Londongrad

by Reggie Nadelson

  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.

  “Congratulations on your daughter,” I said. “The marriage. Cheryl, right?”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I waited for him to give something away, tell me why he’d been bugging my friends. We walked. He smoked. In front of us the great gothic arches of the bridge rose in the early sky. The sun through clouds that had moved in turned the river to a stream of hot tin.

  “So how come you’ve been talking to my friends, Roy?” I said finally. “You could have just called me up.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.” He didn’t explain.

  “Tell me what you need,” I said pleasantly, and I could see he was confused. He had wanted me off my guard, angry maybe, pissed off at least. Figured he’d get more out of me, make me say something I didn’t want to say.

  My father, when he was with the KGB all those years back, knew how to get information out of people better than anyone I ever met. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he was a star, enough of a star that they let him travel. He had been to New York.

  Always be quiet, my dad had said. Always wait. Getting information is a sort of seduction. Be cool was his message, though he would not have used the word.

  The blowhards, the guys quick on the draw with clever retorts, the furious, the overly confident, never learned anything worth knowing.

  “So you’re here to celebrate?” I said. “You want a soda, a coffee Roy?” I spotted a guy with a cart a few feet away.

  “Thanks,” he said, and I got a couple of Cokes and gave him a can. “You want to walk across the bridge?”

  “Sure. You like the guy she’s marrying?”

  “What?”

  “Your kid.”

  “Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Nice boy, nice enough.” He was distracted.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t call earlier, we could have grabbed some lunch,” I said. “I could have taken you by my pal Sverdloff’s new club, he serves nice wine.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re back on the job?” I said.

  “You knew?”

  “I was guessing. Lot of guys went back, you were pretty much always a patriot,” I said.

  “Since after 9/11,” he said. “Had to do it.” Pettus added, leaning against the brick structure at the center of the Brooklyn Bridge and looking out at the river. “Mostly I work out west, out of Denver, closest place to where I live where there’s a big office.”

  “I’m guessing you get here to the city, though, some of the time, that so, Roy?”

  “Yeah, sometimes I do some stuff here.”

  “Who with?”

  “Liaison stuff. Your guys. Ours. Joint Force on Terrorism. This city is the only place they do it right. You didn’t just wait on Washington.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Critical,” he said. “Without them, we’d be screwed.”

  Pettus put the Coke can to his lips and swallowed the rest of his Coke. He walked to a trash basket and deposited the Coke can, walked back, lit a cigarette and offered me one. I didn’t want it.

  “You’re good with languages, aren’t you?” said Pettus. “You’ve lived different places. You have friends.”

  “I’m just a homicide detective, Roy, that’s it, and I’m on vacation.”

  “You’re better than that.”

  “There is nothing better,” I said, and he smiled.

  “Your old boss, Mr Lippert, I mean, he used to say you were sharp and smart and you knew your way around. Worldly, was the word I think he used,” Roy said.

  In silence, we walked down the slope of the bridge towards the Brooklyn end, and I turned and started back again. Pettus had trouble keeping up and I stopped for a minute and let him ca
tch his breath.

  “Artie, there’s no vacation from the terrorists. No vacation. And it’s coming again, Artie, we just don’t see it, it’s coming in a nuke in a container on a ship into Jersey, it’s coming over the Mexican border, it’s coming in some kind of financial meltdown.”

  “We’ll be okay,” I said, as we walked to the Manhattan side of the bridge. “In New York we got really good guys, we get good intel on terrorists now, we even send our people to Tel Aviv, London, Pakistan, as soon as there’s an incident, we get our own people on it.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Roy.

  “What do you mean?” I said. It was hard keeping cool. I was angry at Pettus for going to Dubi, and to Tolya. “What’s on your mind, Roy?”

  For a while he talked some more about terrorism and patriotism, and then he said, “We need you. We need your skills. We need you in places where you can learn what’s going on.

  And then I understood.

  “You’re saying you want me to be a spook, a spy, a curtain-twitcher, as my mother called them? You want me as a creature- for what, for who? Your people? The CIA? Listen, Roy, man it’s not me, I’m sorry, but I don’t do that stuff. I do cases here in New York. We fight our own kind of terror, homicides, rapes, like always. Maybe Sonny Lippert’s been reading too many spy novels.”

  “There are no local cases anymore, Artie. Everybody’s caught up in a spider web of shit, it encircles the globe like the ozone, you follow up something, it takes you somewhere else, borders are fluid, easy to get across, nothing is local.” It was the longest speech I could remember him making.

  “This was your idea? Talking to me?”

  He nodded.

  “Your idea to go to my friends, too, to ask around about me?”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “You knew they’d tell me.”

  “I’m sorry about that. People say you still speak good Russian, no accent.”

  “You went to see Dubi Petrovsky for this? This is why you saw him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You asked him how good my Russian is?”

  At first I had thought it was my Arabic Roy was interested in, and I didn’t get it because the Arabic I learned in Israel was pretty basic stuff. Now it was clear, the reason for him asking how good my Russian was, I put it all together. I’d been stupid not to see exactly what he was after. But I made him spell it out even while I watched the river, the skyline, the city. My city. Mine. I wasn’t going anywhere else.

  “I’m not leaving the city or my job, so you can forget about it,” I said.

  “This is another Cold War we’re in, Artie. Things are moving fast. The FSB-what they’re calling the KGB now-run the whole show. They run Russia.”

  “I know what the FSB is.”

  “Everyone thinks they just got some kind of Russian-style capitalism, maybe a little light authoritarian stuff till they get the economy fixed, but that somehow they’re okay, and they’re our pals. Bush says he looked in Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his soul. What’s he think, it’s some kind of prayer meeting? And John McCain he looks at him and sees KGB on his forehead, and he says so, and he thinks this is the way you deal with them?” This was a blaspheming kind of thing for somebody like Pettus who had always been a good Catholic, not pious, but devout, and also a staunch Republican who thought Ronald Reagan was a dead god, and who would walk over broken glass for a guy like McCain. Pettus had been in the Marines in Vietnam.

  “I work homicides, it’s all I do, okay? I’m speaking loud enough?” I said. “So I speak Russian, so what? What the hell do you want with me being a, whatever it is, some kind of spy bullshit? I mean they have all that lingo, they talk about trade-craft and curtain-twitchers, and moles and shit. I guess I could study up, read the books.” I kept my tone light. “Why didn’t you just call me for fuck’s sake, Roy?” “I’m sorry. It was stupid. I don’t know. I get used to doing things a certain way. If it will help, I apologize. I’ll apologize again.”

  “Right.”

  “This Russian thing’s serious. We get calls for help from the Brits, especially, who are in bad shape. They didn’t see it coming, they were obsessed with the Islamic stuff. Ever since Litvinenko, that Russian that died from polonium in London, everyone’s going nuts. Artie, the Russians poisoned one of their own, he got out of line, they killed him on British soil.”

  “I heard nobody was exactly sure what happened.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. The Brits, they’re paying big time for their government that opened the door, they got greedy, they let rich Russians into London, tax free, and the money came and the crime followed. It’s coming here.”

  I’d had no plans to leave New York before last night, and after, after Val stayed with me, I was never going away. We didn’t say anything. We hardly spoke. After I left Pettus, I’d call her. I wouldn’t push her. I’d buy her breakfast was all. Or lunch.

  “I have to go,” I said, and we walked to the Manhattan side, and off the bridge. “You think I live in some bizarro alternative spook universe? Honest to god, Roy, how in the fuck would I ever know anything about being a spy in a foreign place? What do I know about London?”

  “You worked a case there once.”

  I smiled. “You’ve been in my files.”

  “I’m just talking, right? You can relax,” said Pettus, tossing his cigarette on the sidewalk and putting it out with the worn toe of his brown cowboy boot. “I’m just here to shoot the breeze with you, just passing through. Get your view of things is all. I always got an interesting angle off of you, Artie. Always valued it. Like running things through a different prism.”

  I accepted what Pettus said but deep down I felt it was bullshit. He had a job in mind for me, and I wasn’t going anywhere, I wasn’t leaving New York.

  “Right,” I said. “You’re pretty interested in helping the Brits.”

  “We owe them. My dad was Canadian. He was in the Air Force. He went over in l940 and flew in the Battle of Britain. The Brits did it for us then and they’re doing it for us now.”

  “It’s a long time ago.” I put out my hand. “Roy, keep in touch.”

  “You know these people, Artie. You come from there. You speak the language. You understand the territory. You got it in the blood.”

  “What the hell is that? I was sixteen when we left Moscow.”

  “You got a feel for it, though.”

  “Who says?”

  “I’m not going to talk patriotism to you. Like I said, I just wanted to chat, honest to God.”

  “There’s a load of Russians, very patriotic, very devoted to the USA and right here in New York. You probably got a few in Wyoming.”

  “What about your friend, Sverdloff? He devoted? I heard he doesn’t love America.”

  “What about him?”

  “He spends time over in London. Got himself a club here, a club there, another one in Moscow, he has houses everywhere, hangs out with the real money. Isn’t that the truth, Artie? You’re pals with him, with his kid, too?”

  “How the fuck do you know that?”

  “Why? It’s a secret?”

  “Is that what this is about, about Sverdloff? You want me to spy on my friend? Go fuck yourself.”

  “Come on, Artie, man, you know Sverdloff is one of theirs.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean Russian.”

  “Sverdloff isn’t a spy.”

  “Don’t be a horse’s ass, Artie. Sverdloff will do whatever he has to do.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We’re in trouble, Artie. The whole damn free world.”

  “I haven’t heard that line for a long time.”

  Pettus got out his smokes again, lit one and offered me the pack.

  “Can we talk again?”

  “It won’t make any difference.”

  The phone rang while we were talking. I looked at the number. It was Valentina. I didn�
��t want Petttus watching me when I talked to her.

  Have breakfast with me, she had said earlier before she left my place. Let’s have breakfast.

  “You’re in a hurry?” said Pettus.

  “I’m in a hurry,” I said. “I have to go,” I added, left him in front of City Hall and called Val back.

  “I’m looking at the ocean,” she said. “It’s such a gorgeous day.”

  For a moment I thought she had gone away. I felt panicky.

  “Where are you?” I said. “Val?”

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Doing ninety, I was in my car heading for Brooklyn to see Valentina. I had left Roy Pettus, broke away from him and his terrorist fables about the Russians. I wasn’t leaving New York for London. I wasn’t going into the spook business.

  Alongside the Belt Parkway was the water, the harbor, the sunlight on the Statue of Liberty making it glisten. I had driven this road a thousand times, past Red Hook and the ancient warehouses, past the new cruise-ship port, the parks and garbage dumps. I knew every landmark, but I hardly saw them now, just drove as fast as I could and listened to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens, “Potato Head Blues” making me even happier than I already felt.

  Hearing Val’s voice, I felt happy. And anxious. I wasn’t sure how to behave. For her it hadn’t been-I didn’t know what it had been for her. For me, something else, something like hearing Armstrong for the first time. I was forty-nine years old and I felt like a kid.

  I went back over every word of the brief conversation we’d had half an hour earlier, when I was leaving Pettus.

  “Come on out. I’ll buy you breakfast,” said Val. “And we can swim, if you want,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  I was so relieved she was only in Brooklyn, I started laughing.

  “What’s the matter?” said Val.

  “Nothing. Where in Brooklyn?”

  “You remember that apartment my dad bought for his mother, my grandma, Lara, when she came to America, before she died? Did you ever see it?”

  I remembered.