Bloody London (19 page)

I was looking out through the lens of the telescope mounted on the ledge of Sverdloff's terrace. I could see everything: A jaunty department flag hung over the back of the police boat, blue markings clear, that bobbed at the end of the Middlemarch jetty; a cop in uniform reached over the back of the boat and trailed his hand in the water, and then looked up and waved at a flotilla of boats that chugged up the East River and were caught in the arc lights rigged on the Drive and on the bridge. Green and yellow water taxis, tugs, ferryboats, a Circle Line loaded with people cruised past. It was like a movie set, the night all lit up.

I swivelled the scope: the streets were lit by more lights. The parade that had wound its way up from Sixth and Spring earlier had splintered when it left the Village, turned East, then kept on going. Ten thousand cops patrolled the streets, in uniform, on scooters and bikes, on horseback, on foot. Bands played everywhere, salsa, reggae, rap groups. A jazz orchestra on a flatbed truck wove its way up First Avenue. I could see the glint of light on the brass.

From the terrace I shifted the telescope so I could see the building tops, lighted up in orange and black. All over the city a million people bobbed and swayed. I looked down at Sutton Place again and for a second I thought I saw, on the little piazza at the Middlemarch, a figure among the stone urns with white flowers in them. Frankie Pascoe smoking a cigarette. But it wasn't her. She didn't answer my calls all day.

Suddenly, Sverdloff's building seemed to vibrate as the fireworks exploded. The crowd on his terrace pushed for places at the railing, then whistled, clapped, cheered, yelled, as gold fountains of light fell into the river. I put the telescope down.

Torches wrapped with yellow flame shivered in the breeze on Tolya's terrace; waiters snaked between the guests and hefted heavy trays of Champagne. I caught my reflection in the glass wall. In uniform, my reflection stared back, a version of the guy on my old ID card, only older. Dark blue jacket. My old cap. Light blue shirt. One of ten thousand guys in uniform that night.

“I like the outfit.” Tolya came outside and stood next to me. He wore white tie and tails and said he was
dressed as Fred Astaire. He put a cold glass of Champagne into my hand and said, “Take a drink.”

He was the good host, smiling, laughing, pushing drinks on people, feeding titbits into the mouths of the hundred gorgeous women he'd invited, but I knew him and he was worried. Tolya looked through the window and across the room. A man got up like an Orthodox priest danced with Catherine the Great. I saw Tolya look at him, then turn away.

“Who is he, Tol?”

“His name's Eddie Kievsky,” Tolya said.

“From Brighton Beach?”

“No.”

“From?”

“London. He owns a big piece of the action over there.”

I went inside, where a band played and people danced. I saw Callie Rizzi – I got her the invite — and she waved. The invitation had redeemed me. She had on a micro-miniskirt and a Soviet army shirt and cap I got for her. She was dancing with Jared Mishkin and he looked up and smiled too; he was got up as some kind of nineteenth-century gent, black frock coat, ruffled shirt. He was handsome as hell. She glowed; he smiled sweetly.

I started towards Callie and felt a hand on my arm. It was Rick. I pulled away from him and moved towards Callie. He stopped me. “No,” he said. “Leave her.”

In the dining room, people bobbed for apples. Water splashed on the floor. I figured I better go down to the street; I left Tolya's before midnight.

In the unfinished lobby, where the furniture was draped with dust sheets, someone had placed a pair of pumpkins on the floor: Jack and Jackie O'Lantern. Six naked guys on their way in said they were the Full Monty. A frantic Spice Girl – Back From the Dead Spice, she told me – waited for the elevator.

“You're a real cop, or it's a costume?” Dead Spice asked.

I said, “Tough call.”

In the street, I leaned against the building, called Lippert on my cellphone. Things were pretty good, he said: a few people trampled but not injured bad on the Brooklyn Bridge; a heart attack at a Queens disco; a couple wiseguys shot each other in Brighton Beach; not much else.

I stayed on Sutton Place. By three in the morning, the crowd had thinned, the adrenalin was low. I was weary, and so were the other cops who walked down the street littered with bottles and streamers and candy corn.

I got a carton of coffee from a deli, then climbed down to the pocket park below the Middlemarch. I sat on a bench to drink the coffee.

Silently, a man sat down next to me. He was small, dark hair. He wore some kind of cheesy toga, mask over his eyes and nose, a paper plate with a slab of pumpkin pie on it in his hand. He set the plate on the pavement and pushed up the mask so I could see his face. It was Pindar Aguirre. The janitor from the Middlemarch. The guy I met in Astoria who took a flesh wound that
should have been mine. I could hear how the shot cracked out from nowhere on a sunny day in Queens. I'd tried to check up on him after he got shot, but at his place nobody answered. Now I said, “You OK?”

“Sure. It was nothing.”

“You been at a party?”

He shrugged. “Some of my old friends at the building. Sure. They had a party. They invited me.”

For a few minutes we sat silent, staring at the water. Then he started to talk. He talked very soft, and I was tired and it took a minute until I could connect. Then my blood turned into ice.

“They swim every day,” he said. “Every morning,” he added. Then he put his mask back on and hurried away. He left his pie on the pavement. I sat and stared at it, shivering.

I climbed down to the jetty and the police boat that rocked gently now in pitch-black water. The arc lights on the bridge were out now. The fireworks were finished. People roamed the riverfront, but the party was over.

The cops on the boat were grateful for some company. I sat with them and watched the Middlemarch and thought about Aguirre. I watched for a while, until the sky started to lighten, slowly first. An early mist covered the city like gauze.

It was just before daybreak. I was in uniform. There were still cops on the street, and when I got to the Middlemarch, no one stopped me. I was in.

It was cold. Somewhere, water leaked. It dripped on to
the old, cold stone floor. I listened for footsteps in the basement of the building. No one came. I checked the room where the night super lived; the door was open. The room was empty. I had timed it right, between shifts; the pool opened at seven, Frankie said. Tommy swam at six-thirty. I looked at my watch. It was six. “They swim every day … every morning,” Aguirre said.

Upstairs, the doorman, the cops, the residents, hung-over from the parties, slept.

I waited. I looked at my watch. Six-ten. My lids sank over my eyes, then I thought about my loft, the way the bastards ripped it up, thought about Lulu Fine and Callie Rizzi and Sverdloff. And about Frankie. The adrenalin buzz that came with the anger woke me up. I was wide awake.

Then I heard it: the faint slap of bare feet on tiles. Slap slap slap, it was rhythmic, careless. Then a ripple of water. I walked towards the locker rooms. The smell of chlorine got in my nose.

In the men's locker room, a crumpled black coat lay on the floor. There was a wide column, floor to ceiling, just outside the locker room. I put my hand on it, felt the damp, cool, tiled surface, got a partial view of the pool. It was empty. Then I smelled the dope. It drifted towards me, I smelled it before I saw them. Heard them laughing. It was raucous, unselfconscious laughter.

They slipped into view. Except for the coats, they were still in costume: two boys in Victorian clothes. They passed a joint back and forth and grinned, then one of them rested it on the rim of the pool. They
stripped quickly and dove into the water. I knew the kids. Jared Mishkin and his freckled pal Harry. Harry was freckled all over. It gave his body a weird reddish tinge.

They were good swimmers. They cut through the water while I watched, then pulled themselves out again, skin shining with water. They retrieved the marijuana.

The smell of chlorine mixed with the stink of the dope. The boys laughed, swam, came up for air. Jared and Harry. Powerful swimmers, big shoulders, muscular arms, these were boys who could kill an old man. Whack his head with a sword. A Ninja sword. A killing toy you could order from any martial arts catalogue.

“Kids talk about killing,” Callie had said. They practiced on chickens. Christ, where was she? She had been dancing with Jared. Not Jared, she had said. He was a good boy, she said. He worked at the homeless shelter most nights.

I let them see me.

“Come on in,” Jared called when he looked up and saw me. His voice had a hollow, metallic ring in the cavernous pool. I got up close, I could see he was ripped and so was his pal, and they clambered out of the pool and sat on the rim, legs over the edge, feet in the water. Both of them were naked. They had men's bodies, but boy's faces. No fear.

I said, “How did it work?”

“What's that?” Jared picked up the joint. “I'm sorry. We shouldn't be smoking this,” he said, and crushed it on the rim of the pool. “How did what work?”

“Thomas Pascoe let you in to swim?”

“Mr Pascoe liked us swimming here. He liked it,” Harry said. “He said so all the time.”

“He gave you a key.”

“Sure. That's it. He gave us the key.”

“And you forgot to give it back. After he died, you kept the key.”

Harry was nervous. “Sure, that's it, definitely. Right.”

“Who else swam? Which other kids?”

“Mostly us. We're on the swim team at school. It was great having the extra practice time.”

“You swam the day Pascoe was murdered?”

“We left before it happened. We swam very early that day, then we left for school,” Harry said.

Jared Mishkin was silent.

“You forgot to mention you were here that day?”

“We were scared. Harry was scared, you know?” Suddenly Jared tried to get up. I put a hand on his neck where he could feel it; the kid flinched. For the first time I saw into Jared Mishkin's blue eyes; they were empty holes. There was nothing there at all.

I said to Jared Mishkin. “How did it happen? It was Harry here, right?”

“He can't touch us,” Jared said. “He can't.”

Harry said nervously, “How do you know?”

“There weren't any witnesses, asshole.”

“Talk to me, Harry.”

“Will it help me?”

“Sure it will.”

Jared said. “You're not a real cop. Callie told me.

You're nothing. You can't do anything. Pascoe was driving us crazy.”

“Pascoe?”

“Yeah. At first it was fine, we showed up, we swam, we listened to a few of his numbnuts old stories, then it got really pretty boring. The old days. The war. The fucking OSS, the Cold War, Moscow, how the Russian and British people stood up to the Nazis, the Blitz, who the fuck cares, it was a zillion years ago.”

Harry piped up. “It was working at the shelter that got to us. We didn't like the smell. Our friends made fun of us, but Tommy said it was the price we paid for privilege, some shit. He said we should get to know the people better, they were human beings, but they weren't, you know. They smelled. But we got to know them better.”

Jared egged his friend on now. “Tell him, Harry.”

“Yes,” Harry giggled. “Turned out they were just about as good as us. Or as bad.”

Jared Mishkin looked at his feet. Under water they were flat as fish. Then he glanced up at me. “So Tommy told us a story once about surrogates during the Civil War. Young men of good family, their parents would buy some poor kid to go to war for them. We figured someone at the shelter could be our surrogate.”

“The guy who got beat up,” I said to Harry. “You brought him to the shelter, but it was you who beat Ramirez up.”

“He was going to talk.” Harry's voice was petulant.

“Keep your mouth shut,” Jared said to his pal. He
went on, “We only wanted to scare Tommy, but, well, like, things happen.”

Harry looked nervous.

“Chill out,” Jared said. “If they try and touch us we'll say Tommy abused us or some other shit. He's not a real cop. He didn't read us our rights. And we didn't kill Tommy, anyhow. Did we?”

I said, “You got all the angles. You didn't kill him, so the devil made you do it? That's what you're saying?”

They laughed an insolent adolescent laugh, part terror, part disbelief. “Yeah, that's right. We read a lot of stuff. It's a very good school. Nietzsche. Faust. Milton. The devil has all the good stuff, isn't that how it goes?” Harry was high. “We thought picking a guy named Dante was a nice touch.”

I thought about their costumes. “Like Jekyll and Hyde.”

Jared said, “Yeah, that was kinda corny but Harry here liked it.”

I said, “What about Mrs Fine? She bored you too?”

Harry said, “Who is Mrs Fine?”

“She's some woman that lives in our building, you know, low-class English, always in your face, always bugging my mom,” said Jared. “I heard someone did her, but what's she got to do with it?”

“So you had Thomas Pascoe killed because he bored you?”

Jared shifted his weight. “Actually, I heard my dad say things would be easier if Tommy was out of the way. I heard him say it to my mom. Tommy was in everybody's way.” He looked up. “I felt I owed it to my
father to help him. I found a way to get rid of Tommy. I helped him. Didn't I?”

“And you figure your father will always take the rap for you?”

Jared got up and started for the locker room. “He'll do anything for me.”

They were big, they were big enough to kill, and I looked at them, but I didn't feel anything except a cold dread. I yelled. “Sit the fuck down.” I knew there was more.