Mr. Cash-a grumpy, middle-aged man with a Jamaican accent in sweatpants and a brown down jacket-led me down to the basement of the bank and unlocked the door to the vault. He took the key I handed him-I’d found it at Lily’s-opened the little door, and extracted a flat metal box from a wall of identical slots in the vault.
“Is that it?” he said. “Will you be long?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” I said.
“I’ll be next door in my office.” He yawned.
Late night? I wanted to say. He knew I was a cop, he knew I was on business. I didn’t like his attitude, but I just left him, went into one of the little rooms opposite the vault, turned on the light, shut the door, laid the flat box on the ledge, and sat down.
I keep my own stuff in a similar box at my bank downtown. When I got hold of my father’s journals, I’d wanted them safe. I keep the journals in the box, along with cash for emergencies-I usually end up spending it when there’s no emergency at all except my being broke-and a spare weapon and some ammo.
What for? I’ve got a second gun at home. There isn’t any revolution coming. I just like knowing it’s there. In the box I also keep my father’s watch and the gold earrings he’d given my mother the night they went to see Paul Robeson.
I’d put on my glasses and opened the box when my phone beeped. I couldn’t get a signal, but I could see from her text that Lily was back from the cemetery. She was upset as hell that nobody had called her about Dr. Hutchison.
From Simonova’s box, I removed an assortment of little worn leather boxes containing old lockets, gold chains, earrings, a diamond ring, and a few Soviet medals, all tarnished now.
There was an envelope full of twenties-I was guessing around a couple grand-and a plastic bag. In it were vials of pills. Spare medication? But why keep it in the bank? I took the bag.
There was also a worn leather passport case. Inside were two passports, one American, the other Soviet, long out of date, a passport from a country that no longer existed. She had also kept her Communist Party card.
Finally, in a blue folder tied up with cotton string, there was a will.
At first, scanning it quickly, I was relieved. I didn’t see Lily’s name. She had gone crazy when she’d thought Simonova had left her the apartment at the Armstrong. But there was something else, and it hit me like a hammer.
I sat up straight, cleaned my glasses on my shirt, and kept reading. I was still feeling lousy from getting beat up in the basement of the Armstrong and I was taking too many painkillers. I shut my eyes for a moment and then reread the will. I didn’t want to believe what I was reading. But it was there, legal, properly spelled out, signed by a lawyer. I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes again, fumbled in my pocket for some aspirin, and ate them.
In that little room in the basement of the bank, I got up, sat down, picked up the paper again. I thought I must have been wrong the first couple of times I read the will, that my vision was blurred, that I was tired. I read it again carefully.
CHAPTER 41
I n her will, Marianna Simonova had left almost everything to Marie Louise Semake. All of it: the apartment, furniture, clothes. She had also left her some cash. This was because Madame Semake was a worker and she, Marianna Simonova, in solidarity with the working class, had bestowed what was rightly hers upon the person who most deserved it. I looked at the date. The will had just been signed on Thursday, but when had she given the instructions to the lawyer? Who put it in the safe-deposit box? Had it been Lily who kept the key? Would she have done it without looking in the envelope? Lily had a fierce sense of what was right. She was obsessive about privacy.
The will had been executed by a woman lawyer from a midtown firm, signed and sealed and witnessed by somebody from the firm. The executor was named as Dr. Lionel Hutchison.
Had there been an earlier will?
The lawyer on the will was G. Neuwirth. She was listed. I left a message. Less than five minutes later, she called back.
Yes, said Ms. Neuwirth, she had been up to see Mrs. Simonova, along with her assistant, yes, on Thursday. She wasn’t sure about earlier wills, and she wasn’t in the city. She had picked up the message and called me back from her place in Montauk. No way she could get back today; nobody she could ask, either, not on Sunday. She’d do it first thing in the morning. What’s more, said Ms. Neuwirth, the attorney who had looked after Mrs. Simonova for years had recently died, and she, Ms. Neuwirth, wasn’t completely up to date with the previous material, at least not without looking at her files. She said she’d call first thing in the morning.
Mr. Cash was hovering now, cracking his knuckles. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, I was so relieved Lily wasn’t named in the will. The will would trump the letter.
But why the letter to Lily? Did Simonova find out something about Marie Louise she didn’t like? Was she just out of her mind? One of those people who constantly rewrite their wills depending on the state of their relationships?
For a few minutes, I sat, the door closed, the overhead light making my hands yellow. Then I put the document back in the envelope, stuffed it in my canvas bag, along with the few other things I’d found. I returned the box to the bank manager and went upstairs, and by the time I left the bank it was already getting dark.
It was only four, but it was the shortest day of the year, and only a smudge of cold, bright color was left in the sky over the Hudson.
From my car, I called Lily. No answer. I tried Virgil. Nothing. I put in a call to an ex-cop I know who had gone to law school. I needed somebody who hadn’t been involved in writing the will.
My pal had gone into estate law. Said she wanted a quiet life. Told me if the will was solid, Marie Louise Semake could inherit even if she was in the U.S. illegally.
Before I put the key in the ignition, I opened the document. Marie Louise’s address was there, but it was in Mali. She wasn’t illegal in Mali, she was a citizen. Maybe it was what she had told Simonova, that it was her permanent address. Maybe she had worried that if she was illegal, she wouldn’t get the apartment.
Either way, Marie Louise had known. How else would Simonova’s lawyer have had the Mali address?
The apartment, the money, would change Marie Louise’s life. She could hire a good immigration lawyer, stay in America, send her kids to school. Or she could sell the apartment and go back to her country and open a clinic. There were a million ways it could change her life.
Suddenly, I wondered what time she had left the party the night before. Tolya had given Marie Louise a ride from the Sugar Hill Club. It had been my idea. I left him a message, then I called Jimmy Wagner and asked him to get me the time of Simonova’s death. He put me on hold, came back, and said the ME made it for between two and three in the morning.
“One more thing, Artie?”
“Yeah, Jimmy?”
“For sure, he must have been pushed. The way the bones were broken, the angle, all the signs. I have people up on that roof right now looking. Are we getting someplace with this?”
I told him I was on it and hung up.
I married an American and then he died, Marie Louise had said. Was it true? If it was true, why did immigration scare her? If it was true, she was the widow of an American.
Immigrants get desperate. I’d met Chinese who had paid forty grand to get to America on ships where some of them died in sealed containers.
I didn’t make Marie Louise for a killer. I liked her. But she had children. She was a doctor who worked scrubbing toilets for people at the Armstrong. Money would change everything.
Did she kill Simonova? Did she think Hutchison knew? He was the executor on the will. He knew Marie Louise would inherit. Did she kill him, too, to stop him talking? She could have pushed him. She had access to most of the apartments on the fourteenth floor. She was young. Strong.
My phone rang.
“Tolya. Listen, you remember the woman you gave a ride to last night?”
“Sure, Marie Louise.
Lovely young lady, sure.”
“What time did you drop her off at home, you remember at all?” I felt safer talking to him in Russian.
“I didn’t,” he said.
“What?”
“She said she felt bad making us go out of the way, that she preferred it if we went to my house on 139th Street first, and then the car could take her to 116th. I think I got to my place around one fifteen. I can ask Janet.”
“Who?”
“Nice lady I met at the party.”
“She went home with you, this Janet?”
“None of your business,” he said, sounding pleased with himself.
“Can you ask your driver what time he dropped Marie Louise and if she went inside her building?”
“I’ll try, Artyom. This guy who drove was not regular guy, just somebody I use on and off, and I think he’s gone on vacation. I’ll find him if it’s important.”
“It’s important,” I said. “I’ll call you.”
I turned my car around so fast, I almost crashed into the curb, but I wanted to see Marie Louise’s apartment. I wanted to talk to her neighbors, see where she’d been the night before, where her children were, if anybody had ever seen an American husband. When I got to the building, I found her name on the buzzer. Somebody let me in.
The fear in that apartment made it worse than I’d expected.
CHAPTER 42
T he face that looked out through a crack in the door belonged to a little kid. He was about six. I showed him my badge. He looked terrified. He let me in, then scrambled back to the chair where he had been watching an ancient black-and-white TV set perched on a shaky table.
I could see a bedroom through a partly open door. At one side of the main room was a kitchen, and another kid, a gangly teenager, was constructing sandwiches for himself and his younger brother. Both boys, skin dark like their mother, were polite, as if they had learned manners in some fancy school.
Putting a sandwich on a plate, pouring a cup of milk, the older kid gave them to his little brother and spoke softly to him, then stood and faced me and asked if he could help. He had a faint French accent. I tried speaking French with him. I gestured for him to sit down and eat while we talked.
He was thirteen, he told me, and he always took care of his little brother when their mother was at work. His name was Luc Semake, he told me, and his brother was Olivier Semake.
I knew Luc wanted his brother to see he wasn’t afraid of me, though I knew he was scared and desperately shy. I tried to keep it short. I hated this.
“Where is your mother?” I said, gently as I could.
“She is at her work,” said Luc, while Olivier just stared at the TV, his sandwich untouched.
“Do you know where she works?”
“Yes.” He told me the address of the Armstrong. He asked if he should phone her. I said it wasn’t a big deal.
“It must be hard taking care of Olivier by yourself,” I said, and thought to myself: I’m not going to do this anymore. I don’t want to be in a shabby apartment, making two kids tell me about their mother so I can get the goods on her. I don’t want this.
“It’s OK,” said Luc. “It’s fine. I can take care of him.”
On a shelf were a row of medical books in French, a few magazines, a few albums, music from Mali, by Amadou and Mariam. I picked up a CD.
“You know this music?” said Luc.
“It’s good,” I said.
There were pictures of the kids near the CDs, and a photograph of a good-looking young guy, maybe thirty, in a T-shirt and a Yankees cap. Luc followed my gaze.
“This was our father,” he said.
“I see.”
“He was American.”
“Where is he?”
“He is gone,” he said. “Dead.”
I got the feeling Marie Louise had maybe invented the American father so if anyone asked, the boys would say they were Americans.
As I asked questions, the kids were polite and attentive, and it made them seem even more lost, these two skinny boys alone in a room in Harlem on a freezing day when it was already dark outside at four in the afternoon and their mother was away cleaning apartments.
“So you visit Mali?”
“Yes,” said Luc. “Soon we will go home, my mother says so. This morning she tells to me that we will go soon.”
“Does that make you happy?”
He nodded.
“You don’t like it here?”
“It is bad for Olivier. We are Muslim, and people here do not like us, and we are not permitted to pray at school.”
“Why did your mother say that this morning?” I said.
“I don’t know. She comes in very happy, she brings us a nice breakfast, and she says soon we will go.”
I didn’t want to ask. Olivier had been listening hard, and he came over to the kitchen. I was sitting on a stool, my jacket unzipped, my elbows on the counter, and the kid came over and leaned against me.
He was still a little boy. In my jacket pocket, I found a candy bar I’d forgotten about and offered it to him. The older boy just shook his head and refused politely, but Olivier leaned against me some more, maybe for the warmth or the safety or just because he was a friendly kid, and he took the candy.
“You take good care of your brother,” I said to Luc. “I’m sure your mother works very hard.”
“Yes. Sometimes she works all day and also in the night.”
“That’s rough,” I said, seeing the kids were getting comfortable with me. “May I have a glass of water?”
Luc got the water. Olivier sat eating the candy bar. “Would you like to see a picture of our mother?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He got a snapshot off the bookshelf and gave it to me. In it were Marie Louise and the two boys posing on the Staten Island Ferry, the city in the background. Just tourists for a day, they were smiling and mugging for the camera.
“She’s nice,” I said. “And she works really hard, I know. You said sometimes she works in the night?”
“Sure,” Luc said. “Sometimes she works as a babysitter for people.”
“But you’re OK to take care of Luc all night?”
“Yes. We have her phone number. I’m grown up,” he said. “Last night, she was away so I made Olivier do his homework, and I made supper, and then when our mom comes in the morning, everything is nice for her.”
“What time did you have breakfast today?” I said.
“I think eight.”
“OK, well, if you just tell your mom I was here.” I took my card out and put it on the counter. I wanted to do something, give them something, take back all the questions. But all I did was say good-bye and run down the stairs.
Marie Louise had been out all night. I had seen her leave the Sugar Hill Club party, but she wasn’t home until morning.
Where was she during that time?
Plenty of time to get to the Armstrong and Lionel Hutchison.
Who could she have been babysitting for? Who?
At a local candy store, I scooped up candy bars, comics, and a box of chocolate, put it all in a bag, ran back to the apartment, went upstairs. I felt shitty about the stuff I bought-it was only a bribe after the fact-so I just left it by the Semakes’ door. I didn’t go in.
On my way back to 116th Street, my phone rang. It was Virgil.
“Where are you?” he said.
I told him.
“Can you get over here? The Armstrong.”
“Soon as I can.”
“No. Now. Just come.” His voice was tense.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the Armstrong, in the basement,” said Virgil. “Please just hurry the fuck up, OK?”
“Where’s Lily?”
“With me.”
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone,” he said.
CHAPTER 43
T he wet sheets, piled up in plastic baskets in
the Armstrong’s laundry room, were like crumpled ghosts. On a line stretched between hooks screwed into opposite walls, hung a newly washed pink cotton baby blanket, shedding water onto the floor. The acrid smell of bleach mixed with the wet laundry hit me as soon as I got to the entrance. A young guy in uniform tried to stop me going in. I showed him my badge.
All the overhead lights were on. A portable spotlight had also been set up. It was aimed at one of the washing machines, where Virgil was standing, looking down. Lily stood a few feet away, still wearing the green shawl she’d worn to Simonova’s funeral that morning. Her arms were crossed. Diaz was there, too, along with a middle-aged woman in jeans, a yellow sweatshirt, and an apron. There was the low buzz of talk, people mumbling, hesitant.
“Over here,” said Virgil. “Jesus, who the fuck does this kind of stuff?” He pointed at a mound covered by a green bath towel.
“What is it?”
“It’s the dog,” he said.
“What?”
“The Hutchisons’ dog.”
“Ed,” Lily said.
“The black Lab?”
Virgil nodded. “Shirley found it,” He nodded in the direction of the woman in the apron.
“The dog?”
“Yeah, somebody put him in the washing machine and ran it for a complete cycle,” said Virgil. “Then they stuffed him into one of the old gas dryers and tried to light the mechanism under it. There was gas in there, it almost blew the place up. We’re waiting for the ASPCA forensics truck. They can test on the spot, but there’s no question what happened here. I’ve seen the shit people do to animals. I remember one case, we picked up some crush videos.”
Lily looked at me questioningly.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“Men use dogs to fight each other, you know that, but there are women who like to put on high heels and stick them in the dogs’ flesh. They kick them to death.”
She turned away.
All I could think of was Marie Louise and her fear of dogs. She’d been terrified of the Hutchisons’ dog.
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