When he went back to Dr Mitu to pick up his dental plates, Mircea made a point of lingering in front of the lovely Alina. She had given him a surprised smile when he kissed her hand last time, but was stubbornly refusing to make eye contact now. He studied her quickly, to see if there was any evidence of violence, although Mircea knew he himself wouldn’t hit his flirtatious wife in any obvious places. He didn’t like to think of himself as a wife-beater, but Mircea knew he would keep his woman in line. Still, he didn’t like to think of Dr Mitu hitting his wife – especially because she hadn’t done anything. Anything with him, at least – he briefly thought of the teenage driver, and how friendly Alina was with him. Maybe Dr Mitu had a reason to be so over-bearing when it came to his wife? Mircea went in to the office to pick up his orthotics, not looking back at Mrs Mitu.
Dr Mitu was very professional with him, greeting him as “Mr Rotar”, and being very precise when fitting the splints and plates. There two sets of these; one soft pair, for day use, and one harder, more sturdy pair for night-time, when he slept. “These will do for now, but you really need to get your fillings redone,” Dr Mitu warned Mircea. “Part of your misalignment comes from the uneven dental work you’ve had done.”
So you want me to let you redo my mouth and fill your coffers? Mircea thought.
Dr Mitu had an unnerving habit of reading Mircea’s mind. “I don’t have to be the dentist to sort out your mouth,” he told Mircea, removing the bite plates he had slipped in to his mouth. “I would recommend you get it seen to in London, as I think it was the dentists back east who did such a shoddy job in the first place, but by all means. Pick a dentist out of the phone directory.” He made it sound like he was one rejecting Mircea, not the other way around.
Mircea experimentally opened his mouth, testing his jaw. “How soon do you think I need to get the fillings redone?” he asked.
“Sooner, rather than later.” Dr Mitu packed the plates into their plastic carrying case, and went to wash his hands at the sink.
Mircea poked his tongue into some of his fillings. “I can try and be back in London in a month or two.”
Drying his hands, Dr Mitu shrugged. “See how the splints and plates work for you,” he agreed. “You’ll need to get your jaw looked at after wearing the splints, to see how it has realigned. They’ll need adjusting.”
Dr Mitu’s aloof manner annoyed Mircea. From the state of his rooms, it was obvious that he needed business. Mircea was insulted that Dr Mitu wasn’t trying to secure an appointment with him to fix his teeth, or even to look at his mouth after wearing the appliances he’d just picked up – was his Moldovan mouth too far beneath Dr Mitu’s Transylvanian standards? Mircea got out of the examination chair and grabbed his orthotics. He said a curt goodbye to Dr Mitu, but found himself staring at the framed diploma he kept by the door. Dr Mitu had gone to dental school in the UK, it seemed.
Dr Mitu noticed Mircea’s looking at the diploma. “Yes, I came here as a student,” he said. “It was right before Romania joined the EU, and getting that student visa wasn’t easy. Not that it was much easier after 2007, but being qualified here helped.”
Mircea could feel the weight of Dr Mitu’s belittling gaze. I did everything legally, he seemed to be sneering. Did you? Mircea made a point of letting his eyes sweep over the room, taking in its rising damp and faded wall paper. Dr Mitu may have done everything by the book, but he was relying on business with gangsters to keep his surgery afloat. Don’t you look down on me! Mircea tried to tell him with his eyes.
“Make an appointment with my wife for when you’re back in London, so we can see what progress the splints have made,” Dr Mitu said. Just as Mircea was feeling triumph, that his Moldovan mouth and ill-gotten money were good enough for Dr Mitu, the dentist shrugged again. “You may want another dentist to examine you, though. It’s always good to have a second opinion on phase 1 treatments.”
So, I’m dismissed again?! Mircea clenched his teeth. “Phase 1?”
Dr Mitu nodded. “Phase 1 is more temporary; if you stop wearing the plates, your teeth could slide back into the original position that was causing you pain. If realigning your jaw doesn’t work, you may need Phase 2 treatment, which is not reversible. Phase 2 involves surgery, and redoing your dental work.”
“But you told me to get my fillings redone!” Do you or don’t you want my business?!
“For the overall health of your teeth, yes,” Dr Mitu answered evenly. “But in terms of your pain, first see how the splints work. If they help, fixing your old fillings won’t be such a priority.”
Mircea felt like a dazed schoolboy during a difficult maths class. Phrases like phase 1 and phase 2treatment were swimming in his head. He wondered if taking all his teeth out and getting fitted for dentures wouldn’t be a simpler solution. I should look up Vasile when I get back to Ukraine! He thought with a bitter smile, remembering how his old colleague solved the dental problems of the girls.
“I’ll make an appointment with your wife,” he told Dr Mitu. “I think it’s best to come back to the person who started me on Phase 1 to see if Phase 2 is necessary.” And hopefully, he could make headway with the lovely Alina in the next appointment. Stealing Dr Mitu’s wife had become something of a priority for Mircea now. He took his leave of the dentist, and gave Mrs Mitu the most seductive smile the splints would allow him. He noticed a faint flush on her cheeks as she gave him his bill, and his smile broadened, even though it was slightly painful.
“Until we meet again,” he cooed to her in Romanian as he handed her the money, just as Dr Mitu came out of the examination room. He blazed a look of pure suspicion at his wife, who jumped back defensively. Mircea turned his charming smile to Dr Mitu, enjoying the uncomfortable silence. “Until our next appointment,” he said to the dentist, then gave Alina a knowing look. She looked helplessly at her appointment book, and back to her husband. She shook her head in a pleading manner. Another patient came in to the waiting room, an older woman with a scarf tied around her head to show she had a toothache. Mircea felt comfortable that there was now a witness present – surely Dr Mitu wouldn’t hit his wife now.
“Be good to your wife,” Mircea said to Dr Mitu in English. “You work her too hard.” He left Dr Mitu in stony silence, the dentist and his wife under the gentle smile of their next patient.
Mircea went to visit Ivan at his club; there were a number of reasons to visit Ivan, even if the main one was to find out more about Piotr’s background. But he had been in London for a week now; business was still happening in Belarus, and soon in Cyprus. It was time for Mircea to take charge of things.
Ivan was dressed casually – not in his old tracksuits, but not in the suit Mircea would have worn when running a nightclub. The cast was off his leg now, and he seemed relaxed. He was going through some spreadsheets on a laptop, and barely looked up when Mircea was shown in to the office. “You’re still in London?” he asked, deleting a column.
“I had a medical emergency,” Mircea said, trying to make it sound business-like, not whinging. He noticed how he sounded a bit muffled, talking through the splint. Ivan looked up, his interest peaked.
“Did you get your jaw wired up?” he asked.
That old question! Mircea flashed him a toothy grin. “No.”
Ivan squinted, spying the splint on Mircea’s lower teeth. “Ah, that’s why you sound funny.”
Mircea figured it was best to get down to business. “The paperwork?” he asked.
Ivan glanced at the door to the office, and looked satisfied to see it shut. He opened the bottom drawer of the desk, and pulled out a stack of Russian passports. “Our contact in Minsk will be able to seal the pictures of your Belarussian beauties into the passports; you’ll find the Turkish visas are already there.”
Mircea was impressed; a quick count told him that he had more passports than he needed. “I only need eight passports,” he told Ivan.
Ivan made a tired face. “This is just your first run. You’ll need more passports when you recruit more girls for Cyprus.” Mircea felt as if he had been shot in the leg. He was being talked down to by Ivan? How could he have asked such a stupid question! He might as well have asked if Minsk was a nice place to visit again.
“Sorry...it’s the painkillers.” Mircea pointed to his mouth. Ivan nodded, eyes on the laptop again. “That Dr Mitu of yours is a bit too loose with the shots.”
“Dr Mitu is a good dentist. Sometimes he uses extra medication, but anything to hike the bills up. He needs the cash.”
Mircea had grabbed a passport off the top of the stack and was examining it. “What does Mitu need money for?”
“He used to have some gambling problems. He was seriously low on funds as a student, and couldn’t afford dentistry school. He tried to get rich quick through high-stakes card games, and nearly got his legs broken.”
Mircea raised his eyebrows. He tried to picture Dr Mitu playing cards, and figured the temperamental dentist couldn’t keep a poker face. “So the syndicate took over his debts?”
Ivan snorted. “We felt we owed him. His wife had taken up with one of our fixers.”
Mircea nearly dropped the passport he was flipping through. “The lovely Alina was cuckolding Dr Mitu?”
Ivan shook his head. “This was Andreea, his first wife. Don’t try anything with Alina. He watches her like a hawk.”
So Dr Mitu was connected...not very well, looking at the state of his office. “How much did he owe us?”
“About a hundred thousand.”
That didn’t seem like a lot, but Mircea knew that was not the kind of money you wanted to owe this syndicate. He wondered if the shabbiness of Dr Mitu’s office reflected his depression on losing his wife and being kept in the pocket of Russian gangsters. He ran his tongue over the splint in his mouth – maybe it was a good idea to get the dental work looked at by someone else.
“I met Danny…Piotr’s little half-brother.”
Ivan gave Mircea a long hard look. He said nothing, and continued working on the laptop.
“You know…don’t you?”
Ivan slammed his fist on the desktop. “Don’t talk about it!” he hissed. “Do you want to end up face-down in a ditch somewhere?” He shook his head in exasperation. “So you think you know a secret…you don’t know anything.”
Mircea was surprised by Ivan keeping the status quo. “But…he’s not who he says he is!” This is the guy who shot you in the leg!
Ivan swore. “Who cares?! Are you really that stupid? He is who he says he is…no one cares about biology.” Ivan sighed deeply. “You know, you’re going to be dead within a year if you keep on like this.”
A cold sweat trickled down Mircea’s back. He remembered how he had everyone trembling in Minsk – who was Ivan to threaten him? “Don’t you try to intimidate me-“
“I’m not trying to threaten you! I’m just saying don’t swagger about like you’re untouchable! You need to keep your head down and move your patch. Don’t think too much, and don’t try to pull anything. Just keep it simple and don’t expect too much.” Ivan gestured to himself. “Look at me, I’m happy now. I have my own club, and I’m away from that psycho in the sunglasses. I have my life, my family…I don’t need more. I don’t need to declare war on the church, just to make myself feel bigger. Mircea, look after yourself. I don’t know what’s wrong with your jaw, but if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. You don’t have a woman, you don’t have a family…what do you want from life?”
Mircea didn’t like Ivan questioning him. “I want success. Do you have success, Ivan? You have a second-rate nightclub…I want more than that.”
Ivan smiled at him patronisingly, not even insulted. “Well, good luck with that.” The office door opened, and a swarthy teenager came in. The kid looked uncertainly at Mircea, and Ivan waved him over.
“Come on in. Mircea, this is my son, Thomas.”
Mircea had heard that Ivan’s kids were handicapped somehow, but Thomas looked healthy enough, not drooling or squinting. He was also told that they were racially mixed, but this kid looked almost entirely Caucasian. Thomas was dark were Ivan was blond and blue-eyed, but the family resemblance was evident.
“Are you ready to take a run at the payroll?” Ivan asked his son.
Thomas looked at the laptop screen. “I think we should use a database, not a spreadsheet,” he said with a perfectly middle-class English accent.
“My son, the business administrator,” Ivan said proudly. Thomas rolled his eyes.
“Come on, I told you – the database has the tax codes,” he told his father in a tried voice. “Look, just give me half an hour and I’ll set it up for you.”
Mircea watched Ivan and his son sitting behind the big desk. He felt a definite ache, a jealous pang that rivalled the pain in his jaw. I wish I had a father, he thought. He realised that Ivan had a point. What do I have? Mircea asked himself. He would have to rethink his priorities in life soon.