“Who are they?” she asked.
“These,” Igor said, “are my OTBs—off-the-boats. Just came from Ukraine a few weeks ago. Know almost no English but will do any kind of work I need. Very helpful for stuff like this.”
Olga eyed them. They were beefier than his last set of hands, but somewhat typical of the Russian-Ukrainian wannabe gangsters she was used to Igor bringing around. Tight black T-shirts, suit slacks, pointy leather oxfords that refused to acknowledge the manual labor that was being asked of them, as though their footwear saw a future when they would not be pushing hand trucks full of stolen champagne, but rather sitting at a café off Brighton 6, calling the shots. Or, at the very least, knowing what the shots were.
Olga had met Igor seven or so years before, when her services had been retained to produce the elaborate nuptials of a Russian oligarch’s daughter. She had a limited understanding of how the family made their money in Russia—the vague term “energy” was tossed around quite a bit—but stateside, it didn’t take Olga long to observe that they had clearly diversified. Family meetings around the wedding were continually interrupted by “business associates” ranging from restaurateurs to home health aide empresarios, often bearing gifts. Though they kept an apartment at the Four Seasons, when in New York they mainly held court in an externally forgettable, but internally lavish Russian restaurant off Coney Island Avenue. Every meeting was an occasion that involved copious amounts of salmon, caviar, pelmeni, and vodka and equally copious amounts of family. Igor, who served as a chief of staff of sorts, was always there. Though shrewd during the contract negotiation, the family was warm and gracious once the planning was actually under way. They spared no expense for what they wanted, treated workers fairly, tipped generously, and had a strong sense of their own style. Above all, they wanted people to have a good time. Olga hadn’t enjoyed her job as much before or after them.
She’d landed that gig during her reality TV years, which meant the period when she was busier trying to be famous than rich. Which meant she was running her business honestly, transparently, and with little profit. The oligarch was charmed with the way she sagaciously negotiated his contracts and bemused by how hard she protected money he was happy to spend. He warmly abused her for what he called “her miserable sense of business.” After the wedding, Igor came by the office to drop off her tip—$9,000 in cash, a new Chanel watch, and ten cases of Veuve Clicquot champagne.
“The boss said to enjoy this however you want, but if he were you, he’d keep the watch, invest the cash, and sell the champagne to one of your WASP clients.”
Olga decided that was exactly what she was going to do—though in truth some of the cash was tucked into Lourdes’s college savings account. She was unsurprised by but keenly aware of the sum the champagne earned her. She’d been able to present it as discounted product to the client, when for her it was all profit. Her wheels began to churn. This seemed a harmless way to earn a few extra dollars and her clients all loved good wine and champagne. Olga began to overorder, just a bit at first, and then more and more, when placing her clients’ champagne orders. Then, when she had amassed enough inventory to cover a whole party, she would offer the product to her clients at a discount.
A couple of years later, when the oligarch’s daughter was having her baby shower, Olga planned it gladly, free of charge. She was grateful for the new revenue stream they had opened up for her. Igor suggested more ways that they could work together, as the family restaurants sometimes found themselves with extra product—caviar, vodka, expensive whiskeys—but sometimes found themselves short on other extravagances, like hard-to-find wines. Though Olga was mildly apprehensive about forging an ongoing alliance with the Russian mob, the opportunity seemed too good to refuse. In this way, their exchanges began. Olga would tag onto her clients’ liquor orders a few extra cases of champagne, but also an additional case of Stag’s Leap Cask 23 here, a case of Penfold’s 2013 Grange there. In turn, Igor would deliver below-cost cases of Russian vodkas and Johnnie Walker Blue Label, which Olga could then, of course, resell. Once every couple of months they would exchange product and cash, as the relationship proved symbiotic for all parties.
Had she stopped to think about it from a purely catechistic perspective, the wine enterprise was clearly a form of theft. Morally and possibly criminally wrong. But Olga did not stop to think of it this way, instead viewing this as a present of unquantifiable value that the oligarch and Igor had given to her. Prior to meeting them, Olga was eking out a living, believing, mistakenly, that if she provided quality services the money would eventually work out. They gave her a new lens through which to see her day-to-day operations: apply big-business thinking to her mom-and-pop shop.