Red Mercury Blues

by Reggie Nadelson

  “Sure.”

  “Anything you find out about the case, will you tell me? It’s a great story. I’d like to be in there first.”

  She sure knew how to ring a guy’s chimes, I thought wryly, but I said, “Sure. So how about you try to get the unpublished pages of Ustinov’s book?”

  “You know about that?”

  “I know.”

  “Touché,” she said. “It’s a deal.” Lily held out her hand. I shook it and kept it. It was warm.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” she said.

  I was a little drunk by now. “Yeah. This case? I know in my gut it will end back in Moscow. I know it. I just feel it. And I’m not going back, ever. Ever.”

  Lily leaned over and put her arms around me. “You don’t have to go back,” she said. “OK?”

  “I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  The piano player looked at us, grinned, and launched into “Someone to Watch Over Me”.

  Lily laughed. “They like us.”

  “Me too.”

  “I thought I was too old for this stuff,” she said.

  “Nah,” I said.

  “Will you walk me home?” she said, a warm hand on the back of my neck. She leaned over and kissed me for a while.

  “Is that a euphemism?”

  “Yes,” she said and kissed me again.

  By the time I left Lily’s next morning I felt better than I had since this thing started more than a week before. It was a great day, a cool marine breeze had blown the humidity away and I left the car and strolled a while, smoking, whistling. On my way down Broadway, I stopped off at Dean and DeLuca. It was on Maxine’s list and I had been in before, but I figured I’d drop by again.

  Asking around, I finally found a salesman who remembered the man who bought a fancy boning knife. The knife that cost more than a hundred bucks. I hadn’t talked to this guy; he had been on vacation all week.

  “A Slav of some kind, I believe,” he said politely. He was small and neat and had a cook’s thick competent hands and a real eye for detail. It’s always the detail, the routine, that blows a creep’s cover.

  “I remember because it was the day I was going on my little vacation. And it was early. I came in to do inventory on the cookbooks, so I know. He came in just after we opened. The shop was empty. I noticed him right away. He walked like he was in pain. I thought to myself, this was once a very pretty boy.”

  “Go on.”

  “I watched him. You see them sometimes, foreigners. He was mesmerized. He inspected everything, cheeses, breads, then he stopped here and pointed to the glass case. He only had a few words of English. He carried a little pocket dictionary. I asked if I could help him.

  “‘My mother is, you say, cook? In Russia.’

  “I said we say cook too and he gestured around at the knives and I said all cooks like good knives, and he asked which and I opened the case to show him what we had.

  “We did this in sign language, mostly, but I made out he wanted something for boning chickens, I suppose. I showed him something cheaper, but he liked this one.” The salesman removed the fine steel knife from the case and held it out. It was identical to the knife the creep used to attack me on Brighton Beach.

  “I really felt sorry for him.” He put the knife back and locked the glass cabinet.

  “Why’s that?”

  “He wasn’t rich, clearly, but he obviously cared very much it should be the right thing for his mother. You could see the way he looked the knife over. I thought he must be a cook himself. I felt sorry for him.”

  “Sorry because he was poor?”

  “No. He was sick. Poor bastard. He was sweating, he took off his cap—this is why I remembered him so well—and his forehead was covered with some very nasty lesions. Worst I’ve seen. I knew the poor bastard had AIDS.”

  14

  The street was flooded with sunlight. I barely noticed. I found a phone and called Roy Pettus.

  “Tomorrow,” Pettus said.

  “Now,” I said.

  “Not here.” Pettus had something on his mind; it wasn’t me.

  “Where?” I was desperate.

  “I’ll try. I can’t promise. I got stuff on. Later.”

  Around five I was sitting on a bench downtown by the river, behind the World Financial Center. I watched the boats in the marina and waited for Pettus.

  A while later, Roy Pettus arrived, took off his jacket, put it neatly on the bench, pulled two cartons of coffee out of a brown paper bag and handed me one of them. He had on a white shirt and a striped tie.

  “What is it?” he said. I told him about the man who bought the knife. I told him about the lesions.

  “I see.”

  “What else do you see, if you don’t mind telling me? What else is there?”

  Shading his eyes from the sun, he glanced out at the river, then put the coffee down and leaned forward, making a temple of his hands. “We got some prints off the knife now. We got the video. Now you got the description from the man who sold him the knife. Blood. The jar with Olga’s fingerprints. Everything matches up. I think we have some kind of ID.”

  “Russian?”

  “Russian, maybe Polish. We found a guy at JFK who probably remembers him. You know why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The man’s name was Lev. The customs man’s father’s name was Lev. Both Polacks, he said, with the same name, so he let him through easy. Because he was named Lev.”

  “Olga?”

  “The fingers in the jar belonged to Olga Gross.” He looked up again. Out of the blue, he said, “Tell me something, detective, you ever give nukes any thought?”

  “What?”

  “Nuclear weapons.”

  What was he talking about? I had been cut by a man with AIDS, I probably got his blood on me, Pettus was on some other planet. “I don’t know. We made them. Russia made them. Whatever.”

  “I’m talking about the stuff you put in them, the radioactive stuff.”

  “My father used to say strontium 90 would get in the grass from fallout from American bombs. The cows would make poison milk, he always said.”

  Pettus did not laugh. “In Wyoming we said that about the Russkis. We prayed for the souls of the poor commie children after every mass. I worried about their conversion. I’m not saying the nuke stuff is happening here, I’m just saying I’m scared. For years, there’s been smuggling out of Russia into Europe. Into the Middle East. Big spills. Enough uranium to make bombs. Plutonium. More and more of it.”

  I waited.

  “An ex-KGB general gets shot on TV in New York City. There are rumors. I get interested.”

  “What rumors?”

  Pettus was distracted. “This is what I do, detective. I worry about this kind of stuff coming into the country.”

  I waited.

  “I was thinking about the World Trade Center bombing. About Oklahoma City. What if someone uses a nuclear device next time? But it’s rumors that’s the worst part. I think about every copycat, every wannabe terrorist. Think about it: someone calls the mayor and says, hey, Rudi, I got a radioactive device I’m setting in the Midtown Tunnel. Rush hour.”

  “This isn’t just hypothetical, is it? Is it?”

  Pettus remained silent.

  Pettus threw his coffee in the garbage. It sloshed over the side of the paper cup as it fell.

  “Let’s just say I worry a whole lot,” said Pettus. “You ever hear of a substance named red mercury? Remind me to tell you about it some time.” His normally bland baby’s face glowed with messianic fever; he was obsessed.

  Finally, I grabbed his shoulder. “Listen. Please. What does this have to do with me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m telling you this by way of background because you’re involved with the Ustinov thing and now you’re in some trouble and I’m real sorry you are because I like you.”

  Quietly, this Jesui
tical cowpoke was driving me nuts with talk. Maybe he was crazy. I was shaking so badly I slopped hot coffee on my arms. Again I told him about getting cut, about the man with the lesions.

  “I’m sorry, detective. I’ve been preoccupied. I hear you. I don’t have the answers. We got the ID on him, we’ll try to get to him. Meanwhile, I guess you ought to get yourself checked out. The creep cut you with his knife. He got his blood on you.”

  PART TWO

  New York

  1

  “His name is Lev. The creep who cut you is named Lev. He’s an atomic mule.”

  Sverdloff hoisted his bulk up onto a stool at the bar next to me, grabbed my wrist with a hand the size of my head and said, “Listen to me. Listen to me, OK? You must hunt him down and kill him.”

  It was the night after I met Roy Pettus by the river. My arms were black and blue from the goddamn needles some dismal medic stuck me with to take blood. At the bar on Broome Street where I usually go, I was in a lousy mood, nursing beer, eating fried potato skins. I thought of going over to the Cub Room Café for meat loaf but I couldn’t face it. I put a great track Tony Bennett did with Bill Evans on the jukebox; nothing helped.

  I was tired. I could feel my lids fall like they had weights. I was hating this freelance life. I missed the station house, the squad, the bang of metal lockers, even the rancid smells of sweet and sour pork that died in take-out cartons, the fossilized pizza. I missed my work and the people. Someone put Harry Connick on the jukebox. “For Chrissake, turn it down,” I mumbled.

  Ten days since Ustinov was murdered and already the case was drifting to the back pages of the papers. There had been another murder on TV—some diet show—and reporters were hungry for something new. The Feds loved it; they didn’t have to let on they knew diddly squat about Ustinov or about Brighton Beach. I knew. Brighton Beach sucked me in and chewed me up. The old bitterness about Russians sloshed over me. I rubbed my bruised arm. The doc who tested me for AIDS said he’d try to have results Monday, maybe sooner, but he was overloaded. He made encouraging noises about research and I said, sure, thanks, and started drinking real early.

  “You look lousy,” said Bob, the bartender, and pushed a Bud across the bar.

  “Thanks, I try,” I said, drank it and asked for Scotch.

  Which is around when Sverdloff appeared and started talking about this Lev. Same name as Pettus got off immigration, but I wasn’t going to let on to Sverdloff.

  “How did you find me here?” I was not gracious.

  “You told me you like this place.” He gestured to the bar.

  What a jerk I’d been to mention where I like drinking to him. I swallowed some Scotch and tried to ignore him.

  He grabbed my shoulder. “Listen to me, please. Do you know the story by Borges about the race of the prisoners?”

  It was how Russian intellectuals proved they were good guys; they talked you to death.

  “The prisoners are permitted to race each other, but first they have to cut their own throats. Whoever dies last wins. They all join the race. It is the story of the atomic mules.”

  I polished off the Scotch. “One more,” I said to Bob. “Go on,” I nodded at Tolya.

  “He is dangerous and he is sick. He attacked you. He visited your apartment. He needs money. He wants to sell me his shit.”

  “What shit? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m telling you, this Lev is an atomic mule.”

  “An atomic mule.”

  “Yes. He is a mule, what they also call a sample man. He transports radioactive samples. He says he has plutonium. In hockey pucks. Uranium. Soluble salts of cesium. He has top quality certificates of validation from Russian research institutes. He says he has red mercury.”

  “Where?”

  “In his suitcase.”

  “Probably under his bed.”

  “Yes. Under his bed.”

  I looked up at Tolya Sverdloff, who was a kidder; he wasn’t kidding.

  “You saw the stuff?”

  “I saw enough.” Sverdloff was edgy, angry. He bent over the bar so his huge bulk made an impenetrable shell. Then he hauled himself up, signaled for more booze and pushed me towards the back room where we sat in the window under a couple of hanging plants.

  “You want to pay attention now?”

  A plant hit me in the head. Out the window I saw the white girl on rollerblades I sometimes saw near my building. She was doing figure eights under a street light in the middle of the road. “How come he trusts you?”

  “After Olga, I felt bad. I let her down. I wanted the guy who killed her. I looked for him.”

  “Did he do Olga?”

  “Yes. I felt bad about it. So I talk to people on Brighton Beach. Hoods. Cops. On the boardwalk I gossip with the old men, guys who always got food in their beards. I saw him there. From no place. We make Russian guy talk.”

  “How come he trusted you?”

  “I made him my friend.” Sverdloff laughed bitterly. “Like the KGB used to say, I let him find a niche in my heart. I made him trust me.”

  2

  “Going through immigration didn’t make Lev nervous,” Tolya said. “He told me it was breezy.”

  “A breeze.”

  “OK, a breeze,” Tolya said and then I shut up and he told me everything he had learned from this man who called himself Lev Ivanov.

  Lev Ivanov was the name on his papers, nicely forged documents—he had done the alterations on the photograph himself, he bragged to Tolya. He had a real letter from a cousin in Buffalo inviting him for a visit, which was still necessary for Russians, but easy to fix, a few bucks here and there. Americans were pushovers for a well-dressed foreigner who was white, a Polack like him with a respectable pair of gray leather shoes and a plaid sports jacket.

  As Lev retrieved his suitcases from the luggage carousel, he knew he resembled a newly minted capitalistic business-class guy. He got in line behind a woman wearing a large fur coat. The customs officer kept her twenty minutes. Lev’s turn.

  “He told you all this?”

  “He told me. He told me he carried a copy of Agatha Christie. He told me he has two Samsonite-style suitcases, good imitations. Polish-Russian joint venture. He acts out for me how he puts them on the counter at customs. There’s a fat inspector, big belly, nice manners. ‘Nice cases,’ the inspector tells him. ‘I like them Sammies.’ ”

  Sverdloff was into it, playing all the parts, an actor. Something made me keep my mouth shut; I ate pretzels and listened.

  “The customs officer glances in the big case, gives Lev’s underwear a casual poke. He points at the small suitcase and shoulder bag, but doesn’t open them. He looks at Lev’s documents. ‘Samples?’ he says. Lev nods. His visa says he is a suitcase salesman from Moscow selling these joint-venture goods; he is also hoping to make contact with American manufacturers. The suitcases are the samples.

  “The inspector waves him through, smiling. ‘You are really Lev? My pop’s name too,’ he says, then adds in Polish with a Brooklyn accent: ‘Welcome to America, Lev.’”

  My mouth was dry. “This nukeshit is in the suitcases?”

  Tolya nodded. “Our second meeting, Lev tells me. We eat dumplings together, then he spills the beans. He says he decides to trust me because I am a true Russian, not some Jew, excuse me, like everyone else around Brighton Beach.”

  “Cut to the chase.”

  “He leaves the airport and gets to Brighton Beach.”

  “When? When was this?”

  “A few weeks ago, maybe more. He lies low. He makes contact with a man he says looks like Trotsky—eyeglasses like Trotsky—who gives him some money for expenses. More money is coming, the man says. Arrangements will be made. Lev orders a new suit. He takes a room. He gets lonely. He sees a picture of Olga outside the Batumi and goes looking for her. He only wants to say hello.”

  “Some hello.”

  “He found out she was talking to a cop.”

  “He knew I wa
s at the Batumi? He saw me?”

  “It’s possible. It’s possible he is using me to get to you. I can’t be sure.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yes. He is anxious about money. He sits on the boardwalk looking at the ocean and writes postcards to his father. One has the Statue of Liberty on it. Our boy is ironical. He wants the money to give his father. The father lost a leg in the Afghan war. He sells his shoes outside Belorus Railway Station. ‘What do I need good shoes for?’ his father says to him. He says, ‘For three generations my family has grown up believing, now nothing is left, just Western shit, shitty Westerners that look down on everyone, and traitors like Yeltsin who pander to them.’

  “I had to be careful. He keeps changing rooms. When I met him after he killed Olga he had a room in Brighton Beach. He said it annoyed him because there was a girl playing sad music”

  “What kind of music?” I asked; I already knew.

  “A flute.”

  My stomach lurched.

  “It was his idea to be the first person to bring such samples into America. He read about the poison gas in Tokyo subway last winter, you recall? Lev saw his chance. If poison gas in Tokyo, why not plutonium in New York? He has no politics except hate. He only wants the money.”

  “Who’s the buyer?”

  “The Brighton Beach mob probably. There had been feelers out from New York looking to get into this game. Lev arrives, he meets the hoods. Then suddenly his contacts dry up. Lev is stranded. They cut him loose.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He moves around. Yesterday, I saw him in a room out near the airport. The Palace, the hotel is called. The name made him laugh, he said. It’s a hotel for old people. “Mutants like me,” Lev tells me.”

  “He moved after he beat Genia up,” I said.

  “What?”

  He had moved into my cousin’s house, then beat her up; it was a message for me. “Nothing. Go on. How did he get the stuff in?”

  “Lev had practice. He had been humping samples around Eastern Europe. He knew his way around the atomic gangsters’ third division. He knew the ropes. He drove trucks down to Varna. He ran packages through Ukraine into Croatia. The flow of traffic there means border checks are non-existent, guards can be bribed.