“Yeah, man. They picked him up, he had a pile of them in the motel room.”
“In Brighton Beach? The motel?”
“Yeah.”
“The books were in Russian?”
“I heard yes.”
“Who’s keeping you in the loop on all this?” I said.
“Listen, you know Dubi Petrovsky?”
“Yeah, the guy where you got me that first edition Conrad, right? Big guy, shop out near the beach?”
“Right. Find out if he sold the books they found with this Terenti creep, okay?”
“Sure, man. You think this could turn on books?”
“With Russians, yeah, sure, they love to think of themselves as intellectuals, right?”
“One more thing.”
“Yeah, Sonny?”
“Terenti, turns out he’s done it before, he signed his work on another girl. The letter m in Masha’s flesh, his signature, like he was the author of the job.”
“My God.”
“Come home soon as you can, man.”
“Please come,” he said. “My car is waiting,” he added, calling me
MooDllo
, the name no one except Tolya ever uses. “Asshole, I need you to meet me.”
“Where?”
“My car is waiting downstairs. Ivan is there,” he said.
I went to the window of Tolya’s Notting Hill house and looked out and saw the car, the driver.
“I have to go,” I said to Fiona, who had been waiting for me when I stumbled in. The guy who’d beaten me up had left me looking bad, but she didn’t ask, just washed off the blood, using some antibiotics she found in Tolya’s bathroom.
“I have to go,” I said to her again, and gave her most of the papers I’d found in Grisha’s office on Moscow Road. Not all. Not the notebook.
“Don’t ask me where, okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Just come,” said Tolya into the phone. “I need you Artyom,” he said. His voice was low and hesitant, like a sick man’s.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said when I found Tolya waiting for me in Larry Sverdloff’s house. From the outside, the house resembled a fortress. A dozen guys were planted in the garden, sitting in deckchairs, speaking into their earpieces, and sipping water. More stood outside the front gate.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Tolya from the chair where he sat in Larry’s study. His skin was gray. He worked hard to catch his breath. I got a chair and pulled it up beside him.
“Where’s your cousin?”
“Upstairs.”
“Let me get him.”
“No,” said Tolya. “He’s fixing things. Let him do it.” He reached for a plastic tube of pills on the table next to him, swallowed a few capsules and washed them down with a glass of vodka he poured himself.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I can’t find my shoes.”
“They’re next to the couch,” I said.
“Can you get them for me, Artyom? Please?”
“Sure.”
I got a pair of his Gucci loafers, bright yellow skins, gold buckles, and brought them to him.
“Sorry to ask, man,” he said, slipping his feet into the shoes. “I’m just a little tired,” added Tolya speaking half in English, half in Russian. “I need to get going.”
In all the years we’d been friends, I had never known Tolya like this. He looked lousy. There was a moment when he clutched his left arm as if in pain, and I reached out, but he gently pushed me away. He spoke to me like a supplicant, like a guy who needed help even with his shoes. I tried not to show what I was feeling, but I think he knew.
“When did you get here?”
“An hour ago,” he said, glancing at his watch. The band was loose on his wrist.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He wore a rumpled black suit.
“Listen to me, I came to see you, and Styopa, too,” he said, referring to his cousin Larry’s patronymic. “Only you two, okay, nothing else, nobody else, no one. Is anyone with you?”
“No. Tell me.”
“I came, you see, because I can’t tell you anything on the phone, not anymore, and because I have to go soon.”
“When?”
“An hour. Two.”
“Where?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I reached in my pocket for cigarettes.
“You’re smoking? Give me one, please?” Tolya said, trying to conceal a rasping cough. “No lecture.”
I lit my cigarette and tossed him the lighter.
“So, Artyom. So. You use my nice lighter?” He tried to joke.
I waited.
“Put on some music, please, Artyom,” said Tolya. “ Something nice.”
There was a CD player in the bookshelf and I went over and found a CD I knew he liked. I held it up.
“Sinatra okay?”
“Always,” said Tolya. “Sure. But classical now, Verdi,” he said. “Larry has this recording,
Simon Boccanegra
, the Covent Garden version, Tito Gobbi, Victoria de los Angeles, Boris Christoff, please Artyom, it’s on the table,” he added, as if choosing his last record. When I put it on the turntable, Tolya closed his eyes and listened for a few seconds.
“You should listen sometime, Artyom.” He smiled. “It’s about a poisoned drink and reconciliation. Turn it louder, please.”
“You don’t want your cousin to hear?”
“He already knows most of it.”
“Most?”
“I left out certain things.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“Of course I trust him, it’s for his sake,” said Tolya. “My cousin thinks he is leading the loyal opposition, he thinks he and his people and their money can bring down Putin and the Kremlin. He has made tremendous fortune, billions, so now he hears there is trouble in Ukraine, he supports Orange Revolution, he hears there will be trouble in Georgia this summer, he sends money to what he calls the democratic forces. It makes him a target.” Tolya sat up. “It’s not about him, it’s about you. This is why I came to see you, Artyom. Your fingerprints were all over Val’s place. Excuse me.” He said, hauled himself to his feet like an old man, and slowly made his way out of the room to the bathroom.
“Why did they look for your fingerprints, Artie?” said Tolya when he returned. “Was there a reason?”
“They probably run everything through the computer.”
“Yes, perhaps,” he said, “but people ask questions.”
“Which people?”
“It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to warn you.”
I was pretty stunned. I kept my mouth shut.
“By the time I got to New York, they had taken Valentina away,” said Tolya.
“I’m sorry.”
“You tried. Your Mr Roy Pettus is asking about you.”
“I needed his help.”
“You’re naive,” said Tolya softly.
“Just tell me.”
He picked up his glass and sipped the vodka.
“I got to the loft and my Val was gone. Leven, you call him Bobo? He was waiting as if he knew I was coming. It took balls. He sees me, he gets up and doesn’t know what to say, just stands there, this skinny tall boy, long arms hanging down, showing respect, and I think to myself, I should offer my hand. So I put out my hand, and I think he is going to kiss it. ‘I’m sorry, Anatoly Anatolyevich. Please forgive me,’ Leven says in Russian.”
She wasn’t there, of course. They had taken her away. Together they went to the morgue but he couldn’t look at her body.
“I love all my kids, Artie. Val’s sister, of course, and my boy who I almost never see, but she is special. Valentina is like me. She never took shit from anybody. She wanted to do things how she wanted. Even as a little girl when I bring them to Florida from Moscow to be safe, she is a rebel.”
I didn’t say anything, just waited for him to catch his breath and take another slug of the vodka.
It was the hot dog that got to Tolya, he said. Before he and Bobo got to the morgue, he saw the lunchtime crowd, and in it, a man eating a hot dog with yellow mustard and listening to his iPod. He saw the mustard, the white strings of the iPod, the man’s red shirt very clearly. Then they went inside.
“I can’t look,” said Tolya. “I just went back outside. You love her, Artie? I know that. I know you loved her also not just as my daughter. I know that you did and that you never touched her. You said to yourself, this is not right, and you left it.”
“What else?”
“In the official world, it’s hard to get information.”
“You bought some?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“They tried to poison her, Artyom.” he said. “Turn off the music, please.”
“With what?”
“Polonium-210.”
“The autopsy?”
“They said they were still testing. They didn’t know how to look. You have to know how to look for the symptoms. In another week, or perhaps two, she would have lost her hair, her skin, everything. She would have died very fast, very ugly. But Leven gave me the pictures he took of her at home, after she was dead, she looked very pretty in her summer dress Artyom, everything was in place. How was that possible I asked myself? I asked myself over and over, and I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong about the poison, maybe I went crazy, or maybe the poison had not yet started its work on her body.”
“But you came here to see me.”
“I think, I must tell Artie about the fingerprints. I must tell him before anything happens to him.”
“You think it was me?”
“I only know your fingerprints were everywhere in her apartment, even on the desk, the pictures, the bed, everywhere, even things in the wastepaper basket, old boxes of film, on brushes she uses to clean her negatives. I tell everybody, Artie Cohen had nothing at all to do with this. He was often here, he is our friend, of course his fingerprints are in the apartment. And I don’t ask you anything at all,” he said. “This second killing was not murder. Whoever did this, it was a blessing,” he said. “It kept her from dying like Sasha Litvinenko. It kept her from being eaten from inside. It was from mercy, I understand,” said Tolya who got up, kissed me on the cheek and went to his room.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
“Do you believe me?” I said.
“If you tell me, of course,” said Tolya, but I could see he didn’t believe me, not completely.
“Will they believe me at home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who, Artyom?”
“Grisha Curtis. You were right, it began in London, you can get anything here, buy anyone.”
The housekeeper came in with a tray of drinks, but Tolya shook his head.
“I must go,” said Tolya, barely reacting to the information about Grisha. “We all travel too much now,” he said. “Russians feel they have to keep moving or somebody might take this right away again,” he added. “Don’t worry, I’m okay,” he added, but it was hard for him to talk and he caught his breath constantly the way you might catch your clothing on a thorn.
“You should eat.”
“It’s all right. I’ve had everything,” said Tolya. “I’ve had my share,” he added. “I’ve had all the good things.” He left the room again, and I listened to the music until he came back, carrying a black raincoat and a small bag.
I asked him again where he was going.
“Where is Curtis? Is he in Moscow?”
“I don’t know. You’re going after him?”
“What do you think, Artyom? To Moscow?”
“Probably, yes,” I said, and regretted it as soon as I did. In that instant I knew Tolya would go after, him and in Moscow Tolya would be in bad trouble.
“What else?”
“Curtis knows I have stuff on him, he knows I got it from his office, that I can make the connection that he hired this Terenti creep to kill Val, and Terenti got it wrong and killed Masha by mistake, and then Grisha took over. He knows I can make the connection to Valentina. I think he was furious when this Terenti shit got the wrong girl and killed Val himself. If he went to Moscow it’s because the Russians won’t let the Brits extradite, he probably thinks he’s safe there.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Then he killed her twice, once with the Polonium, the second time because he suddenly thought about her suffering horribly, and so he suffocated her and laid her nicely on the bed. And I believed it was you. Oh God,” said Tolya. “I want you to stay here for a little while, please. To be safe. I’ll call you as soon as it’s safe.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll call you.”
I ran out of the house and caught him near the car. He was bent over, trying to catch some air, to get a breath. I took his hand.
“What’s the matter with you, what’s wrong?” I put my hand on his shoulder.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m just tired.”
“Where’s he going?”
“He didn’t tell me,” Larry said. “He asked me to go to New York to look after things there for him.”
“I thought Fiona said you were in danger, that you should have already left England, wasn’t that it, what happened?”
“I didn’t go,” said Larry. “I had to be where Tolya could find me if he needed me. I’m not such a coward as you might think, Artie. But now I’ll go to New York for him. And you must stay here. He said if you went to New York now, there would be questions about Val’s death.”
“Is he going to Moscow? He shouldn’t go to Moscow, it will be bad for him. He’ll act crazy.”
“I can’t stop him. Look, I’m going to have to leave myself,” said Larry. “Do you need any money?”
“I don’t know. Yes.”
“Then just take it.” He held out a wad of cash. “Anything else I should know? I might be able to help.”
I told him I beat up a creep near Moscow Road with a gun.
“God, Artie. That means your prints are in Valentina’s room in New York, and also on some creep in London. Did you kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll make some calls. Chances are it was just a hood nobody will give a fuck about. Was he black?”
“No.”
“Islamic?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“If he was Islamic, you’d be in better shape. The cops here personally feel one less is a better thing. It doesn’t matter. But they’re not crazy about guns here, at least not officially, and there’s only so much I can do, so just stay put, right? Just a few days. Don’t make calls. Don’t take any.”
“What about Fiona Colquhoun?”
“What about her?”
“She’ll wonder where I am.”
“I’ll let her know as much as I can.”
“How well do you know her?” I asked Larry.
“We’re friends,” he said.