Bloody London (21 page)

I said, “Only half the markers are the same, Leo. Father and son, it's only half.”

He put his head in his hands.

“Your son said he heard you say Thomas Pascoe was a problem. That you wanted him out of the way. Because of Frankie?”

“No,” Leo said. “No, of course not. I loved Thomas Pascoe. He helped me. I was his friend. I tried to help him.”

“But you loved his wife also?”

“Also. Yes. It happens.”

“Who wanted him out of the way?”

“Thomas Pascoe made people nervous. He was a righteous man. He wanted it to stop.”

“Wanted what to stop?”

“I planned only to warn him. My God, I would not have killed Thomas. It was to be a warning.”

“Your son took it a lot farther than a warning.”

He didn't answer. “You can't prove it. There was no witness.”

“You'd do anything for the boy?”

“Yes. Anything.”

“Who did Pascoe make nervous?”

Leo Mishkin looked up. “In London, he said. People in London. They're dividing the territory, Europe, you understand? They're moving into London, west from Moscow, east from New York. Compared to New York, London is virgin territory for them. Thomas knew all this.”

“What's the scam?”

“Like always,” he said. “Real estate. Property. Land.”

“Is Tolya Sverdloff involved?”

“Yes.”

When they took Mishkin away, I looked around Frankie's apartment. It was not exactly kosher, but I didn't care and I found her passport. She had been to
London half a dozen times that year. She had lied about even that.

It wasn't over. Ramirez whacked Pascoe, it was him that did the job. But it wasn't what killed him, not the big picture. The big picture was London.

“Promise me,” Frankie had said. “Promise me you'll finish this.”

In some way I owed Frankie, and anyway I had promised her, and in a way I had loved her. I went into the library. Out the window, it was daylight. Monday morning. I found the tape Stan Getz had made specially for Frankie and slipped it into my pocket.

That night I went to Lily's. I found a bottle of Scotch, poured a couple inches in a glass, lit a cigarette and sprawled on her bed. I could smell her on her pillows. I'd slept some. I felt better.

Lily asked me to pick up some stuff for Beth. I have her keys. She has mine. I've been in and out of her place a million times, but I never looked in her stuff. A cop like me, you'd think I'm a nosey son of a bitch. I learned as a kid in Moscow there's stuff you're better off avoiding. They put that in your milk in Moscow: don't ask. Don't tell.

I stared at the ceiling. There was nothing I could do for Tolya Sverdloff. Later on I'd fill in Sonny Lippert, but I was still wasted from fatigue. I'd think about everything later. I thought I'd take a nap. It made me feel good, being here, in her place, on her bed. Normality seeped back in.

Later, I got up and went into Beth's room. Beth's clothes were neatly tucked in a dresser. It was a little dresser we bought in a junk sale on the island once. It
was painted blue. I pulled out some winter things and packed them in a shopping bag. I couldn't find one of the jackets Lily asked for.

The pink loden coat – Beth's obsessed with pink right now – was in her closet. On the top shelf were four small cartons I hadn't noticed before. I pulled one of them down and put it on the floor, then I opened it.

Inside there were pictures. I sat on the floor and looked at them. I lit a cigarette and kept looking. There were pictures of Lily as a child on Long Island in a smocked summer dress. Pictures of her at school with friends I never knew. College pictures. A picture of Lily in a fringed suede vest with her fist in the air surrounded by a group of Black Panthers. Lily in big shorts in the Peace Corps. Miniskirted in London. In bell bottoms. At friends' weddings.

I got up and took down a second carton and found more pictures, of her parents this time. The mother was tall, thin, unsmiling. The father had a stringy patrician look, a pursed, righteous mouth. In the same box was a copy of the
Communist Manifesto
, the mother's name written in old-fashioned cursive on the flyleaf. Lily's inheritance. I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. We had that in common, anyhow: both of us had parents who were, once upon a time, true believers. A long time ago. Ten years since the Berlin Wall came down already. Time passed.

Carefully I put the pictures back. At the bottom of the second carton was a flat blue gift box. I lifted the lid. Inside was a framed picture wrapped carefully in tissue paper. I lifted it out and unpeeled the paper. The eight
by ten glossy was framed in glass and silver and it was signed. It read, “Tom to Lily, With Love.”

At first I wasn't sure what I was looking at, couldn't focus, felt numb.

Mechanically, I put the boxes back, then I took the picture and baby clothes, locked up the apartment, went out, got in my car and drove home. In the glove compartment I found the envelope Sverdloff had given me with cash and keys for an apartment in London. I shoved them in my pocket, then I looked at the picture on the seat beside me.

The man in the picture had dark hair, but the patrician forehead, the aquiline nose, the bright eyes, were all the same as the day he died in the pool of his building on Sutton Place. Except the hair was white when he died. But the picture I had beside me now, the photograph I'd found in Lily's drawer, was a carefully preserved portrait of Thomas Pascoe.

A faint oystery light smudged the November sky outside the window. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I was in London, it was freezing cold and I couldn't figure how the heat worked. I ran for the shower fast, the tiled floors bare, me hopping around like a fly on a cake of ice. It was early, before seven, and I'd slept lousy after I got into London the night before, restless, displaced, tainted sleep.

At least the water was hot, and I stood under it and let it steam me back to life. Then I put on clean clothes. In my suitcase was the photograph of Thomas Pascoe. Why Pascoe died, the big picture, was here in London. I didn't tell anyone I was coming, not even Lily. I had to get my head screwed on straight. I wanted to know how she was connected to the Pascoe case and why she kept his portrait in her kid's closet. She left New York in a big hurry three days after the case broke. Maybe it really was because I was on the job. Maybe it was that simple and she was pissed off at me, or scared for me, but I didn't call her, not yet. I put it off.

If Lily was here in London – and she was here – Phillip Frye was back in her life. It was Frye who called her the day after Pascoe died. Frye who offered her a job. Frye who could sucker Lily with a call. It was only a job, she said. Said she'd finished with Frye years ago. Now, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

Jacket on, collar up, I went into the kitchen, made some instant because it's all there was; standing in front of the glass door to the balcony, I drank the putrid brew out of a blue and white mug. There was a radio and I switched it on. A woman's voice, poised but icy, talked politics.

The apartment in the renovated warehouse was sleek as a ship's cabin. Light wood floors, white walls, an open kitchen, a table and chairs, the bedroom with the bed, the white tiled bathroom. The balcony hung over a promenade along the river. I shoved open the balcony door.

The fog seemed to lie over the town like old soft rags; it draped itself on my hands and face and left them wet. London wrapped in its traditional weather. What else could a tourist want? I laughed and finished the coffee. Then I looked up at the roof.

The security was good: discreet video cameras, an alarm system. Anyone who got in – whoever left the dummy for me to find the night before – knew his way around. I slammed the door. What was it the cabbie said when I landed, with London lit up by bonfires like a war zone? Guy Fawkes Night.

The dummy, the Guy they call it, lay inside on a white canvas chair. It was limp and harmless now. I
picked up the picture I'd ripped off the dummy's face. A
Daily News
photograph of me on a recent case. A snapshot snatched out of an Internet file, I guessed, and printed on cheap paper. I'd seen a copy before, in New York, the night the bastards wrecked my loft. Bastards!

I stuffed my Knicks cap on the dummy, made more coffee. I didn't tell anyone I was coming to London, but somebody knew. I should have gone to a hotel, but I didn't have the dough, and anyhow, if somebody was interested in me being here, I wanted to know. I wanted a gun. I didn't care if it was illegal here, and I grabbed the picture and the damp dummy, locked up the apartment, then took the elevator down.

“Yes?” He had on a Hawaiian shirt with green pineapples. He stood behind a desk in the lobby and sorted out mail.

“Who are you?”

“Porter,” he said, not looking up. Youngish guy, thirty-five tops. Going bald in the middle.

I held out the dummy and the picture. “I found this on the balcony. It mean anything to you?”

He looked shifty, and rearranged his shirt. “Kids. A prank. You know, man. You staying here?” He had a whiney British accent, American slang.

I put the picture in my pocket. I dumped the dummy on the porter's desk and gave him a ten-pound bill. “See what you can find out about it, will you? Anyone been in that apartment the last couple days?”

“Only the cleaner.”

“Man? Woman?”

“A woman.”

“You talked to her?”

“She didn't speak English.”

“What did she speak?”

“Some sort of wog, I don't know, Polish, Russian.”

I gave him another ten. “She comes regular?”

“The bank sends her in. Bank that holds the lease.”

“Bank holds a lot of leases here?”

He shrugged. “You joking? Round here? After the crash, late Eighties, early Nineties, you could buy property here for peanuts.”

“Find her for me.”

“How much?”

“Fifty.”

“A hundred.” He moved out from behind the desk. I looked at his feet. He wore old Guccis but they were polished to a dull shine.

“Been here long?” I offered him some smokes.

“I'm the porter, like I said.” He picked up a can of Carlsberg from behind the desk where the mail lay. Swigged it.

“What else?”

“I was an estate agent. I was like heavy into Docklands property, then the market crashed, I went broke.” He shrugged, leaned back, crossed his feet, whistled tunelessly.

“You do other errands?”

“For cash.”

It was raining outside. The building was part of a complex of converted warehouses, and on the cold, humid
morning, the narrow street felt ancient, shut-in, sad. It was still dark and danker than any place I could remember except Poland. I jammed my hands in my pockets and left Butler's Wharf. The passageway behind the building was empty, the restaurants and fancy food shop shut up, a few bottles of olive oil set in the windows.

A man with an umbrella hurried towards the river and I followed him up a set of narrow stairs. I looked at the map I had. Tower Bridge.

The river was so dense with fog, I couldn't see the water. Along with the keys to the apartment, Tolya Sverdloff had given me a piece of paper with an address when I took him to Newark before he disappeared through the polluted night to the airport. I fumbled in my pocket for the address, then looked up. A taxi light floated through the fog and I ran for it.

“High Ground” was the name of the house. It was written in gold leaf on the freshly painted black iron gates.

On my way up, the fog had lifted a little and I could see London soaked in the rain. Everything dripped: trees, cars, gutters that ran with water. I must have dozed. When I opened my eyes, I felt lost. We were climbing a hill. I could see a little pond, some kids, maybe on their way to school, young kids in gray shorts, older kids in big sneakers, then an immense park.

The driver turned his head, muttered, “Bishop's Avenue, you said, right?” and pulled up to the fancy wrought-iron gate.

I pushed a buzzer. Heard a voice. Gave Tolya
Sverdloff's name and my own. The gate swung open. We drove up a circular gravel drive that could accommodate a tank division. It was lined with dripping topiaries in the shape of animals, and we stopped at a massive fieldstone house with white columns out front. There was a big piece of land around it. The trees were bare, gray-green, dripping, the vista huge but bleak.

I paid the driver, asked him to wait. He lifted his shoulders in apology, glanced around, seemed uneasy, but all he said was he was due home. He handed me a printed card with the phone number of a cab company.

The door was already open. Through it I saw a hallway, warm yellow light, parquet floors, half an acre of marble.

The maid was Russian; she tried speaking English and I let her. She led me through the hall, where there was a carved fireplace twelve feet high, and into a living room that was lit up like Christmas and decorated with brocade sofas and chairs, antique tables, oil paintings. Some of the pictures were famous.

A skinny guy with blond hair and pale oily skin put down his newspaper – the
Financial Times
– got up from his chair and offered his hand. “Eduard Kievsky,” he said, then smiled. “Eddie.”

I recognized Kievsky from Tolya's Halloween party; he had been got up as a priest. Now Kievsky wore a good gray suit and handmade wing-tips. I don't know if he recognized me but he didn't say. I figured him for Ukrainian. He spoke bad English and educated Russian. “We are all at breakfast,” he said politely. “Please join us.”

He led me into the dining room where seven or eight people sat at a long mahogany table, chatting and eating. The women, most of them in their thirties, sat one end of the table; they were all cheekbones and collagen. They were dressed in fancy sports clothes – Gucci, Hermès – and their Chanel bags were on the table next to them. Picking at pastries with manicured fingers, they leaned in towards each other and chattered softly: Manolo, Versace, Donna Karan, I caught the words and figured London was as overheated by consumption as New York.