On the way to the airport, I made one stop.
Roy Pettus was at a hotel on Lex, a Radisson so new you could smell the carpets. A girl at the desk gave me his room number after I badgered her and I went up to the ninth floor and banged on his door.
“It’s open,” Pettus called out, and I went in.
It was a nondescript room. The furniture was new and ugly. There was no sign Roy Pettus had been here except for the leather suitcase he was packing and the smell of Camels.
He snapped shut his bag, sat in one of a pair of small armchairs and gestured to the other one.
Pettus crossed one leg over the other. He wore pressed jeans, a white shirt and the cowboy boots.
I couldn’t sit. I started for the door, then turned around. I hated the idea of being in hock to Pettus.
“I can trust you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You have to keep your mouth shut. I need you to help me keep the media off this. I need time. I need ten hours of time. I don’t know who else can call in that kind of favor.”
“Go on.”
“Valentina Sverdloff is dead.”
“Tolya Sverdloff’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Somebody left her in her own bed. Last few hours. I was there earlier, she wasn’t there, I went back, she was there.” I stared at him.
“How?”
“She was probably suffocated. Somebody put a pillow over her face.”
“While she was asleep? Somebody who had access to her place?”
“I think so.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I offer you my condolences, and also to Mr Sverdloff,” he added in that peculiar old- fashioned way.
“Tolya doesn’t know.”
“Where is he?”
“London,” I said.
“What else can I do for you?”
He got up, went to the bathroom, returned with a glass of water and handed it to me. He looked at the bag I had put on the floor.
“You’re going to London to tell her father?”
“Just the media, please. Just make sure it’s kept quiet until I tell Tolya. That’s all. If that’s possible. Is it possible? Roy?”
“I can try.”
“Thank you.”
“You think somebody went after her to get at her father?”
“Yes. Maybe. If they did, then he’s in trouble. I have to go over. I have to tell him first, I have to do it in person. You understand that?”
“Of course.” He put out his hand. “I’ll see what I can do, Artie. I’ll try to help you. How old was she?”
“Twenty-four this week.”
“Same as my girl,” he said. “When are you leaving?”
“Soon.”
“I’ll be in touch,” said Roy Pettus.
“Thank you,” I said.
He shook my hand, walked me to the door, watched me go down the hall towards the elevator.
After I left, I realized Pettus had not asked me for anything in exchange. He didn’t ask me for favors, he didn’t propose I go to work on some Joint Force or attach myself to the Brits, get him intelligence, or spy on Sverdloff, he didn’t ask anything at all, just patted me on the shoulder and shook my hand.
But in Pettus’ mind, I was now his, I was in his play, maybe only with a walk-on part. He had wanted me in London, and he was getting what he wanted, I thought as I boarded the plane that evening. He never asked, never said a word, it was enough for Roy Pettus that I needed him. In some way, he’d ask for a payback, in some way, some time, and by the time the plane took off it felt like a threat.
PART THREE.LONDON
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I stood in front of Tolya Sverdloff’s house in London, trying to figure out how to tell him his daughter, his Val, the only thing in the world he completely loved, was dead. Murdered. Suffocated with a pillow, lying on her own bed, as if she had just gone for a nap. And that it was my fault for not taking care of her. I felt like somebody had ripped my guts out.
It was early. Heavy green trees lined the long street. Overhead the sun was flushing out the early London mist, pearly light skimming the tall white houses. Milk bottles rattled as a delivery guy placed a couple of quarts on the stoop next door. A woman in tight red shorts jogged by, a tiny dog like a mouse on a leash behind her.
Notting Hill. London. July. This was Tolya’s Eden, his paradise, the shining city on a hill where he had believed no bad thing could ever happen.
I’d been up most of the night, crammed in a plane seat, my head hurt now, jaws, teeth, neck, too little sleep, too much Scotch. Most of the way across the Atlantic, I’d stared into the darkness, thinking about Tolya, thinking about Valentina. If I dozed off, I dreamed about her as she had been the other night at my place, alive, laughing, beautiful, curious, or at breakfast on the boardwalk, eating lox, cracking jokes, snapping pictures. Asleep it was much worse. I forced myself to stay awake.
From the other direction a second woman appeared, this one in sky blue, also jogging, and smoking, and the two woman, both young, not more than thirty, stopped a few feet from me and kissed three times, and greeted each other in Russian. I strained to hear them.
Was this what Roy Pettus wanted from me? Check out the Russians in London? Eavesdrop?
So far as I could find out, he had kept the media in New York at bay, Val’s death had not been reported and I knew he’d want something in return soon.
How long did I stand outside Tolya Sverdloff’s house? Time seemed to collapse. I stared at the doorbell. I put my bag down on the steps.
Mercedes, Audis, Range Rovers lined the street, punctuated by Smart cars and Minis and VWs in red and racing green and yellow and blue, little colored buttons of cars, shiny in the early light like M &Ms on this rich, gorgeous street.
From a door opposite where I stood, a man emerged with a little girl in a straw hat. I could hear them laughing softly as they climbed into a red Range Rover and the girl tossed her school books onto the back seat.
A man in a black linen jacket and pressed jeans, a guy talking softly into his collar, suddenly moved into the frame. He had been standing a few doors down. He was, I figured, somebody’s guy, some kind of muscle who kept a lookout on behalf of the inhabitants in one of the pretty houses.
Tolya never got up early. I would ring the doorbell and he’d come out, grumpy about the time, grinning because I was there.
“You came for my birthday,” Tolya Sverdloff would say, seeing me in front of his door. “You just arrived? You flew overnight? I’m so happy, my friend. Come in, Artemy,” he would say, and I would have to tell him the
