Maelstrom

Chapter 9: Violating the Prime Directive

A surge of adrenaline flooded my system at that thought – that this man, this mobbed-up über-criminal, was supposed to be the NYPD's unwitting window into the Santiago cartel's plans, and I had possibly just blown the entire operation by violating what should probably be called the Prime Directive of surveillance work: don't attract your subject's attention. But here I was – fully aware that I needed to look away immediately, but completely unable to break free from that ensnaring gaze.

I was finally saved by a day-trader type in a bright green shirt leaning in to fill my line of sight.

I found myself blinking like I'd just come in from the sun. "What?" I called stupidly.

"HEN - NES - SY! I've said it three times!" he shouted. I struggled to focus on grabbing a snifter and the bottle of cognac from the shelf right above my till. Despite my best intentions not to, I scanned the crowd for Alkaev when I turned back to pour the shot, but the delectable mobster and his hired muscle had disappeared.

I poured the customer a double and charged him for a single. He lifted his eyebrows at the generous pour but said nothing. His silence didn't matter; I knew he'd come back to my station later in the hopes of getting a similar deal again. And I'd give it to him, once more. After that, the tips would get bigger even as the shots would start to shrink closer to the ounce and a quarter bar managers expected from their bartenders, but if he was still drinking at that point, he probably wouldn't notice the gradual decline in generosity.

I wiped my suddenly damp hands on my tattered tight jeans, then held them up in front of me in surprise – they were shaking. My hands never shook, I mean, never – not during marksmanship tests at the academy, not when performing Haydn's concerto in C major for cello at the Eisner-Lubin Auditorium at NYU, not even when playing that ridiculous Operation game with my cousin Sibbe as a child. Never. I clenched my scandalously trembling fingers into fists and tried to focus on my next customer.

Three Cosmopolitans, two beers, four shots of tequila, and a surprise Gibson later, my hands had regained their normal steadiness, but that was now being replaced by a crawling, tingling sensation along my scalp and spine. I was trying to ignore it, but the feeling of being watched was almost impossibly distracting.

"Lex, lemme borrow a spoon," the bartender next to me shouted over the music. I handed one over as I took the $50 bill from my last customer and automatically calculated the optimal tip-making change breakdown in my head.

"Thanks," Glory said. She was slowly finishing off a couple of layered shots with the spoon, under the dubious eyes of a couple of clubbies. Glory – short for Gloria, I was sure – was apparently a devout fan of the late, great Amy Winehouse; she had worn her black hair teased and piled into an impressively lofty beehive every time I had worked with her, and her dark eyes were kohl-lined with near-surgical precision. The girls ordering the shots seemed relatively satisfied with her final results and left her a middling tip.

Glory grimaced a bit as she shoved the bills into her tip jar. "This's all your fault, you know," she complained. "No one ever ordered layered shots here before you started making them. Now they all look over at you and order 'one of those'." Her smile made the glued-on gems around her eyes twinkle in the backbar lights. "I'm going to have to move to a new station farther down the bar."

"Or get flashier when making shots," I suggested. "I can show you some simple tricks after close, if you want," I offered, tossing a nearly-empty bottle of vodka into the air behind my back, catching it upside-down by the neck after half a flip and holding it briefly over an ice-filled pounder I'd snatched up without looking.

Glory smirked. "That's all I need, bartending homew ... Holy shit, who is that?" she hissed. I followed her gaze up and to the left to see who she was talking about, though the cold in the pit in my stomach told me I already knew.

Ivan Alkaev leaned on the edge of his private balcony, his hands resting comfortably, widely spaced on the rail, as though he were a medieval lord casually surveying his domain. Except he wasn't surveying anything; his eyes were fixed, laser-like, on a spot behind the bar, somewhere worryingly around where I was currently paralyzed.

"He's a fucking god," Glory squealed softly, dumping ice into a pair of highballs. I wasn't sure whether the "fucking" was simply an expletive or meant to be the activity Alkaev was supposedly the god of. "OMG, is he looking at me? I think he's looking at me." She posed quickly and flashed a winning smile at the balcony, but Alkaev showed no reaction. Glory sagged a bit in disappointment.

"Who knows what he's looking at," I said quickly. I took a half-sip from my glass of water, chock full of cucumber and mint, before forcing my eyes back to the new bottle of vodka I was opening for my well. "It's so dark in here, he could be hopelessly cross-eyed or completely asleep and we wouldn't be able to tell."

Glory perked up a little at that, though she shook her coiffured head slowly. I wondered exactly how much hair product went into a look like that. "You need your eyes checked, darlin'," she chided, handing me back the dirty spoon. "He is definitely not cross-eyed or asleep, and if you can't see well enough to admire that yummy bit of man candy up there, you need to get yourself a prescription or something 'cuz you are seriously missing out."

I waited another full minute before I risked another peek at the VIP balcony, and let out a tremulous breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding; Alkaev was gone. But since I hadn't seen him descend the staircase on my left, I knew that he was still up there. I saw Chauncey making his way along the backbar empty-handed, probably heading for the storeroom.

"Hey, Chauncey, can I get more Grey Goose when you have a chance?"

The barback fluttered his eyelashes at me and laid a couple of tan fingers on my forearm. "Anything for you, khaleesi," he gushed theatrically. Before he could leave, Glory grabbed his arm.

"Chauncey, who's the slab of blond beefcake in the owner's balcony?" she asked, ignoring some impatient customers trying to get her attention.

Chauncey smirked. "You don't know? That's our new lord and master, the guy who bought the club from Julian." He glanced up at the balcony to see if his subject was watching, and after confirming he wasn't, leaned in conspiratorially. "He's been here before, mostly during the day, sometimes in the office at night, but this is the first time I've seen him in the box. He usually comes in through the back." I filed away that tidbit of information for future use. The barback shrugged, feigning indifference. "Do you think he's hot? I hadn't really noticed."

I grinned as Glory slapped Chauncey's shoulder playfully and the barback sauntered off, hopefully on a hunt for more Grey Goose. Glory was watching the balcony again, even though we could see that the box's lights rail remained empty.

"Do you think he was looking at me?" she asked, still ignoring her customers and leaning against her well like a Disney princess about to burst into song.

I slapped two Dos Equis on the bar and scraped up the cash. "I don't know, Glory, but if I thought the new owner of the club might be watching me, I'd probably get back to work."