Red Mercury Blues

by Reggie Nadelson

  “What kind of calls?”

  “Heavy breathing. Middle of the night. Usual stuff. It’s nothing,” she said.

  I didn’t tell her my computer was gone and that her name was in it. Maybe I should have. But I mentioned the studio gave me her home number.

  “Shit,” she said. “The security here sucks.” She shrugged but she looked worried. Then she said, “I liked Ustinov. I put him next to me. Someone killed him. I feel guilty, OK? I feel really fucking shitty. It also happened to be on my birthday.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, what more could a woman want for her forty-fifth than a dead Russian general in her lap?”

  Even after all these years, I never get used to how these clear-eyed, intelligent New York women swear like coal miners or peasants. Not that I don’t have a mouth like a toilet.

  “We already did this. Didn’t we? We went through all this that night.” She took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and, for a minute, her face settled into middle age.

  “What about Teddy?”

  “Teddy? Teddy’s good at what he does. He got into this game before a lot of the others. He’s connected. We’re not talking naked astrologers on public access channels, you understand. Teddy’s a cult for people who buy Salman Rushdie novels and maybe don’t read them. People watch the show ’cause it makes them feel smart. TV talk is cheap, Teddy talks good, and he’s got low cunning. He knows where people live.”

  “He was out of town that night.”

  “Look, I was glad to get the gig. It was good exposure. Now Teddy’s pissed off because he missed it.”

  “You think Teddy Flowers could have anything to do with the murder?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “I wish I did. I don’t. He would if he could, but he’s not that dumb.”

  “Tell me about Gavin Crowe?”

  “I met him, once, detective, or whatever you’re called.”

  “Artie is what I’m called,” I said, and added, “You weren’t in a nightclub in Brighton Beach with Gavin Crowe?”

  She gave me a weird look. “No, of course not.”

  The phone rang.

  She picked it up, listened. “I told you, Phil, I’m busy.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and looked at me. I’ll see you, OK? Maybe after the show tomorrow?”

  “How about tonight?”

  “Sure. Come by for a drink tonight. OK? Artie?”

  Teddy Flowers was in the hall when I left Lily’s office and he grabbed my arm. “You still here?” he said.

  “On my way. But tell me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Who’s Phil?”

  “Phil?” He looked towards Lily’s door. “Phil Frye, like I told you, is Ustinov’s publisher. He is also”—he gave a nasty chuckle—“he’s also Lily Hanes’ main fuck.”

  Killing time until I could go back and see Lily Hanes, I hung around with the Taes and ate a plate of scallops in black bean sauce Dorothy Tae put in front of me. Staring out the window of the restaurant, I watched a black woman in corn rows and kente cloth selling aromatherapy utensils, potions and oils off a push-cart in the street. Circling her was the girl on rollerblades who danced there every day. Across the street in the coffee shop, I could see the owner, George, eating a piece of lemon meringue pie.

  The dusk was colorless. The humidity gathered, fall was overdue, the sky heavy. Lily Hanes hadn’t told me she was connected to Frye, who published Ustinov’s book. She hosted The Teddy Flowers Show where Ustinov got murdered. The TV show and the publishing company were both owned by the same people. I played some backgammon with Mr Tae and he let me win. Ricky kibitzed. It didn’t help much.

  When the phone rang, Mr Tae answered it. He handed it to me. “He says he figured you might be with us.” It was Sonny Lippert.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure, Sonny?”

  “Cut the sarcasm, man. You better get over to Brooklyn pronto.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Someone punched out your cousin. Her face is a Russian sunrise. Her wrist’s broke. The old man is up in arms, he’s gonna sue the police department because 911 didn’t show fast enough, he wants to kill someone. The girl is catatonic. A guy they rented a room to has disappeared.”

  I went to Brooklyn, but by the time I arrived, the old man, Genia’s father, had posted himself and his cronies outside her room at Coney Island Hospital. “Stay away,” he screamed in Russian. “Stay away from us. We don’t do business with the police.”

  I felt like a punching bag. At a payphone, I called Lily. A woman at the studio said she had gone home. She had said come by later and now she was gone and I was pissed off. I planned to say so. I called her house, expecting an answering machine.

  “Can you come over here?” Lily’s voice was very quiet. “Please, I could use some help,” she added and there was more than a whisper of fear as she gave me her address. She said come over and I drove like crazy.

  At Lily’s building on 10th Street, there was some heavy duty security downstairs—a guy from a private firm, a regular cop. I wondered why. I showed my badge. I went up.

  She answered her door wearing an old bathrobe and sneakers. The red hair was in braids. She looked young, scared and glad to see me. I was surprised.

  “I’m sorry to drag you down here at this hour. I’m having kind of a rough time.” She sat down hard on a chair and stared at the wall.

  “What’s going on? I know things have been rough. They’ve been rough for me, too. I can go. I can come back. Tell me what you want me to do. Please.”

  Lily’s living room was painted yellow and there were big sofas and good drawings and the walls were full of books. A coffee table was a jumble of tapes, Kleenex, wine bottles. On an old-fashioned upright piano were photographs of Lily with Gorbachev and a tall thin couple posing with Pete Seeger; they were a stringy pair, but Lily had their good New England bones.

  “I’m sorry about the mess, I’m sorry about everything. Do you want a drink? Wine?”

  “Sure.”

  Lily left and came back in jeans and a sweater, a bottle of red wine under her arm. She poured it into a couple of glasses and sat down. She smiled some. “OK. I’m better now. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Talk to me, Lily.”

  “A guy came through my door with a knife,” she said, drinking some wine as she started her story. “He knew who I was. He knew where I live. He knew how to find me.”

  12

  Lily had come home early from work, around seven, even before the show went on air; she felt lousy. Her heart was pounding. Her head ached. She had to get away from the show, from Teddy, from all of it. Her friend, Babe, called and said she’d come over with food, but Lily said no, she wanted to sleep.

  “You should eat,” Babe said over the phone.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ll feel better. Promise me, OK?” So Lily promised and called the Chinese take-out. Then she buzzed José the doorman, like she always did when she was waiting for the regular take-out people and told him to send the kid on up; that was her big mistake. José always did pretty much what Lily asked because José was hoping for a TV career and figured Lily was a better bet than Richard Gere who lived across the street. José was a practical man.

  Lily put some music on and dozed. The doorbell woke her. She went to the door and slid open the peephole. The man’s face was obscured by a large bag of food.

  “Who is it?”

  There was no reply.

  “Who’s there?” she said sharply, then felt sorry about her tone. A lot of these Chinese kids were just off the boat and didn’t speak any English.

  He shouted something. His English was barely intelligible. Lily felt bad, she was sick of the paranoia; it could turn her into some kind of vile rightwinger if she wasn’t careful, and so she reached for the chain on the door.

  Then he moved back and she saw his shoes. Why did a
Chinese take-out kid have on fancy leather shoes? How come? The man outside her door knocked softly again, patiently. Through the peephole she could only see the paper bag full of food. She couldn’t see his face. Her flesh felt like spiders had crawled under her shirt.

  “Leave the food outside.” She knew he wouldn’t leave it. He would wait, patiently, for the money. She only had a credit card. The card machine wouldn’t fit under the door. If she didn’t pay him, he would lose his job. Worse, they might take it out of his miserable pay. Lily’s mind raced. She buzzed José; there was no answer. José took his dinner break at eight; you could set your watch by José’s breaks.

  “Stop this!” she said and realized she was talking out loud to herself, and she reached for the door, but she left the chain oh. The man outside was ready.

  Dropping the bag, he put his hand through her door and grabbed for the inside knob. Like her worst nightmare, she watched the hand come around her door. The man mumbled at her in a language she couldn’t make out at first; he wore a dark blue cap and sunglasses.

  “Get out,” Lily screamed.

  He swore at her, voice muffled, and she braced herself and shoved the door, but he was stronger. He pushed back. The doorknob turned. She felt herself reel, his weight on her like the dead general. Her ears rang, she was dizzy.

  Like a bad dream, a hand appeared again, fingers groping for the doorknob. Lily was losing ground.

  Somehow, she leaned back and got some momentum then crashed into the door with her shoulder as hard as she could, so hard she smashed the man’s hand. She heard the sound of tiny bones breaking, like a Cornish game hen when you chopped it in half with a big knife. There was the sound of pain on the other side, something clattered on the floor, the man pulled his crushed hand back and Lily saw a blade glint. She got the door shut, snapped the locks, and was on 911 to the cops in seconds. But he was gone, through the basement, out into the night streets.

  Later José the doorman told the cops he didn’t pay much attention to the man. Sure he was hanging around a while, but he looked respectable, the kind of guy who could be visiting in the building. So he was there when the delivery boy asked for Lily. José went on his break. The creep saw his chance, his luck was good or maybe he made his luck. He followed the boy into the elevator, punched him, dragged him out on the second floor, punched him again, grabbed the food and went up to Lily’s. Later, they found the kid in the stairwell nursing a black eye. Lily thought about moving, leaving. He knows where I live, she thought.

  13

  “He swore at me in Russian.” We were in Bradley’s later that night. Lily wanted to get out of the house and we went around the corner for something to eat. I got a beer; she had red wine.

  “You speak Russian?” I looked at her.

  “School stuff,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

  “Weird how all this doesn’t stop you from being hungry,” I said.

  “I thought that.”

  Bradley’s was dark, cool and nearly empty, only a few late-night drinkers at the bar.

  “I’m scared, you know. Someone knows where I live. Where I order take-out. A vindictive thing is out there and it’s after me. Did he know? Was he hanging around waiting for a chance? Did he plan it? I’ve lived around here most of my life. I grew up here. I went away, when my parents died I came back. Stayed on. I know every crack in the streets. I used to tempt fate stepping on them.”

  “When was that?”

  “When I was six.”

  “Where’s the knife?”

  “I guess he took it.” Lily finished the wine in her glass. “Look, thanks for coming.”

  “Thanks for asking.”

  “Is that a come-on?”

  “I better say this now so it doesn’t get in the way later. I need your help finding out who killed Gennadi Ustinov and why, but there’s something else and you should know it now.” I was sweating like a fourteen-year-old.

  “Spit it out.”

  “I’m not a cop exactly any more. But I was a cop. I was a cop, not a brain surgeon. If I could have been a brain surgeon I probably wouldn’t have been a cop. OK? But that doesn’t make me a Neanderthal fascist pig either.”

  “So?”

  “I want to have dinner with you.”

  “Is that a euphemism?”

  “You could call it that. But I won’t mention it again. We could just meet up and talk about the assassination and stuff. We could meet in public places. And if you decide some time you want to have dinner with me or any of the things it’s a euphemism for, you could tell me.”

  “That’s a pretty good line,” Lily said.

  “Thank you. You want to eat now?”

  “Is that an invite?”

  “No, you can pay.”

  Lily ordered a bacon cheeseburger rare with fries; so did I.

  The burgers came. She ate a huge bite; juice dribbled down her chin onto her T-shirt. She laughed. I laughed.

  “You know Ustinov’s publisher?” I said.

  “I know Phillip Frye.”

  “But you didn’t tell me that.”

  “It’s personal.”

  Suddenly I thought of something. “Is he a Brit?”

  “Yes,” she said, and I knew I was right. It had been this Phillip Frye she had been with at the Batumi when Olga met her, not Gavin Crowe. But I was going to put my foot in it if I didn’t shut up. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

  “The show was my idea,” she said. “My subject.”

  “You spent time in Russia?”

  “Some. I wanted to see for myself.”

  “See?”

  “What my parents cared about so much,” she said a little bitterly. “My parents were true believers, you know? They didn’t believe in Stalin, exactly. They believed in Trotsky and Pete Seeger. I finally went to Moscow like everyone else when Gorby came in. It was the hot story.”

  She had a slow easy way of talking. She was a friendly woman. There was no agenda. She didn’t sulk. There were no smuggled messages. She rubbed her eyes with her fist like a kid and a trio I hadn’t heard before played “Desafinado”.

  “Stan Getz does that better.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You like Getz?”

  “He’s the best,” she said and I fell for her completely.

  “My parents were the kind of old lefties who saved their passion for the cause. Righteous New Englanders, you know? Took in everyone. Fellow travellers. Hippies. Black Panthers. God, how I longed for one dinner alone with my parents. They put all their emotion in it, what they had. I think having a kid scared the shit out of my mom.”

  “How do you know?”

  “After she died, I found a letter in her stuff. From my grandma. Her mother. I think you should take Baby Lily home, it said. I must have been almost a year old. I guess she dumped me when I was born.”

  “You’ve done OK.”

  “Yeah, I even outgrew being a good little girl to get their attention.” She was pink from the wine. She leaned forward on her arms. “It was OK. It makes you tougher, you know? There’s not that much I’m scared of,” Lily said.

  “Except how you feel?”

  “Nice guess.” She shifted her weight. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Maybe I like you.”

  “I hope so.”

  “There’s something else I should tell you.” She leaned closer. I hoped she was feeling as weak-kneed as me. I could feel her breath.

  “I really like Tony Bennett. Maybe more than Sinatra. It’s your turn,” she added and waved at the waiter for more wine. “Your turn.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How much is there?”

  I told her most of what I knew so far. It wasn’t much.

  “You think it’s a mafia hit?”

  “That’s the obvious answer, but why? What did Ustinov know that every other KGB apparatchik didn’t know?”

  She looked at me. “This matters to you.”

  “Yes.”


  “Big case.”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Tell me.” She drank red wine and wiped her mouth with the side of her hand. She reached over and put a hand on my arm. She made it tingle.

  I drank, took a deep breath and looked into the light gray-blue eyes. I knew there was part of her I could never get at, but if I could surprise her, maybe I could seduce her. I never talked about Gennadi to anyone, except a little bit to Ricky.

  “Tell me,” she said again.

  I told her. About Gennadi and my father.

  Lily listened, head on her hand, as if what I said was the most interesting thing in the world. It was a real talent.

  I leaned back and looked at her.

  “I called him Uncle Gennadi. All I cared about was Uncle Gennadi. Gennadi would come back from America like a movie star, with magic presents and stories and records and news of another planet, like he’d been to the moon.” I drank. “God, how I wanted to be an American. Not an intellectual. A real American.” I felt I could tell her anything. “My mother said I was born to be an American. I was always cheerful, she said. The family joke.”

  Lily poured more wine in my glass.

  “After a while Gennadi disappeared. Maybe he betrayed us, who knows. My father lost his job. We lived lousy for a while. I spent a lot of time hating. You know? Even after I got here. Everything Russian. The whining. The ideology. Superstitions. I hate the moods, the inertia. Also, I hate borscht.”

  “So you cast yourself as a New York cop.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the point, isn’t it, in New York everyone gets to chose a part, and I can’t play the tenor sax.

  “Gennadi tried to see me. I always refused. Then I thought, what the hell. I said yes. I was over being mad. Over being Russian. I had become someone else. I wanted to see him. I got to the hospital and all I saw was a dead man hooked up to a lot of tubes.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Artemy Ostalsky. Everyone always called me Artie. I took my mother’s last name.”

  “So Artemy Ostalsky became Artie Cohen.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin. She smiled shyly for such a big noisy woman. “Do something for me?”