Bloody London (24 page)

“You never really learned to speak, did you?” It was what my father told me: “Englishmen don't speak other languages.” I added, “How did you buy this place?”

“I saved up. I was quite a rich man, my father had left me a bundle, as you say. I had someone who invested for me. I had a pleasant apartment in Moscow that I was able to sell before I left. There was a KGB pension plan. After all, I was a full colonel, was I not? There were certain perks. The KGB paid my tailors. They went on paying my club membership. I'd like to take you to dinner at my club, if you'll let me. It's very nice. Nice wines.”

“Your club. Jesus.”

“And there was hard currency, of course. For a while, I was able to sell my story. Now no one cares.”

I got up. “I don't buy it. Unless you had something to offer, I don't believe they would have let you in.”

I pulled on my jacket. Finished the whiskey in the glass. Glanced around the room one more time, then looked at the old man in the armchair. My hand was on the doorknob when I heard his voice.

“You'd be surprised if I told you the names of everyone we did business with, one way and another,” he said.

“Yeah, like who? Who is we?”

“Good question.” He got up slowly. Pulled himself out of his chair, turned to go towards the kitchen.

Suddenly I remembered: Frankie in Moscow. Her husband on missions for the West, and I said, “Like Thomas Pascoe?”

The old clock on the carved marble mantelpiece
ticked. Gilchrist disappeared into the kitchen. I waited.

“Just like dear dead Tommy,” he said, coming back into the room with a pitcher of water in one hand. “Is that why you're really here in London, Artie?” He sat on the edge of a small stiff sofa and set the water down on the floor.

“You're not telling me Thomas Pascoe was one of yours? Come on.”

“Pascoe showed up in Moscow from time to time. Put on a show. Representing his bank, he said, but we knew he had other business.”

“You knew Tommy Pascoe was dead.”

He looked triumphant. “Yes!”

I floated it casually. “Do you know why he died?”

He was excited now. “Is it yours, the case, is it?” He looked at his hands.

I didn't answer.

He said, “You're right, don't tell me, dear. I'm not the sort of man who stands up to pressure awfully well.”

“Don't flirt with me, Geoff.”

“But why not?” He smiled. “You met the lovely Frankie?”

“Yes.”

“She was quite something, my dear, and after your family left Moscow, she was a lifeline. She came on Peace missions. Soviet-American friendship committees. And always a bag of nice little tricks. She was a great favorite.”

“What kind of fucking tricks?”

“Things to wear. Things to eat. Books. Once my star declined a bit, I was on half-rations, so to speak.”

“Then do it for her if you want. Tommy's dead. Frankie's dead.” I looked at him. I was angry now. “You didn't know she was dead. She drowned herself. In her own bathtub. It took a while. It was slow for her.”

“I'm sorry.”

“So what's it going to take for us to stop talking oldtime spook shit and get some information? Am I right? Was Pascoe killed to shut him up?”

“Yes.”

“Something he found out here in London?”

“I think so.”

“Know or think? You say you owe me, you owe Frankie, so what's the deal, Geoff? This involves the Russians? The creeps? Eddie Kievsky? You said you owe me.”

He didn't answer me.

“I have to go, Geoff, so can we cut the crap. Please.”

Gilchrist got out of his chair heavily and put his hand out. “I'll have to grease some palms, as they say.”

“What?”

“You will come to see me again, won't you?”

“What will it take, Geoff, the information? What?”

He walked me to the door. He smiled and said, “Money.”

Outside Gilchrist's front door I tried to get a cigarette lit, but the wind snatched it away. The air felt good after the hot little house, but it was raining hard and I needed a smoke. I turned the corner, ducked into a building and found myself in the lobby of a military hospital. Nobody
noticed me. There was a row of plastic chairs and I sat on one and watched the old men coming and going. My feet were wet.

Seeing Gilchrist raised a tension in me like trip wires going up in my gut. You could cross the Atlantic and people still knew your business. New York and London were locked on each other in a way I didn't expect. You added Russians, the circle got smaller. Small enough everyone knew your business.

Ten, twelve days had gone by since Dante Ramirez, poor bastard, whacked Tommy Pascoe. There had been no collars that mattered before I left New York, only Ramirez, who left prints, his DNA and his soul by the side of the pool. He showed Homicide where he tossed the weapon. They offered him a deal; he didn't want it. The only deal he wanted was a place to stay when it got cold. He was crazy with fear of the cold. Even if he fried, he said, he'd still be warm.

The Mishkin kid and his sicko pal set Ramirez up. “Our surrogate,” the kid had drawled. Later he told Homicide he had lied to me under pressure. He said him and the pal were long gone from the pool when Pascoe was murdered, and it was true. Jared Mishkin had taken his cue from his father when his father said Thomas Pascoe was a problem. Ramirez hit Pascoe, but he was only a tool. Leo Mishkin was the messenger. But who sent the message and why?

“It will end in London,” Frankie Pascoe said.

“Everything moves through London,” Tolya told me the night I left him at Newark Airport.

An old soldier shuffled up to me and asked if I needed
anything, and I shook my head and headed for the door. I turned my collar up and looked out. I was an alien on an alien planet and it was raining. Still daytime, already dark.

I left the hospital and started back to Gilchrist's house. Then I noticed the dark-blue Jaguar across the street. It was the same car that took me from Kievsky's. I had been right about Geoff.

Geoffrey Gilchrist was an errand boy for the Russian mob. When he could, I was betting, he traded information about them to the Brits. What choices did he have? Gilchrist was a guy who was never in his life straight about anything. He was, like he said, Cold War scrap. Him. Tommy Pascoe. My own father.

Was it only accidental the bookstore guy calling Gilchrist? Did Gilchrist somehow know I was in town? Did Kievsky tell him? Tolya Sverdloff gave me Kievsky's name, and the dummy with my face was in the apartment Sverdloff lent me. I wondered if Tolya was in so deep he'd do anything, even shop me to his cronies. I shoved it out of my head, but I went to a phone, called Sonny Lippert and got an answering machine.

I walked back to Gilchrist's. The blue Jag was still waiting. I turned and headed in the other direction.

At a newsstand I got a cheap umbrella and a map and started walking. Along the embankment, the swollen river on my right, rain belting down now.

I'd come to London without a plan. Some kind of idiotic impulse that I owed Frankie. It was why I went looking for Gilchrist that morning, killing time. Now I
knew for sure whoever sent the message was here in London. If Gilchrist wasn't lying.

But Geoffrey Gilchrist was a guy who had lied for two countries, and would sure as shit do it again to save his own sick ass. He flirted with me and left me hanging.

Before I had left his house, Gilchrist had said, “Have you a phone number, dear?” and I gave him the number of the apartment on the river. Maybe he'd stir things up. Flush them out. So long as I didn't drown.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Lily Hanes stood in the doorway of the houseboat in a white turtleneck and black slacks, a gray-green silk scarf like seawater around her neck. With one hand she leaned heavily on an aluminum cane, with the other she pushed her hair off her neck like she does when she's nervous. She said, “God, I'm glad to see you,” leaned forward and kissed me hard. “You look like shit. What's the matter?”

“It doesn't matter now.”

“When did you get here?”

“Last night.”

“You came to London and you didn't call me? How come?”

“Where's Beth?”

“I sent her to the country with the Cleary kids for a few days, my friend Isobel, you remember? I'm having trouble with my foot. The ligament is fucking ripped. It's going to take another week, maybe more. I'm
permanently high from painkillers, which ain't bad,” she joked, but it fell flat.

“Been out dancing?”

She laughed. “Sure, with my two right feet. I tripped. I swear to God.” She laughed again.

“You didn't tell me.”

“You think I look distinguished with the cane?” She was talking too fast. “I was worried about you, you fuck. I called you in New York yesterday, I called your cellphone. Are you OK? Why didn't you tell me you were coming?”

Lily leaned one hip against the door, then sat down heavily on a canvas chair, gesturing at the living room. “It's wonderful. Isn't it?”

There was something territorial in her tone. She showed me the place as if it were hers. She said it belonged to a friend of a friend, that she had rented it for a couple of weeks.

I said, “Is it for sale?”

She nodded. “Maybe. Do you like it?”

“Sure, but that's not what I meant.” I lit a cigarette and let the subject go.

We went on the deck where there were armchairs and a table, the cushions stowed because of the weather. Lily leaned against me, pointed out the bridges over the Thames, an old power plant on the other bank, the Embankment and Cheyne Walk. Chelsea, she said. “I always loved it around here, it's a dumb cliché, Americans, Chelsea, but I don't care. I love it.”

Lily's was the third houseboat down in a row of boats and barges, crammed, about twenty of them, against the
Embankment, each one hoisted up over the mud of the riverbank on what looked like steel sledges.

Inside, the living room had floor-to-ceiling doors to the deck outside, there was a dining area, a kitchen, two bedrooms. From the window I could see big pots on the deck next door, bushes burdened with dead hydrangeas.

The room itself was brightly lit, filled with good retro stuff, a yellow canvas butterfly chair, a bean bag, some moulded plastic stuff, not my taste, but OK. Piles of Lily's books were on the floors and chairs; her lap-top was open on the dining-room table.

She sat down again, then looked up at me. “So you thought, OK, fuck her, I won't call, is that it?” She reached for some cigarettes, then tossed the pack on the table. When she got Beth, she quit smoking. “Fuck. Fuck this fucking foot. I'm sorry, it's driving me nuts. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't nicer to you. I'm sorry I left home in a hurry. Please. Sit down, OK. I'll try to talk to you. I missed you, Artie, and I'm, Christ, I'm sorry.”

“I'm hungry,” she said when we were still in bed. An hour after I got there, maybe two, we got up slowly, showered, dressed. I followed her up the street to the King's Road where she nabbed a taxi away from a couple of German tourists and we both collapsed in back laughing. Lily sat tight against me. She was warm. She smelled great.

I watched the streets go by, got a glimpse of squares and parks, houses, buildings, cars going on the wrong side, black taxis, red buses, Hyde Park. Most of the leaves were gone, most of it was a blur. It was night and
London seemed wet, cold and handsome. We stopped in front of a brightly lit restaurant. Lily handed the driver some money and said something that made him laugh. She was all laughs; this was a brittle Lily I didn't know. The couple hours we spent in bed began to fade. She was nervous with me.

The front of the restaurant was all glass. Inside there was a bar, and near it a few tables, one in a window alcove. The rest of the big room was down a few steps.

Lily claimed the window table, sat down hard on a chair, put her bad leg on another, gestured for me to sit next to her and said, “I'm starving. And I could use a drink. Artie? Red? White?”

I didn't answer her. She knows what I drink. I looked out of the window. Opposite the restaurant, the narrow street forked. There were fancy antique shops. One was full of chandeliers; the pellets of crystal glittered. Welcome to London.

I said, “Can I get a real drink here?”

Lily picked the green olives out of a dish of black and green.

The martini came. I drank it and looked out the window. The rain was driving down now in sheets against the huge expanse of glass window.

“What are you going to eat?”

I glanced at the menu. “I don't care.”

She turned on a smile and said, “Don't sulk, OK? I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry. I am glad to see you, you know.”

Around us the room was jammed. A woman, leaving, waved at Lily, another stopped by to kiss her and exchange gossip.

I watched the scene swirl behind Lily, like figures on a screen. “You feel like you belong in London, don't you?”

Lily said, “I guess. I keep coming back. They like me,” she added. “They don't know what to do with me, but they like me.”

“I like you,” I said. Then, to make it easy for her, I said, “You're not coming home, are you? That's why you've been stalling, isn't it? Isn't it?”

She didn't answer.

“The houseboat where you're staying, you're happy there.”

She hesitated. “I came to London because I was offered a job. I'm freelance, it was a job, no big deal. I was going to help make a documentary for home. It's a good organization. It shelters the homeless everywhere.” Lily smiled ruefully. “You know I'm a guilty liberal. But it's not because of Phillip Frye, God knows, if that's what you're thinking. He's a self-obsessed jerk. Worse.”

“What's that mean, worse?”

“Nothing. Look, it's in spite of him. It's his wife who designed the Life Bubble.”