Free Londongrad by Reggie Nadelson Page B

watch. “We’ll have some fun before it’s too late, Artyom. Okay? Before we die. Thought we’d die before we got old, like they say back in the day, right, when I was rock and roll god, but now we have to hurry up.”
    For a second it occurred to me that—I’d thought it before— Tolya’s clubs were some kind of cover, but cover for what? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
    “One other thing, Artyom,” he said.
    “Sure.”
    “This Roy Pettus, stay away from him.”
    “Don’t worry. I’m seeing him later, I’m going to tell him to fuck off, you know?”
    “Don’t see him at all. Just don’t. These guys, Artyom, these spook people they are the same, they work together, they exchange information, it’s capital for them, like cash,” said Tolya. “I have to go now.”
    He climbed into the black Range Rover that was waiting for him at the curb. He shut the door. He pressed his face against the window, pushed his hair back from his forehead. It was already gray at the roots. In the face against the window, I could see how he would be as an old man.
    Don’t go, I wanted to say.
    “Take care of her,” he mouthed through the car window.
    Tolya put his hand, big, like a pale pink ham, flat on the window, a sort of farewell gesture, and I remember thinking, not knowing why I thought it, that I’d never see him again. Then the car pulled away.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    It was quiet downtown when I went to meet Roy Pettus, the Sunday of a holiday weekend. No lawyers cluttered the monumental steps of the courthouses, or leaned against the columns of this imperial New York, no supplicants or secretaries or jurors fed up with endless waiting, nobody except a few tourists heading for Ground Zero, and homeless men stretched out on benches in the shade of the trees. And pigeons. And pigeon shit.
    It was sultry. I tried not to think about Valentina and couldn’t think about anything else. A few minutes later, I saw Pettus.
    He crossed the street near City Hall, stopped to light up a cigarette, and then he continued towards me. He put up his hand in greeting. Then he held it out.
    “Artie, good to see you.”
    “You too, Roy.” I kept it cool.
    He looked around, maybe from habit and said, “Can we walk?”
    “Sure.”
    We set off towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Pettus looked a lot older than I recalled but it was more than a decade. The sandy hair was white, cut short. The sunburned face was lined, the pale eyes watery. He walked straight, though, and he was dressed square as any FBI man: pressed chinos, white button-down shirt tucked in, cellphone attached to his belt. Only a pair of worn cowboy boots marked him as off duty.
    I asked Pettus how Chugwater was. He said okay. I’d known him when he was an agent at the New York FBI office, must be fifteen years, and we both worked the nukes case on Brighton Beach together. Afterwards, he retired to Chugwater, Wyoming where he was born.
    I drove through it once on a trip out west, but I didn’t know Roy’s address and I didn’t look him up. Wasn’t much there, just an old railroad siding, a grain silo, a couple shops and a place that made chili. And the endless empty spaces of prairie in all directions. I had wondered what it would be like, living in all that emptiness.
    “Congratulations on your daughter,” I said. “The marriage. Cheryl, right?”
    “Thanks,” he said.
    I waited for him to give something away, tell me why he’d been bugging my friends. We walked. He smoked. In front of us the great gothic arches of the bridge rose in the early sky. The sun through clouds that had moved in turned the river to a stream of hot tin.
    “So how come you’ve been talking to my friends, Roy?” I said finally. “You could have just called me up.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry for that.” He didn’t explain.
    “Tell me what you need,” I said pleasantly, and I could see he was confused. He had wanted me off my guard, angry maybe, pissed off at least.