Which is precisely why this whole thing has a funny smell about it.” Igor still has not touched any of his beer, despite it being respectably afternoon. The rare abstinence was a sure sign of concentration.
Taras looked at him with his piercing blue eyes, which froze men and thawed women. “I’m worried about you, cousin. You sure you’re not getting into something that’s way over your head?”
Igor didn’t answer.
“Don’t tell me that you’ve suddenly developed social conscience and decided to become a crusader, exposing the dirt swept under the carpets of the high and mighty,” Taras said. “Some things are better left alone, Igor. Let the dead stay dead. Particularly the dead like him...”
Igor looked out the open window across the courtyard to the opposite wall, covered in climbing ivy. The only noise coming in was the distant sound of a radio playing sentimental favourites of his parents’ generation. He finally took a sip of his beer and put the almost full bottle back on the desk.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” he said.
Outside, he dialed Alicia’s number again. This time phone was ringing. Four times, five, six...
He heard the pick-up at the other end.
“Hello.” It was a man’s voice.
“Sorry, a wrong number,” he said and ended the call.
A very wrong number.
Photo by Jarosław Kwoczała on Unsplash
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