Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

And here I checked, because all beyond that was speculation, all the Shakespeare business, and I knew how it would sound to a New York cop, and so I concluded the conversation rather lamely and suffered being put on hold and, when at last unheld, reported the petty mugging to a bored man and received my case number. Then I called J. Ping and got the scoop on the status of Bulstrode’s will, with which she saw no obvious trouble, perfectly straightforward, a month should see it through surrogate’s court, and asked me if there was any big rush on, and I said, no, quite the contrary, no rush at all. The decedent’s body, I learned, was due to be flown out that day, in care of one Oliver March, presumably the longtime companion I had heard about.

I skipped lunch that day, my diary says, and went to the gym, although it was not my regular gym day. I wished to talk to someone about Russians, and the gym was as good a place to do that as I had at my disposal. When I arrived, however, it was Arkady who wanted to talk to me. He took me into his tiny office, a cluttered industrial-carpeted place with hardly room for a desk and a few chairs, which desk was nearly invisible under a mass of lifting magazines and defective lumps of gear and samples of diet supplements, some of them even legal for use in Olympic events. There was a glass case in the office holding Arkady’s remarkable array of medals and cups-the old U.S.S.R. certainly did not stint its darlings-and the walls were plastered with many more triumphant photos than I owned myself. Arkady Demichevski is squat and hairy, with deep-set small brown eyes and a twenty-inch neck. He looks like an early hominid but is a civilized, cultured, and kind man, with a good sense of humor. Today he was uncharacteristically solemn.

“Jake,” he said, “we need talk.”

I indicated that he had the floor, and noted that he could not seem to meet my eye. “Jake, you know I don’t care what peoples who come to my gym do on outside. Is their life, yes? They behave in gym, they could stay, if not…” Here he tossed an imaginary object over his shoulder and made a zipping sound. “So, Jake, I know you for long time and I am embarrassed to ask what you are mixed up in, some…some… bizniss , with bad peoples.”

“This would be bad Russian peoples?”

“Yes! Gangsters. What happens, day before yesterday, in evening, I am going to club, in Brighton Beach, for Odessa peoples, you know? Have Russian bath, play cards, drink a little. So two of them sit by me in steam, they have these tattoos, dragons, tigers, this is showing they are zeks , from prison in Siberia, they are proud of this, you understand. These not cultured peoples in the least. So they ask me do I know Jake Mishkin. I say yes, I say Jake Mishkin fine upstanding American citizen, heavy-weight lifter. They say we don’t care about this, we want to know what he does, is he connected, what his business. I say, hey, I see him in gym I am not colleague of his. Then they want to know other things, all kinds I can’t understand what they are saying, some woman, name I never heard of, Raisin Brans or something, so I tell them-”

“Raisin Brans?”

“Yes, some name like that, on the box, I can’t remember…”

“Kellogg.”

“Yes! Is Kellogg. I say I don’t know no Kellogg, I don’t know any private business from Jake Mishkin and I don’t want to know, and they say I should keep my ears open and find out whatever with this Kellogg and Jake Mishkin. So what I do? I come talk you like a man: Jake, what is with you, all of sudden gangsters?”

“I don’t know, Arkady,” I said. “I wish I did know.” Whereupon I told him about the attack on me and Ms. K. and the theft of the briefcase, although I did not expand on what was supposed to be in it. But Arkady was after all a Russian and he stroked his chin and nodded. “So what is in briefcase, Jake. Is not drugs?”

“Is not drugs. Is papers.”

“You can give them so they leave you alone?”

“I can’t. It’s a long story, but I would like to know who your zeks are working for, if you have an idea.”

“You didn’t hear it from me,” said Arkady. He was nibbling at his lip, and his eyes were all over the place. Seeing him like that, this big, confident man nervous as a sparrow, was nearly as shocking as the attack by the thugs. After a pause and in a hoarse voice he said, “They work for Osip Shvanov. The Organizatsia.”

“The who?”

“In Brighton Beach. Jewish gangsters. You know about this? Twenty years ago the Americans say to Soviets, you are keeping Jews against will, this is like Nazis, you are persecuting, let them go. So the Soviets say, okay, you want Jews, we give you Jews. Then they go to Gulag and they find every criminal what had Jew marked on passport, they say you go to America, you go to Israel, have nice trip. So some come here. Of course most Jews got out from Soviet Union was regular peoples, my accountant is one of these, very nice man, but also very many criminals, and they go back to old doings, whores they have, porno, drugs, what-you-call, extortions. These very bad peoples, like these Sopranos you have on cable, but Sopranos are stupid and these are very smart, are Jews ! And Osip is worst of all of them.”

“Well,” I said, “thanks for that information, Arkady.” And I got up to leave, but he gestured to stop me and added, “They come here too. These men, yesterday morning, and ask me if you going come here today, and they just sit. I could not eat my lunch, they are watching me like animals. So, Jake, I’m sorry, but I think you should not come here to train anymore. I will refund membership, no hard feelings.”

“You’re booting me out? I’ve been coming here nearly twenty years, Arkady.”

“I know, I know, but you can go other places, you can go to Bodyshop-”

“What! Bodyshop is pretty boys and girls in designer outfits and fat guys on treadmills reading the Wall Street Journal . Bodyshop sucks.”

“So someplace else. You keep coming here they make me to spy on you and if I say no…I don’t want my place burned up and I have family. I mean it, Jake. You don’t know these peoples. If you got something they want, is my advice give it to them.”

I saw Arkady had a point, so we shook hands and I left, with my gear in a Nike bag. I felt like I’d been expelled from school because someone else cheated. But the mention of family was what had really struck home. I recalled that I had one too.

My diary sayssimply “A.” in the slot for six-thirty on the day in question, which was the first Wednesday in November, so it was my evening to dine en famille at my ex-wife’s brownstone on East Seventy-sixth Street, our arrangement on the first Wednesday of every month. Not exactly “ex,” because officially, in the eyes of the state, the church, and my wife, we are still married. Amalie will not agree to a divorce, partly on religious grounds, but mainly because she believes we will get back together after I cure my mental illness. She thinks it would be shameful to desert me while I am sick in this way, and the fact that my mental illness is philandering does not signify. I don’t know anyone else who has this sort of relationship, although I don’t for a moment believe we are unique. My three law partners have, I think, eight or so wives among them, and in every case I have been treated to the whole litany: the insanity, the vicious revenges, the manipulations of children, the financial extortions, and I find I cannot produce a fair exchange of marriage-hell narratives. I do suffer excruciatingly, but through my own fault rather than via the malice of my wife, for she is generous, kind, and forgiving, and so I have to carry the whole fucking load myself. Jesus had a point, you know: if you really want the evildoers to suffer, just be nice.