“I’ve been one a long time,” I said.
“I like you,” she said. “My son was a detective, a good one, too. Got killed by some junkies down by 116th Street back when crack cocaine ruled these streets.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe it’s time I told somebody,” she said finally, glancing in the direction of the door. “You want to keep this to yourself, but you ask if I was surprised about Mrs. Simonova passing, well, indeed I was, just like I was surprised when somebody else in the building passed a while back.”
“Who was that?”
McGee moved a little closer to me. “Mr. Amahl Washington,” she said.
“You knew him?”
“I did. He was a sweet man, and for a while we were what they used to call stepping out, but he got sick and his friends were just buzzing around, specially that Carver Lennox, making like he cared so much, and by the end I didn’t hardly see Amahl at all.” She paused, nervous. “I still think about it sometimes. I ask myself, How did he pass so suddenly? Now it happens with Mrs. Simonova, and I’m thinking you get sick in this building, you die, but maybe that’s just my sadness speaking.”
She looked at a little gold watch set with diamonds. “Gift from Miss Ella,” she said. “It’s getting late. Make sure you come by and visit me.”
CHAPTER 16
Hello?” I had Marianna Simonova’s storage room door half open. I called out again, but what did I expect, some fucking ghost? It was pitch black in the room, and I fumbled on the wall for a switch. The light came on-a low-watt lousy overhead bulb.
I moved inside. Left the door open a crack. I didn’t want anyone to see me poking around, but I hate tight spaces. Hate them. Already I could feel the walls closing in.
On the wall near the light switch was a half-peeled sticker with the Atomic symbol. This had been a nuclear fallout shelter once, back when Americans figured Russia was going to bomb us. We thought the same thing when I was a kid. I’d wake up at night sweating, thinking America was going to nuke us and we’d fry in our beds, our faces oozing off.
The room was about eight by fourteen, long, narrow, the old paint on the walls scabby and falling off. It was jammed all the way back and halfway to the ceiling with furniture, chairs, dressers, rugs, tables all piled on top of each other.
A crummy metal rack to the right held rows of pictures, most in fake gold frames. I slid one out. It was an oil painting of some happy workers on a pig farm. From the 1950s. But there were also Chagall prints and what looked like a Rodchenko poster. Not an original, I figured.
Something about Simonova had made me feel she’d been playing a part. All the right props. Maybe I was just pissed off at her for dying and making Lily sad. Making me spend time in a dark little room that felt like a coffin. On a shelf to the right were about a hundred wooden dolls, all sizes, all kinds, an endless row of wooden dollies. Gave me the creeps. I ran my flashlight over the room.
I had no idea where the Christmas decorations would be. Boxes on top of boxes, some so precarious I figured they were going to fall on me, topple over, bury me under tons of stuff. Books were stuck into the crevices between pieces of furniture, little gilt tables with legs missing, cracked mirrors, a samovar, varnished boxes in plastic bags. It was like a souvenir stall, a bazaar, a flea market. What the hell did she need all this crap for?
Close to where I stood was a pile of cushions, red, gold, green, velvet and satin, fabric frayed. The stink of damp came off them. I could hear water drip. A few drops fell on my head. I brushed them away. I reached out for the wall; the cement blocks were moist. There were newspapers tied up like bales of hay and a baby stroller with a wheel missing.
Again, I heard a rat, maybe the same rat I’d heard that morning. All New York buildings have rats. There had been rats on Sutton Place when I worked a crime at the Middlemarch, a huge fancy building, rich people, swimming pool, and rats. Fat ones. Well fed. Too fat to run. Fat people. Fat rats.
Here, I was shut up with the rats, and I could hear one, maybe more, scratching at the walls. I’d give it five more minutes, I said to myself. I found a cardboard box that was half open. When I scrabbled inside, it made me gag-mothballs, old newspaper, something I couldn’t identify that smelled like a dead animal. It was a fur hat.
There was a huge rusting metal trunk, the lettering-Simonova’s name-was in English and Russian. It was easy to get to, so I opened it.
Start at the top, I thought. I found a thick folder with papers in it, official stuff, old and yellow, and I set it aside. Maybe a will, I thought, maybe something important about the woman’s life.
It was like an archaeological dig, everything packed in layers. On top were two winter coats and boots with labels from Macy’s. There were copies of the New Yorker that dated back ten years. Underneath were books, huge tomes in Russian on socialism, economics, history.
Then more clothes. Fancy dress-up clothes, evening things, stuff she might have worn to go out, and hats, and shawls. Beneath these were some stage costumes-Robeson’s, I wondered?
I dug further. There were military uniforms, heavy rough pieces, brown, khaki, scratchy fabric, stiff with age, and with them thick leather belts and broken boots. Maybe her father had been in the war. I even found a Young Pioneer’s outfit, complete with shirt, shorts, red scarf, stinking of ancient kiddie sweat. I’d had one like it that I’d hated. In a cardboard hatbox, I found a little nest of children’s clothes with American labels. A little boy’s clothes.
At the bottom of the trunk were old Soviet magazines, including the famous issue of Soviet Life with the bear on the cover, along with copies of Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Izvestia.
I took out one brittle yellow paper and it crumbled into my hand. It was from October of 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when my own father, a young KGB agent, was stuck in New York. I had read his diary. In one of the newspapers now, mesmerized by the style of the propaganda, I read an article about Cuba. Russians loved their little socialist brother, the author had written. How stylish and handsome and brave were its barbudos, the bearded ones, how wonderful the music. That year, the top hit in Moscow was “Cuba My Love.”
I used my flashlight to read the papers. There were stories about Paul Robeson’s visit to Moscow, about the wild party in 1961, about his alleged suicide attempt and the CIA’s efforts to silence him.
There was more. Programs from Robeson’s performances, articles about his part in the Spanish Civil War, a thousand-page biography. It was as if Simonova had been trying to piece together his life, as if she had been an actress preparing for the part of his lover. I wondered if she had made it all up, a story she retailed to make herself important, a tale that had ensnared Lily.
Finally, I found a shoe box-B ONWIT T ELLER, the logo said-and I rummaged through it. There were glass baubles, red velvet flowers, gold bows. There was a small, flat box addressed to Lily. I put it in my pocket. Ready to leave, I turned off my flashlight.
Something hit me hard on the back of the neck. The pain was so intense I wanted to vomit. I could hear somebody behind me in the storage room breathing hard. I kicked out as hard as I could. I kicked again and again, fumbling at the same time for my gun. Remembered I’d left it in my car when I went into the hospital.
In my pocket was a Swiss Army knife. Getting it out, I cut my own hand on the corkscrew. My hand started to bleed. I dropped the knife. Just then I thought I heard the man behind me swear in Russian. I couldn’t be sure. I was frantic. It was pitch black in the little room. Then he hit me with the butt of a gun. I waited for the next blow; it would kill me.
Suddenly from someplace out in the basement came the sound of voices. The creep backed out. Then the door slammed. It was locked from outside.
My hand was still bleeding. I found an old shirt and wound it around the red gash. I thought: this is where I’m going to end up, suffocating in a basement room in Harlem full of stinking Russian clothes and newspapers. All around me was the detritus
of the Soviet Union-Simonova’s past, my own. I’d never escape.
If I get out, I said to myself, I’ll quit. I’ll quit being a cop. I’ll teach school, or take my pension, or work for Tolya tending bar-he was always asking me to go into business with him. The rest of the time, I’ll take care of Lily. I’ll lie around and watch baseball and listen to Ella Fitzgerald and Stan Getz, like a New York Oblomov.
I didn’t believe I’d get out, and the feeling of loss and pain, the thought that Lily was just upstairs, made me crazy. This was where I was going to die.
How long did I stay in the room? I must have passed out. When I came to, I looked at my watch. It had been almost an hour.
I’d told Lily I was going to the storage room. Where was she? Maybe she had slipped on the ice when she was out, or got hit by a car in a skid. Why didn’t she come looking for me or call somebody, call Virgil Radcliff? Where was she?
I banged on the door, yelling, but there was no reply. I’m going to die in this room. I’m going to bleed and die.
Minutes went by.
Animals scampered past.
Footsteps passed overhead.
Somebody playing Ella, improbable, my hallucination. Ella singing “Manhattan.”
My finger bleeding through the scrap of white cloth.
Me, gagging on my past.
CHAPTER 17
What happened?”
I sat in Tolya Sverdloff’s SUV, trying not to cry from the pain. My head hurt so bad I had to close my eyes. Leaned back. Tried not to whimper. Floaters cruised the air in front of my face, bubbles of light and the pain that I couldn’t stop. Again, I tried to open my eyes. It was really Tolya sitting beside me. We were parked on Edgecombe Avenue opposite the Armstrong. He handed me a bottle of water. My hand was neatly bandaged.
“You did this?” I said to him.
“Sure,” he said. “You recall I have been medic in Russian army. So we are going to see my doctor, Artyom. I made this appointment already. I pay. No emergency room, no quacks, nobody on police health insurance plan.”
Somebody tapped on the car window. Still squinting through a fog of pain, I saw Carver Lennox. I opened the window. Lennox leaned in.
“How you doing, Artie?” He looked worried.
“I’m OK,” I said.
“Carver is who finds you, Artie,” said Tolya.
“What?”
“Lily calls you on cell, says you told her you’d be at her place in ten minutes, that you’re in the basement of the building, but she can’t reach you, can’t reach this guy, Virgil. She calls me. I call Carver.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Yeah, thank you.” I didn’t like it that I owed him now.
“I was worried as hell,” said Lennox. “You must have been in that storage room an hour. More.”
“You have any idea who did it? You think it was somebody who works in the building?” I said to Lennox.
“I can’t see why,” he said. “They didn’t take anything off you, did they?”
I checked my pockets. My wallet was intact, my phone, too.
“Nothing.”
“You been hassling any of the guys that work here?” said Lennox. “They get pissed off. Not that a few of them couldn’t do with a wake-up call.”
“Why would I?”
“You’re a cop, aren’t you? But listen, I’m sorry. I’m getting in some real security. I don’t want this kind of shit going down in my building,” he said, referring to the building as his own. I thanked him again and otherwise kept my mouth shut.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I have to go now, but call if you need anything. Artie. Tolya.” With a nod, he left and went into the building, the black coat flapping behind him in the cold wind.
“How the hell did you know to call Lennox?” I said to Tolya.
“Everybody in Harlem knows him. If you want real estate you must know him. So I know him. Drink some more.” He gave me a second bottle of water.
Wearing a black suit and red shoes, the Gucci loafers he has made for him out of the skins of weird reptiles, six six, three hundred pounds, Tolya was looking good. The heart surgery he had during the summer had worked out. He was happy running his club, Pravda2, in the West Village. He bought good wines for it; he traveled to France regularly.
Tolya has been my best friend for a long time. I met him fifteen years back, more even, and, as they say in Russian, we’ve shared more than one sack of salt.
Last summer, when some creeps snatched Tolya off a Moscow street, they asked me for the promise of a favor. I told them I’d do whatever they wanted if they let Tolya go. Anything. It had been my fault that his daughter Valentina was murdered. He had never blamed me.
We got the creep who did it, but I’d never figured out who had fingered Valentina in the first place. I never knew who had discovered where she lived in New York, where she went, who she went with. I knew if I ever did, I would kill him. I loved Val a lot.
The promise I had made in exchange for Tolya was to the FSB, the new version of the KGB. These guys were tough, and they were corrupt. So far they hadn’t asked me for anything, but it would come.
“Artyom?” Tolya was watching me, looking worried.
“I have to go,” I said. “I have to get to Lily. Tolya, listen to me, I think whoever beat me up spoke Russian. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I told you, Lily calls me, she’s worried, I don’t know if she’s crazy or this is for real, so I call Lennox, like I tell you. I was not far away.”
“I mean what were you doing uptown?
“I have business.”
“What business?”
“You recall from election night? I said I love this Harlem, and so I will buy a house, I said this to you, and I have bought.”
“You bought a house?”
“Sure. Maybe I buy nice little club, you can run, you can employ jazz musicians instead of getting beat up, Artyom. Maybe I buy Minton’s Playhouse for you if you want. Is enough already, being a cop.”
“Where? The house?”
“Strivers’ Row, you tell me I am striver, so I buy lovely, lovely brownstone. I am striver, no?”
“I thought you were done with business, with deals, all that shit.”
“Oh, but Artyom, one lovely brownstone is not deals. You will come. Tonight, you can stay with me.”
“You’re living there already?”
“Sure. Cash deal. No problem.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“Yes.”
I put up my hand as if to catch one of the floaters in front of my eyes, a long gold and purple flash, like an exotic insect.
Tolya handed me some pills. “Take this,” said Tolya, in Russian now, the beautiful, elegant Russian he had learned from his parents, who had been actors. They had taken him with them to France and England when they performed. They were pretty upset when Tolya became a rocker. He had been arrested back in the day, when rock was illegal in the USSR.
He speaks four, five languages, if you include Ukrainian, and his English is great, except when he’s drunk, or when he’s putting me on, dropping articles, speaking his make-believe Brighton Beach English.
“I have to go,” I said again.
“Not yet.”
“Listen to me, I need to finish this case, I really do. Give me some more of those pills, OK?” I climbed out of the SUV and held onto the door handle. Tolya followed me.
“I’ll come with you, in that case.”
“What for?” Shivering, I realized my jacket had disappeared in the storage room.
“In case you pass out,” he said. “You look like crap. Put this on.” He reached in the back of the SUV and handed me a black sweater. Cashmere. Triple X. I pulled it over my head.
As we went into the lobby of the Armstrong, I spoke softly to him in Russian. “There’ve been a couple of murders not far from here.” I described the guy with the tats killed in the cemetery, the paper skewered to his heart.
“Y
our cases?”
“No.”
“You are interested, why?”
“Somebody beats me up, there’s creeps out there killing people, I get interested.”
“Russians?” Tolya said.
“Probably. Gangs, maybe. I need your help.”
“You never ask me before,” he said. “What do you want?”
“I’ll let you know. I have to see Lily now.”
“Be good to her,” said Tolya.
I nodded.
“You will try to win her back?”
I pressed the elevator button. “I have to.”
CHAPTER 18
I have an old woman’s feet, Artie. I have ugly, wrinkled old feet now,” Lily said. Sitting on a white leather stool at the kitchen counter in her apartment at the Armstrong, she looked down at her bare feet. Her soggy winter boots were on the floor. I was opposite her. “How do you feel?”
We had been sitting like that for a little while. Lily had helped me wash the blood off my face and put some clean bandages on my hand.
“I’m OK now. And your feet are OK. I like your feet,” I said.
She didn’t answer, just pulled herself off the stool and crossed the kitchen to make coffee.
The apartment had cream-colored curtains and sofas. A milky pink glass vase filled with orange roses was on the granite kitchen counter. The living room, this kitchen, had been renovated-stainless steel appliances, sleek wood floors and cupboards, a blue-and-white-striped kilim. Unlike Simonova’s apartment, no water dripped from the ceiling; no plaster cascaded down the walls; the paint was fresh. Glossy magazines were artfully arranged on a black glass coffee table.
Lily put two mugs on the counter. “Do you want something to eat?”
I shook my head and glanced at the old clock that hung on the kitchen wall.
“What is it?” she said.
“I was wondering if Dr. Bernard had stopped by. She said she’d come. I was stuck in the fucking storage room.” I rubbed my head.
“Don’t touch it,” said Lily, handing me a dishcloth. “There’s blood on your head, Artie. You need to see someone. You need them to check for concussion. I mean it.” For a moment, Lily’s bossy, practical side took her over, and it made me smile. For a moment.
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