Bloody London (20 page)

Jared sat down abruptly and I took out my gun and put it against his forehead. I said, “How did you get in here?”

“I have a key. Like you thought.”

“You stupid little fuck, there aren't any keys to the pool. The elevator comes straight down and the door is locked until seven. Only Thomas Pascoe swam earlier. Access to this pool is through the building for residents. How'd you get in Monday? How'd you sneak Ramirez in? How'd you get in today?” I was furious, looking at them, this pair of shitty kids sitting at the edge of the pool, thinking they owned the world. “Who the fuck let you in?”

I waited for his answer. I was squatting next to the Mishkin kid, my gun still out. I wanted to hurt him. “Who let you in?”

“I did.” The voice echoed from the other side of the pool.

Wrapped in the white terry-cloth robe, Frankie Pascoe appeared, walked swiftly to Jared Mishkin, put her hand on his bare shoulder. She caressed the damp skin. She touched him as if she couldn't keep her hands off, and said, “I did. I always let them in.” Then she looked at me with the cold light eyes and I realized they were swimmer's eyes, light, see-through green like water.

She said, “It wasn't Tommy. It was me.” She smiled at the boy. He pushed her away hard and she reeled backwards. Frankie stumbled. I put out my hand to keep her from falling and she took it.

From the second I saw her, a week earlier now, a week ago, seven days, I knew the fallout from Pascoe's murder would go on and on, like a wave that caught everything in it.

“Get dressed,” I said and Jared leaned down to pick up his clothes. Frankie watched him. It wasn't just the
father she cared about; it was the kid. She was in love with Jared Mishkin.

I was already on the phone. Before they were finished dressing, a pair of uniforms and a detective showed up. They read the kids their rights. Silently the three of them took hold of the two kids and got them in cuffs. I pushed Frankie to one side.

“You saw me watching the boys in the park that first day. That's why you gave me the list of names. To keep me busy somewhere else. You were protecting him.”

“Yes.”

She exhaled and sat on a bench. “Can I have a cigarette please?” I gave her one. “I got him into St Pete's, I got Tommy to spend some time with him, I didn't want him growing up a Russian hood, did I?”

“You were fucking the kid too.”

“I would have if I could, but he wouldn't let me, so I settled for watching. I watched him swim. I watched him shower in my bathroom after he swam. I told you I'm not a sentimental woman. I gave him keys to the apartment. I told Tommy if he had keys, he could come upstairs, he could use the residents' elevator to get to the pool when he liked. Tommy thought it was for the swimming.”

“And Harry?”

Frankie turned up her palms. “Harry came along for the ride.” She looked at him. “Harry was a joke.”

“But you were with Leo Mishkin that night, like you said?”

“Yes, of course.” She watched the cops take the boys, half dressed in their costumes. Frankie said to me, “Will they charge them as adults?”

“If I have anything to do with it? You bet.”

“Why can't you leave things alone?” she said.

“You fucked me to find out what I knew.”

“Don't be an infant, Artie, for heaven's sake, what's that got to do with it? I liked you.”

“You were never in love with Mishkin.”

“Sure I was. When I met Leo, I was in love with everyone I met. It was the Seventies. Good times. Peace and love. I helped Mish get to America. I loved the whole wide fucking world. I helped Leo Mishkin get to America, which was pretty bloody decent of me, don't you think? It meant his son was born here, a proper American.” She laughed.

I grabbed Frankie Pascoe's wrist. “You think you're going to work this so they don't get the kid, don't you? You'll put it on Leo Mishkin if you have to, but you'll fix it, won't you?”

“Anything.”

It was an unholy alliance. Pascoe got Mishkin's kid into the best school in town. Mishkin bailed out Pascoe with dough for his causes, his shelter. He gave him his son for a companion and fucked his wife. I remembered Mishkin coming out of the elevator with his son. I remembered how he looked at him. I played the scene back in my head: Leo Mishkin with the fine suit; the beautiful kid at his side; Mishkin's adoring look. He would do anything for the kid, like Jared said. So would Frankie.

“Did they know about each other? Did Jared know about you and Leo?”

“Yes.”

“Did Leo know how you felt about his son?”

“No. And he wouldn't believe it if he knew.”

Dante Ramirez was the sucker. He did the dirty work. Along with Lippert and a couple of precinct guys from the One Nine, we waded through beer cans, balloons, confetti, the crap left in the streets from the night before, and we picked him up at the shelter and took him to the local station house. They offered him a deal. I sat with Sonny Lippert and a homicide guy in the box while they grilled Ramirez.

The Mishkin kid told it like it happened. They made Ramirez a friend, gave him money, bought him booze, promised him a place to live.

“The shelter was nice,” Dante Ramirez said, “but they were getting ready to tear it down. The kids told me Mr Pascoe's shutting it down. Developers moving in. I didn't wanna be on the streets.”

“Was it them that beat you that night in the bank?”

“One of them,” he said. “I think one of them. Freckles. Red hair. They thought I might tell. Now I told.” He laughed bitterly.

“You did Pascoe for money?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Money for a place to live. Like everyone else done around here in Manhattan. The city wouldn't give me nothing. I decided to take.”

Ramirez was the sucker all right. I went home. I had been up three nights running. I had to sleep.

*

In the middle of the night, late, after they charged Ramirez and I'd gone home and slept a while, Tolya Sverdloff woke me up. He was at the Holiday Inn on Tenth Avenue.

“Help me,” he said.

When I got there, he was in the crummy bar eating peanuts nervously, feeding them into his mouth like a machine. He spoke in Russian. “Can you take me to Newark?” he said. “To the airport. Please.” He could catch a ride with a friend who had a plane, he said. He said, “Don't ask me who, Artyom. Just drive me, please.”

I said, “Let's go,” and he scooped up more nuts, grabbed a carry-on bag from the floor, put it over his shoulder, followed me outside.

I drove through the tunnel; he didn't talk. The industrial wasteland on the Jersey side of the river stank. The weather had changed. It was dank and chilly. The air was sulphurous, the lights on the power plants looked dull, and Manhattan, across the river, gave the sky an eerie glow. A few hundred yards from the airport, I rolled up the window and pulled into a gas station.

We sat in the car, me and Sverdloff. He watched his wing mirror and I thought of all the times he saved my ass. I couldn't feed Sverdloff to the cops, no matter what he did. Friends are all I have.

Sverdloff picked at a scab in his nose; blood leaked out and he stuffed some Kleenex in the nostril. He looked at his watch. “I can get a lift in two hours,” he said.

“Whose plane?”

“I said it doesn't matter.”

“What's happening here, Tolya?”

“It goes back a long way.”

“You and Mishkin?”

“Some of it.”

“Mishkin will say he set Pascoe up, take the rap for his kid. They'll indict him as an accessory.”

“He'll go to Moscow. Trust me.”

“What about Lulu Fine?”

He shrugged. “The same thugs who tried to warn you off the case went after her for the same reason.”

“Sent by who?”

“I don't know.”

I said, “You have to help me here.”

“I don't know how to help you. I'm a messenger boy is all.” He looked ashen, shaky, a smear of blood on his upper lip. “I can't even help myself. All I know is everything moves through London these days.”

“What kind of things?”

“Russians.”

“Spell it out.”

“Pull around the other side of the diner. I don't like to be near the road.”

I turned the key and pulled the car into the shadows. Visibly, Tolya relaxed. He went on talking Russian. “One side America. The other side, the immense land mass, Europe, Russia, Asia. London is the axis for money. Body parts. The art market. Media. I do not mean individuals, Artyom, not just a few ladies who run this or that magazine, lovely English ladies that they are,
of course,” he said, and because he was speaking Russian said something so dirty I laughed. From relief I laughed. For a minute, Sverdloff sounded like himself.

“What else?”

He took my cigarettes from the dashboard and unwrapped the cellophane. “Most of all, real estate. Property. Land. You know, in Europe we killed each other for land in the old days, now we have polite economic communities, but it's all bullshit. The governments take down borders. Europe, Asia, one big party now.” He tried to laugh. “Look at Manhattan. London. For the right apartment, flat, house, mansion, dacha, villa, castle, factory site, skyscraper, landfill, even a burned-out jungle that will be a suburban sub-division next year, people will refrain from asking the hard question. People will fuck their neighbors, cheat their clients, kill. These are guys who buy and sell hotels, whole towns; look at the new cities of Asia. Look at Vegas. It's Monopoly.” He exhaled, took one of the cigarettes and lit it with the car lighter. “It's not just the money, it's the size of your cock. You believe me? What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “There's still time. You want some coffee?”

He leaned back as if to retire into deeper shadow. “No. We did it in Hong Kong, we fucked with real estate over there, sold high, then we destroyed the market, the Asian economies went down on their knees. We'll do it where we have to. Buy up the market, flood it, sell it low. Start again. Remember the fires in Malaysia? You think we were unaware? You think
Russians did not have a hand in it? Before the banks went bust and the rouble fell apart, we knew real estate was the only game. But no more rules. All up for grabs. For the first time in my capitalist life, Artyom, I am scared to death.”

“That guy Kievsky, he's a player? Is it he who scared you?”

He didn't answer. Then he leaned towards me. “Look, Artyom, I don't want you in trouble. You already got in the way. You were involved with Pascoe. You were my friend. They know your face. They came after me, and you were in the way, you started asking around.”

I thought of Frankie. “It will end in London,” she had said. I said to Tolya, “I'm not going to London, man, you know. I'm finished with this thing.”

“OK. Sure. But in case.” He shoved an envelope in my hand. A siren wailed behind me, got louder, then passed.

“What is it?”

“Keys. A place in London if you need it. It's OK. It's held through a respectable bank. No one connects me. I'll try to meet you, but I have to go home now. Moscow. My kid's in trouble.”

He had been evasive before about the kid, and I said, “What kind?”

“Not now.” He opened the car door.

“I'll drive you.”

“No. From here I can walk. Better like that. No one sees us.”

I knew it was for my sake. He got out on the side of
the road. I could see the outline of the airport a few hundred yards away against the polluted sky. I got out too, and said, “Be careful.”

“Yes.”

I hugged him. “You said you were scared. Of who?”

Tolya picked up his shoulder bag, stood silently for a few seconds, a huge lonely figure, then he said, “My own greed.”

Leo Mishkin sat on the bathroom floor holding Frankie Pascoe's hand. A medic, a thin blond guy in green hospital pants, bent over where she lay on the floor in the white robe she'd worn that morning. It was soaking wet.

Mishkin had called emergency and Sonny heard the news and called me on my cellphone on my way back from Jersey. When I got to Frankie's, Stan Getz was still on the stereo; “Falling in Love” was playing. Mishkin, whose face was raw and covered with stubble, wore a pair of jeans and a pajama top. He looked up; his face was wet. The medic stood up. Frankie Pascoe was dead.

Frankie had put the music on, poured herself a pitcher of martinis, put it on the rim of the tub and run the water. She pushed the green button in her closet. The security system was activated. The steel walls snapped into place. She trapped herself in her own bathroom. Then she slipped into the tub, still in the robe – who could say why she wore it? – and began drinking.

The maid found the room locked. Ryan Sweeney, the doorman, got hold of Mishkin because only
Mishkin could get her out. He had the blueprints and knew the codes. He deactivated the system, got Frankie out, called 911.

Mishkin didn't move. I sat down next to him on Frankie's bathroom floor and we waited for Sonny Lippert.

I said, “You knew they'd pick you up if you came here.”

“Yes.”

“It would destroy your business, letting people know a safe room you built got screwed up.”

Mishkin shrugged.

“It was a lie, wasn't it? It wasn't the room. It was Frankie.”

Mishkin didn't care. He had protected Frankie for a long time. He stayed on the floor while they covered her up and took her away. I passed him some smokes, but he shook his head.

He said, “Can we speak in Russian? It's easier.”

I nodded.

“I don't care if they pick me up. They'll pick me up anyway,” he said.

“You'll take the blame for your son?”

“Yes, I will say I was at the pool. They will check the DNA and see mine matches. Father and son.”