Blood Count

CHAPTER 16

Hello?” I had Marianna Simonova’s storage room door half open. I called out again, but what did I expect, some fucking ghost? It was pitch black in the room, and I fumbled on the wall for a switch. The light came on-a low-watt lousy overhead bulb.

I moved inside. Left the door open a crack. I didn’t want anyone to see me poking around, but I hate tight spaces. Hate them. Already I could feel the walls closing in.

On the wall near the light switch was a half-peeled sticker with the Atomic symbol. This had been a nuclear fallout shelter once, back when Americans figured Russia was going to bomb us. We thought the same thing when I was a kid. I’d wake up at night sweating, thinking America was going to nuke us and we’d fry in our beds, our faces oozing off.

The room was about eight by fourteen, long, narrow, the old paint on the walls scabby and falling off. It was jammed all the way back and halfway to the ceiling with furniture, chairs, dressers, rugs, tables all piled on top of each other.

A crummy metal rack to the right held rows of pictures, most in fake gold frames. I slid one out. It was an oil painting of some happy workers on a pig farm. From the 1950s. But there were also Chagall prints and what looked like a Rodchenko poster. Not an original, I figured.

Something about Simonova had made me feel she’d been playing a part. All the right props. Maybe I was just pissed off at her for dying and making Lily sad. Making me spend time in a dark little room that felt like a coffin. On a shelf to the right were about a hundred wooden dolls, all sizes, all kinds, an endless row of wooden dollies. Gave me the creeps. I ran my flashlight over the room.

I had no idea where the Christmas decorations would be. Boxes on top of boxes, some so precarious I figured they were going to fall on me, topple over, bury me under tons of stuff. Books were stuck into the crevices between pieces of furniture, little gilt tables with legs missing, cracked mirrors, a samovar, varnished boxes in plastic bags. It was like a souvenir stall, a bazaar, a flea market. What the hell did she need all this crap for?

Close to where I stood was a pile of cushions, red, gold, green, velvet and satin, fabric frayed. The stink of damp came off them. I could hear water drip. A few drops fell on my head. I brushed them away. I reached out for the wall; the cement blocks were moist. There were newspapers tied up like bales of hay and a baby stroller with a wheel missing.

Again, I heard a rat, maybe the same rat I’d heard that morning. All New York buildings have rats. There had been rats on Sutton Place when I worked a crime at the Middlemarch, a huge fancy building, rich people, swimming pool, and rats. Fat ones. Well fed. Too fat to run. Fat people. Fat rats.

Here, I was shut up with the rats, and I could hear one, maybe more, scratching at the walls. I’d give it five more minutes, I said to myself. I found a cardboard box that was half open. When I scrabbled inside, it made me gag-mothballs, old newspaper, something I couldn’t identify that smelled like a dead animal. It was a fur hat.

There was a huge rusting metal trunk, the lettering-Simonova’s name-was in English and Russian. It was easy to get to, so I opened it.

Start at the top, I thought. I found a thick folder with papers in it, official stuff, old and yellow, and I set it aside. Maybe a will, I thought, maybe something important about the woman’s life.

It was like an archaeological dig, everything packed in layers. On top were two winter coats and boots with labels from Macy’s. There were copies of the New Yorker that dated back ten years. Underneath were books, huge tomes in Russian on socialism, economics, history.

Then more clothes. Fancy dress-up clothes, evening things, stuff she might have worn to go out, and hats, and shawls. Beneath these were some stage costumes-Robeson’s, I wondered?

I dug further. There were military uniforms, heavy rough pieces, brown, khaki, scratchy fabric, stiff with age, and with them thick leather belts and broken boots. Maybe her father had been in the war. I even found a Young Pioneer’s outfit, complete with shirt, shorts, red scarf, stinking of ancient kiddie sweat. I’d had one like it that I’d hated. In a cardboard hatbox, I found a little nest of children’s clothes with American labels. A little boy’s clothes.

At the bottom of the trunk were old Soviet magazines, including the famous issue of Soviet Life with the bear on the cover, along with copies of Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Izvestia.

I took out one brittle yellow paper and it crumbled into my hand. It was from October of 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when my own father, a young KGB agent, was stuck in New York. I had read his diary. In one of the newspapers now, mesmerized by the style of the propaganda, I read an article about Cuba. Russians loved their little socialist brother, the author had written. How stylish and handsome and brave were its barbudos, the bearded ones, how wonderful the music. That year, the top hit in Moscow was “Cuba My Love.”

I used my flashlight to read the papers. There were stories about Paul Robeson’s visit to Moscow, about the wild party in 1961, about his alleged suicide attempt and the CIA’s efforts to silence him.

There was more. Programs from Robeson’s performances, articles about his part in the Spanish Civil War, a thousand-page biography. It was as if Simonova had been trying to piece together his life, as if she had been an actress preparing for the part of his lover. I wondered if she had made it all up, a story she retailed to make herself important, a tale that had ensnared Lily.

Finally, I found a shoe box-B ONWIT T ELLER, the logo said-and I rummaged through it. There were glass baubles, red velvet flowers, gold bows. There was a small, flat box addressed to Lily. I put it in my pocket. Ready to leave, I turned off my flashlight.

Something hit me hard on the back of the neck. The pain was so intense I wanted to vomit. I could hear somebody behind me in the storage room breathing hard. I kicked out as hard as I could. I kicked again and again, fumbling at the same time for my gun. Remembered I’d left it in my car when I went into the hospital.

In my pocket was a Swiss Army knife. Getting it out, I cut my own hand on the corkscrew. My hand started to bleed. I dropped the knife. Just then I thought I heard the man behind me swear in Russian. I couldn’t be sure. I was frantic. It was pitch black in the little room. Then he hit me with the butt of a gun. I waited for the next blow; it would kill me.

Suddenly from someplace out in the basement came the sound of voices. The creep backed out. Then the door slammed. It was locked from outside.

My hand was still bleeding. I found an old shirt and wound it around the red gash. I thought: this is where I’m going to end up, suffocating in a basement room in Harlem full of stinking Russian clothes and newspapers. All around me was the detritus of the Soviet Union-Simonova’s past, my own. I’d never escape.

If I get out, I said to myself, I’ll quit. I’ll quit being a cop. I’ll teach school, or take my pension, or work for Tolya tending bar-he was always asking me to go into business with him. The rest of the time, I’ll take care of Lily. I’ll lie around and watch baseball and listen to Ella Fitzgerald and Stan Getz, like a New York Oblomov.

I didn’t believe I’d get out, and the feeling of loss and pain, the thought that Lily was just upstairs, made me crazy. This was where I was going to die.

How long did I stay in the room? I must have passed out. When I came to, I looked at my watch. It had been almost an hour.

I’d told Lily I was going to the storage room. Where was she? Maybe she had slipped on the ice when she was out, or got hit by a car in a skid. Why didn’t she come looking for me or call somebody, call Virgil Radcliff? Where was she?

I banged on the door, yelling, but there was no reply. I’m going to die in this room. I’m going to bleed and die.

Minutes went by.

Animals scampered past.

Footsteps passed overhead.

Somebody playing Ella, improbable, my hallucination. Ella singing “Manhattan.”

My finger bleeding through the scrap of white cloth.

Me, gagging on my past.