“Is Washington’s apartment empty?”
“Yes.”
“Which floor?”
“The ninth floor,” said Lily, as her phone rang.
When she walked away from me, phone in hand, I knew Radcliff was on the other end, and from what I could tell, he was on his way over to see her.
“Come downtown with me,” I said to Lily when she had finished her call. “You’ll feel better away from here.”
“No, Artie. I can’t do that,” she said. “What? You think somebody will find out Marianna left me her apartment and they’ll do something bad to me to get it? Lennox isn’t that crazy.” She straightened up. “To hell with it. I’m tired of feeling scared. I’m going to change for the party. I want to look nice. It’s been a long day. I just need a little time, clear my head. I’ll meet you at the party later.”
“One more thing.”
“Not now, Artie,” she said, as the doorbell rang and she went to answer it.
It was Virgil Radcliff. He shed his jacket, and accepted a drink from Lily.
“That tastes great,” he said. “Everything OK?”
“Yes,” said Lily. “It’s fine.”
“Thanks, Artie, for being here,” said Virgil. “Thank you.”
He’ll be gone Wednesday, I thought. He’ll be in California. Just fuck off.
As I went to the door, I noticed the way Radcliff put his hand lightly on Lily’s sleeve. The way she looked at him. They were connected. They were a couple.
CHAPTER 23
What the hell are you doing?” I said to Diaz, who was on the floor outside Simonova’s apartment.
Diaz had the ferret-like look of a man who had been waiting for somebody, for me, for Lily, a man who, as soon as he heard the door open, probably got down on his knees, pretending to fix a piece of loose carpet. I didn’t know what he was up to, but he gave me a queasy feeling. He reminded me of a low-level KGB hood, the kind who used to wait for kids outside Moscow schools to check if our hair was too long. Diaz probably made a career of watching out for the main chance, a way to make a little cash. He knew his way around the Armstrong, and he used it.
He wore workman’s pants and a shirt with the Armstrong’s logo on it. His heavy boots had left a trail of wet snow on the carpet.
“Where were you?” I pointed to the snow.
“On the roof,” he said. “The old woman is dead?”
“You probably know that.”
He grunted.
“You didn’t like her?”
He hauled himself to his feet and leaned back against the wall, putting his hand on the wallpaper. “Right.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why? Because she was a Communist.”
“So?”
“I’m Cuban, man, you get it?”
I took a twenty out of my pocket and folded it. “Feliz Navidad,” I said to Diaz, handing him the money.
“What you want to know?” He wasn’t coy. It was the money he had been waiting for.
“What was she like?”
“Russian,” he said. “Communist.” He snorted. “Well, not now, she’s dead now, gone to be with Marx, like they used to say. Bastards.”
“How did she treat people in the building? The people who work here?”
“Like shit,” he said. “Except for the old doctor. I think they were doing it,” he said making a dirty gesture, and then made as if to puke.
“What about Carver Lennox?”
“OK. Yeah, he’s OK. He treats me good. Maybe one day he helps me get good apartment.” He looked at me.
“Here?”
“Shit, no. He has buildings in Queens.”
“So you’re friends with him?”
“No. Not friends.”
“But friendly?”
“Sure.”
“Simonova was lousy to you?” I said it again. I wanted more out of him.
“I already say, she treats people bad, and me, I hate the Commies. She doesn’t like this. Even when I tell her I got here on a fucking raft.”
“You were in her place?”
“Why?”
“Listen, why not just tell me straight? I can be generous,” I said, putting my hand back in my pocket.
Diaz sized me up. “OK, I was in.”
“Just now?”
“Before I go on the roof.”
“You have a key?”
“Passkey. I got one for all the apartments. Listen, I went inside with the funeral home guys, OK, and that’s it—I go with them, I leave with them. You ask the old doctor, he was there, OK? I didn’t take one fucking thing. I wouldn’t touch her shit.”
“So you were in Simonova’s place other times? Maybe fixing something?”
“Sure. When she asks me. I change light bulbs for her.”
“Right. She seemed sick to you?”
“Yeah. I have to get to work.”
“You like the building?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s good job.”
“So about the roof? What were you doing up there?”
“I check things is all. Doors is locked, stuff like that.”
He picked up his work gloves from the floor. From around the corner came the sound of voices, and Carver Lennox looked out into the hall. He smiled at me but didn’t seem to notice Diaz, or didn’t care, and retreated back into his apartment.
“People always treat you like that, don’t even say hello,” I said to Diaz, in a conspiratorial voice. I figured that and another twenty might put him in a confiding mood. I gave him the twenty and waited.
“Whatever,” he said.
“I thought you said you were friendly with Mr. Lennox.”
“If he gets me apartment, I’m friendly.”
“What were you in Cuba?”
“Engineer.”
“It’s hard here.”
“We do it for the kids. I go downstairs now, to sit at the front door in a stupid hat.”
“I’ll ride with you.”
“Sure,” he said. “Maybe I show you something,” he added as we got into the elevator.
“What’s that?”
“Something in the basement.”
Between the seventh and eighth floor, Diaz pushed a button on the panel and the elevator stopped. He leaned against the wall. I kept my mouth shut. I knew it was his way of showing he was in control, that he could stop the elevator, that he had some kind of power in the building.
When he spoke again, he lowered his voice, and I knew he was preparing to deliver some information.
“So, you know about somebody threw this woman off the roof.”
“When? What woman?”
“I don’t know. I hear.”
“While you’ve been working here?”
“No.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Six years,” he said.
“So this thing happened before that?”
“Sure, but I hear. I hear she is fucking whore, and this guy is some pimp, and he throws her from roof.”
“Maybe it was a long time ago. Maybe it’s just a story.”
“No.”
“Anybody who still lives here involved?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, listen,” I said, extracting a third bill from my wallet. “Did you know Mr. Washington?”
“Sure. I do things for him, fix stuff, sometimes he say to me, ‘Diaz,’ he calls on my cell phone, he say, ‘my hands are trembling, man. Can you turn the valve on the oxygen?’ OK? He is always real polite, and I say to myself, Why not Miss Regina McGee, who is girlfriend of Mr. Washington, but he wants me. One time I go, and he is all confused and puking up. I help him. He is grateful. Demasiado.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Too much.”
“What happened to it?”
“What?”
“The oxygen machine.”
“I take it away. I want to return to the rental company. Maybe I forget.”
“Where the fuck is it?”
“I can look,” he said, backing away from me.
“Did somebody tamper with it?”
“What’s it mean ‘tamper’?”
“Did somebody mess with it?”
“So many people go visit Mr. Washington, his friend, Miss McGee, who lives on fourteenth floor and runs down to nine to say hello, or bring food. The Russian bitch, too.”
“What did she have to do with him?”
“In this building, who knows?”
“What else did you do for Simonova?”
“For money. I told you, I changed her light bulbs, I cleaned up her terrace. She is Russian, she loves Russia, she loves the Soviet system, she has all the books, she tries to tell me, ‘Join union, join Party.’ Who in fuck is joining Communist Party now? She likes giving orders. Like all of them. Communists,” he said. “I grow up with this shit in Cuba, where for all my father’s life they shit on his head. But he says, ‘Fidel is good, Cubans is happy. Society is just.’ I come to America to escape that shit.”
“And Mr. Washington?”
“He is OK. This one I like, this Mr. Washington, sure. He is a gentleman to me. I even go to his funeral.”
“Who’s in his apartment now?”
“Nobody. Nice one. They call it classic seven. Somebody lucky will get it.”
“Do you think somebody hurt him?”
“You mean did somebody off Mr. Washington?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “It’s not my business,” Diaz said.
“Can you show me? His apartment?”
“Sometime. Now I have to work.”
“Start the fucking elevator,” I said to him, and he just grinned. Then he hit the button. I noticed he wore a ring with his initials: UD.
“What’s the U for?”
He laughed. “Usnavi. You know what that is? My mami, she sees the sign near Guantanamo, U.S. NAVY, and she thinks if she gives me this name, it makes me American,” he said.
“Let’s get going, if you really have something to show me.”
Diaz led me down a hall, and as we passed the basement storage rooms, he glanced at Simonova’s, sealed up with yellow police tape now, and grinned.
Was it Diaz who beat me up?
A few minutes later, he turned a corner, led me into a room. He got a key from his pocket and unlocked it. “Here,” he said.
Inside was medical equipment. Wheelchairs folded and stacked. A few walkers propped against the wall. At the back were two oxygen tanks, cubes on wheels that looked like R2-D2. “You stole this shit?” I saw one of the oxygen tanks that looked like the one I’d put into Simonova’s closet earlier. Diaz must have swiped it. I tried to push past him. Diaz held his ground.
“My stuff. My shit,” he said. “I got other stuff I can show you, I got information. Maybe we can talk more some time.” He looked at his watch. “Right now I gotta go back up to the lobby.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Gotta go,” he said, edging me out of the room. He locked the door behind us jogged to the elevator. Punched the button and got in. I followed. Then I pushed him against the wall. I’d had it with the smug look on his face.
“What stuff? You want more money, that it?” I was furious. “You want to tell me what you were really doing on the roof? What about your pal, Carver Lennox—you work extra jobs for him?”
He shrank back from me but he managed to push the button. A few seconds later, when the doors opened on the ground floor, people waiting saw that I had a guy with dark skin pinned to the back of the elevator.
CHAPTER 24
You can watch the moon rise right over there, nights when the sky is clear,” said Lionel Hutchison, when I found him on the Armstrong roof. I asked him if he’d seen Diaz.
“You think he’s up to something?”
“He said he’d been on the roof checking something.”
“Didn’t see him.”
“You know him well?”
Hutchison shook his head. “No need. Don’t like the fellow much, I admit.”
“Isn’t it cold, even for you, doctor?”
“Good for the health,” he replied. “And please do call me Lionel. You know, I used to belong to the Polar Bear Club. They swim out at Coney Island every year on New Year’s Day. Terrific,” he said. “I enjoy it here. I come on up mornings, before everybody is around, sometimes bring my coffee. You look cold, Artie. I’ll tell you what, see that toolshed? It’s not much in the way of shelter, but we can sit in there for a minute if you like.”
In the wooden lean-to, cigarettes in hand, Lionel offered me one, and I took it. He sat on a rough bench and I sat next to him. He got out his old Zippo, lit his smoke and mine. “Got this old lighter when I was in the service, back in the war,” he said. “I was just a kid, but did kill a few Nazis,” he added with satisfaction. “You wanted to ask me anything else about Diaz, Artie? Or you’re wanting to ask me some things now we’re out of Lily’s hearing?”
“Yes.”
“What is it you really want to know, then?”
“You knew Amahl Washington?”
“Of course I knew him. He lived here. He was the local councilman, as well, a very decent good man. What’s this about?”
“Did he die unexpectedly?”
“Yes, but he was a sick man, he had been ill for a long, long time. I see the connection you’re making. I’m not unaware.”
“Did you treat him?”
“I helped him out from time to time.”
“You come up here a lot?”
“Detective, just ask me your questions. You don’t have to make small talk.”
“When did Amahl Washington die?”
“I would say approximately six months ago. Let me see. It’s December. That was June. Died from his heart giving up the fight. Still, it was lung cancer that made it all happen,” said Hutchison. “I watched him suffer. Suffering is not noble, you know. Pain cripples our best selves and makes us hopeless at best, at worst evil,” he added. “Do you know how Marianna lost the tip of her finger?”
“Tell me.”
“She was in such pain at one time she bit it so hard it had to be amputated. As for Amahl, I believe it was mainly his own doctor who tended to him.”
“His own doctor being Dr. Lucille Bernard?”
“He had several doctors, I believe. Lucille was called in toward the end.”
“She was married to Carver Lennox?”
“Still is. Lucille’s a wonderful doctor, but she believes in all that Roman Catholic foolishness, like my wife, in fact.” He leaned back comfortably against the wall of the shed. “Do you know what the best thing about this neighborhood was?”
“What’s that?”
“The real advantage of growing up on Edgecombe Avenue was that you had a sense of possibility. Couldn’t not. You knew people, your parents knew people, who had made something of themselves. This building was like a fort where we were protected from even the worst times in Harlem. A lot of people thought we were snobs, of course, and that we looked down on them. Living here gave us a sense of ourselves, especially as kids. It empowered us, we thought we could do anything, even back in what I like to think of as the dark ages, back in the thirties, forties, you know?” He paused. “We met all kinds of people, of course. One of the profits of segregation, I guess you might say was that even in buildings like the Armstrong, we were all thrown together eventually. As time went on, it wasn’t just professionals, there were people who worked as maids downtown. The oldest fellow in the building used to run the elevators. Pullman porters. Doctors like me. All kinds.”
“What year did you move here?”
“I moved in with my mother and daddy in, what was it, 1931, and except for school and my military service, I’ve lived here all these years, had my medical practice in an office right downstairs for a long time. Couldn’t get a job at any hospital in my specialty—hematology. Couldn’t hardly get a job in any hospital a
t all in New York,” he said. “So I set up in general practice right here on the ground floor. Graduated Harvard Medical School. Couldn’t get a job in a New York hospital. Felt like the whole of America was an alternate universe for us. Sepia universe,” he said. “I stayed on here. By then times had got bad, and after that it got worse and worse; even the Armstrong wasn’t completely immune to it—the murders, the heroin, the poverty, the crack cocaine, the landlords and real estate people who sucked the place dry, the corrupt police force. Whole big areas of Harlem just a burnt-out case. My parents died; I married Celestina. Couldn’t do it until Mother passed, though.”
“How come?”
“Hold on, I just need to light up afresh.” He used the butt of his smoke to light another one. “Calms me down. Must be my blood pressure’s up again.” He laughed. “Old age.”
“Please go on.”
“You like a good story, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Mother didn’t like Celestina. She’s older than I, and she had worked as a dancer at the Savoy Ballroom as a teenager. Didn’t have much education. Her parents had come from Trinidad. Always was a tension between folk from the islands and the rest of us. They felt themselves to be superior. My mother didn’t agree. Celestina was also quite dark-skinned, to my mother’s way of thinking.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re surprised by all this foolishness about skin color and class?”
“Yes.”
“Where my folks grew up, Artie, in South Carolina, in one of the churches—a black church, mind you—they hung a comb in the entryway. If you couldn’t pull it through your hair easily, you were not acceptable, you were not allowed in,” he said. “ ‘Important to have good hair,’ many of the church ladies whispered. Same ladies that would inspect a baby’s ear, see what color the child would darken up to. Claimed the ear would tell you. That kind of thing goes on to this day.”
“But you married Celestina.”
“When my mother had passed, only then. Mother had her eye on a nice lady doctor I knew. ‘Blood will tell, Lionel, dear,’ Mother always said to me. When I was little, I thought she meant it could actually speak. People didn’t talk about good genes back then, they talked about blood. ‘Blood counts, dear,’ she’d say, and it turned out she was right in a way she couldn’t have expected. My little brother had sickle-cell anemia, the worst form. Not enough treatments back then. He went blind, his organs failed. He died in agony when he was twenty. I was already in medical school, so I decided I’d study the blood.” He looked at me. “I decided I wasn’t going to watch anybody suffer like that, either. Maybe that’s why I never wanted children—married a woman too old for it. Maybe that’s so,” he said. “I knew I was a carrier.” Lionel pulled casually on his cigarette, but his eyes watered. “Guess I’ve about told you everything. But you didn’t come on up here for that, did you?” Hutchison tossed his cigarette onto the ground and took out a worn leather notebook and a fountain pen. “It’s the pen my father gave me when I finished medical school.”
Blood Count Page 14
