Londongrad

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Bray was the name of the little town where Tito Dravic had worked. Bobo Leven got me the information same as he got me the information that Dravic had turned up in Belgrade and refused to talk to anyone. I was guessing he was scared by Masha’s murder, by offering to help me. Scared him so bad he’d left New York.

The town was an hour out of London, and the River Inn where Dravic had been a waiter sat in a plush green grove of trees on the banks of the river Thames. Yellow-green willows brushed their feathery branches against the water.

A lovely sweet smell came up as I got out of the cab from the train station, green, fresh, light years from the crappy playground where Masha had been tied up to the swing.

Another part of Tolya’s make-believe paradise was the English countryside. I knew Tolya had a country mansion someplace. His Eden.

“Ten pounds,” said the irritable cab driver when I gave him dollars by mistake.

Even before I got to the front door of the hotel, it hit me that Dravic had known Masha Panchuk better than he said, and that he knew her long before she got to New York.

How bad did it hurt when he found out she had a husband, that she was probably going out with other guys, maybe working as a hooker? Did he watch her with men at the club in Brooklyn and want to kill her?

As I left the parking lot at the inn I noticed the same Mercedes SUV I had seen from the window the night before, the SUV that rolled slowly over the speed bumps on Tolya’s street; or maybe I was just going nuts.

“Can I help you?”

The hotel smelled of polish and fresh flowers. In the bar off the lobby, a young guy was setting up for lunch. Chilling bottles of white wine in a tub of ice as delicately as if they were tiny missiles, he clocked my presence and asked for the second time if he could help.

“Can I help you, sir?” I wasn’t sure why I did it at first, but I twisted my wrist to glance at the gold Rolex I had taken from Tolya’s place because I’d left my watch in New York. I made my accent slightly foreign, faintly Russian. I realized he had seen the watch, had taken note of my accent.

The Rolex sat on my wrist, big as a quarter pounder, gold, diamonds surrounding the dial.

“I’d like some coffee, please,” I said.

“Of course,” said the waiter attentively. “Would you like some breakfast, sir?”

I said I’d be out on the terrace where tables were set for lunch. As I sat down, I asked for some cigarettes, took Tolya’s lighter out of my pocket, flicked it in the sun, examined the familiar design-a cigar engraved on the surface with a large ruby for the burning tip. Tolya always carried it. The waiter who had seated me rushed away to get my coffee and a newspaper. He obviously figured me for somebody with dough, maybe a rich Russian.

From where I sat I could watch boats drift along the water, the beautiful houses on the other side, a few kids scrambling down the bank, and then, without me really noticing at first, a man emerged from the hotel and sat at the table farthest from mine, next to a large terracotta pot of red geraniums.

He wore jeans and a white t-shirt. He spoke Russian softly into his phone. He saw me look. Nodded politely like well-bred strangers in some period movie, then closed his phone and opened his copy of the Financial Times.

When the waiter brought my coffee, I peeled a ten off the wad of Tolya’s notes I had in my pocket and said, “You have a minute?”

He nodded. I asked him about Tito Dravic. He said he knew Dravic before he left for the States. I showed him the picture of Masha Panchuk.

“Oh, sure, Masha worked as a maid here for a few weeks,” he said. “She was a sad girl. Pretty, but so sad she wore it like a coat.”

“She was close with Dravic?”

“I don’t know. I heard something,” he said. “Hang on a minute.” He disappeared into the hotel, and a few minutes later a stocky woman in a white skirt and dark blue blouse came out and hovered. She introduced herself as the assistant manager. I didn’t identify myself as a cop, but I implied this was some kind of official visit. The woman looked tense. Easy to intimidate.

“Sit down, please.” I said. “You knew Masha Panchuk, and Tito Dravic?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Miss Panchuk worked for a friend of mine,” I said. “In New York. I said I’d ask about her when I got here. They were close?”

“Yes,” said the woman who didn’t tell me her name, just her title. Yes, she said again and told me that Tito was upset when Masha went away. That Masha took up with a fellow, name of Zim something. “She told me she was going to Alaska with him. I told her she was mad, she had a good job here, but she didn’t take any notice.”

“Did Dravic know?”

“I imagine he knew, and not long after Masha left, he said he was going home to New York.”

“When was this?”

She shrugged. “Last winter perhaps?”

“You knew she was dead?”

“We heard. I am so sorry.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?”

She got up. “Do you speak Russian?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me, if you would.”

I took a gulp of my coffee, glanced again at the middle-aged man in jeans-good-looking, expensive haircut, unlined face- and I followed her into the hotel and upstairs to a small office. She picked up the phone. A minute later, a young woman appeared. She wore a maid’s uniform, she was very young and pale and serious.

The manager spoke to her in bad Russian and gave her permission to answer my questions.

“You knew Masha Panchuk?” I said.

She nodded.

“And Dravic?”

“Yes.”

“They were close?”

“Yes,” she said, not volunteering more than she was asked for.

“Masha went away without him?”

“She gets married with Zim. Tito is unhappy. After a while he returns to the United States.”

“How unhappy?”

“Very unhappy and angry. I didn’t like to be near him,” the girl said. “One time I found him punching the wall with his fist until it is covered in blood.”

“And Masha?”

“I never saw her again.”

*

Masha was dead. Dravic was in Belgrade, refusing to talk to anyone, which was as good as dead.

Had Masha first gone to the Brooklyn club to get help from him? To tell him it was over with Zim? That she only used Zim to get to America?

It was a dead end. What I wanted was the son of a bitch who killed Valentina.

The manager told the Russian girl to go back to her work, then said to me, “Is your friend looking for someone to replace Masha Panchuk?”

“It’s for me,” I said. “I’m going to be living in London for a while and I need someone good.”

“You’d like a Russian girl?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t ask why, just made a phone call, wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

“This is the agency we used for Masha. They have good workers. They supply many of the important Russian families living here.”

“But you’re not Russian?”

“No, just plain English,” she said.

“A lot of Russians come to the hotel?”

“Yes,” she said. “We have a marvelous chef, two stars in Lyons before he came to us, absolute genius, and a very fine wine cellar and the Russians want only the best. Many come here to stay which is why we hire quite a few Russians as maids and waiters. Many of the wealthiest Russians have country estates quite close by. We cater parties for them, and the houses are marvelous, and the best art.”

“So it’s okay? You’re happy about it?”

“Of course we’re happy,” she said. “The Russians come and they are wonderful tippers. As long as it lasts,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“One of these days the whole thing will come crashing down.” She shifted her glance from me to the wall and back, and I realized she was not just uneasy, but on edge and maybe a little bit nuts.

Was she afraid of her world crashing? Of the Russians fleeing? Of the wave of money receding and leaving her stranded on some imaginary beach?

“How do you know?”

She looked up at the ceiling.

“I hear things,” she said, and I didn’t know if the woman meant God talked to her or she got messages through the fillings in her teeth or she eavesdropped on the Russians in the hotel.

“Can I trouble you for a light?” said the man in jeans when I got back to the terrace.

“Sure.” I handed him the gold lighter I had borrowed from Tolya. He shook a cigarette out of a pack and lit up, then handed the lighter back.

“Nice,” he said. “I noticed it earlier.”

“Right.”

“I was just wondering where you got it.”

“Why?”

“I’ve only seen one other lighter just like it. It belongs to Tolya Sverdloff.”