the way she was still in the service of her country, how the new Russians, oligarchs, officials, agents, needed her. And paid her well. The tape ended abruptly. I turned it over.
I pressed play again.
“Even now I am old, I give help to Russian government,” Simonova said. “Last summer, they call and say, Marianna Simonova, we need you; we are concerned about this man who lives in New York City who is called Anatoly Sverdloff.”
“How did you help?” a voice said. It was Lily. Even through the plastic box, I could hear Lily strain for calm, could feel how it had taken every ounce of self-possession for her to remain attentive. “How did you help?” she said again.
Simonova laughed triumphantly. “They congratulate me for my idea. I help them locate daughter of Anatoly Sverdloff. I say to them always best way to deal with father is through child. The name of girl is Valentina.”
“When did you help them find Sverdloff’s daughter?”
“Late in last spring,” Simonova said.
It had been late last spring when Valentina Sverdloff was murdered.
So I knew.
Lily had wanted me to hear it. She had given me the box with the tapes. I knew now why Lily had wanted me to help her instead of Virgil. I knew why the oxygen had been turned too high. Simonova didn’t die because Lily forgot her medications, or because Lionel Hutchison tried to keep her from suffering. She had died from too much oxygen, that and her need to boast of her triumphs. She bragged to Lily. It had been Simonova’s big mistake.
I turned the dial on the oxygen down to a normal setting. I wiped it off. I pushed it in the closet.
In the kitchen I found a metal garbage can and a big black plastic bag. I took them out onto the terrace. I stuffed in everything-tapes, notes, the address book-everything with Lily’s name or references to her. I put in the old cassette player, the answering machine.
I turned my back to the wind as best I could, lit a match and set fire to the leftovers of Simonova’s life, and waited while it burned, praying nobody would notice. When the paper had turned to ash, the plastic melted, I took the whole mess, put it in the black bag and went back into the apartment.
I put on my jacket. I picked up the black bag. When I left the apartment, I took it all with me, all of it.
But noise came from the hall. The kind of uninhibited noise cops make. I went back outside. I climbed over the wall to the Hutchisons’ terrace and then to Carver’s. I waited. Somebody had decided to look around. If Simonova had poisoned Lionel Hutchison, that alone gave them plenty of reason. I looked into the hallway. The cops must have been inside Simonova’s place.
I knew I had to get away. They’d smell the stink of ash. I had to find Lily. I called Tolya.
“She’s not here,” he said.
I ran into her apartment, managed to avoid anyone seeing me.
She was gone. Her clothes were gone, her computer, everything.
CHAPTER 58
I went home. I parked my car, saw Mike waving at me through the coffee shop window, saw him beckon to me, but I ignored him, and went upstairs. I was beat. Anxious as hell about Lily, and dead tired.
“Hello, Artie.” She was sitting at the kitchen counter. “I borrowed your keys from Mike. I hope that was OK.” Lily looked at me.
“Yes.”
“I had to get out of that building for a while. I couldn’t just stay with Tolya.” She paused. “That’s not true,” she said. “I wanted to be here.”
“I’m glad you came.” I sat across from her.
“My own apartment is still sublet,” she said.
“Stay here.” I said. “Lily?”
“What?”
“The tape you used to record Simonova, the one you put in the box of her stuff-you wanted me to find it.”
“Yes. I couldn’t understand all the Russian, but there was plenty in English.
“So you know what she did to Valentina?”
“Yes.”
“Artie, there’s something I need to tell you.”
I cut her off. “No. There’s nothing at all. I know. Everything is fine. It’s all taken care of. It’s over.”
“Thank you. What about the Russian? Ivan? Won’t he talk? Say he had instructions from Marianna?”
“So what? Who will care what a pig like him says? Did you tell Virgil?”
“Not everything,” said Lily. “He wouldn’t have understood about Valentina and Tolya. He doesn’t know that I loved Val, and you loved her, and how it is with Tolya and us.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I wanted to, God, I really did. I was going to, but then you got there, and I was so crazy, it was as if I’d fallen over into some other universe. I didn’t know if I should tell you the truth or try to mislead you, so I came up with that cockamamie story about forgetting Marianna’s meds. I was scared. I freaked out. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Not to me. Never.”
She reached in her bag and took out a CD. “I wanted to give you this,” she said. “Lionel gave it to me for you.”
I opened the brown envelope addressed to me in Lionel Hutchison’s hand with his old Parker pen. In it was Anniversary, a Stan Getz album. I put it on my CD player. Then Lily and I sat on my couch and listened to “Blood Count,” Billy Strayhorn’s last song. We sat there for a long time, just listening.
Inauguration Day,
January 20, 2009
T hat morning I ran into Sam, the doorman at the building next to mine. He was getting a cab for a woman and her kid. Then he said hi and we stopped to talk for a minute.
“Great day,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yes.”
“Never thought I’d live to see this day.” Sam’s eyes welled up. “Never in my whole damn life,” he said.
Most of the time, Sam was a quiet man. Today he wanted to talk. He was wearing an Obama button.
“You know it’s my birthday,” said Sam, straightening his jacket. “Nice way to celebrate. I’m seventy years old today, Artie. My daughter went down to DC this morning. I said to her, ‘I want you there, I want you to see it with your own eyes and tell me.’ ” Sam paused and smiled. “Bet they don’t got anybody like Mr. Obama over in Russia.”
“Not a chance.” I don’t know why I asked, but since he had mentioned the place where I was born, I said, “Where are you from?” I realized I didn’t know. I had never asked Sam. I should have asked him.
We stood inside the front door of the building. He told me he was from Mississippi. Bad place, he said.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“I was no more than six years old,” said Sam. “I went out hunting for rabbits with my grandfather-I adored him; he raised me-and I got lost in the woods.” He paused. “Lost my way, lost him. I just wandered around, and then I looked up, and he was hanging from a tree.”
I didn’t know what to say, so we just stood there for a while until Sam said, “I have to get going. Want to be at home for the speech.”
In spite of having voted for McCain, Mike Rizzi had made fresh apple pie that morning, and I got Sonny Lippert over to eat breakfast with me. We sat, drinking coffee, chewing the fat. It was inauguration day. He told me he had fixed it with Jimmy Wagner to lose the tape that showed my car near the van on election night. For a while, Sonny told me, there had been talk that I’d pushed the van out of place, that somehow I was involved, that I could even be had up for some kind of involuntary manslaughter. But they found the bastard who left the hand brake off,
