Blood of the Czars

by Kilian, Michael;

  “What do you want to do about your apartment?”

  “Keep up the rent, if you would. For a while. I’ll get in touch with you about it. After a while.”

  Tatty’s drink came and she sipped it gratefully. Perhaps this was not a bad choice of rendezvous. They must look nothing more than a couple of Westchester ladies having a late afternoon drink, discussing their husbands, or their affairs.

  “What are you going to do, Tatty?”

  “I can’t tell you. For one reason, I haven’t figured it all out yet. For another, you and Daddy shouldn’t know. I wasn’t exaggerating about people getting killed.”

  “What more can we do to help you?”

  “Nothing. Just stay out of it, and let everything quiet down. That will help me.” She glanced at the door as a man entered; no one she knew. “And don’t talk to, don’t have anything to do with a swine named Ramsey Saylor.”

  “I remember him. A boy from Westchester. Harvard. One of your beaux.” A more characteristic smile crept onto Tatty’s face. “Several times.”

  “Don’t let him near you. He’s part of this, and very dangerous. I don’t want to tell you anything more, but stay away from him.”

  Chesley nodded. She seemed at a loss for what next to say. Tatty feared she might lapse into that great forte of their class—small talk.

  “What you said about my grandmother and mother, their origins,” Tatty said. Chesley’s face became blank. “I was very angry about that at first, but thinking about it today, well, I have reason to believe you may well be right.”

  She hadn’t fully concluded that yet. She was fishing, provoking. But Chesley did not respond in the way Tatty hoped she would. She only patted Tatty’s hand, recanting nothing—sympathetic and affectionate, almost smug. Her belief in the nobility of the Iovashchenkos had been Tatty’s only bolster of self-respect when she and her mother had come to the Chase household. Now it was gone. She finished her drink.

  “I must go.”

  Chesley quickly drank her Dubonnet.

  “No, Chesley. You stay awhile. Let me just sort of vanish.” She rose, and kissed her stepsister’s forehead. “I love you. I love Daddy. I’ll find a way to get in touch. Good-bye.”

  She picked up the overnight bag and the purse Gwen had loaned her, and walked away. The parking attendant took too long getting her car, making her nervous. She almost didn’t tip him, but quickly realized that would make her stick in his mind. She didn’t want to be remembered by anyone.

  Once gone from the place, taking a series of back roads she knew east across the line into Connecticut, she felt an extraordinary sense of freedom. She was escaping herself. Her life had not been quite so pointless and meaningless as Ramsey had insisted, but he had now irrevocably driven her from it. Tatty Chase could no longer be, nor could Tatiana Iovashchenko. She was free to become whoever she wished.

  There was a car behind her, but she was not going to worry about it. There were too many cars for her to become paranoid about each one.

  She could go to Canada, when this was done. She was very fond of Canada. Better, Australia or New Zealand, lovely places, and out of harm’s way.

  There would be one more night in Bridgeport, and then Tatty Chase would disappear.

  There were no lights on in Gwen’s house, but as she went to pat the key in the front door, Tatty heard the radio playing quite loudly. If Gwen had not yet come home, there was no way the radio could have been turned on. If she had gone to bed, she would not have left it on, certainly not at such a volume. Perplexed, Tatty hesitated, then pushed open the door, eyes straining against the darkness, wincing at the din.

  She called out Gwen’s name. Hearing no answer, she shouted it out. The radio was insufferable. It was a wonder the neighbors hadn’t called the police. She started toward the kitchen to turn it off, when her peripheral vision caught the movement. It was a strange motion, too high above the floor. Blinking in the dark, she peered more closely. It was the slow, profound spin of a mobile, such as one might see at the Museum of Modern Art, only this had no such metallic delicacy.

  She quickly flicked on the hallway light, as she should have done from the first. Then she screamed.

  Gwen was much as she had been at the conclusion of that living room scene, her arms slack at her sides, her legs akimbo, her head bent forward oddly. But she was hanging naked from a length of clothesline tied to the upstairs balustrade. Her eyes were not sad but madly strained and bulging. Her face was a puffy crimson, her mouth full of a ghastly purple tongue.

  Tatty stood immobile, as she had when Griuchinov had pitched forward into the tray of ice. She didn’t know what to do. The radio had to be turned off. Gwen had to be cut down. Tatty had to flee.

  There was a note on the hall table. Tatty snatched it up. It was a sorrowful farewell, Gwen proclaiming her overwhelming love, and her utter inability to go on living without Tatty’s love in return. It was the perfect suicide note, except for one small matter.

  It was entirely in Tatty’s handwriting.

  14

  Tatty ran to the kitchen, turned on the light, and snapped off the radio. She looked frantically about, and grabbed a carving knife, hurrying back to the hall. Scrambling up the stairs, she sawed frantically at the clothesline until it finally gave way, and Gwen’s body fell to the floor with a horrible thump, landing in a tangle, her genitals exposed from the rear. Tatty rushed to her side, turning the body over to a more seemly pose, pointlessly loosening the cord around Gwen’s neck, sick at the sight of the deep, ugly line it had cut into the flesh. She closed Gwen’s staring eyes, then rose to go upstairs to get a blanket and cover the body. She stopped.

  No. She must run now, just as she had run from the Kremlin. She had her small suitcase, the borrowed purse with all her other possessions, the keys to Gwen’s car. Except for her collection of newspaper articles about events in Russia, there was nothing else of hers in the house. She had thrown out the clothes in which she had returned to America. Everything else she had used was Gwen’s.

  She jammed the spurious suicide note into her coat pocket, clicked off the hall light, and, with overnight bag and purse in hand, ran outside and down the front steps. Feeling a thousand eyes upon her, though she saw no faces in the windows across the street, she backed Gwen’s Volkswagen out of the drive, and roared off, taking streets and a road that led north toward Danbury. In her panic, her intent was to keep driving all the way to Canada, but before long she thought better of it. Canada would mean no deliverance. Not yet. She needed help. She needed friends. Friends were in New York.

  She left the car in a supermarket parking lot a few blocks from the commuter railroad station in suburban North White Plains. It was an hour-and-ten-minute wait, which passed slowly and horribly, her mind beset with images of Gwen’s disfigured face and fears of what would happen next, perhaps at any moment. She wanted a drink.

  Nothing did happen. She boarded the last car of the train and took the last seat in the rear, assured that everyone in front of her would be facing forward. When the train finally lurched under way, gathering speed for the short run to the city, she allowed herself to feel a little more secure, enough to take her eyes from the others in the car and open the little suitcase.

  The money was there, nearly all of it in hundred-dollar bills. Remembering Russia, she rolled it tightly and quickly stuck it into the top of her bra and in her coat pockets. Chesley had also put in a nightgown, a pair of her Ferragamo shoes, one of her more expensive afternoon dresses, and, thoughtfully, several pairs of panty hose. As Tatty hadn’t requested, her birth certificate was there. Angry, she took this as a snide gesture of Chesley’s, but at length realized it was probably her stepfather’s idea—and a good one. Though she’d legally taken the name Chase, her birth certificate was under the name of Shaw, her real father’s name. She could use it to acquire a new passport, without attracting trouble. Here she’d so blithely decided upon Australia or New Zealand as her eventual haven, without stop
ping to think that her passport was in some Moscow police file.

  The forward door to the car banged open. She looked up, her hand going instantly to the coat pocket in which she kept the pistol. Seeing it was only the conductor, wondering if she looked too fearful, she closed the lid of the suitcase and composed herself. When he finally reached her, she was able to say, “Grand Central, one way,” almost nonchalantly. He lingered overlong after handing her her change and ticket, but she could only hope it was for the usual reason.

  When he was gone again, she quickly went through the mail. The “important-looking” pieces proved to be mostly investment offers and charity requests, though there was an old letter from her tax lawyer advising her of a new change in the internal revenue code that would be of advantage to her. The “personal” ones were largely invitations to formal parties and theatrical previews. One, however, was from her ex-husband, asking if she would be willing to sell him her interest in the cottage they both still jointly owned in Chatham, on Cape Cod. She’d forgotten she still had it. She read on. He wanted it because he was remarrying. Well, hurray for him. The bride was no doubt the sort of Smith girl who’d be more than content with suburban Republican politics and the Junior League. She read further. Good God, he was marrying someone named Levatino.

  There was another letter from an actor friend in London, who was writing to say he was in London, and an old one from Dexter Johns, proposing marriage.

  The final piece of correspondence was a small, elegant card stuck in a side pocket of the bag. It said, “Remember that we love you, daughter, and will always be waiting.” It was signed, “Daddy.” After that, in her own hand, was Chesley’s name.

  Tatty shut the case and slipped it onto the seat beside her. She closed her eyes, but that did not hold back the tears. When they reached Grand Central, the conductor looked at her with some concern as she left the train.

  Wiping her eyes, she passed through the gate into the terminal much as she had hundreds of times before. She could now be returning from just another visit to the country. It would be so easy to turn and walk out the Lexington Avenue exit, hail a cab, and return home to her apartment, there to watch the late news with a cozy drink and then go to bed.

  But Tatty would not want to see what would be on the news that night.

  She thought of stopping for a drink in the Oyster Bar, where she had met so many dates in her college days, preferring it to the Biltmore’s silly “under the clock.”

  She should not go where she had ever been before. She should not be in this city. Yet she needed a drink. Good God, she caught herself thinking of going to the Algonquin.

  She hurried up the ramp to Forty-second Street, settling finally on a grubby little Irish bar near Murray Hill, not far from the Morgan Library. It was fairly crowded, and the bartender was busy. She ordered a double Scotch on ice when he finally came, and when he went away again, she looked through Gwen’s purse, taking the small amount of money that was there but leaving the drivers license and the few other items that were Gwen’s.

  The drink was not enough. She had another, quickly, then left. Passing a small alleyway, not dissimilar to the one she had hidden in in Moscow, she threw the purse into a pile of uncollected garbage, and hurried on. Heading west, Tatty crossed a stretch of Fifth Avenue she had paid little attention to in years before, startled to see an entire block of Korean storefronts. She kept on, into the darkness of the shabby side street, moving around sacks of garbage but remembering to stay close to the curb, away from the doorways. Reaching Herald Square, alarmed at its sleaziness—the bums, bag ladies, and winos, the hulking young men—she turned north on Sixth Avenue, walking quickly, almost at a run.

  It was a puzzle. It was a game. How many people could Ramsey and the Russians have at their disposal? How many of her friends could they watch? Ramsey had not thought of Gwen but he had had someone at the Chase estate. He had someone, no doubt, at Tatty’s Fifty-seventh Street apartment. Where else? Which of her friends would he choose? The likeliest? The least likely? He was more than clever. He was ingenious. She would have to avoid the obvious. She would have to avoid the ingenious.

  The warmth and glow of the whiskies was wearing off. Tears were returning, tears for Gwen, tears for Jack, tears for Chesley and Daddy Chase. Tears for herself. She was enveloped by layers of melancholy, helplessness, and paranoia. But inside her was still the anger. It kept her going, hurrying along, stumbling over broken pavement, dodging through traffic, until she finally found herself back in her own country, on Central Park South, the St. Moritz just down the street.

  She looked diagonally across the park toward the Upper West Side, a neighborhood like all those south of 96th Street becoming rapidly expensive, but still with its grubby, grimy sections.

  She rolled her dice. Ramsey had already rolled his.

  Cyril Greene, barefoot, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, unshaven, though his red mustache was gone, opened his door an inch or two on its chain. He seemed not to recognize her. The television set was on. He smelled of beer, and something else. Marijuana.

  “It’s me, Cyril. Tatty Chase. I need your help.”

  His expression focused. “Tatty Chase.” He shook his head.

  “Please, let me in.”

  He shook his head again, then he produced his obnoxious old grin. He let her stand there a few seconds more. After another shake of the head, he pushed the door forward and slipped off the chain, opening the door wide and ushering her inside like the maitre d’ of a grand restaurant.

  Closing the door behind her, he leaned back against it and stood there, arms folded.

  “Amazing.”

  “Yes. I’m alive.”

  “That’s not amazing. What’s amazing is that you’ve come here, that you’re standing here in the middle of Chez Greene. Chez Cyril Greene. Chez Sid would not be amazing.”

  “It would tonight.” She looked around. The place smelled rancid and stale. There were several empty cans of beer standing on the principal table and a pile of clothing in the corner. Four doors opened onto the room: the one through which she had entered, one leading to a kitchenette, another to the bathroom, and a very wide one behind which was likely to be found a Murphy bed. “Cyril, I need a place to stay.”

  “You certainly must. Desperately, for you to be here.”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Just for tonight. I’ll be gone tomorrow. The day after at the latest. I need sleep and some food. I have to figure out what to do next. I’ll be no trouble.”

  “Tatty, by any calculation, I must owe you six hundred consecutive days in the Helmsley Palace’s best suite.” He shoved an old New York Times off what appeared to be his best chair, and motioned her to it, seating himself on a sagging couch. She kept her eyes from his bare feet.

  “I need a drink,” she said.

  “I have beer.”

  “Anything.”

  “You don’t drink beer, do you? I have some wine, but it’s rather old, and there isn’t much of it.”

  “Anything.”

  “Wait. I’ve a pint of Rock ‘n’ Rye. I keep it just for when I have a cold. I’ve had a few sniffles, lately, but nothing—”

  “I’ll take it. In a large glass, straight. Please.”

  He leaned forward, hesitating. She quickly reached into her coat and pulled a bill free from the roll. It was a hundred. She set it on the water-stained table next to her.

  “Buy another. And with the change, get me a large bottle of something decent.”

  She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. She was shaking.

  “Tatty, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine!”

  She moved her hands again to cover her eyes. Tears were streaming from them.

  “Tatty?”

  “Just get me the damned drink, will you?”

  She heard his bare feet crossing the wooden floor to the kitchenette. Taking her hands away, she found herself lo
oking at a Seurat print on the dingy wall opposite. She folded her arms, hugging herself, still trembling. She was wearing one of Gwen’s dresses and it was making her ill. She caught herself searching frantically over it, as though for bloodstains. Her mind was unraveling. She could not think.

  Cyril slammed a cabinet. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “No,” she said. It wasn’t true. She wanted to tell him, someone, anyone, everything—to let it all pour out, purge herself of the entire horror, and then crawl into someone’s arms, even Cyril’s, for a protective embrace of warmth and comfort.

  “Did your brother-in-law really try to murder you?”

  “No.”

  “Was someone murdered?”

  “I don’t want to tell you anything, Cyril. Not a word. I haven’t told anyone anything. I’m just in trouble, and I need your help. Just for tonight. Please.”

  “Sure, Tatty. Anything.” He came back with a jelly glass filled to the brim with the candied whiskey. “Here. It’s all I’ve got.”

  She drank, gratefully and desperately. He eyed the hundred-dollar-bill.

  “Take it, Cyril. It’s yours. I’ll give you more if you want it. Money’s not among my worries.”

  “I’m really not a sponge, Tatty. People are unfair about that. I’ve just had a long streak of bad luck.”

  “I understand that, Cyril. You have no idea how much I do. It’s just that money is not what matters right now. What matters is that I’d like a bottle of good Scotch and something decent to eat. I have money for me and for you. The money is unimportant.” She hugged herself still closer, spilling some of her drink.

  “Would you like a blanket?”

  “No. That’s all right.” She took another large swallow. It was awful, but wonderful. She had drunk quite a lot of Rock ’n’ Rye as a college girl.