Bloody London

by Reggie Nadelson

  “I’m not getting this. You tell me your husband was a Christian guy, it turns out he’s coming on to half the women who want apartments. He manipulates the board. He laughs at people who want to live here. He rejects them because he doesn’t like the father-in-law.”

  “You have all the answers. Can you do something for me?”

  “What?”

  “The police have sealed Ulanova’s apartment. I’m not allowed in until the will goes to probate, I’ve got to get in there and see it’s cleaned out before the rest of the building’s infested.”

  “I can’t help you with probate. You’ll have to talk to your precinct. Talk to your lawyers.”

  Frances Pascoe lay on the sofa now, legs crossed, smoking. I went to the door, then I turned around and said, “I think you’re protecting someone.”

  I’d put the bronze hands in my pocket. Now I put them on a table.

  She looked at them. “Take that away.”

  “Why?”

  “I hate the bloody thing, I think it’s repellent.”

  “Who did it? The hands.”

  “A British sculptor.”

  “Named?”

  “Warren Pascoe.”

  “Some kind of relative?”

  “A distant cousin of Tommy’s, I think. Gives me the creeps.”

  “I think it’s haunting.”

  “Then for chrissake take the bloody thing if you like it so much. Take it out of here.”

  She came down to the lobby with me. The bronze hands were in my pocket. “Let me show you something,” she said and we walked out into the street. It was late. The TV crews had given up for the night. Frances Pascoe pulled her sweater tight.

  She gestured at Sutton Place. “It was our village,” she said. “Ours. When Tommy first came here during the war, before they put the Drive through, it was a riverfront village. It’s all over now,” she added.

  The street was deserted except for the cop in his sentry box at the far end of Sutton Place, where the Secretary General lives in a townhouse.

  We walked north. Mrs Pascoe looked up at the big buildings on the west side of the street. The lobby at Lulu Fine’s building blazed with a million watts. Next to it, the unfinished building Castle had showed me loomed in the darkness, a massive hulk shrouded by the scaffold and metal nets.

  She said, “I just wanted you to see. Ugly buildings that blot out the sunlight and destroy the city’s environment. We feel them on our neck. Literally. The market got hotter, people built these monstrosities. Condos they pay for with funny money. They steal our air.”

  “Yours? Your air?”

  “Yes. Tommy tried to stop them.”

  “The old woman hated your husband, you know. She said she was his ghost. She stayed upstairs so she could haunt him. She also believed in saints and gangsters. She was afraid to stay in the hospital because she figured he might steal her apartment.”

  A breeze came up and I could feel Mrs Pascoe shaking. We had walked back to the Middlemarch and she said, “I’m in trouble here,” then wrapped herself with her arms. “I’ve never been frightened of anyone or anything in my whole bloody life. But we both know it wasn’t Madame Ulanova who killed Tom. It wasn’t Janey Cabot or Lulu Fine, either. Was it?” She held my arm. “Was it?”

  “Probably not.”

  She took the cigarette out of her mouth and tossed it on the street. The red ash flickered for a second and went out. She reached up and touched my face lightly. Tiny hairs stood up on the back of my neck. She said, “What’s the bruise?”

  “Someone didn’t like my face the way it was.”

  “What do you want from me, Artie?”

  “A look at the building. A look at the pool.”

  Frances Pascoe led me to the service door and pushed a key in my hand.

  She said, “Promise me you’ll finish this.”

  “Finish what?”

  “It won’t end here.”

  “Where will it end?”

  “In London,” she whispered. “Tommy said we had to go to London. There was a phone call, he started packing. We were packed.” She held my arm, urgent now. “We were packed!”

  “You said you were scared. Scared someone might come for you? What are you scared of ?”

  “Being alone.”

  9

  The key slipped in easily. The lock on the service door, like everything else at the Middlemarch, was perfectly oiled. I reached for the light switch, but she pushed my hand away from it. “No one’s supposed to be here at night except for security, you understand? Please.”

  For a few seconds she held the door and we stood inside the vestibule, a faint light coming in from the street. I listened for footsteps. I could hear my own pulse in my ears.

  It was late. From the river I could hear the hoot of a tug somewhere, from the street the grind and rattle of a garbage truck. Then she pulled the door shut, and we were alone in the dark.

  I ignored her warning and reached for a switch; the overhead light cast a hard, dull glare on the gray paint walls. I got my bearings. Frances Pascoe looked old under the hard fluorescent beam.

  There was a telephone control panel on the wall and I opened it easily and saw even the phone wires were neatly coiled. In my own building downtown, you go in at night, you trip over stuff, ladders, stacks of newspaper, bags of empties, dead mice. This place had innards streamlined as an Olympic athlete.

  The vestibule had an elevator on one side and a gray metal door on the other. I switched the light off and we stood in the dark one more time, then I pulled open the door to the stairs and we started down to the basement. I went first.

  The building had a self-satisfied hum – the boiler, the generator, the central air, the pumps for the pool, the electricity meters, all running smooth.

  “The doors open out into the stairwell,” she said. “It’s a fire precaution.”

  I didn’t mention I already knew and she led the way down another flight, then unlocked a door. We were on the pool level. I could smell the chlorine.

  I said, “I need some light.”

  She said, “No light. There’s a super who lives here, a night watchman. The doorman comes down here to eat his supper.”

  “And the janitor named Pindar Aguirre?”

  She looked startled. “He quit.”

  “You’ve replaced him?”

  “Not yet. Please leave the light off.”

  “You’re in charge now, aren’t you? Now that your husband’s dead, it’s yours to run.”

  “I imagine my presence in the swimming pool in the middle of the night would raise a few questions with your lot. Your Mr Lippert doesn’t like me, does he? He’d be glad to hear I’ve been places I shouldn’t be. I’m as good a suspect as any.”

  “He won’t hear. How much time have we got?”

  She squinted at her watch. “About half an hour before the doorman eats his supper and the night watchman makes his rounds next. I don’t know about the police.”

  We whispered.

  The basement was a warren of rooms and closets. I’d had a glimpse the morning of the murder, now I got a better look. Empty kitchens, once used for residents who ordered meals sent up through the dumbwaiters. A staff cafeteria, empty now too. A clubroom, a few chairs draped in musty sheets, and lockers where crates of illegal booze were once stored.

  There were wine cellars, servants’ rooms, even shops. There had been a pharmacy, a grocery, a hairdresser. All empty now, or stacked with boxes and trunks and bikes.

  I leaned towards her. “No one wants all this space?”

  She said, “Only the wrong people want it.”

  A radiation symbol was painted on a gray steel door further along the hall. The fall-out shelter. I walked in. It was empty, too, except for some shaky wooden shelves with six cans of creamed corn. I picked one up and read a handwritten label stuck on it. It was dated 1953.

  The smell of chlorine got stronger now, and we went through the locker rooms and past a row
of wide fluted columns.

  We were in the pool. The gold frieze on the blue tiles glittered dully.

  She said, “They drained it.”

  I walked carefully around the perimeter of the pool. Lippert had warned me off the building. Dozens of specialists had crawled every inch of this place.

  I took Frances Pascoe’s arm and we made our way to the deep end. Our footsteps echoed with a hollow ping. There was a bench and we sat on it. I said, “He swam every day?”

  She said, “Every day, same time.”

  “And the Russian?”

  “Most days. She went to the pool, sometimes she swam, sometimes not. Sometimes she just stood up to her waist in the shallow end.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I saw her. I occasionally swam with Tommy.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No, of course not. Can you do me a favor, please?”

  “Sure.”

  “Call me Frankie. It makes me feel less old.”

  “So he swam every day and people knew it?”

  “Of course.” She reached into the pocket of her sweater and took out four vodka miniatures and passed me a pair. We sat on the bench in the empty pool, breathing chlorine and drinking vodka.

  “I need to know.”

  She opened the second miniature. “What?”

  “You knew the old woman advertised her apartment.”

  The light-greenish eyes fluttered briefly, then she said, “Yes.”

  “Do you want to tell me when she did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But your husband knew.”

  “Yes.”

  “It upset him.”

  “Very much.”

  “She had a right?”

  “Only legally,” she said.

  I said, “If you ask me, the old woman advertised her apartment, your husband got pissed off, he invited her to the pool for a chat and someone surprised them. You must be relieved she’s dead.”

  “Yes, I am. He was my husband, whatever else he was, and Ulanova was an evil old woman. She inherited shares in the building from her husband, who was a contact of Tommy’s during the war.”

  I thought of Sal Castle and said, “I know.”

  She looked up. “How do you know?”

  “What else?”

  Mrs Pascoe reached for her drink. “Then she sold them. She made her bargain. She mistreated the help here, fancied herself some kind of aristocrat – it was all horseshit, actually. That lair she kept upstairs was filthy, roaches, mice, rubbish everywhere. All we wanted was to restore the building to its original integrity. We offered to get it cleaned for her, she turned her yapping disdain on all of us.”

  “But you didn’t evict her.”

  “It was complicated.”

  “She knew your secrets? You didn’t want bad press.”

  “We didn’t want any press, good or bad.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Tommy? He had been a dashing chap, you know. An Englishman who was raised on Kipling and could recite If and fought in the Second World War and came to New York on some mission for the OSS. He believed all that imperial bullshit,” she smiled. “Long time ago. And then Tommy was old. It goes so fast. People were polite, but the dazzle was gone. Give me a cigarette.”

  I gave her the pack.

  “It’s why he went to London so often, I guess. Make believe people wanted to know him. People writing books, rewriting history, making television programs. He retailed his glorious exploits. The old days.”

  “He kept his British passport?”

  “Oh yes. Absolutely.”

  “What about you?”

  “I traded mine in as soon as I could. I hate England. I wanted to be an American for as long as I can remember. When I was still a little girl I wanted that.”

  I said, “Me too.”

  She finished the rest of her vodka and smiled.

  “You didn’t want to go to London with him?”

  “No.”

  “But you didn’t want him dead.”

  She got up. “I’m a rich woman. Why would I want him dead?”

  “There’s other stuff than money. Can we go over the alibi one more time, Frankie?”

  Frankie Pascoe turned and smiled so sweetly I reached over and took her hand. She kissed me on the cheek and said, “Thank you. I wasn’t home is the thing, Sunday night. I was out. I didn’t come home all night is what I’m saying.”

  “You weren’t far away.”

  “I wasn’t far, and Mr Sweeney, the doorman, called me on my mobile phone to let me know it had happened, then slipped me upstairs. Tommy was already dead. Ryan Sweeney’s my lifeline.”

  “You were out all night?”

  “You’re jealous. I like that. Out being a euphemism. Yes, I was.”

  “Do you want to tell me who you were with?”

  “Not unless I have to.”

  “You’re protecting someone?”

  “Yes.”

  I put my hand on her arm. The skin was cold as ice. “You’re not like rich people. Are you, Frankie?”

  “What are rich people like, Artie? Is there some genetic coding? That we’ve haven’t got problems, we’re not allowed?”

  “Someone else said that to me.”

  She was suddenly alert, the eyes opened wide. “Who else?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not like rich people. But I’m not like anyone. Do you want to come home with me?” She leaned heavily against me. “What were you looking for here? Why did you want to see the pool? Artie?”

  “I figured whoever killed your husband knew his way around here,” I said.

  Without any warning, Frankie stood up.

  “What is it?”

  She stood silently for a minute, as if listening for something, someone. She fiddled with her sweater. Glanced around the pool, then locked her eyes on mine.

  “What?”

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “There’s nothing,” I said. To distract her, and because I wanted to know, I added, “Tell me some more about Stan Getz.”

  “You’re wrong. There is someone. I can hear them. There are police everywhere, swarming on us, they think I’ll tamper with the evidence. I’ve seen them.” Her voice turned shrill. She grabbed hold of my arm. I could feel the panic.

  Somewhere in the basement was the faint drip of water and Frankie said, “I want to go home.”

  She walked rapidly now toward the door where we’d entered, past the columns, lockers, toilets. The sound of steps got louder. Louder. Someone running.

  We got to the elevator. The doors opened. Behind us, the footsteps got closer, and I turned and squinted, peering into the dark basement.

  When I turned back, Frances Pascoe was already in the elevator.

  She raised her head. In the elevator’s light, her eyes were wild lazy in their sockets, the lids half shut.

  I put my hand out to hold the doors, but it was too late. She stared at me, threw up her hands in exasperation, fear, maybe both, and she said, “I’ll call you.”

  Then the doors shut.

  It was Thursday, one in the morning, when I got to my car. I’d checked out the basement after Frankie got in the elevator. She was right. There were a couple of cops making the rounds, guys doing security, keeping the scene clean. Why did it scare her so much, them being at the pool? It was her building after all.

  I had been tempted pretty bad when she said, “Come home with me.” Then her mood changed. She was protecting someone, I thought again, as I got on the FDR and headed home.

  The highway was empty. I needed sleep, but when I pulled up to my building, I saw the lights on in the restaurant on the ground floor. Ricky Tae, who lives upstairs from me, sat at a table in the window of his parents’ restaurant on the ground floor. I figured he wanted to talk, and yawning, I climbed out of my car and waved and pointed at the front door, but Rick darted out i
nto the street.

  “Don’t go upstairs, Artie. Don’t go.”

  “What’s going on, Rick?” I reached for the front door.

  I ran up the stairs. Rick was behind me. “Wait for me, please,” he yelled. “Don’t go in there by yourself.”

  The locks on the door were bust. Broken glass was scattered on the floor. I turned on the lights. The couch and chairs lay on their sides, stuffing pulled out. The barstools I had stripped down and painted myself were smashed and scattered like pickup sticks. Files, faxes, letters had been torn up and scattered.

  They destroyed the paperwork, broke the glasses, smashed my laptop, took some cash I left on the kitchen counter. They never touched the CD player or the TV set, the usual stuff creeps want if they’re ripping you off. It was some kind of message.

  Feathers drifted from the bedroom. I went in. The pillows had been ripped. Books I’d had since childhood, the only things left from Moscow, were torn up in thick, rough chunks.

  In the living room I saw Rick staring at the floor. Something heavy, a gun, brass knuckles, had been used to rip scars in the polished wood floors. The floors had taken me and Rick weeks to make beautiful.

  “Christ, Artie, I’m so sorry. Stay at my place until we figure this out,” Rick said.

  “Go home,” I said to him. “Please.”

  After Rick went, after I called an old friend who’s a sergeant now at the First and got him focused on the situation, I swept up the glass, very careful, very methodical. If I’d caught them, I would have killed them. If I found out who did it, I would hurt them.

  Someone wanted me off the Pascoe case enough to wreck my place. It had the opposite effect on me: I was in. I was in it for good.

  Suddenly, I understood Thomas Pascoe and Mrs Ulanova and Frankie and Lulu Fine, their territorial sense of entitlement to their apartments. Their homes. Their piece of turf.

  I wanted to call Lily bad, but it was the middle of the night. Maybe I would have called her anyhow if I didn’t find the picture. It was stuck on the wall over my desk. It was a piece of newsprint. A picture of me from a case I worked in Brighton Beach a while back. The eyes were cut out.

  I yanked it down. Then I got Sonny Lippert on the phone. He was still awake.