Bloody London (4 page)

I peered at the name cards slotted into doors. No one stopped me. Some of the doors I passed were ajar; I got a glimpse of beds, patients, some asleep, others half sitting, peering up at the TVs that hung from overhead arms. The cathode glow of the screens caught my attention and I stopped and looked at a set. The Pascoe story was already running. I turned a corner.

From one of the rooms came a soft moan now: someone crying in pain, muffled by medication. And the alien antiseptic smell, insidious, the ammonia, the sick flesh, the weird sour smell of stainless steel – bedpans, sinks, bedrails.

Too many times in the last year I'd smelled it. Friends died. I had waited in the hallway and smelled the sour smell.

Behind me there was the quiet squish of rubber soles on linoleum. Hospitals spook me. Something goes
wrong. An alarm shrieks. A hunk of human flesh in intensive care malfunctions. There's the sudden noise, the officious thud of a phalanx of medics when they appear.

Where was she? Ulanova. There'd be a cop on duty. Then I saw it. The name was on the door. No cop. I pushed the door open softly, but the bed was made up tight and empty, the lights doused. She must be dead.

I dug some chewing gum out of my pocket. I wanted a smoke, but I was committed to three a day and I'd already had four. I glanced in the bathroom and the closet. Someone had supplied her with a toothbrush and there was a cheap watch on the bedside table, a hairnet and a little wooden icon. I wondered how the hell she got hold of the icon before they brought her in, and I sat on the edge of the bed looking at it, the sad, crappy souvenir, and felt pissed off that I was too late.

What the hell. With the story running this big, other witnesses on this one would come out of the woodwork like cuckoos out of a clock.

In the mirror, I caught my reflection. Like Sonny said, I had dropped some weight, I was tan from a day of fishing off Sag Harbor the week before. I'd cleaned up my act and my eyes were clear. I'm six one. Hair still dark.

“You look like an American,” my mother always laughed, way back when I was still a kid in Moscow. When I got to New York, it made it easier to dump the past.

The last few years cost me. There was no ease in me for so long I didn't even notice. I thought I was a goodtime
guy when I was really dying. Too much pain, too much booze. I couldn't stop. People said, veg out, Art, chill. But I couldn't. I was locked into what I'd seen and done, with all the obligation, fury, guilt. I'd watched other guys my age drop dead from heart attacks. Strokes. You turn forty, you're in trouble.

But I was OK now, better than I'd been in a real long time. I'm solvent, more or less. Lily Hanes and me, we're good together, and there's Beth who's three already. Nothing was going to drag me back into the shit, and now, sitting in the silent, sunny room staring in the mirror, I hummed the Beach Boys tune that I heard the guy by the pool whistle.

“See anything you like?”

I saw Frances Pascoe in the mirror. I got off the bed, the cheesy watch still in my hand. There was a film of talcum powder on it.

I said, “She's dead.”

Mrs Pascoe shut the door to the room. “No, she isn't. She's gone home. I came in, like you, and found her gone. I spoke to the head nurse. Someone checked her out. When they brought her in this morning, it seems, she made a frightful stink and eventually got herself released against doctor's orders.”

“Who took her home?”

“I heard it was a nephew.”

“Doctors that accommodating around here?”

“Here? If someone's paying, yes.”

“He was Russian?”

“Who?”

“The nephew. Say I'm curious.”

“Apparently, yes.” She glanced at the icon in my hand. “I'd better take her things.”

Like me, she'd come to pump the old woman. Mrs Pascoe gestured at the empty bed with a small yellow basket she carried. “I'll get her things, then I'll take you to see her if you like.” She was polite and very cool.

I gave her the icon and she took it, then set her bag on the bed, put the hairnet and toothbrush inside. She pulled her sweater around her shoulders and pushed the short hair away from her eyes. A wry smile animated her cold, ageless face and I couldn't stop looking. Frances Pascoe was very sexy. I don't want anyone except Lily, but this was an interesting woman. Adhesive. You wanted to touch her. She glanced at me, then at the bed and smiled.

I followed her into the corridor, where she said, “You might want to get rid of your sleuth costume.”

I dumped the white coat in a laundry bin. “My car's outside.”

When we got to the street, she put her hand on the door of my red Cadillac and said, “Marvelous car.”

This was a woman who watched men: she saw where the soft tissue was; she clocked right away how I feel about the car. I reached over and opened the door for her, felt her sweater brush my arm, then her hand on my wrist, her letting me feel the cool light fingers, as she slid into the seat. She closed the door, shifted her thighs on the natural leather seat appreciatively, then waited until I got behind the wheel and said, “You're wondering why I don't seem more upset about Tommy's death, is that it?”

I didn't answer her.

She said, “I don't do grief, you see. It's not who I am.”

Ulanova's place was made up of a couple of maids' rooms; the bedroom was small and crowded with boxes, trunks, a narrow bed. The end of the line for the old woman who lay on the bed. Grimy white walls. On the mahogany bureau stood a gilded icon, the gold leaf mottled and flaky, the figures rubbed out.

Inert, emaciated, the old Russian lay on the narrow bed, head wrapped in bandages and a red silk scarf. A black woman in a white nylon uniform, face weary, sat thighs apart on a kitchen chair. I crouched next to the old lady's bed. The breathing was shallow, the face barely haunted by life. A noise came out of her mouth and I leaned closer; she spoke in short bursts.

I leaned my elbows on my knees and bent my head closer to the mouth. I whispered to her in Russian. I want to help, I said. Talk to me, please, I said. Suddenly her hand moved towards mine, the fingers crawling over the sheet like spiders. I put my hand in her claw and she dragged it up to her cheek. It felt like onion skin, thin, brittle, greasy. Her eyes stayed shut, but she forced out the words into a stream of venom.

The breath was putrid, her Russian was exquisite. Like some hideous metaphor for the whole goddam country.

I leaned closer. She whispered how much she hated Thomas Pascoe. He had stolen her apartment and left her the maids' rooms and she hated him for it.

The attendant said, “That's enough.”

“This is important.”

“I'm sorry. You can come back tomorrow.”

I said softly, so the old woman wouldn't hear me, “What if she's worse?”

“That's a chance you'll have to take, hon, all right? Let her be.”

But Ulanova pulled on my hair. My face was against hers.

“I came home,” she hissed in Russian. “I had to come home from the hospital.”

I said, “Why?”

She said, “They planned to steal my home from me.”

Mrs Pascoe was waiting in the living room. It was small. It had one window, leaded panes, a rusted handle that didn't work right. It faced a brick wall. Under it was an upright piano with yellow keys, some of them missing. The room was jammed with black walnut furniture and carved statues, wooden crates, old books, battered icons, oil paintings, some of them stacked three deep, in piles, shoved against the walls, covered with drop-cloths and padded moving blankets. Seedy oriental rugs were piled on top of each other. Enough stuff for a mansion was crammed into the room; her life had shrivelled, was boxed in now, all that was left this lousy cluttered room.

I looked around and said, “Miss Havisham's parlor.”

Mrs Pascoe, who sat on the edge of a straight chair, her legs tucked neatly together, raised her eyebrow very slightly.

I added, “Yeah, I read books too.”

“I'm sure you do. Did you get what you wanted?”

I shrugged and said, “You got anything for me? Some names? Some kind of list?”

“Names?”

“People who wanted apartments in this building.”

She got up and looked around. “I hope the bloody nephew's coming to get her stuff. I hope to Christ he's got some sense and we can do business with him. At least we'll be able to clean this place out,” she said. “Don't look so shocked, Mr Cohen. It's been hell dealing with her rubbish. Literally. We've been trying to get her out for years. Tommy would have been delighted.”

I said, “She's not dead yet,” but Mrs Pascoe only said, “As good as.”

She opened the front door. The hallway up here was bleak, no wallpaper, green paint peeling, the sour smell of age, disease, garbage. A mouse skittered by on the stained carpet. I said, “All of them maids' rooms up here?”

Frances Pascoe said, “Yes. The building's board has managed to buy them all, except for hers. To convert them to storage. She's stayed on like grim death.” She pushed the elevator button. It was a service elevator at the back of the building; we got in, rode silently to the second floor, where we got out and took some back stairs to the lobby.

I said to Frances Pascoe, “This the way the help travels?”

She only smiled.

In the lobby, she gestured to a sofa in the corner. She didn't invite me home.

“Tell me how it really works, getting an apartment here. You advertise?”

“Never.”

“So?”

“We can't take everyone. We rarely have anything available.”

“You have complete control?”

“It's a co-operative. The residents own the shares. It's private. We have control.”

“So you look them over, the wannabes, according to the kind of dough they make. Right? So there will be records. You get an applicant for a co-op, you check out their financials first, and the references. Then you haul them in for an interview with the board that runs the building, right?”

“The apartments are paid for in full as I told you. I did tell you. There's no reason to involve banks for the most part.”

I said, “OK, so references,” but she said, “Most buildings, yes. Co-ops, as you know, are owned by the owners of the apartments, each has a share, each has a vote, which is how the boards are elected.”

I was getting impatient. “Spare me the basics.”

“Fine,” Mrs Pascoe said.

“But there's references.”

“We don't ask for references.”

“What?”

She rubbed her hand across her forehead. “We don't need them. Either people are known to us or not.”

“Known to you?”

“Yes. Can we go outside? I'd like to smoke.”

I followed her to the piazza, where a fountain decorated with stone mermaids spouted water and there were carved marble urns full of white geraniums. She walked down the stairs to the pocket park, where there was a little gazebo with a bench inside, then leaned on the railing and craned her neck towards the river. At the water's edge was a larger park; sun glinted off a bronze animal.

She looked down at it. “It's a warthog, I think. The kids call it Warthog Park.”

“Kids?”

“Never mind. Let me have a cigarette.”

I gave her my pack and the lighter. She said thanks, lit up and glanced around.

“Expecting someone?”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said, but she was jumpy. Noise distracted her – the hoot of a boat on the river, the steady drone of cars on the Drive below us, the cars that swished over the 59th Street Bridge a few blocks north. The sun was warm, but Mrs Pascoe buttoned her sweater.

“You want to go in?”

“No, thank you.” She took my wrist lightly, then let go. “I swear to you, we did try.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“Except for two apartments that were willed on when the occupants died, we've only had one come up in the last half-dozen years.”

“When? What year?”

“Last year.”

“Anyone make the cut?”

“We interviewed a few, I barely remember them. You know, it's curious, most people are awfully good about it, they realize this building isn't for them, they rarely fuss. A few go a bit mad. They beg. A veiled threat. Offers to charity. The new rich always want to appear charitable, don't they, Mr Cohen? My God, one couple even offered us cash under the table.” She honked with laugher. “In notes.”

I shrugged and kept quiet.

“It was a disaster really, all our efforts. I remember one couple, the fellow said, ‘We've got cash,' and Tommy said, ‘But you work for your father-in-law. What happens if you and your wife should split up? You understand,' Tom said – it was marvelous how he kept a straight face – ‘there's no financing ever,' and the poor sod ran for the bathroom. He was sick as a parrot. We all heard him. It was humiliating for him, of course, but he shouldn't have lied to us.”

“Sure.”

She said, “It did make us laugh, though. Tommy had such a sense of humor. One has to try, darling, he'd say before. Such frightfully unattractive behavior, he always said afterwards, after the interviews, when he had to have a second whiskey. He was right.”

“So what do these apartments run?”

“The market's been absolutely ridiculous, of course. I'm not being evasive, it just depends. Nothing under two million, of course. Am I a suspect?”

I watched the river. “That's not my department.”

“I can't believe anyone killed Tommy on purpose.”

“Why not?”

“He was one of the good guys. He gave away money. He helped people. It's how he was raised. He sat on the boards of several schools. He rolled up his sleeves.”

“He was a good Christian.”

“Exactly.” Her tone was bland. She added, “I wonder if this wasn't random, you see, an opportunity, someone he helped even, with an ax to grind, if you'll forgive the pun, or looking for cash.”