Was I obsessed because he had been with Val? If he didn’t kill her, why didn’t he show up or get in touch with Tolya? He was Valentina’s guy, what was stopping him? The part of me that was functioning like a cop knew the other part was jealous as hell and it was clouding my judgement and making me stupid.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Even from the entrance to Kensington Gardens, just as I entered the park, in the near distance, I could see the palace all lit up like Christmas, aglitter on the near horizon, and I could hear the Stones. A cover band was playing ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’.
As I got closer, the palace turned into a blaze of lights, lights in windows, lights in trees, little gold lights, silk lanterns with lights inside, chandeliers with candles set on tables you could see through the tall windows, real torches lining the drive. Tolya’s party, Valentina’s party, a party in honour of Val’s charity, a party where they both should have been. In my hand was the invitation I had taken from Tolya’s mantelpiece.
The band shifted to ‘Wild Horses’. Security was everywhere, guys in uniform, others in plain clothes, Russian muscle speaking into the collar of their evening clothes that were too tight, others in costume.
Near the entrance where people were streaming in, was a bunch of gorgeous girls in period ball-gowns, diamonds on every part, wrists, ears, necks, greeted me. Slavic cheekbones, legs up to their armpits, the Russian babes were working the door.
All suited up in the tux and new shoes, I passed in without much trouble.
“Devil?”
“What?”
“A mask?” One of the babes was holding up a red devil mask with sequins on it.
“I don’t think so.”
“Cat?”
“What?”
“I think there’s others,” she said worriedly, sorting through the basket.
“I’ll take the devil.”
Kensington Palace, where Lady Diana had lived – somebody dropped this into conversation as soon as I got in the door – was close to the Russian Embassy. Maybe in the next Revolution, the new Russians could set up shop here.
London had always been a good place to operate out of. My mother used to tell me about it, late at night when Moscow was asleep. She told me how Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin had been in London: Lenin and his wife had stayed in a nice place in Kensington; Stalin, who was broke, in a flea pit. She liked spinning stories about the so-called Soviet heroes. It made her feel better. It was her form of sedition, these late-night sessions.
From the look of the guests streaming into the palace, many courtiers, Tsars, more than one King Louis, a couple of Rasputins, and the others in regular clothes, jewels glittering, they already knew the next Revolution would not take place during Marxism-Leninism class, or folk-dancing.
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash is a gas gas” went the lyrics you could never get out of your head. This band was almost as good as the original, the beat, the strut, the bluesy heart.
I had always secretly preferred the Stones to the Beatles, even as a kid in Moscow, when the Beatles were like God, and everyone prayed at their altar; and though I Ioved them for a long time, after a while I couldn’t stand the reverence. And now, at the entrance to Kensington Palace, the noise was like a drug. It picked me up and carried me into the place, where I saw, in what felt like a druggy hallucination, Marie Antoinette, or maybe it was Catherine the Great, wobbling towards me, the heels of her large blue silk pumps going tippy-tap on the marble floor.
This Marie had very big feet, she was six feet tall plus a yard of powdered wig on her head, thick corkscrew curls hanging down her neck. Shoulders of an Olympic swimmer, big boobs pushed up most of the way so that when she bent over you could see her nipples. Until I saw them, and even then, I thought it was a guy in drag.
Her blue dress, weighed down with lace and sequins, was so wide that people scuttled away to avoid getting hit as if by a bumper car in an arcade. Unlike the ladies of the eighteenth century, she had a deep hard tan, and a voice that, when she shouted out to friends who passed, could crack Coke bottles. Overhead chandeliers hanging with crystals, and lit up with real candles, made her diamonds glitter hard as the tan.
I pushed the devil mask up on top of my head. Maybe I should have come as Lenin, I thought, and it was then, near the door, me adjusting my red mask, that the Marie Antoinette or whoever she was held out her hand as if she expected me to kiss it. I gave it a shake.
“Alexandra Arkadina Romanov,” said Marie through puffy lips thick with implants and gloss. “And you are?”
The band moved on to “Mother’s Little Helper”.
I said hi to Marie. She said this was her party, or at least she was on the committee, and that she had been Valentina Sverdloff’s best friend. In mourning for her, she said, we are all in mourning, but one must carry on.
I’m looking for a guy named Greg, I said to her, but she wasn’t interested. She asked where I was from and I said New York, and she said, no, originally, and I said I was original, and it went on like that for a minute or so, until she spotted better prey, a fat guy in a red frock coat with lace dribbling down his front.
“Artie.” It was Larry Sverdloff. He was not the kind of guy to put on a costume, and he was wearing tails and white tie and he looked good, the stuff was custom-made. He shook my hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Yeah, sorry I’m late.”
“It’s fine.”
“How come Tolya got this place for a party?”
“They rent it out,” he said. “You can rent pretty much any place you want. Can I get you a drink?” He signaled a waiter who swerved in and out between people, carrying aloft trays of champagne and other booze as the crowd grew, and you could feel the heat. There must have been five hundred people. I scanned the room, looking for Greg.
“You’ve heard from Tolya?”
“Only a message to deliver when I make the speech. I’m playing host for him. You okay? You have everything you want?”
“What about Greg?”
“I put out lines. I’m sure you’ll meet him. Excuse me,” said Larry. “I’m going to make a speech soon, then we can talk. There’s somebody I want you to meet here. ”
“Yeah, who’s that?” I was getting sick of Larry’s games, if they were games.
“Somebody else. She’ll be somewhere, probably out on the terrace smoking.”
“Who?”
“I’ll explain.”
“Fine, so what’s her name?”
“Fiona,” he said. “Excuse me.”
The band was on “Brown Sugar”. I looked around for the musicians, I went through one gilded room after the other, all of them packed, five hundred rich people giving off heat and ambition, and a band playing Stones numbers. I realized the music was coming from outside, from a big white tent out on the lawn.
Everywhere I went, people swarmed around me, shook my hand and bowed, and asked who I was, but didn’t care.
I met a guy who had made a fortune installing bulletproof glass, I met art dealers who could get you a Francis Bacon or a Monet, depending on your taste, and people who would protect your art collection because there had already been killings on that front, they said, and I didn’t know if they meant in the financial sense or the other kind that made you literally dead.
Actors, famous actors I’d seen in the movies, were around, dotted across the room like decorative objects. Brits with braying nasal voices in white tie and tails bragged about their agencies where you could hire butlers with pedigree, realtors who told me Russians liked living in houses near famous people, Belgravia was good, any place near Sean Connery a top choice. Or people with titles, God how the Russkis loved it, they’d say, oh, do meet the Earl of Fuckwit or whatever, and you could see them creaming their pants.
And there were Russians I recognized from news magazines, the big ones, the ones with the fleets of yachts. These were men who had swiped chunks of the old USSR, oil, gas, airlines, aluminum, the works. Faces as famous now as Lenin and Stalin and the other ghouls.