Vassily shrugged. He knew his bodyguard would be actually feeling the slaps and cuffs used by the person who raised him.
It was a bit unsettling to walk downstairs with a hulk of a man wincing, ducking, and covering his head.
Maria Bangossa stood in shocked amazement as the two of them left the house. It was as though her beloved husband was reacting to his older brother Carl who had raised him. Johnny had said Carl had raised him strictly, in the old-fashioned way. Nowadays, with the advent of social workers, this was considered child abuse.
Carl Bangossa had been proud of the way he raised his younger brother Johnny to follow in the family footsteps. Unfortunately, Carl never saw Johnny reach manhood because Carl too followed in the Bangossa family footsteps.
He was buried at the bottom of the East River in a tub of cement. It was the Bangossa way of death. A greatgrandfather was the only one to have died in bed. That was the place he was stabbed to death.
"Hey, Carli, there's a stakeout here," said Johnny as they reached the sidewalk.
"What is stakeout?" asked Vassily.
"You don't know what a stakeout is?" asked Johnny, and then ducked, expecting a hit in the head for asking that kind of question.
"You tell me," said Vassily.
The large hairy man talked a foot over Vassily's head. This Carli had to be big also. A stakeout, he said, was when the police were watching you.
Why were they watching him? Vassily asked.
" 'Cause they hate Italians. You know, you got a vowel at the end of your name and they think they got a right to lean on you."
"All Italians?"
"No way. Some of the paisans are the worst cops and prosecutors. You got a vowel at the end of your name, they lean on you harder."
"And a paisan is?"
"Carli. You crazy? . . . Sorry, Carli. Sorry. Don't hit. Don't hit. All right."
It was very difficult dealing with someone who had been raised with violence as a teaching tool, but Vassily came to understand that the policemen in the stakeout were sitting in a car across the street.
"You stay here, Johnny. I'll take care of them."
"Not in front of my house. They'll get us for sure. You can't kill a cop in front of your house. We'll never get away with it."
Johnny Bangossa felt the slaps and the hits on his head, heard Carli tell him not to worry about it, and then to his amazement saw his older brother walk over to the car, and not kill anyone. Nor did he have money in his hands. He only spoke to them and they drove away.
That was even more amazing than Carli being alive. Johnny could have sworn Carli had been put in the East River for good.
"Hey, Carli, word had it you was sleeping with the fishes," said Johnny.
"Don't believe everything you hear," said Vassily Rabinowitz.
He now had his bodyguard, but of course one had to be able to feed a bodyguard, and probably pay him too. Vassily needed a business, He could go into a bank and probably withdraw money, but sooner or later, numbers, which did not lock eyes with people, would show something was wrong and eventually people would come looking for him. Besides, he had looked in one of the banks and there were cameras on the walls. They would probably get his picture anyhow. He could have become the lover of a wealthy woman or the lost child of a wealthy man. But he had not come this far to be cosseted with some stranger who needed to be intimate. He wanted freedom. And to have this freedom he knew he had to start his own business.
And what better business than what he did better than anyone else in the world? He would set up an office to supply hypnotism. He was, after all, the best hypnotist in the world.
Johnny Bangossa would stay near him all the time, and act as doorman to his little office. He would act as chauffeur when Vassily got a car. He would do everything for Vassily while making sure no one ever laid a finger on his beloved Carli. Otherwise his beloved Carli would punish Johnny Bangossa.
But business was not easy at first. Not even for Vassily.
His first customer refused to pay him. He was a chronic smoker.
"Why should I pay you for quitting smoking? I never smoked in my life and I don't smoke now," said the customer.
"Then what are the cigarettes doing in your pocket? Why are your fingers stained with nicotine?" asked Vassily.
"My Lord. You're right. What have you done to me, you bastard?" said the man, who had come in with a cigarette in his mouth, hacking away, explaining how he had tried everything and couldn't quit. Johnny had to quiet him down, but Vassily learned it wasn't what you did for a person but what they thought you did for them.
For the next patient the first thing he did was to convince the obese woman she was going through an exotic experience of hypnotism. And this time, the important message was not that she would no longer overeat. Not that she did not want to overeat, but that she was getting her money's worth.
"This is the best hypnotic experience of your life and you will come to me twice a week for the next fifteen years," said Vassily. "And you will pay me ninety dollars for a mere fifty minutes of my time even though you will have to imagine any improvement in your life, because there's going to be none."
The woman left and recommended fifteen friends, all of whom agreed Vassily was just as good as their psychiatrists. In fact he functioned just like one.
And Vassily had another trick up his sleeve. He learned to give fifty minutes in thirty seconds' time. All they had to do was believe they were getting that much time.
The line stretched out of his office right to the elevator every day. He was making fortunes. But he was spending fortunes, too. There were the lawyers he had to hire because Johnny Bangossa defended him a little too well.
There were tax advisers he had to get because he was making so much money. And he realized Johnny could not do it all. Johnny had to sleep from time to time. So Vassily had to get other bodyguards and of course he got the toughest men that money and great hypnotism could buy.
And he had to have somebody to order them around. So in came a second in command. Within a very short time, Vassily Rabinowitz, formerly of Dulsk, Russia, formerly of the parapsychology village in Siberia, was running one of the most powerful crime families in the country, but he couldn't support them all with just hypnotism. No matter how profitable that was, he had to let them earn their money at what they knew-narcotics, extortion, hijacking, and sundry other things.
It was a horror, except something began to stir in the heart of Vassily Rabinowitz, and it would ultimately threaten the entire world.
A portion of his mind that had never been used was being called on now. He had to organize his deadly people, and he found he liked it. It was much better than hypnotism, which he could do with no effort at all: this was a challenge.
And so what had started as a way to be safe from muggers now became a game of war. And it was just the nightmare that Russian planners had always feared. Because here was a man who, once he looked in someone's eyes, owned that person, could get him to do virtually anything. What would happen, asked the Russian strategic planners, if he got into the game of international conflicts? He could go from one small state to another, and all he had to do was have one meeting with an enemy or one with a general. He could turn the whole world around.
That was the real reason they had never used him against enemies. They never wanted him to get a taste of war. There was nothing closer to war than the manipulation of racketeer armies.
But Russia did not yet know this had happened. They were only out to find out where he was. And they found out only by accident, an accident that accomplished what their entire alerted espionage network failed to do, pinpoint exactly where Vassily Rabinowitz was.
Natasha Krupskaya, the wife of a Russian consul who had been assigned to America for the last ten years, decided at last that weighing 192 pounds might be a fine thing in Minsk, Pinsk, or Podolsk, but not on Fifth Avenue. Americans had started to make fun of Russian figures on television. And since she also had a face like the back end of a tractor, she decided she had to do something to avoid ridicule. But dieting was hard. She would find herself at the end of the day craving a roll slathered with butter. Dieting in America was impossible. Not only was there wonderful food, but it was for everyone. And not only was it for everyone, but television advertisements created by geniuses enticed everyone to eat. In Russia the best minds went into making missiles hit targets; in America the finest minds went into making people buy things. And when they made you want to eat food, no one from Minsk, Pinsk, or Podolsk could resist.
Natasha needed help, and when she heard of the greatest hypnotist in the world, she decided to try him. She waited in line, hearing people come out saying the strangest things, like:
"That was the best fifty minutes I ever spent in my life. "
"That fifty minutes went like three seconds."
"That fifty minutes was grueling."
What was strange about all this was that they had been inside the office for less than thirty seconds.