There’s a big overlap between gangsters and people who look like gangsters—a big overlap between true vory and people who go to wiseguy nightclubs and flash a lot of money. We would get to know the bartenders at Russian mob clubs. A bartender at, say, Rasputin in Brighton Beach, might tell us, These five guys come in here every night, spending loads of money. There’s girls all over the table. We’d ask the bartender to describe those five guys in detail.
