Bloody London Page 15

  “You’re a real cop, or it’s a costume?” Dead Spice asked.

  I said, “Tough call.”

  In the street, I leaned against the building, called Lippert on my cellphone. Things were pretty good, he said: a few people trampled but not injured bad on the Brooklyn Bridge; a heart attack at a Queens disco; a couple wiseguys shot each other in Brighton Beach; not much else.

  I stayed on Sutton Place. By three in the morning, the crowd had thinned, the adrenalin was low. I was weary, and so were the other cops who walked down the street littered with bottles and streamers and candy corn.

  I got a carton of coffee from a deli, then climbed down to the pocket park below the Middlemarch. I sat on a bench to drink the coffee.

  Silently, a man sat down next to me. He was small, dark hair. He wore some kind of cheesy toga, mask over his eyes and nose, a paper plate with a slab of pumpkin pie on it in his hand. He set the plate on the pavement and pushed up the mask so I could see his face. It was Pindar Aguirre. The janitor from the Middlemarch. The guy I met in Astoria who took a flesh wound that should have been mine. I could hear how the shot cracked out from nowhere on a sunny day in Queens. I’d tried to check up on him after he got shot, but at his place nobody answered. Now I said, “You OK?”

  “Sure. It was nothing.”

  “You been at a party?”

  He shrugged. “Some of my old friends at the building. Sure. They had a party. They invited me.”

  For a few minutes we sat silent, staring at the water. Then he started to talk. He talked very soft, and I was tired and it took a minute until I could connect. Then my blood turned into ice.

  “They swim every day,” he said. “Every morning,” he added. Then he put his mask back on and hurried away. He left his pie on the pavement. I sat and stared at it, shivering.

  I climbed down to the jetty and the police boat that rocked gently now in pitch-black water. The arc lights on the bridge were out now. The fireworks were finished. People roamed the riverfront, but the party was over.

  The cops on the boat were grateful for some company. I sat with them and watched the Middlemarch and thought about Aguirre. I watched for a while, until the sky started to lighten, slowly first. An early mist covered the city like gauze.

  It was just before daybreak. I was in uniform. There were still cops on the street, and when I got to the Middlemarch, no one stopped me. I was in.

  It was cold. Somewhere, water leaked. It dripped on to the old, cold stone floor. I listened for footsteps in the basement of the building. No one came. I checked the room where the night super lived; the door was open. The room was empty. I had timed it right, between shifts; the pool opened at seven, Frankie said. Tommy swam at six-thirty. I looked at my watch. It was six. “They swim every day … every morning,” Aguirre said.

  Upstairs, the doorman, the cops, the residents, hung-over from the parties, slept.

  I waited. I looked at my watch. Six-ten. My lids sank over my eyes, then I thought about my loft, the way the bastards ripped it up, thought about Lulu Fine and Callie Rizzi and Sverdloff. And about Frankie. The adrenalin buzz that came with the anger woke me up. I was wide awake.

  Then I heard it: the faint slap of bare feet on tiles. Slap slap slap, it was rhythmic, careless. Then a ripple of water. I walked towards the locker rooms. The smell of chlorine got in my nose.

  In the men’s locker room, a crumpled black coat lay on the floor. There was a wide column, floor to ceiling, just outside the locker room. I put my hand on it, felt the damp, cool, tiled surface, got a partial view of the pool. It was empty. Then I smelled the dope. It drifted towards me, I smelled it before I saw them. Heard them laughing. It was raucous, unselfconscious laughter.

  They slipped into view. Except for the coats, they were still in costume: two boys in Victorian clothes. They passed a joint back and forth and grinned, then one of them rested it on the rim of the pool. They stripped quickly and dove into the water. I knew the kids. Jared Mishkin and his freckled pal Harry. Harry was freckled all over. It gave his body a weird reddish tinge.

  They were good swimmers. They cut through the water while I watched, then pulled themselves out again, skin shining with water. They retrieved the marijuana.

  The smell of chlorine mixed with the stink of the dope. The boys laughed, swam, came up for air. Jared and Harry. Powerful swimmers, big shoulders, muscular arms, these were boys who could kill an old man. Whack his head with a sword. A Ninja sword. A killing toy you could order from any martial arts catalogue.

  “Kids talk about killing,” Callie had said. They practiced on chickens. Christ, where was she? She had been dancing with Jared. Not Jared, she had said. He was a good boy, she said. He worked at the homeless shelter most nights.

  I let them see me.

  “Come on in,” Jared called when he looked up and saw me. His voice had a hollow, metallic ring in the cavernous pool. I got up close, I could see he was ripped and so was his pal, and they clambered out of the pool and sat on the rim, legs over the edge, feet in the water. Both of them were naked. They had men’s bodies, but boy’s faces. No fear.

  I said, “How did it work?”

  “What’s that?” Jared picked up the joint. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t be smoking this,” he said, and crushed it on the rim of the pool. “How did what work?”

  “Thomas Pascoe let you in to swim?”

  “Mr Pascoe liked us swimming here. He liked it,” Harry said. “He said so all the time.”

  “He gave you a key.”

  “Sure. That’s it. He gave us the key.”

  “And you forgot to give it back. After he died, you kept the key.”

  Harry was nervous. “Sure, that’s it, definitely. Right.”

  “Who else swam? Which other kids?”

  “Mostly us. We’re on the swim team at school. It was great having the extra practice time.”

  “You swam the day Pascoe was murdered?”

  “We left before it happened. We swam very early that day, then we left for school,” Harry said.

  Jared Mishkin was silent.

  “You forgot to mention you were here that day?”

  “We were scared. Harry was scared, you know?” Suddenly Jared tried to get up. I put a hand on his neck where he could feel it; the kid flinched. For the first time I saw into Jared Mishkin’s blue eyes; they were empty holes. There was nothing there at all.

  I said to Jared Mishkin. “How did it happen? It was Harry here, right?”

  “He can’t touch us,” Jared said. “He can’t.”

  Harry said nervously, “How do you know?”

  “There weren’t any witnesses, asshole.”

  “Talk to me, Harry.”

  “Will it help me?”

  “Sure it will.”

  Jared said. “You’re not a real cop. Callie told me.

  You’re nothing. You can’t do anything. Pascoe was driving us crazy.”

  “Pascoe?”

  “Yeah. At first it was fine, we showed up, we swam, we listened to a few of his numbnuts old stories, then it got really pretty boring. The old days. The war. The fucking OSS, the Cold War, Moscow, how the Russian and British people stood up to the Nazis, the Blitz, who the fuck cares, it was a zillion years ago.”

  Harry piped up. “It was working at the shelter that got to us. We didn’t like the smell. Our friends made fun of us, but Tommy said it was the price we paid for privilege, some shit. He said we should get to know the people better, they were human beings, but they weren’t, you know. They smelled. But we got to know them better.”

  Jared egged his friend on now. “Tell him, Harry.”

  “Yes,” Harry giggled. “Turned out they were just about as good as us. Or as bad.”

  Jared Mishkin looked at his feet. Under water they were flat as fish. Then he glanced up at me. “So Tommy told us a story once about surrogates during the Civil War. Young men of good family, their parents would buy some poor kid to go to war for them. We figur
ed someone at the shelter could be our surrogate.”

  “The guy who got beat up,” I said to Harry. “You brought him to the shelter, but it was you who beat Ramirez up.”

  “He was going to talk.” Harry’s voice was petulant.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” Jared said to his pal. He went on, “We only wanted to scare Tommy, but, well, like, things happen.”

  Harry looked nervous.

  “Chill out,” Jared said. “If they try and touch us we’ll say Tommy abused us or some other shit. He’s not a real cop. He didn’t read us our rights. And we didn’t kill Tommy, anyhow. Did we?”

  I said, “You got all the angles. You didn’t kill him, so the devil made you do it? That’s what you’re saying?”

  They laughed an insolent adolescent laugh, part terror, part disbelief. “Yeah, that’s right. We read a lot of stuff. It’s a very good school. Nietzsche. Faust. Milton. The devil has all the good stuff, isn’t that how it goes?” Harry was high. “We thought picking a guy named Dante was a nice touch.”

  I thought about their costumes. “Like Jekyll and Hyde.”

  Jared said, “Yeah, that was kinda corny but Harry here liked it.”

  I said, “What about Mrs Fine? She bored you too?”

  Harry said, “Who is Mrs Fine?”

  “She’s some woman that lives in our building, you know, low-class English, always in your face, always bugging my mom,” said Jared. “I heard someone did her, but what’s she got to do with it?”

  “So you had Thomas Pascoe killed because he bored you?”

  Jared shifted his weight. “Actually, I heard my dad say things would be easier if Tommy was out of the way. I heard him say it to my mom. Tommy was in everybody’s way.” He looked up. “I felt I owed it to my father to help him. I found a way to get rid of Tommy. I helped him. Didn’t I?”

  “And you figure your father will always take the rap for you?”

  Jared got up and started for the locker room. “He’ll do anything for me.”

  They were big, they were big enough to kill, and I looked at them, but I didn’t feel anything except a cold dread. I yelled. “Sit the fuck down.” I knew there was more.

  Jared sat down abruptly and I took out my gun and put it against his forehead. I said, “How did you get in here?”

  “I have a key. Like you thought.”

  “You stupid little fuck, there aren’t any keys to the pool. The elevator comes straight down and the door is locked until seven. Only Thomas Pascoe swam earlier. Access to this pool is through the building for residents. How’d you get in Monday? How’d you sneak Ramirez in? How’d you get in today?” I was furious, looking at them, this pair of shitty kids sitting at the edge of the pool, thinking they owned the world. “Who the fuck let you in?”

  I waited for his answer. I was squatting next to the Mishkin kid, my gun still out. I wanted to hurt him. “Who let you in?”

  17

  “I did.” The voice echoed from the other side of the pool.

  Wrapped in the white terry-cloth robe, Frankie Pascoe appeared, walked swiftly to Jared Mishkin, put her hand on his bare shoulder. She caressed the damp skin. She touched him as if she couldn’t keep her hands off, and said, “I did. I always let them in.” Then she looked at me with the cold light eyes and I realized they were swimmer’s eyes, light, see-through green like water.

  She said, “It wasn’t Tommy. It was me.” She smiled at the boy. He pushed her away hard and she reeled backwards. Frankie stumbled. I put out my hand to keep her from falling and she took it.

  From the second I saw her, a week earlier now, a week ago, seven days, I knew the fallout from Pascoe’s murder would go on and on, like a wave that caught everything in it.

  “Get dressed,” I said and Jared leaned down to pick up his clothes. Frankie watched him. It wasn’t just the father she cared about; it was the kid. She was in love with Jared Mishkin.

  I was already on the phone. Before they were finished dressing, a pair of uniforms and a detective showed up. They read the kids their rights. Silently the three of them took hold of the two kids and got them in cuffs. I pushed Frankie to one side.

  “You saw me watching the boys in the park that first day. That’s why you gave me the list of names. To keep me busy somewhere else. You were protecting him.”

  “Yes.”

  She exhaled and sat on a bench. “Can I have a cigarette please?” I gave her one. “I got him into St Pete’s, I got Tommy to spend some time with him, I didn’t want him growing up a Russian hood, did I?”

  “You were fucking the kid too.”

  “I would have if I could, but he wouldn’t let me, so I settled for watching. I watched him swim. I watched him shower in my bathroom after he swam. I told you I’m not a sentimental woman. I gave him keys to the apartment. I told Tommy if he had keys, he could come upstairs, he could use the residents’ elevator to get to the pool when he liked. Tommy thought it was for the swimming.”

  “And Harry?”

  Frankie turned up her palms. “Harry came along for the ride.” She looked at him. “Harry was a joke.”

  “But you were with Leo Mishkin that night, like you said?”

  “Yes, of course.” She watched the cops take the boys, half dressed in their costumes. Frankie said to me, “Will they charge them as adults?”

  “If I have anything to do with it? You bet.”

  “Why can’t you leave things alone?” she said.

  “You fucked me to find out what I knew.”

  “Don’t be an infant, Artie, for heaven’s sake, what’s that got to do with it? I liked you.”

  “You were never in love with Mishkin.”

  “Sure I was. When I met Leo, I was in love with everyone I met. It was the Seventies. Good times. Peace and love. I helped Mish get to America. I loved the whole wide fucking world. I helped Leo Mishkin get to America, which was pretty bloody decent of me, don’t you think? It meant his son was born here, a proper American.” She laughed.

  I grabbed Frankie Pascoe’s wrist. “You think you’re going to work this so they don’t get the kid, don’t you? You’ll put it on Leo Mishkin if you have to, but you’ll fix it, won’t you?”

  “Anything.”

  It was an unholy alliance. Pascoe got Mishkin’s kid into the best school in town. Mishkin bailed out Pascoe with dough for his causes, his shelter. He gave him his son for a companion and fucked his wife. I remembered Mishkin coming out of the elevator with his son. I remembered how he looked at him. I played the scene back in my head: Leo Mishkin with the fine suit; the beautiful kid at his side; Mishkin’s adoring look. He would do anything for the kid, like Jared said. So would Frankie.

  “Did they know about each other? Did Jared know about you and Leo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Leo know how you felt about his son?”

  “No. And he wouldn’t believe it if he knew.”

  Dante Ramirez was the sucker. He did the dirty work. Along with Lippert and a couple of precinct guys from the One Nine, we waded through beer cans, balloons, confetti, the crap left in the streets from the night before, and we picked him up at the shelter and took him to the local station house. They offered him a deal. I sat with Sonny Lippert and a homicide guy in the box while they grilled Ramirez.

  The Mishkin kid told it like it happened. They made Ramirez a friend, gave him money, bought him booze, promised him a place to live.

  “The shelter was nice,” Dante Ramirez said, “but they were getting ready to tear it down. The kids told me Mr Pascoe’s shutting it down. Developers moving in. I didn’t wanna be on the streets.”

  “Was it them that beat you that night in the bank?”

  “One of them,” he said. “I think one of them. Freckles. Red hair. They thought I might tell. Now I told.” He laughed bitterly.

  “You did Pascoe for money?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Money for a place to live. Like everyone else done around here in Manhattan. The cit
y wouldn’t give me nothing. I decided to take.”

  Ramirez was the sucker all right. I went home. I had been up three nights running. I had to sleep.

  *

  In the middle of the night, late, after they charged Ramirez and I’d gone home and slept a while, Tolya Sverdloff woke me up. He was at the Holiday Inn on Tenth Avenue.

  “Help me,” he said.

  When I got there, he was in the crummy bar eating peanuts nervously, feeding them into his mouth like a machine. He spoke in Russian. “Can you take me to Newark?” he said. “To the airport. Please.” He could catch a ride with a friend who had a plane, he said. He said, “Don’t ask me who, Artyom. Just drive me, please.”

  I said, “Let’s go,” and he scooped up more nuts, grabbed a carry-on bag from the floor, put it over his shoulder, followed me outside.

  I drove through the tunnel; he didn’t talk. The industrial wasteland on the Jersey side of the river stank. The weather had changed. It was dank and chilly. The air was sulphurous, the lights on the power plants looked dull, and Manhattan, across the river, gave the sky an eerie glow. A few hundred yards from the airport, I rolled up the window and pulled into a gas station.

  We sat in the car, me and Sverdloff. He watched his wing mirror and I thought of all the times he saved my ass. I couldn’t feed Sverdloff to the cops, no matter what he did. Friends are all I have.

  Sverdloff picked at a scab in his nose; blood leaked out and he stuffed some Kleenex in the nostril. He looked at his watch. “I can get a lift in two hours,” he said.

  “Whose plane?”

  “I said it doesn’t matter.”

  “What’s happening here, Tolya?”

  “It goes back a long way.”

  “You and Mishkin?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Mishkin will say he set Pascoe up, take the rap for his kid. They’ll indict him as an accessory.”

  “He’ll go to Moscow. Trust me.”

  “What about Lulu Fine?”

  He shrugged. “The same thugs who tried to warn you off the case went after her for the same reason.”