Londongrad (17 page)
“For Val’s sister, I never worry. Her sister is in medical school, she will be a great doctor. Val is different. She wants to save the world, I want to help her, I build a nice legitimate business for her, I pay tax, I join community groups, I pay much more than minimum wage, I do not ever hire illegals in the kitchen, which is perhaps the only place serving food in New York City which has not one illegal, not because I approve of the American stupid obsession with foreigners, but because I want everything perfect for Val.” He leaned back. “For first time everything is nice and in order, I am in New York, I have one little club, my Pravda2, I try to be content, and then I see how much money I can make in London.”
“Money?”
He smiled bitterly. “Yes. Money. You’re so naïve, Artyom. British government makes this tax haven for people like me, for rich Russians. London is like an offshore island.”
“You said that. What shore?”
“European shore, American shore, shore of paradise, who cares? For Russians, like a, what do you say, day at the beach.”
“No rules.”
“No rules. And for Russians this is the godsend,” he said. “Maybe already five, ten years, some even more, so I come in very late, but there is always more. They can hide money, they can spend, they can invest in real estate, shares, anything, all this money they make from buying whole pieces of the earth. These are people who buy and sell oil, nickel, aluminum, sugar, oil, gas, diamonds, everything, the earth itself, people who use sugar and soy and turn it into money, who make fortunes on orange juice, who manipulate whole countries. Russians floating on oil, all the money in the world.” Tolya paused. “While it lasts.”
“Go on.”
“It’s not your fault. You think you failed me, you didn’t watch over Valentina, but it was me. I wanted too much. I got so greedy. My God, what did I do?”
“No, Tolya. It wasn’t you. It was some bastard who killed her, not you.”
“It was me,” said Tolya. “Such a simple beginning, you know? People say, why not brand your club, why not do this style of luxury in London, Moscow, Dubai, Tokyo? It seemed like a good game, so much fun.”
“People kill for this?”
“For anything. You want an example?” said Tolya. “Right. It’s very hard to get good caviar, Russians, we shat into the Caspian for years, we killed all the fish. The Iranian side is better, expensive, but first class. But of course there are Russian fishermen who do business with Iranian fishermen. With money nobody cares. I heard from somebody is always same, even in military, did you know Russian generals and Chechen rebels pump their gas at the same hole? Literally. Caviar is the same. Together these guys find a little place to fish sturgeon that make eggs so pure, so delicious. Deluxe, premium, melt-in-your-mouth big gray pearls. And I have a little connection. And sometimes I cheat.”
“You’re saying someone killed Val because of a caviar deal?”
“Also wine, wheat, you can buy Russian wheat fields now, anything. But even when I get my club in London and my club in Moscow, I don’t know how to play this game, and so I joke around like always. I joke about Putin. I joke about the money he stashes in Swiss banks. And some creep, the kind you can visualize FSB written on his forehead, tells me shut the fuck up, and I laugh at him. He’s in my club every night for a week. Just watching. I realize it’s like the Cold War, they’re still here, no matter what you call them, KGB, FSB, whatever you call them. They watch me, and still I don’t shut up, or stop, I think: I can do what I like, this is London, and so they kill Val.”
“Why New York?”
“Because she is there. These people go where they want, this is killing by the state, Artyom, like old days. They move very freely. And it comes from the top.”
“I can help you better in New York, I can do more if I’m with you.”
“Please. For me,” he said. “And for Valentina.”
“What about you?”
“I will be fine in New York. I have people,” said Tolya, and then I understood. He wanted me in London to work the case. He also wanted me out of New York so he could use his own people, he could do things I couldn’t do as a cop. Things he didn’t want me to know.
“Who knows you’re here?” Tolya asked. “What about this Roy Pettus? This FBI schmuck who came to my club in New York?”
“He helped me keep the media out of this.”
“Don’t go further with him, please, Artyom. We keep this in the family, unofficial, you tell one person, everyone knows. We do not trust officials, FBI, CIA, MI5, 6, KGB, FSB. All the same.”
“Pettus is on our side.”
“There is no side.”
“Tolya?”
“Yes, Artemy?”
“Who asked you to get the books to Olga, the old lady in Brooklyn?”
“I don’t know,” said Tolya. “It was through Val. A lady in London asks her to do this.” He looked at me as the car finally pulled into the airport and stopped.
We got out. As if he had a chill, Tolya held his tan raincoat close to his body.
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the photograph of Val and the good-looking boy.
“You know this guy?”
“Yes. I don’t like him,” he said.
“Why?”
“Val brings him over once and I don’t like him, no reason, just a feeling. Too eager, too slick, too polite with me, as if he wants something but never says. I think he was in love with her, though,” he added grudgingly. “I didn’t want to believe it. She says to me, Daddy, you are jealous of every boy since I’m twelve years old.”
“He has a name?”
“Greg. It’s all I know.”
We walked to the terminal building.
“If you go to New York, and you make noise, they’ll kill you,” I said.
“I have to take Valentina’s body before they cut her up,” said Tolya.
I didn’t tell him that the medical examiners were already at work. I didn’t have the guts to tell him. Deep down, he knew, of course.
“Will you stay, Artie? Please? Stay in London a few days. There will be no funeral without you. I promise this. I will not bury my Val without you.”
I nodded.
“I’ll call whenever I think of more things for you,” he said. “Please, do your work as a cop. You’re a good detective, Artie, sometimes great. You will know what to do,” he said and now he sounded calm. As soon as he saw I would stay in London, he seemed to calm down.
“Tolya?”
“Yes?”
“You won’t do anything stupid in New York? You won’t employ your guys in any stupid way? You won’t run some kind of war by yourself?”
He didn’t answer, but reaching into his canvas carry-on, Tolya pulled out a plastic bag wrapped around something. On the bag it said Mr Christian’s Delicatessen. Inside was a gun.
“Here,” said Tolya. “Take this, be careful. There’s no license for you to carry it. Be careful. In the house in Notting Hill there is money if you need it. My guy will be there for you.”
He called out softly and Ivan hurried over. He made a little bow. “Ivan will drive you back.” said Tolya.
“What’s his other name?”
“Danilov.”
From a few feet away, I looked sideways at Ivan Danilov and saw that he was staring straight ahead. I didn’t like him, but I had never liked Tolya’s “guys”.
“Everybody loved Valentina,” I said.
For a split second Tolya opened his mouth as if to howl, but no sound came out.
“I got my wings burned off, Artemy,” he said finally, face swamped with tears now. “I got greedy and I got burned, and I fell down, it’s my fault, I fell and crushed my little girl.”
That night, after Tolya left for New York, I was on the roof of Pravda22, his London club. For each club, he had announced, he would add a 2. The buzz of excitement mixed with the whoosh of girls’ silky skirts in the breeze of an early summer evening, the sounds of voices, the buzz of traffic.
Below were the streets, low houses, deep gardens. People were sitting out on balconies, on the street, spilling onto the sidewalk from pubs and cafes. A kid whizzed by on a skateboard. From nearby, a motorbike roared.
I felt somebody watching, as if from the houses, behind the lights, up in the trees, as if there were people looking at me from all around, the way you might in a forest, the birds, the monkeys staring at you. Or ghosts. Ghosts in the green summer trees. The air was heavy on my skin, humid, and somewhere a streak of thunder rumbled.
Downstairs inside the club I wondered if he was in New York yet. I looked at my phone. Nothing.
It was jammed, the air full of Russian voices. The waiters glided among the tables, with huge buckets of champagne on ice and platters of sushi. I introduced myself to the bartender.
“Yeah, mate, good to meet you,” said the bartender when I introduced myself. “Mr Sverdloff said you’d be in, said to give you whatever, you know?”
Roland was his name, he said, and I remembered Tolya saying I could trust this guy if I needed somebody. Trust him, more or less, Tolya had said.
Roland was his name, he said again, and I nodded, “Yeah, thanks,” I said, and he said, “They call me Rolly. Australian. Read Russian at uni. Everyone calls me Rolly. Anything you need, mate.” He was a skinny guy, striped shirt, long humorous face. Mate. Matey. Like a sailor doing a jig.
At the far end of the bar was a guy in his fifties, long hair, straggly beard, sloping shoulders, paunch, cheap gray shoes. A second-hand book was propped on the bar.
Crime and
Punishment
the guy was reading in Russian.
“Mr Sverdloff’s poet, like his Pindar, mate,” said Rolly. I looked again.
What kind of poet? I wondered did he write odes to Tolya? Was he some kind of praise singer in Tolya’s pay? Before I could get away, he detained me, and started talking at me in Russian, about Russians in London, about the true believers, the communists, the democrats, the nationalists, on and on and on, Putin, the anti-Putinistas, the Kasparovites, who believed Gary Kasparov wasn’t a chess player but a god. Decried money, pissed on capitalism. I tossed some money on the bar. Finally he left.
From behind the bar, Rolly held up a glass to make sure it was clean. He beckoned me back to his end, and said, “Mr Sverdloff tells me to serve him, give him drinks and food, don’t charge him. Says he can be our conscience. I think he’s our pain in the royal, you know?” He put the glass down and reached for a bottle of vodka. “He comes in early, I keep him at the end of the bar so he doesn’t bother the others with his bullshit, but he leaves early, knows a good thing, mate, so he doesn’t make a fuss much,” said Rolly. “He’s been in London a while. Teaches, I think.” He was making a martini while we talked.
“You ever meet Valentina Sverdloff, Sverdloff’s daughter?”
He hesitated.
“What is it?”
“You’re Mr Sverdloff’s friend, right?”
“Yes.”
“It’s tough to say exactly.”
“Try.”
“She was a knockout,” he said.
“That’s not what you were thinking.”
“You mean because I’m gay? I can see what a girl looks like can’t I?”
“You were thinking something you didn’t want to tell me. You want to walk outside for a minute? Grab a smoke?”
“Sure,” said Rolly, talked to another bartender, and went out onto the street with me where he lit up a smoke and sighed.
“Valentina,” I said. “You knew her. How well? Listen, level with me. Tell me what you thought about her, don’t fucking hold back, okay?”
Drinking his beer, he looked surprised.
“You sure, mate? I mean, you’re her dad’s pal, right?”
“Just fucking please tell me.”
“Men were crazy for her, and she was drop-dead gorgeous when she bothered, I’m saying sometimes she came by, no makeup, old pair of jeans, she was okay, but when she was done up, it was like Jesus H. fucking Christ. She was fantastic, I might be gay but I know sex on a stick.” He glanced at me. “I’m sorry.”
“She had friends?”
“Sure. Girlfriends. Men. Men came round like bees to honey, though she was bloody demanding.”
“One guy in particular?”
“Oh, yeah, baby,” said Rolly with emphasis, while he took big sucks on his smoke. “Now he was very cool.”
“Did he pay for the drinks?”
“Of course not. It was her daddy’s club, they didn’t pay though I got the impression he wasn’t absolutely rolling in it, the boy I mean.”
“Was he after her father’s money?”
“Who can tell? You want to know the actual truth about her, Valentina, the way I saw it?”
I nodded.
“She was a scary girl. Intense, you know?” said Rolly. “She’d talk about orphanages in Russia, the bloody politics of the place, I could see some of the customers look at her as if she was mad.”
“Anything else you can think of about the boyfriend?”
“Just he looked amazing, crazy about her, a lot of fucking charm, mate. Perfect manners. Never said a thing when she started in on one of her rants, but I could see it made him uncomfortable when she talked about how corrupt officials in Moscow are, I mean it’s not fucking brilliant in a club like this to say Putin has billions stashed in a Swiss bank, is it?”
“And she liked him?”
“Crazy about him. I think she was one of those girls who everybody wants, but she had never really fallen for anybody, and this time, it was very big, very hot.”
“He was Russian, wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t notice. Yes, I think so. He only spoke English to me. Said his name was Greg.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not with me,” said Rolly. “But I was just the help. I better go back in. You coming?”
There wasn’t much more I could get at the club so I went back to the house which was a few blocks away and sat in a canvas chair on Tolya’s patio. It was back of the house and joined up with the communal gardens just beyond. Fireflies spat their glitter onto the thick dark summer night, and I sat, drank some Scotch and watched people go in and out of their houses.
They carried trays and bottles, they sat around outdoor tables and yakked and laughed. Kids ran on the grass.
For a while I tried to figure how to look for a man who had killed Sverdloff’s daughter as a warning.
From my cell I called Bobo Leven in New York, told him to get me anything he had on Tito Dravic, the Brooklyn club manager. Told him to keep working everything, including the initial m carved on Masha. I wasn’t convinced it was her own initial, I was guessing the killer left it because he liked to sign his work. Then I went into Tolya’s house through the garden door.