Kill Whitey

The club seemed to grow silent, like somebody had hit the mute button. The music, the crowd noise, Darryl and Jesse’s laughter—all of it vanished. There was just Sondra and me. We were the only two people in the club and she was dancing just for me, showing me all of her secrets.

And then the sound came rushing back in and my illusion was shattered as some drunken fat guy in a t-shirt and jeans clambered onto the stage and grabbed Sondra’s wrist. The crowd hollered in anger. Sondra tried to pull away but the guy yanked her closer. His other hand cupped her ass.

“Yo,” the DJ shouted. “Yo, yo, yo! Cut that shit out. Security!”

“Here we go again,” Tonya muttered.

“This happens a lot?” Darryl asked.

“Every time Sondra dances,” Jesse said. “Or at least it seems that way sometimes. Fucking guys can’t keep their hands off her.”

The bouncers swarmed, rushing the stage. The fat guy let go of Sondra and held his hands up, pleading with them. Not that it did him any good. Four of them jumped his ass and shoved him offstage. The patrons around the stage scattered. There would be no crowd-surfing tonight. The fat man bounced off some chairs and a table, and then belly-flopped onto the floor. The bouncers leaped off the stage and pinned him. Two of them grabbed his arms. Another seized his hair. The fourth shouted something in Russian. Then they dragged him to the door. I noticed that his nose and lip were bleeding. The bouncers didn’t seem to give a shit. Otar opened the door and they threw him outside.

Their faces were expressionless throughout this. They barely broke a sweat. It was all very perfunctory.

And the music never stopped.

And Sondra started dancing again as if it had never happened. The crowd surged towards the stage again, the altercation already forgotten. I turned my attention back to her as well, but not before noticing another man standing in the rear of the club. He leaned against a door. I guess it led to an office or something. He was watching Sondra, too, but instead of looking lustful, he seemed angry. He was short and pudgy, but not fat; probably in his thirties or early forties. His thick mop of hair was just starting to thin on top. He had a long goatee and mustache. All of his hair—face, head, even his eyebrows, was snow white. Not gray or silver, but ivory colored. There were no strands of black or brunette. He wasn’t an albino. No pink eyes or any of that shit. But his white hair was striking—and somehow unsettling.

Tonya licked her index finger and then ran it down Yul’s neck, leaving a trail of saliva and glitter on his skin. She gyrated faster on his lap. Yul’s hands twitched. He licked his lips and closed his eyes.

“Remember,” she warned him, “no touching. Whitey’s watching.”

“O…okay.”

Darryl turned towards her. “Whitey? Who the fuck is Whitey?”

“The owner,” Jesse explained. “Dude in the back with the white hair. You don’t want to fuck with him. His real name is Zakhar Putin, but everybody calls him Whitey on account of his white hair.”

I continued staring at Sondra. “Putin? Like the Russian President?”

“Same name,” Tonya said, “but no relation. Although supposedly he is related to some famous Russian dead guy. Doesn’t need to be related to anyone, though. He’s hooked up. And Jesse is right. You definitely don’t want to know any more about him than that.”

I nodded. It made sense. All the bouncers at the Odessa spoke Russian, and a lot of the strippers had Russian accents, too (but not Tonya—judging by the sound, she was from Baltimore). ‘He’s hooked up’ Tonya had said. That meant Whitey was in the mob—as in the Russian Mob. I’d heard rumors they were moving into York. There had been a big thing about it in the newspaper recently. According to the police, they were trying to take over York’s organized crime. Our proximity to all of the East Coast’s major metropolitan areas made York desirable, same as it did for our employer. Like they say in real estate—location, location, location. Control York and you controlled a lot of flow. It had always been that way. Back in the day, the Greeks were in charge. They kept things pretty peaceful, and even helped squelch a race riot in the mid-Sixties. Then, in the Seventies, the Marano Family out of New Jersey seized power. But in the early Eighties, when the Italians started turning on each other or getting busted, their reign gave way to the drug gangs—offshoots of the Bloods and Crips and various Hispanic crews out of Philly and Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Things got violent. Bodies dropped. The Italians came back for a bit in the Nineties, long enough to chase the brothers out. The Marano Family took control of things again, but then old man Marano died and his top guy, Tony Genova, disappeared. After that, most of Marano’s crew went to prison or became informants for the Feds. York had been up for grabs since then. The drug gangs came back, squabbling with bikers and local drug dealers, but nobody had seized total control. Now the Russians were making a play.