Dmitry's Closet by Nelson, S. (read people like a book .txt) 📕

She smiled. It was nice to have him pamper her, but it was even nicer to watch her favorite daytime talk show host give the skinny on all the stars.

Barefoot and exhausted, Dmitry made his way back downstairs to his study, where he found his son filing away some papers. Anatoly looked up as his father entered the room but continued with his task. Looking back just to make sure that Royal had not followed him, Dmitry closed the door behind him and sat down in one of the large leather chairs to relax his aching body. He rubbed his temples and sniffled a little.

“Good Morning,” Anatoly said, initiating the conversa-tion.

“The sun is not even up yet, so why are you? Were you disturbed by Royal’s cackling all night, too?”

Anatoly smirked. “You know. This is first time I’veever seen you take care of anyone except yourself.” He slid the last of the files in the drawer and closed it.

Dmitry sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “There is something about her… I cannot explain.”

“Maybe it’s because she isn’t a money grubbing whore like the women before her.”

“That could be,” Dmitry sat up. “She wanted to go to work today – in the state that she’s in.”

Anatoly leaned on the corner of his father’s desk. “You sound surprised. This is Royal that we’re talking about.”

Dmitry nodded in agreement.

“I did as you asked,” Anatoly said sighing. The conversation quickly changed. Dmitry stopped smiling and sat up in his chair.

“And?”

“There is more than one of these whorehouses. Ivan has more like ten.”

“Ten?”

“There is more. Word on the street is that he’s trying to negotiate with the Mexicans on an upcoming drug shipment of meth coming up the pipeline, and he’s been seen with the owner of the Black Tie strip club. I think that he’s pressuring him to sell.”

The news definitely bothered Dmitry, but he darednot show it. “Do you know why we have done so well for the last ten years, Anatoly?”

“No. News of our unorthodox tactics got around?”

“More than that.” There was a twitch in Dmitry’s eye. “It’s because we found niche, and we did not bother to spread ourselves thin by doing more than the things that we were good at. Each of the original men who came to Memphis from Moscow or New York had strong back-ground in gun running. Some of them had been rebels for legitimate causes in the motherland and others simply criminal minds with a hunger to get rich.

“Now, weapons traffickingis not just about selling to thugs and funding street wars. We have an array of high-end hunters who want untraced quantity, cops who want unmarked reliable guns, rednecks who stockpile for race wars, guns for hire who need professional grade munitions, ex-military who want the weapons they used in Iraq, aficionados who want them in the house for show and tell and heads of organized crime, who need them for protec-tion.” Dmitry smiled, as he watched his son soak up the information like a hungry sponge.

“So you cut your market share by not expanding when you clearly had the man power,and this is a good thing?” Anatoly was perplexed. It didn’t make much since to him. It never had. He had always wanted his father to expand the empire by selling more than just guns.

“No. This is better than a good thing…it is smart thing. See, you have to know history of a place before you just come in and start to take it over. Do you know much about Memphis’ organized crime families?”

“Elvis, Bar-b-que, Three-Six Mafia rap group. What else is there to know?”

“Much more, son.”

“Well, it’s four o’clock in the morning. Why don’t you explain it to me? I have nowhere to be for hours.” He tapped his finger on his watch.

“Dah. I tell you all so that you are smarter than the next generation of Vor, and you lead best.”

Dmitry motioned at the chair across from him. Anatoly took off his suit jacket and sat down in the comfortable chair to listen to his father. He sat up attentively awaiting the knowledge that only Dmitry could share.

“We came from different market. There was much opportunity when the Soviet Union fell. Those who were in a position to leave did. We went so many places before we came here, but the long and short of the route was Moscow to New York. When we got here, this area already had drugs and whores by the bus loads. Black and whites were shipping cocaine in from Mexico via Texas, heroine from Afghanistan, cooking and shipping meth and crack cocaine here locally and from the southern borders, getting marijuana and prescription drugs from Canada and Californiaand home growing their own whores. We could not add any value to these things. Plus, the relationships were there. People had their supply chains set in stone.”

“What about other things?”

“Other things? Chop shops are more risk than return. Pornography doesn’t do it for me. We wanted something we could centralize and maintain for this area. Small dollar schemes are for armatures. Plus, we have lucrative businesses all over US and other countries.

“Running numbers and the whole betting machine be-longs to the Italians, and they took big hit when the casinos came to Mississippi. So they responded by clinching their unions tighter, increasing their chop shops and construction businesses and cutting into the drug market, which by the way, when we arrived here was basically run by three major drug dealers. One Italian and two blackshad the entire city locked down. Eventually the drug dealers got popped one by one and their investment bankers retired to nice locales in more tropical regions. All of this was due to a war between the blacks and the Italians that nearly lasted five years.”

“What started the war?” Anatoly asked.

“The one Italian drug dealer wanted to expand more into areas that were not really the blacks’ territory but not really his.”

“And the blacks pushed back?”

“You’re damned right. It was bloodshed on both