Londongrad

by Reggie Nadelson

  “He has a name?”

  “Greg. It’s all I know.”

  We walked to the terminal building.

  “If you go to New York, and you make noise, they’ll kill you,” I said.

  “I have to take Valentina’s body before they cut her up,” said Tolya.

  I didn’t tell him that the medical examiners were already at work. I didn’t have the guts to tell him. Deep down, he knew, of course.

  “Will you stay, Artie? Please? Stay in London a few days. There will be no funeral without you. I promise this. I will not bury my Val without you.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll call whenever I think of more things for you,” he said. “Please, do your work as a cop. You’re a good detective, Artie, sometimes great. You will know what to do,” he said and now he sounded calm. As soon as he saw I would stay in London, he seemed to calm down.

  “Tolya?”

  “Yes?”

  “You won’t do anything stupid in New York? You won’t employ your guys in any stupid way? You won’t run some kind of war by yourself?”

  He didn’t answer, but reaching into his canvas carry-on, Tolya pulled out a plastic bag wrapped around something. On the bag it said Mr Christian’s Delicatessen. Inside was a gun.

  “Here,” said Tolya. “Take this, be careful. There’s no license for you to carry it. Be careful. In the house in Notting Hill there is money if you need it. My guy will be there for you.”

  He called out softly and Ivan hurried over. He made a little bow. “Ivan will drive you back.” said Tolya.

  “What’s his other name?”

  “Danilov.”

  From a few feet away, I looked sideways at Ivan Danilov and saw that he was staring straight ahead. I didn’t like him, but I had never liked Tolya’s “guys”.

  “Everybody loved Valentina,” I said.

  For a split second Tolya opened his mouth as if to howl, but no sound came out.

  “I got my wings burned off, Artemy,” he said finally, face swamped with tears now. “I got greedy and I got burned, and I fell down, it’s my fault, I fell and crushed my little girl.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  That night, after Tolya left for New York, I was on the roof of Pravda22, his London club. For each club, he had announced, he would add a 2. The buzz of excitement mixed with the whoosh of girls’ silky skirts in the breeze of an early summer evening, the sounds of voices, the buzz of traffic.

  Below were the streets, low houses, deep gardens. People were sitting out on balconies, on the street, spilling onto the sidewalk from pubs and cafes. A kid whizzed by on a skateboard. From nearby, a motorbike roared.

  I felt somebody watching, as if from the houses, behind the lights, up in the trees, as if there were people looking at me from all around, the way you might in a forest, the birds, the monkeys staring at you. Or ghosts. Ghosts in the green summer trees. The air was heavy on my skin, humid, and somewhere a streak of thunder rumbled.

  Downstairs inside the club I wondered if he was in New York yet. I looked at my phone. Nothing.

  It was jammed, the air full of Russian voices. The waiters glided among the tables, with huge buckets of champagne on ice and platters of sushi. I introduced myself to the bartender.

  “Yeah, mate, good to meet you,” said the bartender when I introduced myself. “Mr Sverdloff said you’d be in, said to give you whatever, you know?”

  Roland was his name, he said, and I remembered Tolya saying I could trust this guy if I needed somebody. Trust him, more or less, Tolya had said.

  Roland was his name, he said again, and I nodded, “Yeah, thanks,” I said, and he said, “They call me Rolly. Australian. Read Russian at uni. Everyone calls me Rolly. Anything you need, mate.” He was a skinny guy, striped shirt, long humorous face. Mate. Matey. Like a sailor doing a jig.

  At the far end of the bar was a guy in his fifties, long hair, straggly beard, sloping shoulders, paunch, cheap gray shoes. A second-hand book was propped on the bar. Crime and Punishment the guy was reading in Russian.

  “Mr Sverdloff’s poet, like his Pindar, mate,” said Rolly. I looked again.

  What kind of poet? I wondered did he write odes to Tolya? Was he some kind of praise singer in Tolya’s pay? Before I could get away, he detained me, and started talking at me in Russian, about Russians in London, about the true believers, the communists, the democrats, the nationalists, on and on and on, Putin, the anti-Putinistas, the Kasparovites, who believed Gary Kasparov wasn’t a chess player but a god. Decried money, pissed on capitalism. I tossed some money on the bar. Finally he left.

  From behind the bar, Rolly held up a glass to make sure it was clean. He beckoned me back to his end, and said, “Mr Sverdloff tells me to serve him, give him drinks and food, don’t charge him. Says he can be our conscience. I think he’s our pain in the royal, you know?” He put the glass down and reached for a bottle of vodka. “He comes in early, I keep him at the end of the bar so he doesn’t bother the others with his bullshit, but he leaves early, knows a good thing, mate, so he doesn’t make a fuss much,” said Rolly. “He’s been in London a while. Teaches, I think.” He was making a martini while we talked.

  “You ever meet Valentina Sverdloff, Sverdloff’s daughter?”

  He hesitated.

  “What is it?”

  “You’re Mr Sverdloff’s friend, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s tough to say exactly.”

  “Try.”

  “She was a knockout,” he said.

  “That’s not what you were thinking.”

  “You mean because I’m gay? I can see what a girl looks like can’t I?”

  “You were thinking something you didn’t want to tell me. You want to walk outside for a minute? Grab a smoke?”

  “Sure,” said Rolly, talked to another bartender, and went out onto the street with me where he lit up a smoke and sighed.

  “Valentina,” I said. “You knew her. How well? Listen, level with me. Tell me what you thought about her, don’t fucking hold back, okay?”

  Drinking his beer, he looked surprised.

  “You sure, mate? I mean, you’re her dad’s pal, right?”

  “Just fucking please tell me.”

  “Men were crazy for her, and she was drop-dead gorgeous when she bothered, I’m saying sometimes she came by, no makeup, old pair of jeans, she was okay, but when she was done up, it was like Jesus H. fucking Christ. She was fantastic, I might be gay but I know sex on a stick.” He glanced at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “She had friends?”

  “Sure. Girlfriends. Men. Men came round like bees to honey, though she was bloody demanding.”

  “One guy in particular?”

  “Oh, yeah, baby,” said Rolly with emphasis, while he took big sucks on his smoke. “Now he was very cool.”

  “Did he pay for the drinks?”

  “Of course not. It was her daddy’s club, they didn’t pay though I got the impression he wasn’t absolutely rolling in it, the boy I mean.”

  “Was he after her father’s money?”

  “Who can tell? You want to know the actual truth about her, Valentina, the way I saw it?”

  I nodded.

  “She was a scary girl. Intense, you know?” said Rolly. “She’d talk about orphanages in Russia, the bloody politics of the place, I could see some of the customers look at her as if she was mad.”

  “Anything else you can think of about the boyfriend?”

  “Just he looked amazing, crazy about her, a lot of fucking charm, mate. Perfect manners. Never said a thing when she started in on one of her rants, but I could see it made him uncomfortable when she talked about how corrupt officials in Moscow are, I mean it’s not fucking brilliant in a club like this to say Putin has billions stashed in a Swiss bank, is it?”

  “And she liked him?”

  “Crazy about him. I think she was one of those girls who everybody wants, but she had never really fallen for anybody
, and this time, it was very big, very hot.”

  “He was Russian, wasn’t he?”

  “I didn’t notice. Yes, I think so. He only spoke English to me. Said his name was Greg.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Not with me,” said Rolly. “But I was just the help. I better go back in. You coming?”

  There wasn’t much more I could get at the club so I went back to the house which was a few blocks away and sat in a canvas chair on Tolya’s patio. It was back of the house and joined up with the communal gardens just beyond. Fireflies spat their glitter onto the thick dark summer night, and I sat, drank some Scotch and watched people go in and out of their houses.

  They carried trays and bottles, they sat around outdoor tables and yakked and laughed. Kids ran on the grass.

  For a while I tried to figure how to look for a man who had killed Sverdloff’s daughter as a warning.

  From my cell I called Bobo Leven in New York, told him to get me anything he had on Tito Dravic, the Brooklyn club manager. Told him to keep working everything, including the initial m carved on Masha. I wasn’t convinced it was her own initial, I was guessing the killer left it because he liked to sign his work. Then I went into Tolya’s house through the garden door.

  Sleepless, I wandered through the house. On the marble mantel in the living room was a stack of invitations, heavy white cards. I picked them up. Balls. Parties. Picnics. Races. One was for Saving Girls, a charity ball. Host: Anatoly Sverdloff. It was Val’s charity. I looked at the date. The night after the next. I’d be there. I wanted to know what these people had heard, how much they knew. Russians.

  From the room where I crawled into bed finally, but still restless, I leaned on one arm and looked out the side street window. Tolya’s SUV was there, and his guy, Ivan, was leaning against it, smoking. I could see the burning red tip of his smoke.

  A minute or two later, another car drove slowly up the street, slowly maybe just to avoid the speed bumps, maybe because the driver was looking for something.

  I changed rooms. I went to bed in a room away from the street. I put the gun Tolya had given me on the bedside table. The clock, an alarm clock in a blue leather case, was next to it. The illuminated green dial read 3.04.

  Couldn’t sleep. Got up one more time, smoked a while, standing at the window, saw black shapes outside, something in the gardens, maybe just teenagers, maybe something else. I felt trapped between the two sides of the house.

  Exhausted, jet-lagged, so heavy I felt like I was carrying somebody else, another whole body, on my back, I dozed. Except for a few miserable hours sucking in stale air on the plane, I hadn’t slept for a couple of nights.

  Only now, in my half-sleep, then in my dreams, did I finally grasp that Valentina was really gone. I pushed my face into the pillow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bray was the name of the little town where Tito Dravic had worked. Bobo Leven got me the information same as he got me the information that Dravic had turned up in Belgrade and refused to talk to anyone. I was guessing he was scared by Masha’s murder, by offering to help me. Scared him so bad he’d left New York.

  The town was an hour out of London, and the River Inn where Dravic had been a waiter sat in a plush green grove of trees on the banks of the river Thames. Yellow-green willows brushed their feathery branches against the water.

  A lovely sweet smell came up as I got out of the cab from the train station, green, fresh, light years from the crappy playground where Masha had been tied up to the swing.

  Another part of Tolya’s make-believe paradise was the English countryside. I knew Tolya had a country mansion someplace. His Eden.

  “Ten pounds,” said the irritable cab driver when I gave him dollars by mistake.

  Even before I got to the front door of the hotel, it hit me that Dravic had known Masha Panchuk better than he said, and that he knew her long before she got to New York.

  How bad did it hurt when he found out she had a husband, that she was probably going out with other guys, maybe working as a hooker? Did he watch her with men at the club in Brooklyn and want to kill her?

  As I left the parking lot at the inn I noticed the same Mercedes SUV I had seen from the window the night before, the SUV that rolled slowly over the speed bumps on Tolya’s street; or maybe I was just going nuts.

  “Can I help you?”

  The hotel smelled of polish and fresh flowers. In the bar off the lobby, a young guy was setting up for lunch. Chilling bottles of white wine in a tub of ice as delicately as if they were tiny missiles, he clocked my presence and asked for the second time if he could help.

  “Can I help you, sir?” I wasn’t sure why I did it at first, but I twisted my wrist to glance at the gold Rolex I had taken from Tolya’s place because I’d left my watch in New York. I made my accent slightly foreign, faintly Russian. I realized he had seen the watch, had taken note of my accent.

  The Rolex sat on my wrist, big as a quarter pounder, gold, diamonds surrounding the dial.

  “I’d like some coffee, please,” I said.

  “Of course,” said the waiter attentively. “Would you like some breakfast, sir?”

  I said I’d be out on the terrace where tables were set for lunch. As I sat down, I asked for some cigarettes, took Tolya’s lighter out of my pocket, flicked it in the sun, examined the familiar design-a cigar engraved on the surface with a large ruby for the burning tip. Tolya always carried it. The waiter who had seated me rushed away to get my coffee and a newspaper. He obviously figured me for somebody with dough, maybe a rich Russian.

  From where I sat I could watch boats drift along the water, the beautiful houses on the other side, a few kids scrambling down the bank, and then, without me really noticing at first, a man emerged from the hotel and sat at the table farthest from mine, next to a large terracotta pot of red geraniums.

  He wore jeans and a white t-shirt. He spoke Russian softly into his phone. He saw me look. Nodded politely like well-bred strangers in some period movie, then closed his phone and opened his copy of the Financial Times.

  When the waiter brought my coffee, I peeled a ten off the wad of Tolya’s notes I had in my pocket and said, “You have a minute?”

  He nodded. I asked him about Tito Dravic. He said he knew Dravic before he left for the States. I showed him the picture of Masha Panchuk.

  “Oh, sure, Masha worked as a maid here for a few weeks,” he said. “She was a sad girl. Pretty, but so sad she wore it like a coat.”

  “She was close with Dravic?”

  “I don’t know. I heard something,” he said. “Hang on a minute.” He disappeared into the hotel, and a few minutes later a stocky woman in a white skirt and dark blue blouse came out and hovered. She introduced herself as the assistant manager. I didn’t identify myself as a cop, but I implied this was some kind of official visit. The woman looked tense. Easy to intimidate.

  “Sit down, please.” I said. “You knew Masha Panchuk, and Tito Dravic?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Miss Panchuk worked for a friend of mine,” I said. “In New York. I said I’d ask about her when I got here. They were close?”

  “Yes,” said the woman who didn’t tell me her name, just her title. Yes, she said again and told me that Tito was upset when Masha went away. That Masha took up with a fellow, name of Zim something. “She told me she was going to Alaska with him. I told her she was mad, she had a good job here, but she didn’t take any notice.”

  “Did Dravic know?”

  “I imagine he knew, and not long after Masha left, he said he was going home to New York.”

  “When was this?”

  She shrugged. “Last winter perhaps?”

  “You knew she was dead?”

  “We heard. I am so sorry.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  She got up. “Do you speak Russian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me, if you would.”

&n
bsp; I took a gulp of my coffee, glanced again at the middle-aged man in jeans-good-looking, expensive haircut, unlined face- and I followed her into the hotel and upstairs to a small office. She picked up the phone. A minute later, a young woman appeared. She wore a maid’s uniform, she was very young and pale and serious.

  The manager spoke to her in bad Russian and gave her permission to answer my questions.

  “You knew Masha Panchuk?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “And Dravic?”

  “Yes.”

  “They were close?”

  “Yes,” she said, not volunteering more than she was asked for.

  “Masha went away without him?”

  “She gets married with Zim. Tito is unhappy. After a while he returns to the United States.”

  “How unhappy?”

  “Very unhappy and angry. I didn’t like to be near him,” the girl said. “One time I found him punching the wall with his fist until it is covered in blood.”

  “And Masha?”

  “I never saw her again.”

  *

  Masha was dead. Dravic was in Belgrade, refusing to talk to anyone, which was as good as dead.

  Had Masha first gone to the Brooklyn club to get help from him? To tell him it was over with Zim? That she only used Zim to get to America?

  It was a dead end. What I wanted was the son of a bitch who killed Valentina.

  The manager told the Russian girl to go back to her work, then said to me, “Is your friend looking for someone to replace Masha Panchuk?”

  “It’s for me,” I said. “I’m going to be living in London for a while and I need someone good.”

  “You’d like a Russian girl?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t ask why, just made a phone call, wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

  “This is the agency we used for Masha. They have good workers. They supply many of the important Russian families living here.”

  “But you’re not Russian?”

  “No, just plain English,” she said.

  “A lot of Russians come to the hotel?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We have a marvelous chef, two stars in Lyons before he came to us, absolute genius, and a very fine wine cellar and the Russians want only the best. Many come here to stay which is why we hire quite a few Russians as maids and waiters. Many of the wealthiest Russians have country estates quite close by. We cater parties for them, and the houses are marvelous, and the best art.”