Blood Count

by Reggie Nadelson

  “No. Listen, I saw your father,” I said as Virgil started for the door.

  “He told me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He called. He liked you. I guess he told you his story. He tells everyone.”

  “Those were lousy times when he was in college.”

  “Hard to imagine, for us, I mean. These guys, my dad’s age, they suffered such fucking absolute segregation. Guys like Lionel Hutchison. Jesus, Artie. This is bad. I’ll go up.”

  “You called your house?”

  “Yeah, and I also managed to get through to the chief at home,” said Virgil. “Soon as I got your call.”

  I’d been expecting Virgil to ask about the party. He didn’t, not about the party or about Lily. Maybe he knew not to. Maybe he was preoccupied with Lionel Hutchison. I felt guilty about Lily and me, but I didn’t sleep with her to get at him. I wanted her. Needed her. Maybe for her, it had been a one-time thing, a party, the booze and music. I didn’t want to think that.

  I just leaned against a garbage can and waited for the ambulance, the cops, the whole gang of assorted characters who would arrive, each with a different part to play, a traveling troupe of death.

  The first cops to arrive, a couple of uniforms in a cop car, unreeled a spool of yellow CRIME SCENE tape, marking off the area, as if it was their stage.

  A few minutes later, the ambulance came. Somebody from the ME’s office followed. She was young; she looked like a kid in her purple parka.

  A yellow cab pulled up and a couple of detectives climbed out—there’s plenty of detectives these days who use customized yellow taxis. It’s useful in neighborhoods where a four-door sedan would stick out like a sore thumb.

  From the back door of the building, Diaz emerged, alerted by the noise of the sirens. He stood, looking down, his back against the wall. With him was a teenager, tall, gangly, head too big for his body. Goofy, Diaz said. The Goof.

  “Hey, Goof, help the detective if he asks you, right?” He tapped the boy on the back.

  “I’m fine,” I hurried to the other side of the parking lot.

  “Celestina wasn’t home,” said Virgil. “I went upstairs, no one answered the door. I’ll try her sister. They took the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go find out what they’re doing with it,” said Virgil to a young detective, who looked at me because I was obviously the senior guy.

  “Just do it,” I said, then turned back to Virgil. “What about that damn dog,” I said. “Lionel said he had to get back to the building because of the dog.”

  “When was this?”

  “He came to the party looking for me around two in the morning. He said he needed to talk.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “He looked cold and tired, he was confused, he rambled on about something, and then I asked him to wait so I could take him home and I left the room for a minute, and when I got back I discovered he’d just gone. Bartender said he had pulled himself together and left.”

  “Then you can’t be feeling too good.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “So you went inside the apartment?”

  “I called, I buzzed, I yelled and hammered on the door. Loud enough to wake the dead, since you’re asking. If the dog was there, it would have heard. I would have heard it. You want me to just go on in, Artie?”

  “What about keys?”

  “I can find a way without keys.”

  “It’s your call.”

  “You found him,” said Virgil. “You want me to check out whoever gave Lionel a ride home?”

  “I think the apartment comes first. Virgil?”

  “What’s that, Artie?”

  “You want me to try to work this with you? Or not. Just spit it out. This is your part of town, you work homicides here. It’s your call.”

  “Thanks for asking,” said Virgil. “Yeah, I could use your help. If Wagner agrees,” he added. “You think it is a case? You don’t think Lionel could have just fallen over?”

  “Do you? Lionel Hutchison was in good shape. Looks like a case to me. First Simonova, now Lionel. Lot of dying, wouldn’t you say? Listen, you get along OK with Jimmy Wagner?”

  “He treats me OK, but I don’t think he likes me,” Virgil said. “He thinks I’m a cocky overeducated son of a bitch, and I’m black, which doesn’t help if you’re from the captain’s background. No offense, but Wagner is old school. He can’t help it.”

  “Right. I’ll talk to him,” I said.

  CHAPTER 34

  Bundled up in a North Face jacket, Jimmy Wagner pumped my hand. “I’m really glad to see you, Artie, man. But how come you’re here?”

  I said I’d been visiting somebody. To Radcliff he said, “What the fuck’s going on?”

  Virgil told him what had happened.

  “Poor bastard,” said Wagner. “I met the old man once or twice at community meetings. He was a pistol. He didn’t put up with no shit whatsoever. He fought for his community. I liked him. You think he just slipped, Artie?”

  “I have no fucking idea, Jimmy. I had a good look at the area around the garbage can, that stuff, but we’ll need the ME to figure it. Hutchison was old, maybe bad heart, he smoked like a chimney, the ground was icy.”

  “You believe that, Artie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you meet him before?”

  “Yeah. Couple times.”

  “You got a lot of interest in this building, that right, man? Some friend of yours was wanting to buy an apartment, something like that?” Wagner said. “You got a lady here or something? Nice girl?”

  Radcliff looked at me.

  I kept my mouth shut.

  The woman from the ME got up from beside the body, came over to talk to Wagner, told him her preliminary thinking. Then Wagner huddled with some of his guys—a detective, a couple uniforms, the women from the ME’s office. It was hard not to notice most of them were white except for Virgil.

  Some people who had emerged from the building, wrapped in sweaters and jackets, stopped to watch. Then I saw Wagner motion for Radcliff to join his group. I waited. A few minutes later, he turned to me. “I’m gonna need you, man,” he said. “Radcliff is cool with it. He’ll work it with you. I’ll call whoever it takes to get you the time off.”

  I told him not to bother. It was Sunday morning early, and what was the point of waking people up. I told him I was mostly on fraud cases these days, Russian stuff; nobody went in on Sundays for that. He didn’t need to call anybody.

  “But if I work with Radcliff, it’s his case, right? His precinct?” I said.

  “For chrissake, man, yeah, fine, all them fucking niceties, man,” said Wagner. “Also, I only just heard an old lady died in the building Friday night. You knew about this?”

  “I heard.”

  “You didn’t bother to tell me?”

  “It wasn’t my business. You want my help, Jimmy? I’m happy to do it.”

  He said he wanted it. “We got cars sliding around crazy, on icy roads, like Dancing with the Stars,” Wagner said. “Not to mention our other homicides. So you’re cool with Virgil Radcliff. You asked me about him when you came by yesterday, right? He’s good, man, he is really good, very sharp, does his work.” Wagner glanced at Radcliff, who was talking to the ME. “He also likes to fly by the seat of his pants, so keep an eye on him, see that he don’t fucking reinvent the rules.”

  By now, more people had come out of the Armstrong’s back door and others from around the front. They’d heard the sirens. News was spreading. Some pretended to walk their dogs.

  From across the street, still more onlookers stopped by, the cops fending them off, or swearing at them for hanging around, for gawking at the dead, or trying to. One kid held up his phone to take a picture and a cop gave him an earful. Made me remember, for some reason, the time I was down at Ground Zero, after 9/11, and fucking tourists were taking pictures. Dust was everywhere. One cop got so crazy, he just looked at some tourist assholes an
d yelled, “You know what that is? That’s people.”

  “So you’re on it,” said Wagner, obviously nervous as fuck about this incident.

  “I told you, Jimmy. Yes. Sure.”

  “Thanks, man, I owe you.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Listen, Artie, the old man had a wife, right?”

  “She’s at her sister’s. Radcliff’s going.”

  “I’ll go,” said a voice. I looked up to see Carver Lennox in a thick orange silk bathrobe, his bare feet stuck in a pair of driving mocs, staring at the body. He was crying.

  “Where is she?”

  “Her sister Vanessa lives over at the Hurston—it’s a new condo on Broadhurst,” Lennox said. “Let me go.” He took my arm. “Please let me go. We’re close. Celestina helped me out when I first got here. She was like my mom, swear to God. How did this happen?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Listen, you knew Amahl Washington?”

  “What? Sure. You asking me that now? Why?”

  “Never mind.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now. Give me your number,” I said, and I got out my phone and punched it in.

  “Artie?”

  “Yeah, Jimmy.”

  “That girl from the ME says she can’t say until she looks at X-rays and they start the autopsy if the old guy just toppled over by the garbage cans or what. Jesus, you can’t even say girl—I mean officer,” said Wagner. “She says her guess is he fell off something high up, the way the body was splayed out on the ground. I don’t know, a terrace, or the roof, the building could be liable and then we have a shitstorm coming down.” He wheezed and began coughing.

  “Or he was pushed.”

  Wagner looked up at the building. “Christ, no, not another homicide. You think? Shit, man.” He hacked again, turned his head, spit into a big handkerchief, and I saw there was blood on it.

  “Take it easy.”

  “The cold weather stinks,” said Jimmy. His big face, the reddish hair going gray under his black wool watch cap, the veins in his nose, the way he gulped at the air once in a while, he was a very sick guy. He pulled his jacket tight around his bulky body and turned up the collar. “This sucks,” he said. “Christmas coming, an old man dead, one of the best buildings. Fuck.”

  “Don’t ask me exactly why right now, but can you get me Amahl Washington’s medical records? I need to know if he really just passed, if that was all.”

  “I ain’t asking why, but I’m asking why, Art.”

  “Personal favor.”

  “Then consider it done.”

  “If Lennox is going over to find the wife at her sister’s, I want to go up to the apartment with Radcliff, take a little look before anyone else goes up. You can do that, Jim? I need twenty minutes. Thirty. Tell your guys to hang on down here, or let them canvass the building or whatever.”

  “You got it,” he said. “One more thing, there’s a time component.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s Sunday. Things are quiet. Come tomorrow morning, maybe before, I’m going to have officials on the phone. Hutchison was a big deal in the community, and I’m not even sure one of them churches doesn’t own part of the land the Armstrong is on. They’ll all be on me, the preachers, the rest, Christ, for all I know, Al fucking Sharpton will show. You hear me?” He coughed some more. “I’ll feel a whole fucking lot better when Dawes gets back on Wednesday.”

  “I’m ready, Artie,” said Virgil, who had been talking to the medic. Next to Jimmy Wagner, Virgil looked tall, young, and easy. It was like looking at Obama and McCain. I think Jimmy Wagner saw it, too. He shuffled away to join the other cops, then he turned around.

  “Tomorrow,” Wagner called out. “You hear me?”

  CHAPTER 35

  He was pushed,” said Virgil, trying the door to the Hutchison apartment.

  “I thought that, but tell me how you figure it?”

  “You were with Wagner, I was talking to the ME, and she was saying it looked to her like Hutchison hit the ground from someplace high up, you heard that, right? So I get to thinking, Artie, since you’re asking, I mean how’s he going to just fall?” He got some keys from his pocket.

  “Where’d you get those?”

  “I sweet-talked Mr. Diaz,” said Virgil, opening the door.

  “Let’s go. I want a good look before the rest of them get here.”

  “Right,” said Virgil, pushing open the door.

  “Jesus.”

  “What’s that, Artie?” Virgil flipped on a light in the hall of the apartment, surveying the room.

  “He went up there a lot to smoke, right? Maybe something happened. His wife didn’t like him going up there. They played this game that she locked him in the apartment. What do you think her game really was?”

  “Humiliation.”

  “Right. Yeah.”

  “What did Wagner mean when he said ‘tomorrow’?” asked Virgil.

  “Wagner wants this, whatever it is, wrapped by tomorrow. Says on Monday people will start to make noise, officials, people who want a piece of the publicity.”

  “What else?”

  “Says he’ll be glad when Dawes is back. I met him over at your station house.”

  Virgil was silent.

  “Wagner told me Dawes was your partner.”

  “We split up. He didn’t like the way I do things, he thought I was some kind of loose cannon,” said Virgil. “Don’t get me wrong; Dawes is a good man, but it’s like working for your censorious uncle,” he added. “Listen, Artie, maybe Lionel could have had a heart attack and then fallen?” He had changed the subject.

  “He was healthy as a horse. He told me he swam off Coney Island every winter.”

  “Told me, too.”

  “Listen, Virgil, you OK here by yourself for a couple minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  “See if you can find any of Hutchison’s notes. He kept a little notebook, maybe he wrote stuff down about people he treated,” I said. “Or helped.”

  “You talking about his interest in euthanasia? I’d want my grandparents to go out easy,” Virgil said. “Wouldn’t you, Artie?”

  I thought about my mother.

  “I guess. Anyway, see if you can find the fucking dog too; maybe it crawled under something and fell asleep. This apartment has about nine rooms, from what I saw. I’m going on the roof.”

  “What for?”

  “Can you just do this? We only have twenty minutes until there’s cops all over this place.”

  “Be careful up there.”

  The wind whipped at my face. There was snow on the roof. The sun was coming up, and the sky was bright and slashed with color.

  There were footprints in the snow that led from the door to the low brick wall.

  Had Lionel come up here to smoke again? Had somebody else been here? Somebody who had pushed him? The footprints looked fresh, but it was hard to tell.

  From the street I heard the sirens. From somewhere on the roof came the banging of a radiator, a generator, the noisy innards of an ancient building. The wind howled.

  At the edge of the roof was the plastic sheet I’d seen the day before, some cans of paint, a ladder. The wall here was broken, and I could look over and see the cracked back of one of the stone figures—a gargoyle—that faced the street.

  In spite of the fancy marble fireplace in the lobby, the high ceiling, the old chandeliers, restored now, the doormen in their caps with the gold braid, this was no fairy-tale castle on a hill. It had, like most of the great old buildings in the city, a secret life, all the histories buried in the apartments, in the basement rooms, in the people who had lived here on and on for decades.

  A building was like a village, enclosed, wrapped up in its own life, with its own class system and a ruling caste—the co-op board. These were people who had power—it might be power to decide who got in, or just what kind of decorations went on the Christmas tree.

  I had once worked a case where
potential owners were so desperate to get into a co-op, they had their dogs’ voice boxes removed so they wouldn’t bark. Couldn’t get into a good co-op if your dog was noisy. I had worked another co-op downtown on Eleventh Street where one owner hated the color of paint in the lobby so much that, after a lot of martinis, he went for the board president with a sushi knife. Cut the tip of his nose off.

  Easy at the Armstrong to get people talking, kids, old people, guys working around the place, guests at the party the night before. It was a talkative group, and they talked about the building, the Armstrong, its past, its problems, its glories. It was one of the building pastimes, like villagers in Russia might talk about the potato crop.

  What I’d found out was that the Armstrong had fallen on bad times in the fifties and sixties. The landlord let it go, didn’t pay taxes or fix the plumbing, so the city took it over. Bad times—heroin, cocaine, Harlem in the toilet. Then in the eighties, the tenants go it together to take it back, formed their own co-operative, kept the maintenance prices same as their rentals had been. Low.

  So people stayed on. Some had been here sixty years. A few new people bought in when there were apartments on the market—usually when somebody died. I figured what Carver wanted was to turn it around, make it into the usual kind of New York City co-op—fix it up, raise the maintenance from five hundred to five thousand. Sell off the apartments that were empty. He’d been buying them up, warehousing them. Telling people he’d buy them out.

  He got himself on the co-op board, became its president, the rest of the members are his people. I’d heard one old man say at the party the night before, “Lennox says it’s to restore the Armstrong to its former grandeur, the glory days, but if it happens, the residents will just get moved on. Lennox? That fellow just waiting for us to die.”

  I went to the other side of the roof. When I leaned out, I was right over the back lot where I’d found Hutchison’s body. There were still a few cops, but the ambulance had gone. I leaned out as far as I could, lost my footing, and gasped for breath.