Red Mercury Blues
Page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Also available by Reggie Nadelson
Red Mercury Blues
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: New York
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Two: New York
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Three: Moscow
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue: New York
A journalist and documentary film-maker, Reggie Nadelson is a New Yorker who also makes her home in London. She is the author of seven novels featuring the detective Artie Cohen (‘the detective every woman would like to find in her bed’, Guardian), most recently Red Hook. Her non-fiction book Comrade Rockstar, the story of the American who became the biggest rock star in the history of the Soviet Union, is to be made into a film starring Tom Hanks.
Also available by Reggie Nadelson
FICTION
Bloody London
Skin Trade
Hot Poppies
Somebody Else
Disturbed Earth
Red Hook
NON-FICTION
Comrade Rockstar
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781409007647
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Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books, 2006
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Copyright © Reggie Nadelson 1995
Reggie Nadelson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by
Faber and Faber, London
Arrow Books
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For Anne Graham Bell
PART ONE
NewYork
1
“There were body parts hanging from the trees.”
I was in the car coming back from Brooklyn when the radio started playing news of an airplane crash in the midwest, and a nurse who got to the scene first was saying, “There were body parts hanging from the trees.” Then I forgot about it because a weird white fog seemed to boil up fast and low off the river and cut Manhattan off.
It had rained hard all morning—rain like steel needles driving into the East River, the river spilling over its banks in places, and now the fog chasing me back from Brooklyn. I raced it halfway up the Brooklyn Bridge. Then traffic stopped dead.
Only the tops of the buildings were visible. Manhattan was an island state. Remote. Isolated. Borders cut off by fog. The buildings, eerie monsters, stuck up out of the rolling white fog and the mist hung on the Empire State Building in sheets, like ghosts on bayou trees.
I lit a cigarette as the fog crawled up my windshield. Out of the gloom, headlights flashed, a couple of kids got out of the car in front of me, tried to climb the struts of the bridge, disembodied heads sticking out of the mist, hands clinging to the railing. I sat on the bridge, smoking, waiting.
I had gone to Brooklyn early to get caviar for Dawn’s wedding because you could get good stuff for cash at Fish Town in Brighton Beach. I didn’t want to go much, I’m not crazy about dealing with Russians, but Dorothy Tae, Dawn’s ma, asked me, and I would have bought the whole goddamn sturgeon if she wanted, or gone fishing for it. It worked out fine, and a few pounds of the best Osetra in a blue can was in a cold-pack on the back seat of the Mustang.
Then it was over.
The fog rolled out. The rain quit. Suddenly. The way tropical rain stops. The city was locked back in a suspension of humidity heavy as chicken fat or depression. The sun came out again, bloated as a wiseguy’s Rolex, leaking smudgy color into the sky. It was very hot, a stinker for September, as I drove off the bridge near City Hall, up Lafayette, and thought of the first time I’d crossed the bridge, when I was nineteen, coming in from the airport. I’d ordered the taxi driver—it was a rattletrap gypsy cab—to take the Brooklyn Bridge. A big shot. I was aching to show I knew the way. I didn’t. I didn’t know shit. I wanted to be cool, but I was scared. And then I saw the skyline: impossible, arrogant, beautiful. It made me want to cry. It made me feel I could dump the past. Twenty years later, it was home.
“Dickfist. Asshole. Sonofabitch piece of dogshit, move it!” The guy in the next car leaned on his horn. He was white and he wore a Knicks cap backwards. The light had turned green, I was gazing absently out the window. He had a point.
“Lighten up,” I yelled back pleasantly and headed for Broadway to deliver the caviar, get a shower and change into my tux.
“You got some secret?” a pretty girl at Dawn Tae’s wedding asked me that night. I was laughing out loud for no reason except that I was drunk. And happy. Later on, when things were lousy, I would remember having a c
ompletely wonderful time at the wedding. Dawn could have had it some place fancy, but she wanted it here; this was home. For me, too. The Taes, who run the best restaurant in Chinatown, are also my landlords, having refurbished the space in the building upstairs for lofts. They put in a separate entrance so you don’t have to go through the restaurant. It works great.
“I’m a happy man,” I said to the girl in blue satin. Under her thin jacket, as we spun onto the dance floor, I could feel her pliant flesh. Over her head, mirrored balls the size of melons spun and sprayed reflections of hundreds of people into silvery shards of light. The smell of lilies, chilies and girls’ perfume bloomed in the heat and everywhere, vases blazed with red roses. Red for luck.
I knew I was drunk. But it was the kind of champagne drunk that made everything sharper. Later, the scene would come back as if out of a Christmas window on Fifth Avenue: the room very bright, the dancers spinning, the bride parading, old men in armchairs snoring, children spilling over their feet, waiters hefting loaded trays, the guests all moving in set patterns, as if driven by invisible motors. Sleek as a seal, Mr Tae beamed; Peter Chu came from a good Hong Kong clan; Dawn had married well.
The band played “Cheek to Cheek”. I’d trade any classical stuff you could name, even Horowitz playing Chopin, for Astaire, not to mention Dreck Doggy Dog or whoever the rap fool was, and I danced with kids who stood on my feet and old ladies who pushed me around in intricate two-steps. I danced with girls in sleek silks, perched like exotic birds on four-inch heels.
“I’m in heaven.”
The girl in blue satin looked up at me like I was a little cracked and I realized I was singing out loud. Born happy, my mother said once: a freak of nature.
“How you doing, detective?” Ricky Tae, Dawn’s brother and my best friend, drifted by.
“Great,” I said. “Great.”
As we danced, I realized the girl in blue, who had a high forehead, a great smile and terrific tits, had nothing on under the satin jacket.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Artie,” I said, pulling her closer. She smelled good.
“You’re Ricky’s policeman, aren’t you? I thought cops were brooding. You know, brooding. Disaffected. Sick of life. Saddened by experience.”
“You’ve seen too many Al Pacino movies. I am the cheerful cop,” I said. “You want to come upstairs and try me? I live upstairs,” I said. I didn’t bother her with all the facts, didn’t mention I was on leave and thinking of quitting the department, or that the more misery I see, the more I’m convinced there is only one message, which is to live it up. She wanted brooding, I could try; I gave her the young Brando. She giggled, then drifted away from me. Dawn passed and I put my arm out and caught her.
“She didn’t like you?” Dawn looked spectacular in a red suit.
“She was hoping for Al Pacino,” I said. “You look wonderful. Maybe you married the wrong guy.”
“I wish it could have been you,” Dawn whispered, only half joking. We’d been kidding around for years, ever since I moved into the building; sometimes we used to make out on the stairs.
But it would break her father’s heart if Dawn married a round-eyed cop, and we both knew it.
“Let’s just dance,” I said and we moved out onto the floor and everyone made room for us because we were good. From the bandstand Ricky sang “I Love You Just the Way You Are”. Everyone laughed and danced, the rights spun and I held Dawn and smelled the roses.
“You’re drunk. I’ve never seen you drunk,” she said.
“You never got married before,” I said.
An hour later, I ran up the stairs to change because my shirt was soaked. Earlier, Dawn and her girlfriends had commandeered my place for a dressing room and it was drenched with delicious smells: powder; hairspray; the smell of girls, and perfume: Dawn wore Joy. A red silk slip was tossed over my bed. I put my face in it, then snapped on the CD; Ella Fitzgerald sang “Give It Back to the Indians”.
Glancing in the mirror, I grabbed a fresh shirt. I was thirty-nine, six one, in pretty good shape. I sucked in my gut. God, I was slaughtered. I lit a cigarette, did up my shirt with fingers thick as egg-rolls, inhaled the smoke, and the perfume mixed with it and gave me a rush, like pure oxygen, or pure pleasure. I would find a nice girl, get married. Be a real American. Have fun. Listen to Ella Fitzgerald. It was OK. I was safe.
I was halfway down the stairs when my phone rang. The answering machine picked it up. Something made me go back. Something was wrong. The pulse in my neck pounding, I played the message.
Gennadi Ustinov had been shot.
My head exploded. Shot. Shot where? I stood, rigid, frozen, watching myself listening to the voice on the machine. Gennadi Ustinov shot in the face on The Teddy Flowers Show. Shot?
As I ran out into the street, I was uncomprehending, the city hot as hell, me running, trying to outrun the nightmare I could feel pulling me back, sweat dropping like rainwater from my hair into my eyes. The soft hot tar dragged at my feet. I kept thinking: Don’t die. Don’t die.
2
Don’t die!
Even before I got to his room in the intensive care unit, I could hear the machines breathing. In. Out. In out. In out. It was after midnight, the hospital was quiet. From halfway down the corridor, I heard the sounds of a man in outer space.
In the room, on a bed, under greenish lights, Gennadi Ustinov lay motionless, attached like a spaceman by corrugated plastic tubes to the machine that breathed for him.
Banks of machines winked. Jagged green lines on the black monitor showed his heart was still beating, and he was wired to a tangle of IVs, anchored by these fragile connections to life. His face, half covered by the plastic cone he breathed through, was drawn; he was old, he was older than I remembered.
There had been pictures. With his book coming out, there had been photographs in the papers, but his age never showed because he was a vain bastard, and you could fool with pictures. I pushed the hair out of my eyes and leaned over him and a nurse motioned me away, but an FBI agent whose name I couldn’t remember said to her, “Let him be.”
The agent had been there when I arrived at St Vincent’s, had shaken my hand with a brief, dry gesture of sympathy. My knuckles were bleeding.
In the street, after I’d left the wedding, after I’d run three or four blocks up Broadway, I’d seen a cab, and I ran for it, blocking it, hitting my fist on the hood to get the driver’s attention, throwing myself into it. The driver’s name was posted on his license: Petrov, Fyodr. I started barking orders and the angry driver became meek, began tugging a tuft of hair. “OK, mister,” he had said. “Yessir,” he had mumbled, subservient, scared of me, and I had realized I was shouting in Russian.
“Don’t die, please,” I whispered to Gennadi Mikhailovich now, this time in Russian. “Don’t goddamn die on me.”
“What did you do?” I said to him. “Who wants you dead?”
Except for the nurse, a single intern and the agent, the room had emptied out and I was alone with him. I stood by the bed looking down. How many times in recent years had I picked up his phone messages off my machine? He always spoke English, as if to show he knew I was now an American. I never called back.
“Shall we meet, Artyom?” he wrote. I never answered the letters. I saved the tape from the answering machine, though, and put it in a drawer.
“Shall we meet?”
“Please,” my Aunt Birdie wrote me from Moscow. “Please see him. Please, Artie, for your father’s sake.”
On the narrow white bed, breathing through tubes, oblivious, was the man who had been my father’s best friend: Uncle Gennadi, I called him. I had not seen him in twenty-five years. Then Birdie wrote me. I had agreed. We were to have met the next day at my place. In his last letter, he had asked me to show him where I lived. “I am so happy we shall finally meet,” he wrote; now we never would.
The FBI agent materialized behind me and put his hand on my shoulder as I watche
d the green lines on the black screen go flat. Doctors hurried in, rubber soles of their shoes making busy noises on the linoleum. In a furious phalanx that cut me out, they surrounded the bed and went to work on the body that lay on it.
“I’m sorry,” a doctor said. “You’ll have to go.”
“Is he dead?” I said. “Is he dead?” No one answered.
“Who would want to kill an ex-KGB general these days?” some news knucklehead with big hair chuckled knowingly as I wandered into the street outside the hospital. I needed a smoke. “Everybody,” I said to her. Go away, I thought. “Everybody.”
On the street, a camera crew lolled against a network truck, waiting hopefully; their lights were already up. Half a dozen blue and whites were parked along 12th Street, and up near Seventh Avenue a couple of barricades cut off the through traffic. Men in suits disembarked from limousines and cabs, were whisked into the hospital, the newsguys running alongside them, arms flailing, equipment aloft.
Trying not to yawn, young cops patrolled the perimeter, the boys scratching their brutal haircuts, the girls struggling to keep their hair up under their caps, weighed down with handcuffs, guns, nightsticks, and fatigue. I felt for them, but I couldn’t reclaim the young Artie Cohen from this footsore street life.
Then, out of one of the big cars, Sonny Lippert bounded energetically, racing towards the hospital. He saw me; Sonny never misses a trick.
“Artie, I’m sorry, man.” He was solemn. He pumped my hand like a man at a funeral.
“Yeah, well, thanks for letting me know, Sonny.” It had been Sonny Lippert’s voice on my answering machine telling me Ustinov was shot. A few weeks back, during some bonding built out of too many beers, I had confided to Sonny I was going to see Ustinov. It was a mistake.
“I’m a sweet guy,” he said.
Like me, Sonny was still wearing a tux; his was unwrinkled. He shook hands with half a dozen cops on the street. Sonny Lippert is plenty ambitious; he has a huge network of buddies and keeps it well oiled.
“I got to go in. I’m on the job, man. On this case, no one sleeps,” he said. Sonny works out of the Federal Prosecutor’s office now, and he takes an interest in anything Russian, but he never lets you forget that he was a detective once. He wears attitude that says “I’m a real cop.”