“I’m going to see Lily. ”
“Artie?”
“What?”
“We need to talk,” Virgil said. “About Lily.”
“What do you want, a duel?”
He smiled faintly. “I wish.”
“Why, because you know how to fence?”
“I do, since you ask. Yeah, I did some very pretty fencing. I was on the team. Harvard,” he said in a tone of self-mockery. “You don’t believe me, do you? There’s been black guys on that team for quite a while, cross my heart,” he added. “Listen to me, I really like her, Artie.”
“It’s Lily’s decision,” I said. “Right?”
“Is it?”
“What do you think, that I’m going to hypnotize her or something?”
“You spent the night,” Virgil said. It wasn’t a question and I didn’t answer, and for a few seconds, we were both silent. Then he held up a single piece of paper. “You should know I’m taking this, I found it in Lennox’s files. It shows what he’s been up to.”
“It’s no good without a warrant.”
“I don’t care. Carver Lennox is too connected. We might never get the fucking warrant. Don’t push me on this one, Artie. I’m just doing it.” He put his hand on the doorknob. “I’m going to get Lennox now,” he said. “Please don’t stop me.”
CHAPTER 49
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” Sinatra was singing on Lily’s stereo.
She looked up from a pile of presents she was wrapping on the floor of her apartment. “Where were you?”
“Can I sit down?”
“Let him talk,” said Tolya, who, attired in his Santa suit, looked like an enormous red tomato. He sat on the floor near her and put his hand on Lily’s arm. “OK?”
I looked at all the stuff on the floor. “What is all this?”
“I’ll take it to some kids tomorrow,” said Tolya. “Nice kids. Local school.” He peered into an enormous canvas bag, handing a package to Lily. “I want to be part of this community.”
Tolya’s magic had worked on Lily. Lap full of ribbons, she sat near him. Being with Tolya made her feel safe. The place was littered with silver paper and gold and red ribbons and sparkly stuff, and stacks of greeting cards. There was a bottle of red wine on the floor, two glasses.
Lily asked if everything was OK with Marie Louise and I just nodded. I just said it was all fine now.
“Will you help her get a green card?”
“If I can, of course,” I said. “Yes. You’re not mad at me anymore?”
“Not very mad,” she said.
Tolya handed Lily a toy truck, closed his eyes for a minute, listening to the music.
“It is toss-up, Artyom. Verdi, Sinatra. I should have been Italian.”
I went to the kitchen to get some water and he followed. I swallowed a couple of aspirin.
“Artyom?”
“What?”
“I got a little information about some dead guys, dead Russians. It’s all connected, Artyom, the guy in the cemetery, the one in the closet who bled out, maybe the old lady—Mrs. Simonova, even the doctor. Nothing solid, but I don’t like it. You should be careful, you hear me? You will get beat up again. Bad. Worse.”
“Get me more information.”
“Soon,” he said.
“You’re worried about this. Is that why you’re here with Lily?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Artie? Sit with me,” Lily called out and I went and sat on the rug near her.
“Are you OK?”
“I’m better,” she said. “I’m sad, but better. I’m sad about Lionel. You’ll find out who killed him, won’t you?”
“Yes. Soon.”
“Good. I remember you used to say there was a moment in a case when you felt it was coming to an end.”
“You remember.”
“Most things,” said Lily, as I leaned over to kiss the top of her head. I got up off the floor. “Come back soon,” she added.
At the door, I turned to look at her, at Lily on the floor, the bright paper and ribbon around her, a glass of wine in her hand, Tolya in the kitchen, the music. She suddenly looked up at me and smiled in a way that told me the night before hadn’t been an accident, wasn’t just the party and a late night and too much booze.
I closed the door behind me, I was already on my phone. I wanted to make sure Virgil was on his way to get the warrant. I wanted to see Lennox, and alone. Virgil was so angry, I figured he might blow it. I got him, he told me he was at the station house. Then, I left a message for Carver Lennox. Told him I wanted to meet. I suggested the Sugar Hill Club. I hung up, got in the elevator and went looking for Diaz.
Regina McGee stopped me in the lobby, and I got the feeling she’d been waiting for me. She was nervous, shifting from foot to foot, hands clasped.
“I thought you were in the hospital.”
“They let me go. I got dehydrated. Stupid, I forgot to drink water. I felt a chill, I turn the heat up too high, must have done passed out. Sometimes I think I’m going soft in the head,” she said. “I said to them, please, send me home, soon as they ran a couple tests. I begged. I don’t hold with being in hospitals.”
I said I was glad she was better. She said she had been looking for me.
“What do you need?”
“Please, can you come to my apartment? I don’t want to talk here.” She lowered her voice as she led me to the elevator, and, when it came, peered inside, as if to make sure we would be alone.
There was an alcove for her bed, and another for the kitchen. A door led to the bathroom. There were two windows that faced south over Manhattan. The apartment was very small, the whole room jammed with record albums, hundreds of them, some on makeshift shelves, others in cartons on the floor. There were photographs of Ella Fitzgerald on the walls.
On one side of the room was an elaborate stereo system, which Regina said Ella had given her. On the small table, there was a coffee pot and the remains of a meal. Books were piled up, most of them biographies of jazz musicians.
“I found this when I went to put the garbage out.” She held up a dog’s collar. “I heard about the Hutchisons’ dog.”
I took it from her. “You think it’s his?”
“I know it,” she said. “Celestina treated me like a maid, and I didn’t take kindly to it, but I didn’t mind walking Ed from time to time. So when I see there’s fur in the garbage chute, I get the feeling somebody tried to push the dog down, and he wouldn’t go, so they stuffed him in the washing machine. Who does this type of thing?” she said, clutching a Kleenex. “Can I offer you some tea?”
I shook my head. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Regina sat down on the edge of a chair, gestured to another. I sat.
“I can’t sleep at night,” she said. “All night I think about Amahl Washington and how fast they buried him—they didn’t bury him, they cremated him before anybody could say good-bye. Then they held this big fancy funeral over to the Abyssinian. It wasn’t Amahl’s church. Why? I have asked myself over and over, and I can’t make no sense of it.”
“Who was in charge?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who organized his funeral?”
“He didn’t have much real family, just the one niece from out of town, from up near Buffalo. He had a lot of friends and associates, so first I think to myself maybe this funeral been organized by somebody from his basketball days, or from his time on the City Council. But at the church I notice it’s Carver Lennox running things. He gives the eulogy.”
“What’s happened to the apartment?”
“Do you want to see it?”
“Yes”
“It’s on the ninth floor. Come on.”
Amahl Washington’s apartment sounded empty, that strange, faint noise a vacant place makes, when all you hear is the refrigerator and the heat.
“They changed the locks on Amahl’s apartment after he died,” Regina
said. “But I kept a key to this here back door. Some of these apartments have a back door that leads into the kitchen. Nobody uses them much anymore. They were for folk who did the cooking and washing,” she said, “I was counting on them forgetting about the back door, you know?”
Regina led me from room to room. The place was immaculate. It had been cleaned up and cleaned out, the floor polished, the paint fresh.
“This looks like somebody fixed it all up,” I said.
“That’s what I wanted to show you. Somebody who’s thinking of selling you’d say.”
“Right.”
“So I called that niece of Amahl’s that lives upstate, and she didn’t know much, they weren’t close, but she told me the will was still in, what do you call it—probate?—and ain’t nothing can be done until that’s fixed.”
“Does she know this apartment has been cleaned out?”
“Sure. I told her. She said that was fine, Carver Lennox told her he was getting ready to sell it and he was a big help to her. He took care of everything.”
“She’s going to sell it to him?”
“She says she don’t know, it’s not clear who this place belongs to, seeing as Amahl didn’t specify nobody in his will, he just went too fast to do it, so it’s all in a kind of mess. But I’m sure Carver has his eye on it.”
“You think Mr. Washington meant you to have it?”
“Could be,” she said. “I’d rather have him alive, tell the truth.”
“Anything else?”
Regina led me back to the kitchen and through the back door, into the hall near the back stairs. Right then I heard something; so did she. Somebody was coming toward us, along the hall. I could hear him talking on his cell phone. Fear crossed Regina’s face.
“Go home,” I said. “Just walk to the elevator like nothing happened, just go on. He won’t hurt you. I’ll be right here. I’ll wait.”
“I’m scared of that man,” she said, as Lennox got closer, his voice louder.
“It will be fine. Go on.”
“Too many old folk dying in this building,” said Regina. “I don’t want to die.”
CHAPTER 50
Who was the guy I saw slip out of the Sugar Hill Club and into the ice-cold night? It was after I’d left Regina McGee at the Armstrong. I pulled up across the street from the club and I saw him, the figure in a dark jacket, hood up, emerging from the club door. In a spill of white from the streetlight, he appeared, looked pale as a ghost, then was gone into the shadow. Was he black? Hard to tell. The glistening tarmac, the ice, the light, played tricks. Light turned black people white and white people dark.
A thief in the night. The phrase came to me as I crossed the street. My head throbbed. I needed sleep, but I felt wide awake, adrenaline roaring through my body. If Carver Lennox showed, I’d get it out of him. It was him. He had killed Lionel Hutchison. He was involved with the others. He wanted the apartments. He wanted the building.
It was almost midnight when I got inside the club. The place was empty except for a young couple, her in a yellow sweater and sparkly earrings like little Christmas trees, him in a red plaid shirt, sitting at a table near the deserted bandstand, holding hands over a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Canned music came over the sound system. I didn’t know the guy behind the bar, but at the far end, last seat near the wall, sat Carver Lennox.
He saw me and raised a hand in greeting.
I climbed on the stool next to his, wondering if this was the man who had murdered Lionel Hutchison.
When Lennox had found me earlier at Amahl Washington’s apartment on the ninth floor, he had been cool about it. I had expected a fight, but he didn’t ask why I was there, just told me he’d picked up the message I wanted to meet and asked if midnight worked for me. He wanted to help his daughter with her homework. She was upstairs at his apartment, he said. Said the Sugar Hill Club was fine. He’d meet me.
Now he ordered a refill on his whiskey. “What would you like, Artie?”
“I’ll get my own.” I asked for a beer.
“How can I help?” said Lennox.
When the bartender put the bottle in front of me, I realized I was thirsty. My head hurt. I was dog tired.
“I’ve been thinking about all of the shit going down at the Armstrong, and I figure you’re the guy to paint me the picture,” I said. “Open a window on it for me, Carver. You want to do that?”
Carver ignored my question. “You all right, man?” he said. “That beating you took in the storage room, I’m sorry about that. It’s the kind of thing we have to change. That damn back door is always open, there’s always people in and out for smokes, and garbage, and to get their cars. It’s not the way you run a building, you know, I tell them over and over. Only Diaz gets it. But he can’t do everything alone.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You have a different impression?”
“He’s very attentive.”
“You mean he eavesdrops?” Lennox laughed.
“Isn’t that what you pay him for?”
“I pay him to make my building a better place.”
“Right.”
“Help me here, Artie. You think Diaz has his hand out more than normal? I need to know.”
I didn’t answer for a minute. I downed the beer.
“I didn’t come to talk about Diaz. Your problem,” I said.
“What do you need?”
“You tell me.”
He leaned close, arms on the bar, hand gripping the whiskey glass. His eyes were bloodshot. In the whites of his eyes were tiny threads of red. In the corners was more blood. I was so close to Lennox, I thought I could see the blood in his left eye leaking.
“You don’t think I care that Lionel died?” Lennox said. He was pretty wasted. He had been drinking, a lot, I realized.
“Do you?”
“He was my friend, so I fucking care. It’s also bad news for my building.”
“Your building?”
“You fucking know what I mean,” he said, his voice low now, but angry.
“What about Marianna Simonova? And Amahl Washington?”
“They were old, man. They were old and sick and they died.”
I kept my mouth shut, and my silence got to him.
“You think they were murdered, too?” he said. “You think it’s connected? Is that what you think?” The horror that crossed his face seemed real.
I ordered another beer.
“Should I have another drink?” It was rhetorical. He gestured for another, his third, he said. Or fourth. Raised it. Drank it.
“So how many apartments you got empty, Cal?”
“There’s some,” he said. “Why?”
“Let’s say I’m a fucking financial idiot. You’re planning to turn the Armstrong into a new co-op, call it the Barack Obama, that right?”
“You don’t like our new president, man? That’s your problem.” Lennox sounded hostile.
“I’m guessing the way you got it structured, you need a majority of owners who will go along. Ready to play your game when you ask five grand for maintenance, or else sell up, right? You already got your hands on a few, isn’t that right, Cal?”
“Shares, yeah.”
“What?”
“You buy shares in a co-op, you don’t buy the apartment.”
“What-fucking-ever,” I said. “And you and the new shareholders can run the board between you, that right?”
“I don’t know what business it is of yours,” he said. “Listen to me, man, just ask me what you want to know. I want Hutchison’s murder solved, right? I loved that man. You listening?”
“Well, you’ll get hold of his place now, won’t you? I mean, his wife wants out, isn’t that right? You have enough apartments now?”
“Plenty.” He pushed his empty glass away and got up from the bar stool.
“Let me buy you one,” I said, backing off. I figured I better ease up or I’d lose Lennox before I nailed him. “You mind if I ask you about
Amahl Washington?”
“You can ask me any fucking thing you want, man. You understand?” He was drunk, but he was willing to talk.
Was this his game? I still had him figured for Hutchison’s murder, but the longer I spent in the bar, the less sure I was.
“I was fucking sad, man,” said Lennox. “I played basketball in high school, and Amahl was my hero. He was a great man. He did a lot for his people. He retired and he went on to the City Council.”
“He died at the Armstrong. Your wife was his doctor.”
“Please! Lucille is the straightest woman ever walked this planet. Her religion is what makes her tick, not fucking money. She was Amahl’s doc because she’s the best lung specialist at Presbyterian.”
“Lionel Hutchison was her mentor, isn’t that right? Isn’t that why Simonova saw Lucille Bernard, too? You were friends with Mrs. Simonova?”
“I’m getting another drink,” said Lennox. I signaled the bartender. I paid for it.
“You didn’t like her?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Simonova.”
“You have no idea.” He turned so I couldn’t see his face.
“You wouldn’t be sad to get your hands on her apartment, would you? But it belongs to Marie Louise. Simonova left it to her, you must know that.”
“Nice for Marie Louise.
Oddly, Lennox seemed glad for Marie Louise, and I wondered why
“You didn’t want a shot at buying Simonova’s apartment?”
“No way,” he said, half to himself. “No fucking way.”
“You were at Simonova’s the night before she died. In fact, more than once last week.”
“She asked me over,” said Lennox. “She needed some help.”
“What with? I noticed she had presents for you and your kids; what’s that about?”
“She gave everybody presents. It was how she bribed people. Listen, man, you got anything to tell me about Lionel Hutchison? That’s why I came out on this fucking miserable night, right?”
“You knew about Hutchison’s obsession with pain relief, with assisted suicide?”
He snorted. “Everybody fucking knew. It was his religion. Times I was in the middle, Celestina saying Lionel wants to kill people, him shilling for his euthanasia thing.”
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