Londongrad (8 page)

To Tolya they said rock and roll was redneck music. He didn’t listen. Rock and roll was what got him through the Soviet years, he always told me, though it was the British stuff he loved most. The Beatles were his redemption and his rebellion as a teenager in the USSR, his line in the sand. “We didn’t rebel politically, there wasn’t any point, but we went into internal exile with the forbidden music,” he said. “It was different country then, this US of A,” he told me. “Music was incredible then.”

We argued. He pulled my strings. We drank. I told him, when I had had plenty of Scotch, that he was a sell-out, a rock and roll hero who became a businessman. He beamed whenever I said it. Money was his art now, the richer he was, the greater an artist. He was my best friend and he had saved my ass more times than I could count.

“You really love him, don’t you?” Val had said to me once, and she was right, of course, but we didn’t talk like that, we talked like guys.

That night, sitting on the roof, we drank too much and suddenly, sometime very late, Tolya said, “I’m going to London on Sunday, Artemy.”

“Already?” I thought about Valentina.

“Like I told you, I will spend my birthday there in my lovely city, this beautiful green place,” he said, pushing the graying black hair back from his huge forehead. “London!” he said, as if it were a woman he was crazy for. “This is so beautiful a city, you should come. Come next week. My birthday is next week. We’ll have a party. I’ll take you to my place in the country also, which is eighteenth century, and so beautiful and was previously owned by very famous politician.”

“What’s the big deal with London?”

“It is sympathetic to good food and great wine, and also to Russians, and it is a civilized country, a civil society, a place of laws and culture.”

“Enough about bloody London,” a voice said, as Val came through the door, walked across the roof, kissed me on the cheek, sat on the arm of Tolya’s chair and flung her arm around her father. “You’re obsessed,” she said.

“Hello, darling,” said Tolya. “What would you like?”

“I’d like for you not to go to London.”

“I won’t stay too long. I promise.”

“But we could have a nice summer here, we could go out to the house in East Hampton, we could go fishing together in Alaska, like we said, wherever you want. Please, Daddy?”

“Afterwards. I promise you.” He looked up at her, surveyed the floaty green summer dress she wore, and smiled. “You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

He loved his daughter better than anything on earth. They were connected in the most elemental way, father and daughter. I was jealous, not because I wanted her—which I did—but because of the way they were together. I have no kids. It makes me sad.

“Artie, the club, was it okay?” said Valentina. “You found what you needed?”

“What club?” said Tolya.

Again I held off telling him about the dead girl. It wasn’t just that he’d set up his own guys to investigate it. Maybe I didn’t want Val upset.

“It’s nothing. I was helping out a guy on a case in Brooklyn.”

“It’s Bobo Leven?” he said.

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t but whenever he comes in the club, I watch him, he’s like, what do you call it, grapevining all over you, listening to you, trying to pick your brains out,” said Tolya who was pretty drunk now.

“You’ll go swimming with me tomorrow?” said Valentina.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Not too early. I’m going to a party.”

“Now?” Tolya said, glancing at his watch.

“I’m a big girl, Daddy,” she said. “Daddy?” She got up and then squatted near her father, and took his hands. “Don’t go. Please.”

“What’s bothering you?”

“I don’t know. I just have this bad feeling, like I ate something off. They do bad stuff to Russians in London.”

“But I’m very small potatoes, my darling, nobody is going to bother me,” said Tolya. “I’m not Boris Berezovsky, after all.”

“Please?”

“I’ll think,” he said. “Don’t nag.”

She kissed him and got up to go. Tolya called after her.

“What is it?”

He took an envelope out of his pocket, and handed it to her. She looked inside and smiled. “Thanks, Daddy. That’s nice.” She kissed the top of his head. “You’re turning gray. You’ll have to start dyeing your hair,” she giggled. “See you both tomorrow, okay? Love you.”

When Val had gone, Tolya asked me again if I wanted to come to London with him. I said I couldn’t. What I didn’t tell him was that I wanted to stay in New York where Val was, that I wanted to go swimming with her and take her to dinner.

“How come Val’s so worried?” I said.

“She thinks they’re killing Russians, some silly shit, Artyom, in London.” For a split second he looked uncomfortable, then he said, “But this is just small, little part of things, and who except English would give asylum to so many people, and protect against bad guys? Also, me I am not in that league of oligarchs. I’m little guy, Artyom,” he said, dropping his articles everywhere, making himself sound like a peasant, as if he didn’t know better.

“But you’d like to be, wouldn’t you? A big guy,” I said, and saw that it bothered him, that his eyes shifted inwards. He wanted it. He wanted the whole thing. It gave me the creeps. It turned him into a man I didn’t really recognize. Then it passed. He laughed, and we had some more to drink, then he stretched out his legs, inspected his cigar, looked out at the Hudson River, then back at me and said, “It’s just business.”

“What kind of business? In London?”

“Restaurants. Wine. All my life I know that without good food, life is nothing, so now I am in the good-food business. In Europe they understand this. In Russia they understand. You have no idea, Artemy, these Russians, these guys, Dellos, Navikov, they get big respect, they are considered true food guys and they are Russians, not French or Italian, and they understand restaurants, they are changing Moscow, they spend money, they buy great chefs, and now they open up in London, London has become wonderful Russian province along with food center of the universe now.” He reached over and turned on the CD player, and put his head back and closed his eyes. “Tito Gobbi,” he said. “
Don Carlos
. Gorgeous, yes?”

For a while we listened, then Tolya suddenly said to me, “You know what is my favorite book, Artyom?”

“
Nineteen Eighty-four
,” I said, recalling how he had for years carried a tattered Penguin copy. He put it in his pocket and took it out once in a while to read a passage to me. I always told him
Brave New World
was much closer to the way things had been in the USSR, but Tolya loved Orwell very much.

“But also
Slaughterhouse 5
. Recently I reread this. I am also a pilgrim, like Billy Pilgrim, also unstuck in time, also tumbling in the ridiculous. This writer, Kurt Vonnegut, I love this man. I feel like that, London, Moscow, New York, planes in between, other places, nothing fixed, nothing regular, like many people these days, just falling free here to there. Even as a boy, I always feel I am in contact with creatures from another planet.” He smiled. “Not like UFOs, asshole, you know what I mean,” he said.

Glass in hand, Tolya got up and leaned on the parapet, looking out at the city. Suddenly, as he turned to look at me, I saw a look of pain cross his face, of sudden sharp physical pain held in. He put his hand to his left arm.

“What’s the matter with you?” I said. “Tolya?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“I drank too much,” he said.

“What? Talk to me. Sit down, for chrissake.”

Sitting in the chair, he pulled up his pink silk socks.

“Come with me. You can be part of it, you know what is happening in London, how much money, how this lovely adorable government takes just teeny little taxes, and how they are civil and have good courts. Money, you can scoop off trees. This is stupid, still being a cop, Artemy, what for? Big stupid people are cops. You know what they call them in London? Detective Plod.”

“Pick,” I said.

“Pick what?”

“Pick money off the trees. Not scoop.”

“Ha ha. So your English is better than mine, I am younger than you. You’ll be fifty before me. You won’t come, will you? So you’ll watch out for Val, yes?”

“She’s not going to turn into a pumpkin, she’s twenty-four.”

“You’ll take care of her, won’t you? Artie? This is not some joke.”

“Yes.”

We drank and watched the sun come up.

“Good.” He got up. He held the bottle of Scotch out. I took a glass and poured a shot for myself. “Mr Pettus will ask you to watch me. This is why he came to my club, Artemy.”

“Why would he want me to watch you? Tolya?”

But he didn’t answer, just watched the sun coming up over Manhattan, and then fell asleep.

At six, Sverdloff dozing in his chair on the roof, I went home through the glorious New York dawn. I’d been up all night. I was exhausted, but edgy, the girl on the swing, Tolya going to London, Val trying to keep him here.

At home, I thought about the case, I made notes, I went out for a walk to clear my head. I wasn’t sure at all how long I walked along the East River, trying to get a fix on things. That evening when I got home, I got into bed and fell dead asleep.

Some time after dark—I leaned on one elbow trying to see a clock—the buzzer rang. It was Valentina. I let her in. Without a word, she took off her jeans and shirt, and slipped into my bed, and it was early in the morning before she left.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sunday morning, Tolya left New York. He called early. He was waiting for me outside the yellow brick loft building where he lived in the old Meat Market. His black hair still wet from the shower, he looked sober.

“Why do I feel you have a case, that you’re working on something and you don’t tell me, Artemy? In Brooklyn? Val asked you about it at my club. You ignored her.”

“It’s a homicide Bobo Leven is working. I gave him the benefit of my wisdom,” I said.

“You don’t want to tell me?”

“It’s fucking grim, a young girl murdered. Just enjoy your trip, okay?”

“Take care of Valentina. I trust you with her only in public places.”

We laughed, but I felt sad and I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the early morning, the soft balmy summer dawn, the kind when we had so often staggered home from parties together.

“I’ll try,” I said. “What airline are you on?” I added, making stupid small talk to change the subject.

“You think I am flying commercial? Please.”

He smiled. He seemed okay. He said that Valentina was still asleep at home and he had checked on her, and in her sleep, she had smiled at him. I didn’t say she had been with me. Somehow, I would redeem myself with him, one day, some day.

“You have keys for my place? In case,” said Tolya.

“Yes.”

“And all my phone numbers?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll think about coming with me in business, in restaurants? You promise?” He looked at his big gold Rolex. “What’s the date, Artyom?”

“July 6. You okay?”

“Please, I just want to set my watch, you think I’m getting senile?” He adjusted his watch. “We’ll have some fun before it’s too late, Artyom. Okay? Before we die. Thought we’d die before we got old, like they say back in the day, right, when I was rock and roll god, but now we have to hurry up.”

For a second it occurred to me that—I’d thought it before— Tolya’s clubs were some kind of cover, but cover for what? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

“One other thing, Artyom,” he said.

“Sure.”

“This Roy Pettus, stay away from him.”

“Don’t worry. I’m seeing him later, I’m going to tell him to fuck off, you know?”

“Don’t see him at all. Just don’t. These guys, Artyom, these spook people they are the same, they work together, they exchange information, it’s capital for them, like cash,” said Tolya. “I have to go now.”

He climbed into the black Range Rover that was waiting for him at the curb. He shut the door. He pressed his face against the window, pushed his hair back from his forehead. It was already gray at the roots. In the face against the window, I could see how he would be as an old man.

Don’t go, I wanted to say.

“Take care of her,” he mouthed through the car window.

Tolya put his hand, big, like a pale pink ham, flat on the window, a sort of farewell gesture, and I remember thinking, not knowing why I thought it, that I’d never see him again. Then the car pulled away.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was quiet downtown when I went to meet Roy Pettus, the Sunday of a holiday weekend. No lawyers cluttered the monumental steps of the courthouses, or leaned against the columns of this imperial New York, no supplicants or secretaries or jurors fed up with endless waiting, nobody except a few tourists heading for Ground Zero, and homeless men stretched out on benches in the shade of the trees. And pigeons. And pigeon shit.

It was sultry. I tried not to think about Valentina and couldn’t think about anything else. A few minutes later, I saw Pettus.

He crossed the street near City Hall, stopped to light up a cigarette, and then he continued towards me. He put up his hand in greeting. Then he held it out.

“Artie, good to see you.”

“You too, Roy.” I kept it cool.

He looked around, maybe from habit and said, “Can we walk?”

“Sure.”

We set off towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Pettus looked a lot older than I recalled but it was more than a decade. The sandy hair was white, cut short. The sunburned face was lined, the pale eyes watery. He walked straight, though, and he was dressed square as any FBI man: pressed chinos, white button-down shirt tucked in, cellphone attached to his belt. Only a pair of worn cowboy boots marked him as off duty.

I asked Pettus how Chugwater was. He said okay. I’d known him when he was an agent at the New York FBI office, must be fifteen years, and we both worked the nukes case on Brighton Beach together. Afterwards, he retired to Chugwater, Wyoming where he was born.

I drove through it once on a trip out west, but I didn’t know Roy’s address and I didn’t look him up. Wasn’t much there, just an old railroad siding, a grain silo, a couple shops and a place that made chili. And the endless empty spaces of prairie in all directions. I had wondered what it would be like, living in all that emptiness.