Bloody London (40 page)

It was surreal under the river. Outside, men drowning. Inside, Gordon, grasping his pants, scrambling to keep up with the rest of us, delivered the party line in a loud voice for the benefit of the TV reporter: the Thames Barrier, Gordon said proudly, was a perfect machine. He had the stats, he knew the dimensions, not just the Barrier itself, the billion bucks it cost to build, the eight years it took, how much that was in today's money, and why it was an important part of London's infrastructure. The soft, unironic voice, the rote recitation of the information, had the opposite effect he intended: it made the place seem less secure. The Barrier was Gordon's home team; for ten minutes, while we hurried through the tunnels, we were his hostages.

He kept up the patter as we went down more stairs and then started up, and I followed him because I didn't have any choice. I thought about the men in the water and listened to Gordon's history of twentieth-century floods. The flood in 1928 when fourteen people drowned. The big flood in 1953 when a depression in the north Atlantic flowed around the tip of Scotland, into the gap between England and the Continent, when the water funneled, was forced higher and higher at the Thames Estuary.

He knew about the daily tides that lap at London, and the tension between London as a trading port and the need to protect the town, and how the city came within an inch of disaster in '53, the year he was born, Gordon
said. The only alternative to the Barrier would be a ten-foot wall the length of London. Lying low on the river, London was vulnerable. Most of its 125 miles of bank were made of old, soft brickwork. It didn't matter. The Barrier would prevail, he added. He talked, and all I saw were people drowning in a wall of water.

Finally, Tessa Stiles grabbed him by the sleeves of his yellow jacket and said, “Just shut up, will you?”, and Gordon, the fixer's smile fading, pushed a button. An elevator door opened and he said, “We'll go up now.”

The silver hood was above us; we stood on the Barrier itself now. The river was wide down here. Standing on the concrete pile, we were an assortment of tiny figures, dwarfed by the silver hood and the concrete piles.

I could barely make out the ship below, or the men in the water, but on the next platform, where more lights were rigged, divers in rubber suits waited. Gordon pointed out there was no damage except to the ship. This was his real purpose. This was why, in lousy weather like this, he was here, delivering the news to the reporter and the rest of us. The Ford plant was just downriver at Dagenham, Gordon added. “It has massive flood gates of its own.”

What about the current storm, I yelled. He smiled and put his hands behind his back. It's all right, he yelled back at me. There was still time. There was time. Get the men out, raise the Barrier. I looked into his soft bland face; I knew even he was worried.

There were nine concrete piles, nine curved wooden hoods capped with silvery metal. When all the gates
were raised, it made a solid steel wall across the river sixty feet high. Five stories. On one side, the river would be violent, turbulent, a killing machine. When the gate shut, the water would rise suddenly, like a bathtub filling fast. It would rise thirty feet and spill over the banks, over the concrete bench where I'd sat a few days earlier, where the grass hid a steel bank. Then it would subside. But the men in the water would drown.

Behind me, Gordon went on talking, whispering in the reporter's ear. The silver hoods were decoration, Gordon said. “A landmark. The first thing the ships see when they sail towards London.” He was proud of the Barrier, of the environmental advances that had gone with it. He talked softly about the return of river fish and bird life, the sanctuaries along the banks, the mud banks that were a source of food for fish and birds, the fish nursery. The river had been dead; now there were 115 species lived off it. He murmured in the reporter's ear.

I had seen enough. A cold sweat dripped down my neck and I grabbed Gordon by the arm, and said, “Get me out of here.”

“I can't do that.” He looked down at the water. “My God.” Excitedly now, he whispered, “Look, they're raising one of the gates. On the left.”

Huge arc lights were directed at the water now, one after another they snapped on until the fog seemed lighted up from inside. I could make out the ship, listing, disappearing under the water. The light picked out faces staring up, bobbing on the water, glowing through the weird fog. The sailors in the water seemed to cling to each other.

Then I saw the steel gate. It rose up out of the water like a monster in a movie. It rumbled, shuddered, the gears grinding, linking one concrete station with the next.

I turned my head away, then I looked back in time to see the sailors in the water smashed against the steel gate, like surfers breaking up in a tide.

The water around Frye's shelter was knee deep. It was dark out now, and the riverfront was a mess: water, mud, cops, firemen, officials, camera crews. Emergency rafts floated in the stinking puddles.

This was where the dead men had washed up that week, the TV crews already knew their way around. Here you could see the scale of the flooding. If the fog lifted, you could see the Barrier. Reporters stood waiting. Photographers climbed on makeshift stands and watched the river and waited.

I thought of the forty bastards who slipped under the water, who smashed into the steel gates. A bunch of guys out to make some kind of life, most of them. They opened the canisters on deck and instead of life rafts, they found vodka.

Jack appeared and grabbed me and said, “I heard on the radio they raised the gate.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Artie. Jesus Christ.”

“Where's Frye?”

“There's nothing you can do about him, man. I'm telling you.”

Jack's phone rang, and he listened in. “Wait here for me, will you?” He shoved some binoculars in my hand and ran in the direction of the road. I headed for the shelter.

Outside the shelter, a dozen homeless men and two women sat on a flatbed truck in the courtyard. Inside, where a foot of water splashed over the bare floor-boards, crews of people worked frantically, humping beds and equipment. A woman told me she'd seen Frye. He was here.

I looked for Lily. She hadn't come. She had gone to Isobel's after all, like she said. She went to Isobel's. Thank God.

On the side of the building was a fire escape and I hauled myself up on to it and began to climb. I was looking for Frye.

The rain battered the building, but the fog was lifting. I stood on the edge of the roof and held up Jack's binoculars and I could see the white lights on the Barrier and the silver hoods. I reached in my pocket for cigarettes. A sharp wind came up.

A trapdoor opened and Frye appeared in his shirt-sleeves. He was soaking wet. “Artie Cohen. You were looking for me?”

The cigarettes were in my hand; I lit one to keep from killing him.

I said, “There's forty guys dead in the river who never had a chance.”

Frye – I could see his eyes glitter – looked out at the
water. “They did the job for the money. It was a job. They knew the risk.”

“They planned to plant explosives.”

He shrugged. “So I imagine.”

“You fucking bastard.”

“Maybe so, but I've done something, haven't I? I've made things better. I've made shelters for thousands of people. Haven't I?”

“It's bullshit, Philly, is what it is. It's crap.” I wanted him riled. The bile got into my mouth and I could taste it. “It was you who had Thomas Pascoe killed. And the rest of them. You let it all happen. Why, he threatened to change his will? Cut you out?”

“For one thing, yes. But people had the wrong idea about Uncle Tommy, you know? He was a stupid old man. He didn't understand the priorities. As soon as he discovered what the Russians were up to with the property market, he wanted to report them. I thought it rather brilliant. Buy cheap, push up the prices, sell high, start the rumor mill turning, the whole bloody market falls on its knees, you begin all over again. Brilliant. And who suffers? Only a few rich people, bastards like Uncle Tommy.” He turned his head.

“But you wanted their money, the Russian mob, the rich bastards?”

“Yes. And why not? They were gangsters, weren't they, on both sides of the aisle? Of course I wanted their money.”

“So you let Eddie Kievsky know what Uncle Tommy knew.”

He shrugged. “It was Tommy who put me on to the Russians in the first place.”

“Leo Mishkin,” I said. “And Kievsky let Mishkin know Pascoe was trouble, and Mishkin's kid overheard him and bought himself a homeless guy to kill Pascoe. Very nice, Philly. Real sweet.”

“Is that how it worked? Well, it's your chum Sverdloff. It's his kind who fix the markets. And pretty much everyone else who's in it, for that matter. Who wants controls on property when there's so much money to make? Not me. Not you. Not any of our pals.”

Frye's sense of entitlement made him fearless; he was a fool. He walked towards me, rain pouring down his neck.

I tossed my cigarette on the roof. “What about Warren?”

Frye laughed. “Warren was nothing. A freak. I bought the bronze hands for our logo, he knew my business, he talked too much, I found a way to shut him up.”

“You supplied the cadavers. Homeless men.”

“It wasn't enough for him. It kept him quiet for a bit, then you showed up. You asked too many questions, Warren had a big mouth.”

“So Eddie Kievsky sent his goons.”

Frye shrugged and didn't answer.

“And Pru Vane?”

“Silly bitch,” he said. I'd heard it before that week. The British insult: “Silly bitch. Silly bitch.”

“Gilchrist?”

“Who?”

Like Warren Pascoe, Geoffrey Gilchrist was a freak, a sideshow. But Gilchrist survived.

Frye suddenly held his hand out, palm upturned, and looked at the sky. It had stopped raining.

The roof was slippery; I edged towards Frye. “You ripped off everyone, you as good as killed Thomas Pascoe, and you inherited. It was win win, wasn't it?”

Frye's face shone. “He absolutely had to go before he changed his mind. Or his will for that matter. What's the difference? His kind was finished. He was a silly sentimental old man, he never saw the real pain out there. I house people, I shelter them – what difference does it make how I get the money? The rich prefer to give when there's some glamor to it, film stars are nice, foreign places, missionary zeal. Imagine what it takes to shelter the ordinary homeless. I don't care where I get the money. Or how.”

Tessa Stiles had said it: “The hotter the property market gets, the more homeless there are. The more homeless, the bigger Frye's operations.” I said to Frye, “You're crazy.”

He laughed. “You don't know anything. You haven't been out there and seen the desolation.” He looked at me. “We're going away. Shashi and I, we'll go to Ethiopia for a bit, work there, let the kids see the real world. There's nothing you can do to me.”

“What about Lily?”

Frye grimaced. “She always wanted you in a way she never wanted me.”

“Yeah, Phil, she does.” I taunted him. “We talk
about you all the time, Philly, and what an asshole she thinks you are, so fuck you.”

Frye's face changed. The flesh tightened up, as if he felt some pain.

“That's really it, isn't it? This is about me and Lily.”

The wind howled down the river suddenly, moving the clouds. I lifted the binoculars and looked at the sky like I did the night Pascoe died in New York and I sat on my own roof with Lily and Beth and watched the stars.

I thought of Thomas Pascoe in the swimming pool on Sutton Place. And Frankie. “Stella by Starlight” ran in my head. The buzz of a helicopter distracted me.

In the split second, when I shifted the binoculars to look at the chopper overhead, Frye lunged. It was what I wanted. The binoculars were a ploy. He figured I wasn't watching him, but I knew he was coming. Could feel him.

I dropped the binoculars and slugged Frye as hard as I could, and the feel of my fist on his face felt good. He looked surprised as he sat down heavy on his foot. He held his hands in front of his face. He tried to get up and couldn't.

I moved in his direction. I wanted to feel the flesh on my knuckles again. Without any warning, one of the men I'd seen earlier walked through the open door to the roof. I didn't know if he was Frye's muscle or a homeless man looking for a smoke. Plastic raincoat. Old hat. Face hidden under it. He stood near the door and watched us and lit a cigarette.

Frye sprawled on the roof. He looked at his leg
twisted under him. He held out a hand to the homeless man, who only took the cigarette out of his mouth and spat at Frye. He spat again and disappeared.

I looked down at Phillip Frye. He'd set up Thomas Pascoe. And the others and he did business with thugs. Now, on the roof, ankle smashed, face smeared with pain, he looked up at me and said, “At least I built my shelters. At least I did something.” I saw he believed it.

Frye held up his hand to me. “Help me up, will you?”

I looked down at him. For a second I thought I might kill him, but the only thing I could feel was contempt. Let someone else have him, I thought. Let it go. I pushed his outstretched hand away and left him, and then I went to get Lily and Beth and take them home.

 

 

We were home in time for Thanksgiving. Rick made the turkey upstairs at his place. His parents brought the trimmings. Tolya Sverdloff showed up with oysters in a barrel, ten dozen shrimp, each one the size of the baby's hand, magnums of Champagne and Bordeaux and a new wardrobe for Beth, everything pink, who showed it off for everyone.

Lily, being as she always says the world's most unmotivated cook, bought the pies from Eileens on Lafayette, apple, pecan, pumpkin, and a cheesecake, and she made some kind of peace with Sonny Lippert, but only, she said, because she liked his wife. I watched her and Jennifer Lippert, and heard them cook up schemes for a soup kitchen; I hoped to God they planned on doing it at home, here in New York, not some cockamamie country halfway around the world. But I wasn't betting on it.