Two weeks ago I had picked up a Saturday Evening Post; it contained the first installment of a book called Fail Safe, the story of an accidental nuclear war. The second part had appeared the last Saturday, two days before the President’s speech. How did they time it like that? How did they know?
After I had read it, I couldn’t sleep, and when I did, my dreams were soaked in radiation. Radiation would cover the earth, and your skin, if you survived the initial blast, would fall off like it had been flayed, like a wet suit.
The war coming wasn’t a novel now; it was real. Cops, firefighters, medics, had been sent to lectures on civil defense. I knew the sound of the warnings. I knew where to lead groups of people underground; how to maintain order; how to organize them in these subterranean cells behind iron doors, with their lead-lined water cans, and portable toilet packs. We were on the front lines, the chief said. We were to consider ourselves soldiers in the line of duty, if the time came.
All those years, the little kids ducking under their desks, watching Bert the Turtle tell them to duck and cover, and it would be OK, it was horseshit. I knew people with bomb shelters who discussed what you did if strangers tried to get in.
Did you welcome them? Push them out into the howling gale because you didn’t have enough food? In the basement of my building was a makeshift room marked with a nuclear symbol. All pointless. They had ICBMs pointing at us. We had more.
Limited war. Percentages. Collateral damage. All the theories were horseshit. Deep down people knew that once it began, there would be no hope.
Outside Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, a few patients, still attached to their IVs, or in wheelchairs, were smoking and taking the air, shooting the breeze. Maybe they had nothing to worry about anymore. Figured they’d be dead before the bombs hit.
I stuck my police ID in the front window and went looking for Mike Bounine. I had never liked him. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but I had him figured for the man who was running Ostalsky, and that was enough.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” Bounine said when he saw me. “Can I help you, Pat?” he said, and shook my hand. He had a firm handshake, manly, and I didn’t believe it for an instant. “I am glad for this visit, Pat. It’s a difficult day for so many people, therefore so nice to see you, please, sit down, and welcome. Tell me how your aunt and uncle, Mr and Mrs Kelly are? They were so kind to show me their home, and their church.”
I ignored the niceties. The confidence was palpable. This Russian who called himself Mike, though I could never get used to it, seemed to wear his self-assurance like an impenetrable garment. He was not at all unnerved by the arrival of a New York cop.
In his starched white coat over a good suit, Bounine rose from his chair and suggested coffee.
“You must be catching plenty of flak what with the Cuban thing, your country shipping over missiles, and wanting to nuke us.”
“People are surprisingly tolerant,” he said. “They consider me a guest. You Americans are wonderfully friendly.”
The hospital corridors smelled of ammonia, and there was the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum as nurses hurried by with that air of self-importance, white caps perched on their hair like birds ready for flight. As they passed, they addressed him as Dr Bounine. He enjoyed the attention.
In the cafeteria, Bounine said, “Would you care for coffee, or would you enjoy tea? What can I help you with? What do you say to a slice of cake? I am a fan of coconut cake.”
What did he mean, what do you say? It was something Ostalsky often said, as if inquiring about my opinion. I knew it was only a verbal tick, something translated from the Russian, but it always unnerved me.
“No cake,” I said. “So you’re getting on?”
“Oh, indeed yes, I like the people so much. I feel myself learning many things. I am enjoying my time at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and I hope I am imparting some useful knowledge as well. Coffee?” He asked again.
“Black, no sugar.”
At the cafeteria counter, Bounine got coffee for both of us, and cake for himself. He sat down again, long legs stretched out in an easy sprawl. A couple of younger doctors came by, but he stayed where he was and they were forced to lean down to speak to him. This was a man used to a certain status, comfortable in his own world.
He looked at his watch to let me know he was a busy man.
“You and Ostalsky, you told me how you traveled together from Moscow. But I don’t remember if you said you had been friends back home? Colleagues? Ostalsky is an English teacher, you’re a doctor, so I say to myself, how on earth could you be colleagues? But perhaps you were friends.”
As soon as I mentioned Ostalsky’s name, there was a faint flicker in Bounine’s eyes. Something that shifted, darkened, turned inwards. He had burrowed inside for the appropriate response, or the right lies quick, like a prairie dog or a rat into a hole.
“Indeed, I flew over to the United States with Max. We met on the plane, as we told to you, and found we had been assigned seats next to each other, so much happens just by chance, don’t you think? We stop in Stockholm. Excellent little fish sandwiches at the airport, I recall that, because Max eats many. We talk together, and discover both of us wish to have been cosmonauts. I think that was a bond. My good fortune to meet such an intelligent friend before even arriving,” said Bounine. “Of course, I knew of his uncle. General Fyodor Grigoryevich Ostalsky, a hero of the Great Patriotic War. My father and the general served together as younger men. Now, how may I be of help?” He poured half a pitcher of cream into his coffee, and started on the coconut cake.
Bounine spoke very fast, as if to leave no room for your questions; like a brilliant suspect on the stand, he diverted the real question, and filled the space with details about cosmonauts and sandwiches. He was lying. I knew it. Ostalsky had known it. In his notebook, he had written that Bounine had been assigned to watch him.
Was Bounine really Ostalsky’s—what the hell did they call them in spy novels—his operative? His operator? Like at a switchboard? In my head, I got the idea that Bounine plugged Max in whenever he wanted, or let him hang at the end of the phone, waiting for the connection. The Max Ostalsky I knew was no match for this cool customer across the table.
I kept my tone conversational and slurped my coffee as a distraction. It was hot and bitter, and I scalded my tongue. I lit up a cigarette and offered him the pack of Chesterfields.
“I prefer these,” he said, produced his Tiparillos, and put one between his lips. With a handsome silver Dunhill, he lit it.
His voice remained amiable, amused, but something about his words gave me the creeps. I felt he could produce a knife, slit my throat, then claim I was one of his patients, all without missing a bite of his coconut cake.
“What’s your specialty?”
Bounine looked up. “Medicine. I imagine you were hoping I’d said nuclear medicine. I’m sorry. No, as I have said, I am a geneticist, also with a sub-specialty in pathology. I spend most of my time looking through a microscope. Viral diseases, nothing very, how would you say it, glamorous. A bit boring, comparatively.” He sipped his coffee. “It is quite a pleasure to see you, but is there something I can help you with because I have an appointment?”
“When’s the last time you saw Ostalsky?”
“Let me see, last week, I think, or was it the week before?”
“Are you concerned about the Cuban situation?”
“We all believe in peace.”
In his notebook Max had written about Bounine’s sense of betrayal by his country and that they—Max, Bounine— had been lied to.
Sitting with him at the cafeteria table, I knew Bounine had handed Max a line of purest horseshit to try to provoke him: Come on, Comrade, confess your doubts, I could imagine him saying. Perhaps this was the Soviet version of the confessional.
“You and Max are still good friends?”
“Certainly.”
“Then perhaps you are helping him?
”
“But why does he need help? I don’t understand?”
“He’s disappeared. Gone. Vanished. Who knows, maybe he’s dead?”
He hadn’t known. Bounine didn’t know. Pushing his plate away, he got up and said, “I really must go now.”
“I wonder if you’ve seen the paper today?” I said.
“I’ve been quite busy. Not one moment to spare.”
“Please don’t go.” I handed him a copy of the Journal-American on the table, folded back to page 19 where there was a picture of the dead man on Pier 46. “This man was murdered last week on a pier in Greenwich Village. I was sure you would have seen it.”
Bounine feigned surprise, and said, “No. Indeed, I rarely look at these sensationalist stories in your less savory newspapers. Who is this? Poor fellow.”
I waited.
“It’s possible, yes, you’re right, perhaps. I think I saw something in the Herald Tribune, but the report was of a Mafia crime. I must say I feel lucky to live in a country with nothing of that kind. But why would I ever know the name of some poor dead Cuban?” He gathered up his coffee cup and cigarettes. “Poor man. Perhaps he was the victim of your country’s hostility towards the Cuban people.”
“I’ll take that,” I said. “My newspaper.”
“Of course,” said Bounine as he set off, and I followed. “If I can do anything to help with Maxim Ostalsky, let me know, please, I would worry if there is a problem. Apologies but I’m due at a lecture. Do you have any idea at all where Max is?”
“Do you? Why do you care?”
“As a fellow countryman, exactly as I would any of my comrades. Also, he is my friend.”
“Is he?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Just one more thing. The murder on Pier 46 is my case. I’m sure you understand how an investigation works. Questions, and more questions, no let-up until it’s done.”
“As I have understood, you were removed from the investigation, this means your visit to me is not official. You are now on your vacation. Isn’t that correct?”
CHAPTER FOUR
October 23, ’62
HOW IN THE NAME of Christ did Bounine know I was off the job? That Logan got me dumped. If I went to Bounine’s office, would I find Captain Logan in his Rolodex? Or Murphy? Did they have a relationship with the Russians? Was it possible?
Mike Bounine was not a careless man. He might have ordered Rica Valdes’ murder; Ostalsky might have done the killing. But they would have done it on orders. They were Soviet agents, not cowboy spooks. They had been trained; they would be disciplined, focused. They knew what they were doing; they did what they were told. Evil bastards, sure, but meticulous.
On the ground floor of the hospital, I put in a call to a friend who knew her way around the police archives, somebody who would always take my calls, I thought. I had been cut off, but for sure she would help, and I blurted it out, what I needed. It took her a while to answer. I thought to myself: even she’s scared of doing business with me; and when I mentioned the name Homer Logan, there was a tiny sharp intake of breath. “Don’t call me again, please,” she said. “Don’t use this number.”
“Help me,” I said.
“I’ll try,” was all she said. “I’ll try. I’ll call you,” she added in a whisper. “If I can.”
Smoking, furious at myself, I slammed my hand against the wall. I was sinking in my own mess; I was sunk; I was under water; I was as good as dead.
Nobody ever said I’d be a good secret agent; Jesus, no. But if I was going to hunt down Ostalsky in my own time, I’d have to stay under the radar, out of sight of Murphy and Logan, but also the Russkis. Shit, I thought, shit.
Distracted, I dropped my cigarette. The stink of burning fabric from my pants was acrid, vile. “Goddamn it to hell.”
I ran out to the street, got rid of the burning butt, and by the time Bounine emerged from the hospital, I was in my car. He had obviously waited until I left. He walked with that confident swagger, a blue topcoat over his shoulders.
Just then, as if it had been choreographed, another man, a fat dapper fellow in a camel-hair coat and a gray fedora, got out of a taxicab that pulled up, and gestured for Bounine to join him. The coat was the kind I once saw on Bugsy Siegel when I was a kid, and my pa had taken me to the Lower East Side to buy a jacket cheap from some pal of his who was a Jew in the garment business.
To my surprise, Bounine obeyed. The two men sat down on a bench. The fat one did all the talking. Bounine seemed to ask permission to smoke, and as he took a cigarette from his silver case, stood up and turned away from the wind off the river to light it, saw me. He raised his hand and waved. “Hello,” he called out. In his mind I was his escape route. The swagger was gone. He had a hunted look, like an animal in a trap.
The fat man smiled slightly and put his hand on Bounine’s arm. It might have looked friendly enough to most people, but I knew it was to stop him, detain him, warn him, the act of a cop who had collared a criminal.
The cliff of elegant apartment buildings on Riverside Drive was on my left as I drove downtown, the dark blue river to the right; and all the way I had the sense somebody was trailing me in a Chevvy Impala, the car I had seen the other night. I took a detour by NYU, hoping to spot Nancy, and not wanting to. I stopped a couple of her friends who said they had not seen her all week, and then went back to talking about the crisis. I had the feeling a lot of babies would get made that week. I don’t want to die a virgin, I heard one of them say. God, I don’t want that.
On the way to my building, I lost the Impala, parked a few blocks from home, walked over and went upstairs.
As I took my key out, from behind my door, I heard somebody on the prowl, somebody walking, the old floorboards creaking. Somebody had beat me home and was waiting for me.
CHAPTER FIVE
October 23, ’62
“I ALMOST JUMPED OUT OF my skin when I heard somebody walking around in here, but I’m glad to see you, I really am, Uncle Jack.”
“I was thinking you could use a friend.” Jack Kelly got out of the chair where he had been watching TV. He had on his ancient Dodgers jacket with the number 42 on the back—for luck, he always said when he wore it. I hugged him, and kissed the top of his head, almost bald now, only a few wisps of white hair left.
“How are you, Paddy?”
“Is Auntie Clara OK?”
“Scared. She watches that damn set, and she runs to the church, and I say, ‘Take it easy, the President is on this.’”
When I was a kid and my pop was on the rails looking for work, and my ma was doing domestic work where she lived in—rich family in Greenwich—Jack Kelly was the big man in my life, physically and in every other way, and I had learned to be a cop, and a human being, if I had managed it at all, from him.
“I said, Clara O’Mara Kelly, do you think I am going to allow them Reds to scare me, well, to hell with them.” Jack was my ma’s younger brother, a smart cop and an optimist, to him, like all the family, JFK was a prince among men, as Franklin Roosevelt had been. For Jack Kelly, a man who avoided church at all costs, these were secular saints.
“Did I ever tell you the time I got a glimpse of FDR during the war, passing by, in that car with Mayor LaGuardia, and he was smiling and smoking that cigarette, and he was a cripple, and he saved us, you know that, boyo? So I’m not afraid about some Commie bastards. Like Roosevelt said, it’s the fear that’s killing us.”
I got out a bottle of the Old Bushmills I had been saving up for Jack, poured it into a pair of glasses, handed one to him.
“You OK?”
“I’m OK.” He drank the whisky in two swallows. “But you’re not, Patrick. You are not OK at all. I can see that.”
“What are you talking about?”
Jack got up close enough to me that I could see the light brown eyes behind his spectacles. He put his hand on my arm, in a protective gesture.
“What is it, Uncle Jack?”
“You gotta get your nose out of this thing over on Pier 46, Patrick. You have to stop it. The homicide, it ain’t your case, and you’re making a lot of people very very angry, you see what I mean? I’m asking you to stop.”
“The brass sent you to me?”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. You don’t believe it, but I got the message. Don’t ask how. It doesn’t matter. Stay away. It’s the Russkis got you into this, that pal of yours, Max, whatsisname? I thought he was OK at first, even if he was a Bolshie, but his friend, the other one, Boney, what was that?”
“Mike Bounine.”
“Yeah, Mike? What’s his real name? That day you brought them to Old St Pat’s for your Auntie Clara to show them over the place? August, right? Well, I’m sitting in the back of the church, watching, and I don’t like it, I don’t like Boney’s damn face one bit. I say to myself, Jackie, this is a bad fellow, I mean not just some Bolshie like your Max, but a dirty Red. Dirty spy. Dirty tricks. Clara introducing Father Sean. Him showing those boys around, like they were interested in religion. You know I don’t care for the church much, but I pretend for Clara’s sake. This made me mad as hell and Father Sean dancing around with those long skirts like some fairy, showing those Reds everything, the chapels, the organ, the mortuary vaults, nobody never gets to see that. Probably thinking he can convert the Russkis; I bet he told the Monsignor all about it.
“And Boney keeps asking questions like who has the keys, when was it built, all that stuff, and saying he’s an amateur student of architecture, and stuff, what’s a fucking Red doing with so much interest in churches? They’re all fucking atheists.”
“You sound like my pop when he told me how evil the Reds are, and made me pray for the souls of little Commie children. I asked him how come we gotta pray for them if they’re so evil. He slapped me with his open hand.” I sat down opposite Jack, and poured more whisky.
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