“So you’ll come to my party?”
“Sure. Where?”
“In London,” he said.
“You know I worked a case there once. It left a bad taste.”
“You’re wrong. Is fantastic city, Artemy.” I drank some more wine.
“Best city, most civilized.”
Whenever he talked about London these days, it was to tell me how wonderful it was. But he described it as a tourist might- the parks, the theaters, the pretty places. I knew that he had, along with his club there, other business. He didn’t tell me about it, I didn’t ask.
He put his glass down. “Oh, God, I love the smell of the Medoc in the morning, Artyom,” said Tolya, switching from English to Russian.
Tolya’s English depended on the occasion. As a result of an education at Moscow’s language schools, he spoke it beautifully, with a British accent. Drunk, or what he sometimes called “party mood”, his language was his own invention, a mix of Russian and English, low and high, the kind he figured un-educated people speak-the gangsters, the nouveau riche Russians. He taunted me constantly. He announced, once in a while, that he knew I thought all Russkis were thugs, or Neanderthals. “You think this, Artemy,” he said.
His Russian, when he bothered, though, was so pure, so soft, it made me feel my soul was being stroked. Like his father spoke when he was alive, Tolya told me once. His father had been trained as an actor. Singer, too. Paul Robeson complimented his father when his father was still a student. He had the voice, my pop did, said Tolya.
“You said you need a favor?”
“Just to take some books to an old lady in Brooklyn, okay?” Tolya put a shopping bag on the bar. “You don’t mind? Sure sure sure?”
He already knew I’d do what he wanted without asking. It was his definition of a friend. He believed only in the Russian version of friends, not like Americans, he says, who call everybody friends. “My best friend, they say,” he hooted mockingly.
“I would go myself,” said Tolya, “but I have two people who didn’t show up last night. Which a little bit annoys me because I am very nice with my staff. I pay salary also tips, unlike many clubs and restaurants.”
It was one of Sverdloff’s beefs that most staff at the city’s restaurants were paid minimum wage and made their money on tips. “I hate this system,” he said. “In Spain it is civilized, in Spain, waiters are properly paid,” he added and I could see he was starting on his usual riff.
“Right,” I said, feeling the wine in my veins like liquid pleasure. “Of course, Tolya. You are the nicest boss in town.”
“Do not laugh at me, Artyom,” he said. “I am very good socialist in capitalist drag.”
Tolya had called his club Pravda2, because there was already a bar named Pravda, which the owner, very nice English guy but stubborn, Tolya said, had refused to sell him. Club named Pravda must belong to Russian guy, Tolya said. English guy won’t sell me his, I open my own.
Pravda2, Artie, you get it?
You like the pun, Artie? You get it? Yeah, I get it, Tol, I’d say, Truth Too,
Originally, he’d planned on making P2, as he called it, a champagne bar he’d run for his friends, to entertain them, and where he would only sell Krug. He added a few dishes, and got himself a line to a supplier with very good caviar, and a food broker, a pretty girl, who could get excellent foie gras, he told me.
To his surprise, it was a success. He was thrilled. He gave in to his own lust for red wine, big reds, he calls them, and only French, the stuff that costs a bundle. And cognac. Some vodkas.
I wasn’t a wine drinker. People who loved it bored the shit out of me, but sometimes Sverdloff got me over in the afternoon when the wine salesmen come around and we spent hours tasting stuff. Some of them were truly great. Like the stuff I was having for breakfast that morning.
Tolya saw himself, he had told me the other evening, as an impresario of the night. I said he was a guy with a bar.
He liked to discuss the wines, not to mention the vodka he got made for him special in Siberia that he kept in a frozen silver decanter. He went to Mali last January to visit his Tuareg silversmith. He stayed for a month. Fell in love with the music.
Sverdloff liked the idea of the rare piece of silver, the expensive wine, liked to think of himself as a connoisseur. It’s just potatoes, I said. Potatoes. Vodka is a bunch of fermented spuds, I told him.
“So you’ll take the books for me?” Tolya said.
“Give me the address.” I finished the wine in my glass.
“They’re for Olga Dimitriovna, you remember, you took some books before, the older lady in Starrett City? She likes you, she always says, please say hello to your friend. I got them special from our mutual friend, Dubi, in Brighton Beach, very good editions, Russian novels, a whole set of Turgenev,” he added, and picked up his half- pound of solid gold Dunhill lighter with the cigar engraved, a ruby for the glowing tip. He flicked it and relit his Cohiba.
“Of course.”
“Thank you for this, Artie, honest. It is only these books, and some wine, but this lady depends, you know?” He put his hand into the pocket of his custom-made black jeans, and extracted a wad of bills held together with a jeweled money clip. “Look, put this inside one of the books. She won’t take money, but I know she needs.”
I took the dough.
“I would go myself if I could,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah, and how would you ever find Brooklyn anyhow?” I picked up the bottle and poured a little more wine in my glass.
“So you’ll go now, I mean, you’re waiting for what,
“What’s the hurry?”
My elbows on the bar, I was slowly winding down into a vacation mode, thinking of things I’d do, sleep late, listen to music, some fishing off of Montauk, maybe ride my bike over the George Washington Bridge, see a few movies, take in a ball game, dinner out with some pals, maybe dinner with Valentina though I didn’t mention it to Tolya. He was crazy about his daughter, Val, and so was I. If Tolya knew how much, he’d rip my arms out. She was his kid, she was half my age.
“Pour me a little more of that wine, will you?” I said.
“Just go.”
“I hear you. I’m going.”
“You’ll come by tonight?” said Tolya.
“Sure.”
“Good.”
I was halfway out the door, when I heard Tolya behind me.
“Artemy?” He stood on the sidewalk in front of Pravda2, and held his face up to the hot sun. He waved at a delivery guy, he smiled at a couple of kids on skateboards. He was lord of this little domain, he owned it, it was his community. I envied him.
“What’s that?”
He hesitated.
“You used to know a guy named Roy Pettus?”
“Sure. Ex-Feeb. Worked the New York FBI office back when, I knew him some, worked a case, a dozen years, more maybe, around the time we met, you and me.”
“I don’t remember,” said Tolya. “Anyhow, he was in here, asking about you.”
“When?”
“Last night after you left.”
“Pettus? What did he want?”
