Londongrad

by Reggie Nadelson

  “Sure.”

  “Probably it is nothing,” said Bobo. “Probably she is just maybe out to the beach or something.”

  “Yes.”

  He opened the door and went in. I waited. I could hear him walking over the hardboard floor, first in the living room, then the bedroom. I waited. Bobo reappeared.

  “Nobody is home here,” he said. “Is okay.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Probably you don’t want people knowing about this or somebody will tell her father and he will go crazy?”

  I nodded. He got out a pack of smokes. We both lit up.

  “You want me to look at where she goes, who she knows, but quiet, right, Artemy?”

  “That would be good. Yes. Tell people you’re on the Panchuk case, and nobody at your station house will ask you questions, right?”

  “Exactly,” said Bobo. “I say just like that.”

  “I want you to find Valentina Sverdloff. Nobody has to think she’s missing, maybe she’s just out with some guy, or someplace taking photographs, or like you said, at the beach. I don’t want her father going crazy and calling in the thugs he uses for bodyguards. I don’t want her going crazy at me because she thinks I’m pestering her. I need you to promise.”

  “Yes, you said already, I understand.” He spoke Russian now, as if to convince me he was serious.

  “I’m sure Val is just at the beach on the island,” I said again. “She forgot we were having dinner. She just forgot, right? Isn’t that how girls are? They forget? Girls, boys, the mood just kind of takes you, you stay out all night?” I could hear myself running on, desperate.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “It is like that.”

  “Daddy? You there? It’s me, Val, listen I’ll be home in the morning. Don’t go insane, I mean, I’m fine. I’m at a friend’s. A girlfriend’s place. See you.”

  When I turned on Tolya’s answering machine for a second I thought the message was from the night before. Any time now, Val would come walking into the apartment.

  But it was an old message, I realized.

  I looked at my phone, then turned it off.

  Tolya had been calling me. Sending me e-mails. It was nine in the morning, July 7. Tolya’s birthday coming up, what was it, two, three days? He had asked me again to come to London, big party, he had said. I’d have to take the calls soon. In the messages he asked about Valentina.

  I went out on the terrace that was planted thick with flowers, pink and violet geraniums, low shrubs nearly trimmed. A glass still half full of orange juice was on the redwood table. Next to it was the Post. I picked it up. It was open to the story about Masha Panchuk. MUMMY GIRL, the headline read.

  For a girl her age, twenty-four, her birthday the same day as her father’s, Val was neat as hell. I’d forgotten. Her laptop wasn’t there but she often took it with her, in a bag slung over her shoulder.

  One wall was covered in books, paperbacks, textbooks, novels, cookbooks, and hundreds, maybe thousands of CDs and DVDs. There was a good Bose sound system, and I turned it on. Spring is Here, a Stan Getz album I’d given her, came on. The last thing she’d listened to before she went out.

  It was a faintly anonymous room as if she alighted here from time to time, but was always on her way somewhere else.

  In her darkroom on the work table was a single print, a picture of Tolya with a bottle of wine in his hand, head thrown back, laughing. He filled the frame.

  A few negatives lay on the table, too, and a box of brushes for cleaning them. Staticmaster, the brushes were called. Something about the box caught my attention. I picked it up and looked at it, then put it back. I was wasting time on stupid details.

  On the dresser in her bedroom were framed photos: her twin sister, her mother. A picture of me she had taken over by one of the Hudson piers.

  Squinting into the sun, I was smiling at her, a dumb smile. I recognized the green shirt I was wearing in the picture. And one of Tolya and me, on his terrace, arms around each other, laughing. And a picture of a young guy I didn’t know, a handsome guy, maybe thirty, dark hair, blue eyes.

  More pictures of the same man were in a drawer, some taken in London, some in Moscow. I didn’t know who the hell he was and I was jealous.

  In the pictures, the way he looked at Val behind her camera, you knew he was in love with her. And she with him. Maybe she had another life. I was a fool.

  Val?

  In my head I saw Val like Masha Panchuk, suffocating inside the hot sticky tape, dying slowly somewhere on the fringes of the city, in a desolate park surrounded by dirty needles, or out by the water where gulls picked over garbage for their breakfast.

  Did the killer who murdered Masha Panchuk take Val?

  I was paralyzed. If I called her friends, there would be questions and Tolya would hear. By now I would have settled for almost anything, even a call from some creep to say she had been kidnapped. How much? Money was easy. If it was only money, it would be okay.

  I called her and called her until I was hoarse.

  Val?

  “I saw her.”

  It was later that morning when Bobo called. “It was Valentina,” he said. “It was her.”

  “Where?”

  “Artie, I saw her. I saw Valentina, I really see her, it’s okay, everything is okay.”

  “Where?”

  “I see her from my car window on 52nd Street, way over near Eleventh Avenue, Hell’s Kitchen, she goes around the corner on this red Vespa, she has a red scooter, right? Artie?”

  My knees seemed to buckle. I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t care about any of it, except that Val was okay. He had seen her. Bobo had seen her. I got out my phone and called Tolya.

  “Jesus Christ, Artyom, what’s all the excitement?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. I just saw Val on a red Vespa. You should make her wear a fucking helmet, or something. It’s dangerous.” I was out of my mind, I hardly knew what I was saying.

  “Listen, I know this, asshole, but they wouldn’t leave off until I bought it, an early birthday present.”

  I left the apartment, went out, and started to walk. I walked to the river. Had Bobo really seen Val? Was it her? I started to worry. I needed to see her myself, so I walked. How many hours did I walk around the city after that? I went up to Hell’s Kitchen, I went everywhere I knew Val went. As far as I knew. How much did I know about her? I didn’t know she had a red scooter.

  Maybe it hadn’t been her at all? Bobo had only glimpsed her.

  Why didn’t she answer my calls? It was after midnight now and I was feeling crazy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tuesday 2 a.m.

  Even at two in the morning, Sonny Lippert was awake. Maybe Lippert could help. I could trust him.

  He had opened the door to his apartment in Battery Park City. Rhonda Fisher, his wife, was asleep, but as always, Lippert was awake reading, listening to music. Out of his sound system, the real thing, turntable, tubes, came “Somethin’ Else”, a great Miles track with Cannonball Adderley and Art Blakey. Sonny was in sweatpants and a t-shirt. In his hand was a glass of single malt.

  “Can I get you one?” he said. I shook my head. “But you didn’t come here for a drink.”

  “Valentina Sverdloff disappeared, no calls, no nothing. I was supposed to meet her on Sunday night. I can’t reach her.”

  Lippert turned off the music. He put his drink down. He was brisk.

  “Who else knows? Please, sit down.” Sonny sat on the edge of the leather sofa, and I sat on a chair.

  “Bobo Leven.”

  He shrugged.

  “You didn’t bother to tell me this before now?”

  “I didn’t want the media.”

  “You think that’s all I do, I call the fucking media, man?”

  “You like the publicity, Sonny.” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Any connection with the dead girl, what was her name, on the swing? Panchuk?” Suddenly Lippert was sharp as ever.
r />   “The dead girl, Maria Panchuk worked at Sverdloff’s club, Pravda2, over on Horatio.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Panchuk looked like Val. Somewhat like,” I said.

  “You think they did Panchuk by mistake?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they wanted both. Maybe Panchuk was an early warning.”

  “Because of Valentina’s father?”

  “I think she was into stuff she shouldn’t have been.”

  “What kind?”

  “Kids.”

  “You’re crazy, man,” said Lippert.

  “Christ, Sonny, no, but Val helped out at women’s shelters in Russia, and with little kids, orphans, abused girls, she sends stuff over, she goes there, she gets in their face, the officials. I’ve seen the letters,” I said, thinking of the files in Val’s closet.

  “A big mouth like her father.”

  “Sonny, listen, I’ve never said this to you before, I’m desperate. This girl is like my own family. I know you don’t like Sverdloff, but that doesn’t matter. I have to find her before Tolya Sverdloff finds out and sends in his guys who will fuck it up worse and get her killed. I’ve been everywhere, and I have not one fucking idea what I’m doing. I’m running on empty here, and you have to help me.”

  “Calm down, man,” he said, and put his hand on my arm.

  I grabbed hold of his shirtsleeve. “Please, Sonny,” I said.

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Thank you. I need a smoke.”

  Lippert fished a pack out of his jacket pocket, and passed them over. “I was supposed to quit. I can’t.”

  “I’ve never been so lost before, Sonny. I keep turning up stuff that has nothing to do with Valentina, or even with Panchuk, the dead girl. I got a Serb club manager scared off bad enough after I talked to him that he left for his mother upstate and maybe to Belgrade. This guy knew Masha, better than he let on, I think, but his alibi checks out.”

  “Where’s Sverdloff?”

  “In Scotland.”

  “Jesus! What for?”

  “Golf. I don’t know. He left for London Sunday morning, and now he’s playing fucking golf.”

  “Let’s just focus on the Sverdloff girl, okay? Let’s just work that, Artie, man, you with me? Forget the rest for now, leave the rest to the others. Take me through everything,” Sonny said, and I told him everything.

  “I was in London a couple times,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, London, you said Sverdloff was in a hurry to get back to London.”

  “Sonny, Jesus, man, a girl is missing and you’re going to give me a travelogue.”

  “It’s related. I’m thinking Sverdloff goes to London where his daughter doesn’t want him going, and Roy Pettus wants you in bloody London. To keep an eye on Sverdloff, maybe? Maybe that’s the part he didn’t mention.

  “It’s a weird country, man, really weird,” said Sonny. “They major in spy shit. Your pal Sverdloff is not the most fucking transparent guy I ever met. I gotta think this thing with his kid is all about what he’s been doing, making money in London, stealing money, doing stuff with people he shouldn’t be doing it with.”

  “And this is a way of getting to him, through Val? But why here? And who the fuck is they?”

  “I’m just trying to think about the Russkis all living over there in London, all the secret stuff, state killings. Man, Lenin would be jumping up out of his grave and clapping his blood-soaked hands. I know, man, I remember. My parents were devoted. They believed.”

  I grabbed his arm. I was panicky.

  “I’m telling you something here,” said Lippert. “I’m thinking this out. If they got to Valentina, they’re after her father. She’s an American. She lives in New York. They’re not coming this far for a girl who likes helping out with orphans. I think she’s alive,” said Lippert. “Listen to me. I don’t think she’s dead. I think they want something out of her. You need something to drink?”

  “No.”

  “Artie, man, I’m going to make some very discreet phone calls to guys who retired and don’t have an ax, and who owe me. Okay? You listening?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ve been to her apartment.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you have keys, right? She lives with her old man, doesn’t she? Go wait for her. Wait for a call. I’ll work this, I swear to you, I know how it is with you and Sverdloff.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “What’s the thank you bullshit?” said Sonny. “I’m on it. It will be okay.” For Lippert this passed as extreme optimism.

  “Art, man?”

  “What?”

  “If Roy Pettus wants something from you, make a trade for information about Valentina. He has connections even I can’t touch. Tell him you’ll do whatever, if he gets Valentina Sverdloff back. Call him and go wait for her. She’ll turn up there, or the creeps who took her will call looking for her old man, I know it. Give me a couple hours,” he said. “You want me to go with you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When I got to Sverdloff’s building, there was light in the sky, and already people were coming out of the elevator with their dogs, two little rat dogs, a big Lab, somebody with a suitcase holding the door open, and I couldn’t wait, I just bolted up the stairs, the endless-seeming flights of stairs, running faster and faster, until my legs burned and I couldn’t breathe, and all I could think about was Valentina and Tolya and how I had failed, I could see them in my mind’s eye, could see the girl Masha Panchuk too, the blue eyes staring up out of her duct-tape shroud, and when I slammed into the apartment, Bobo Leven had just arrived, had just got to the place, and was waiting there in the living room, to tell me that Valentina Sverdloff was dead.

  “Where is she?”

  Bobo nodded towards her room.

  I was already moving towards Val’s apartment, towards her room, but Bobo put out a hand to stop me. Wait, he said. Wait for me.

  “Tell me.”

  “One of my guys found some of Masha Panchuk’s stuff, it had been buried near the playground, behind a derelict gas station. I was looking for you when Lippert called and said you were on your way here.”

  “And?”

  “There was a part of a pink dress, a high-heeled sandal, and a little gold purse with Masha’s clothes, there was a card inside.” He gave it to me. It was Valentina’s card. “I think they killed Masha because she had this card, and she looked like Valentina. They killed the wrong girl the first time. Somebody figured it out,” Bobo said.

  “I came here, and the door was unlocked, Artie, and inside is Valentina Anatolyevich Sverdloff, this lovely girl, she is there.” He lapsed into bad English, and switched to Russian. “I am so sorry.”

  “When did you get here?”

  “Few minutes,” he said.

  I started for her room.

  “Please, do not go in that room alone. Please.”

  I told Bobo to wait. I looked at the card he had given me, and then I went into Val’s place, through her living room into her bedroom.

  On her bed, Val looked asleep. Unharmed. Her feet were bare. There were no marks on her face or legs or arms so far as I could see. She was pale, composed, expressionless.

  On the floor near the bed were wrappers from the Antistatic brushes I’d seen earlier in her darkroom, but I couldn’t deal with anything now, all I could do was look at her. I sat down beside her on the bed.

  Her hands were crossed on her chest. Her eyes were shut. The thin gold chain with the cross was around her neck. I tried her pulse. I put my fingers on her neck. I leaned close to her mouth. There was no breath.

  I picked up one of the hands, and it was still soft, still pliant and soft and smooth, a young girl’s hand except for the missing finger. She hadn’t been dead long, as far as I could tell. Maybe I got to the apartment an hour too late. I had left my watch at home. I was going crazy
.

  How long did I sit in there? Eventually Bobo came into the bedroom and leaned over and took her hand out of mine. I rubbed my hand across my face.

  “What should I do, Artie? Tell me how I can help,” he said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Four minutes after nine in the morning,” said Bobo, and I asked him to check flights to London.

  I couldn’t tell Tolya about Valentina by phone. I had to go. I had to be there. It would kill him, but if it didn’t, at least he could hit me. He could blame me for failing, for not taking care of her, he could at least take it out on me, if he wanted.

  “Artie?”

  “Just stay here, okay? I want you to stay here until I leave.”

  He looked up from his BlackBerry.

  “You can get a non-stop, JFK, get you into London around six tomorrow morning.”

  “Do it.” I tossed him a credit card. I figured there was enough for a cheap ticket on it.

  “If Sverdloff calls?”

  “By the time I get on the plane, it will be night-time in London. I hope to God he’s still playing golf in Scotland, or at some fucking party. Try to fend him off. Tell him I’ll be in touch. Tell him I’m calling any minute. Just give me a little time, can you do that? Try to stay here with her, don’t call anyone.”

  “Of course.”

  “After I go, just do what you have to, Bobo. It’s your case now. This is yours. You work this like you were hanging onto a twenty-storey building by one fingernail, you get me? Find him.”

  “I don’t know how to work this without you.”

  “You know plenty. You’ll solve the thing, you’ll find out who killed Panchuk, and you’ll find out who killed Val. I have to go. The same creep killed them both. He killed Masha thinking she was Valentina, then he killed her.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll call you? I have to get my passport, some other stuff.” I felt very calm and cold. “Lippert will help you, he’ll do it for me.”

  Before I left, I looked at Valentina again, and I understood.