Londongrad

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

“Hello, Artie.”

I saw him as soon as I got through the gate. He was sitting on the steps, smoking. I didn’t turn away, there wasn’t any point, I just kept going until I had climbed the same steps to the porch, and was sitting next to him. It wasn’t a cigar in his mouth. It was a cigarette and he offered me one.

The man I’d seen all week in the seersucker jacket held his Zippo lighter up for me.

In the flame I could see his face a little better, a pleasant round face, short white hair, a snappy haircut, calm milk chocolate brown eyes, big ears which, if he’d grown up in the West, somebody would have fixed.

In that strange purple light, I could see he was older than I’d thought, maybe seventy-five. He wore a black polo shirt and khaki pants and loafers instead of the Timberlands I’d seen him in before.

“Where is he?” I said.

“Sverdloff, you mean? Your friend, Tolya?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to take you to him.”

“You have a name?” I said, wondering if I could get my gun out of my pocket, and if I did what I would do with it.

“Bounine,” he said. “Fyodor Samuelovich.” His English was perfect. I figured him for some kind of creep, somebody who was in business with Sverdloff. Or maybe he was a cop. In this fucking country, they were the same thing.

He didn’t talk after that, and he didn’t threaten me, he just got up off the steps and brushed his pants.

“Are you coming with me?” he said, though I knew there wasn’t any choice.

“I have to do something first,” I said, thinking about Molly down the road with her grieving mother.

“Not right now,” he said. “Have you got a weapon with you?”

“Why?”

“It would be better to leave it before we go.”

“Where are we going?” I took the gun out of my pocket and placed it on the porch, then I picked it up, emptied it, and tossed it into the bushes. “Okay?”

He shrugged and I knew one of his guys-because he would have guys all around the house-would retrieve it.

“How did you find me?”

He smiled slightly. “It wasn’t that hard,” he said. “You stayed in a flat, I believe, where the caretaker was quite eager to make a little money. He said you disrespected the bones of the dead.”

“God.”

“I know. He called in at the local police station and was told the bones were from a butcher, and he then mentioned a foreigner staying in an empty flat.”

“I see.” I’d been an idiot to talk to Igor. I’d been stupid. Out of my head.

“Please get in the car with me? I’d be grateful,” he said. His cigarette was still held between his thumb and forefinger the way my father always held them.

I got in. He turned the key. Turned the car around. He put a CD into the slot, and “Fontessa”, the exquisite MJQ track, played.

“You like this music?” he said.