Too Close to Home

by Andrew Grant

  “Who are you, and what did you do with my roommate?” Wilkinson said, then he repeated himself after Klinsman took his headphones off.

  “I am your roommate.” Klinsman’s smile was broad, and his words were slurred. “But I won’t be for long.”

  “You’re dropping out? Don’t do it, man!”

  “Not dropping out. Moving out.”

  “You’re going home? Like, halfway to Canada? That’s crazy. You need to chill. Party, like me, and soon you’ll like the city just fine.”

  “I already like the city just fine. That’s why I’m staying in Manhattan. I’m getting my own place.”

  “You’re beyond crazy now, man. How can you afford a place? Have you got any idea what the rent’s like? You’d be stuck in a shithole in the Bronx or somewhere. There’ll be entire families of immigrants living in single rooms. Rats. Spiders.”

  Klinsman pointed to a piece of paper fixed to the wall above his fax machine, trying its best to curl despite the illegal pins holding it up.

  Wilkinson peered at the sheet. He normally wore glasses, but left them in their case when he was out chasing girls. “What does it say?”

  “It’s a trading report. It says I just made $1,000,073.17. Think about that. I’m twenty years old. I needed a fake ID to buy this wine. And I’m a millionaire!”

  “Fantastic news!” Wilkinson pulled the headphone wire out of the stereo and started jiggling to the sudden beat. “We can get a condo. We’ll have beer delivered every night. And pizza. Think of all the girls—”

  “I can’t”—Klinsman hit the power switch and realized his voice was louder than he’d intended—“hear you.”

  “I was just saying, our condo, we’ll fix it up real cool, it’ll be a magnet for—”

  “Wow, wait. It’s not going to be ‘our’ anything. You’re not coming.”

  Wilkinson sat down on his bed. “You’re joking, right? We’re roomies. We stick together. I’d take you with me if the foot was on the other shoe.”

  “But would you, now?” Klinsman glared at his friend. “Did you help me take all those Fruit Loops to the food bank?”

  “No, but—”

  “Did you help me address all the envelopes, to send out the vitamin packs?”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “I could go on and on, but the answer would always be the same. I’m always working. You’re always partying. Out of all the money I’ve made, you didn’t help me make a single cent. So give me one good reason. If you didn’t help earn it, why should I let you help spend it?”

  The years after she was wounded were hard for Anna, in exile in her gilded Westchester gulag.

  Her injuries hadn’t been serious. A proper medic, like the ones in Russia, would have given her a realistic evaluation. The doctors in America were marred by decadence. Her eyesight was almost perfect. She could drive. She could see well enough to shoot. She certainly could have continued to take photographs. With her arm she could tell she’d lost a little range of movement, but not so much that anyone else would notice. She made sure to keep the scar covered up. She’d suffered no loss of strength. And if anyone said otherwise, give her two minutes with them in the dojo, her “good” arm tied behind her back, and she’d make them eat their words.

  During her first months in the McGrath house Anna found herself harboring violent fantasies. She was mad at everyone else who’d applied for the job. They must have put up a pretty poor effort if they couldn’t even beat a disabled foreigner. She was resentful of her own people when it dawned on her that they must have had a hand in tipping the scales. She was driven crazy by Mr. McGrath, who’d retired altogether from espionage when his wife died and was hypocritically trying to bring his son up as a pacifist. She’d read his file. Incomplete as it was, she’d seen enough to know the kind of things he was capable of. Cabin fever set in. She had nothing worthwhile to do. And nowhere to go other than the grocery store, and that was nothing more than a temple to the worst excesses of rampant consumerism. She tried to escape via the TV, but was tortured by the mad clown who kept constantly popping up on her screen. She couldn’t believe that the feeble-minded freak had somehow gotten elected president not once, but twice. It was like she’d become an unwilling participant in a live-action demonstration of the shortcomings of Western democracy.

  As bad as things were in America, though, she knew they were worse at home. She wasn’t supposed to show any interest, but she was very discreet. She read about the fatal blow that was struck in November ’89, in her room with tears in her eyes, as her German comrades succumbed to the degeneracy of their western neighbors and dismantled the antifascist bulwark that had kept East Berlin safe since 1961. The union clung on for another eighteen months, then Yugoslavia crumbled. The Baltic states disintegrated. And finally, on Boxing Day 1991, the unthinkable happened. The USSR was officially dissolved. She took to her bed for a week. She felt like her comrade cosmonauts who were marooned on the space station Mir when the terrible news was broken. One of them was from Leningrad, too. Their country had disappeared while none of them were there. At least the cosmonauts were able to land again on friendly soil. Eventually. Whereas she was trapped in a vacuum. She signaled her handler, asking permission to return home. His response took two days to arrive. Request denied. Remain on station. Await instructions.

  Instructions that never came.

  Anna considered killing herself. She considered going back to Russia and killing the traitor Gorbachev. Eventually she settled for an uneasy compromise between boredom and anxiety. She was proficient at the mundane chores that were expected of her. Mr. McGrath’s son, Paul, was growing up and becoming more interesting. She was amused to see how completely he failed to buy into his father’s bogus pacifist agenda. How funny it would be if Paul followed in his father’s real footsteps. So she helped him, and guided him whenever she could. She continued to watch Mr. McGrath in the vain hope that he’d return to some real work. Then he might reveal something that she could parlay into a reason to return home. Or at least capture her interest. But when he did finally make a move, it wasn’t anything she’d expected. He started digging into the availability of a certain piece of real estate. A brownstone in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

  The property had been owned by the Soviet Union. After the place had been compromised by the Americans it couldn’t be used as a safe house any longer, so it was mothballed. It wasn’t disposed of, because transactions leave trails and the Kremlin valued secrecy above all else. But now there was no Soviet Union. Its successor, the Russian Federation, was tainted by capitalism and desperate for hard currency. Who knew what it would do with all the miscellaneous assets it had inherited? Evidently Mr. McGrath knew what he hoped it would do. Sell them. But did he want to buy the place to keep it out of the hands of developers, and maintain it as a kind of shrine to his wife? Or did he hope to find some clues there about how she’d died? And who’d been present at the time?

  Anna signaled her handler for assistance. She needed information. Above all she needed to know what had happened to the American monitoring system. Was it still in place at the house? Or had it been torn out for study, or disposal? She got no response. Her go-bag was ready, as always. The habit was too deeply ingrained for it not to be. So should she run? She was tempted. It’s always safest to assume the worst. But where would she go? There was no more Soviet Union, after all. Leningrad—St. Petersburg, she supposed she should say now—was overrun with oligarchs, by all accounts. Maybe evacuation was premature. The house might have been sanitized. There was bound to be a lot of bureaucracy to contend with, Soviet Union or not, so Mr. McGrath may never complete the purchase. Someone else could come along with more money or better connections, who wouldn’t be the same kind of threat as an owner. She should hold her position.

  She should hold, but she should also raise her alert status. Find out as much as possi
ble about the degree of risk Mr. McGrath acquiring the brownstone could pose. She should start by going back to Mr. McGrath’s wife’s records. The files and folders of notes and diagrams he kept boxed up in the room he pretended she died in. Anna had skimmed through everything soon after she’d moved into the house. She knew some of the papers related to the monitoring system, but she hadn’t sweated the details. She knew the brownstone was bugged, because she’d been there. The presence of the invention wasn’t a surprise. But now she needed to understand its operation in more depth. There was one detail in particular that was critical. Had the system been monitored remotely? Or had there been a recording device at the premises? It was the kind of difference that could determine whether someone lived or died. But it was also moot, unless Mr. McGrath bought the house.

  Mr. McGrath bought the house. It took a few more years, but he was nothing if not persistent. He didn’t hide what he was doing, which Anna took as a good sign. He passed it off as a business thing, which he’d developed a habit of talking about. Anna claimed to have a personal interest in the project, pretending that her father had been a joiner who’d worked in that area. She asked if she could visit the house with him the next time he went there. He agreed, and proposed one day the following week.

  Anna pretended to have errands to run in the city first, so they agreed on a time to meet in front of the house. Mr. McGrath was there early. He unlocked the front door and stood aside for Anna to go in ahead of him. She was fine while she was in the hallway, but when she reached the living room all she could smell was smoke, from the guns and the grenade that had shattered the peace more than a decade ago. Her eyes watered, and Mr. McGrath thought she must be crying over something to do with her father. She was too distracted to deny it, battling to keep on an even keel in the room where her “husband” and Mr. McGrath’s wife had died, and her life had changed forever. It was a struggle not to gawk at the floor by the doorway where his wife’s fatal blood had flowed. To scan the walls for a hole left by the bullet that had torn through Misha’s chest. To search for traces of brains on the hallway plasterwork, where the American operative had fallen. The only encouragement Anna felt was that Mr. McGrath showed no signs of knowing the significance of the room. She thought she saw him paying a little extra attention to the wall where the green sofa had been, but he soon looked away and offered to show her the rest of the house.

  When they reached the ballroom on the top floor Anna pretended she needed to use the bathroom. She left Mr. McGrath gazing out over the Hudson and hurried back downstairs. She went into the living room. Took out the current detector she’d bought at a hardware store on 23rd Street. Checked that it was set to silent. Fired it up and held it against the wall near the place where Misha had been sitting when she’d tested the camera. The needle sprang across its dial. That was one question answered. The wiring from the monitoring system had not been removed. But the query remained, how much else of the system was left intact?

  There was still no need to panic, Anna told herself. If Mr. McGrath planned to keep the house as a shrine, she was in no danger. But if he brought in demolition contractors or electricians or security system installers, it would be a different story. The key would be to have enough warning. It was time to put some precautions in place.

  Brian Rooney was sweating. That was clear.

  What he hoped was less clear were the pains in his chest and left arm. He wanted to finish his testimony. To get the ordeal over with, once and for all. It would be a nightmare to collapse in front of everyone. To have the paramedics run in and cart him off to the hospital, only to have to come back to do it all over again. He gripped the brass rail that ran around the top of the witness box with both hands, took a breath, and focused on the lawyer’s words. On the sound of them. Not the image they conjured in his head. Each syllable he pictured as a bloodhound, racing unerringly through the forest of his lies to drag the damning truth out of its fragile, shallow grave.

  Let me get away with this and I swear I’ll be good…

  Steven Bruce, counsel for the defense, winked. He shot Rooney a sly smile. He knew. He was waiting to bring the hammer down. Drawing out the agony. The sadistic shyster.

  “Detective Rooney, you described the events that followed your entry into my clients’ apartment on the evening of September 22. But you didn’t tell the court what prompted you to smash down their door in the first place. In fact, you seemed to deliberately skirt around the issue. Would you care to enlighten us now?”

  I didn’t tell the court about the bags of cash we removed and sent to the lieutenant’s brother for laundering, either, Rooney thought. “We were acting on an anonymous tip.” He could feel a steel band tightening around his chest. Bruce was closing in…

  “How was this alleged tip received? Via carrier pigeon? Did someone hire a skywriter?”

  The asshole was circling. It wouldn’t be long now. “The tip came in by phone, to 911.” Normally Rooney would have invited the lawyer to check the 911 recordings, but there was a problem. The idiot they’d paid to drop the dime had done it late. They should have waited for the call to come through from dispatch before taking the door, but they heard glass smashing. They guessed that the pimps were going for the fire escape. The operation wasn’t sanctioned, so they had no backup. Money was at stake—a lot—so they figured they’d go for it and fudge the timing in the report. But, as Brian Rooney senior used to say, once the fuck-up fairy comes to stay, there’s no getting rid of her. A stray bullet went through the wall into an adjoining apartment and took out the neighbor’s clock. The guy was a gadget freak, and this was no garden-variety timepiece. It was an exact replica of the first atomic clock. Precisely accurate, and worth around four thousand bucks. The guy made a statement so he could put in a claim on his insurance. Compare that with the 911 log, and it was game over. One more question and the case would collapse. Then the rat squad would come crawling, and the whole house of cards would collapse.

  Bruce tipped his head and pursed his lips. The question was coming. The final nail…

  Let me get away with this and I’ll quit the job. I’ll put my papers in this afternoon. Live on my pension. Quietly. Never allow myself to be led down the garden path again. I swear!

  Someone must have been listening.

  Bruce twitched like he was coming out of a trance. “I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought there for a second. So the call was made to 911. Why was it that your unit was the one to respond?”

  Rooney’s mind was whirling, looking for the angle. Why wasn’t Bruce asking about the time of the call? Setting him up to reveal the discrepancy, while his jugular was exposed? “We responded because we were the closest to the suspects’ address when the call came in.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Bruce paused, cranking up the pressure on Rooney’s heart. “Given the nature of the crimes my clients are charged with, wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for the vice squad to have been involved?”

  “We didn’t initially know the category of crimes that were being committed.” Rooney was struggling to control his breathing. “The call we received only referred to a child being in distress. When we entered the premises and realized the kind of activities your clients were indulging in and the sort of matériel in their possession, we informed our lieutenant. He called his opposite number in vice, which is the proper procedure. When the vice detectives arrived, we left. This is all recorded in the log maintained by a uniformed officer at the scene.”

  “Thank you, Detective. We may need to examine that log in due course. Until then, no further questions.”

  * * *

  —

  Rooney’s retirement racket was a muted affair. Not all of the detectives from the squad showed up. The lieutenant only stayed for the first half hour or so. There was no one from his time at the academy. No one from his days in uniform. No one from any of his old precincts. When it
was nearly time for the bar to close he was barely buzzed. He told himself to look on the bright side. One lousy evening was better than a lousy rest of his life. Especially if all that was left of it had to be spent in administrative segregation.

  Rooney decided to cut his losses and head home, but as he approached the door he spotted a familiar face at a table in the shadows. It was Steven Bruce. He was sitting on his own, and he waved for Rooney to join him.

  “Come, sit for a minute,” Bruce said. “I have an idea how you could put this damp squib of a party behind you. Put retirement on hold for a while. Start a new chapter of your life. The best you’ve ever known.”

  Rooney’s first thought was to tell Bruce to stick his idea, whatever it was. Then he reconsidered. He was a civilian now. It was OK to fraternize with shysters—or lawyers, as he’d have to try to think of them. Especially if by best they meant most lucrative.

  Jimmy Klinsman hadn’t eaten any food that wasn’t prepared in a restaurant or packaged from a store for as long as he could remember. That was inevitable, given the demands on his time. But he often thought that if things had panned out differently, he’d have liked to be a gardener. That could have been the perfect occupation for him, he figured, given how much he enjoyed planting things and watching them grow.

  Klinsman was standing at the back of the room at the clubhouse, doing his best to look like a dutiful supporter. Or at least like he was listening. In front of him the regular furniture had been taken out and replaced with rows of chairs that were usually used for weddings. The place was full to overflowing with the city’s movers and shakers. Some of them were the real deal. The kind of people who regarded $50K for a day of golf to back a cause they couldn’t have cared less about—that they probably couldn’t have spelled—as chump change. Others were from the fake it till you make it school. Many of those were stuck terminally at the fake it stage. But the guy up front who was doing all the talking—Dick White—had certainly made it. That didn’t make him interesting, though. It was safe to say that success had gone to his head. From Klinsman’s vantage point White was standing in front of a giant painting. Of himself. Klinsman made a final attempt to focus and catch some of the vapid words that were floating past him on the overconditioned air. Then he gave up and turned his attention to the massive artwork. He wondered if the abundance of hair and lack of flabby jowls was a matter of artistic interpretation. Or a reflection of the record fee that White’s own charity was rumored to have paid for the picture at auction.