“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.
“I’m on my way.”
“Good, I want to see you. Coffee’s on,” she said, and laughed, the throaty, dark laugh that was like an older woman. “If you’re good, I’ll buy you blintzes,” she added. “Strawberry.”
“I could meet you someplace, we could eat someplace,” I said, nervous now.
“Come to the apartment first.”
I had planned to go to Dacha, the club in Sheepshead Bay. Tito Dravic, the manager had promised me a video and some paperwork on Masha Panchuk, the dead girl on the swing. It was still early.
In Brighton Beach near the boardwalk overlooking the ocean was a condo built half a dozen years ago for Russians who had made some dough in America but didn’t want to leave the neighborhood. Old people, mostly. Others who had moved up and out, Long Island or New Jersey, kept an apartment for the ocean view, the shopping, sentiment, an investment.
Tolya Sverdloff had bought a condo for his mother the time she was in America. I didn’t know that after she died, he had kept it.
A doorman with gold braid on his shoulders was reading the News in the lobby and when he saw me, he faked a smile and buzzed the Sverdloff apartment, and I went up in the elevator with an elderly couple, their arms piled high with bags of food. I could smell the lox.
“Come on in,” her voice called. The door was open. I went into the apartment and saw her.
Behind a makeshift desk near the window, talking into the phone, reading some papers, doodling in a notebook, her face was scrubbed, no make-up, a pencil stuck behind her ear, she wore a red blouse with long sleeves and a white cotton skirt that fell below her knees. Her feet were stuck in a pair of yellow flip-flops. From somewhere-her iPod, maybe-came the sound of a lovely bossa nova track.