Blood Count

CHAPTER 27

T here was already a crowd when I got to the Sugar Hill Club at ten, people looking for a good time. In the corner was a tall Christmas tree, blue and white lights looped through the branches, a silver star on top. Last time I’d been here was election night, six weeks ago. It seemed like years, but hard to forget-the joy, the celebration, and Lily.

I leaned on the bar, ate some peanuts from a bowl, and listened to the conversations swirl around me.

“Fucking Madoff. They should crucify him.”

“You saved anything when the shit came down?”

“ So not, but I’m stacking cheese like crazy now. Gotta save it.”

I needed a drink. I called out to Axel, the bartender, who crossed to me and said,“You wanna hear the one about the guy goes into a bar and drops dead…?”

“Zip it, man,” somebody shouted. “We heard that one already a hundred times. Enough!”

With his big soft shoulders, Axel was a chunky young guy built like a rugby player gone to seed. German mother, black GI dad, a crew cut dyed platinum, a red and white bandanna around his forehead, he was working on his routine as a stand-up comic. “So the other guy goes into the bar-Oh, fuck, I forgot the end,” Axel said. “What are you drinking, Artie? Man it is cold out there. Cold as you-know-what, witch’s tit in a brass bra-my old man used to say that in Berlin when I was a kid. He hated that weather. He wasn’t crazy about the Germans, either.” He laughed. “Have one on me, Artie.”

I asked for a beer. Axel set a bottle and a frosty glass on the bar.

“Ain’t seen you since, what was it, election night? I’m glad you brought your ass over here. It’s good to see you, man.”

I drank, looking at the door. I was waiting for Lily.

On the sound system Oscar Peterson was playing his elegant version of Christmas music, an album Lily once gave me. The six-piece combo played “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” as such a lovely piece of music, it made me believe for a minute in the whole holiday thing.

I had a second beer. Somebody switched the sound system off and a guy went to the piano, and started to play. I’d heard him the summer before when I’d been at the club.

He was probably seventy at least, but when he played “You Took Advantage,” he ran through it like a virile young man, smiling, singing to himself.

I signaled to Axel. I wanted to know the piano player’s name, but a familiar voice interrupted.

“Martini please, Hendricks gin, straight up, very dry, with a twist. Make it a double.” It was Virgil Radcliff.

Radcliff, who’d said he’d be working all night, was sitting with Carver Lennox, the two of them talking and laughing. I was pretty surprised. Radcliff had told me he didn’t like the guy.

“Artie, come join us,” Lennox called. He held up his glass, a smoky, golden single malt in it, and offered me one.

The whiskey was good. Radcliff wore the clothes he’d been wearing all day, but Lennox had on a beautiful black custom-made suit, the wool as fine as silk, and a pristine white shirt, open at the neck. On the bar was a red Santa hat.

After a minute or two of “how you doing” talk-we talked malt whiskey-Radcliff got up. “I have to go. Thanks for the drink, Cal.”

“Not at all, Virgil. Please, Artie, have another one. I had better do some circulating; there’s a big group coming on later.”

“Not everyone’s from the Armstrong?”

“From the Armstrong, plus other friends,” said Lennox, who picked up his Santa hat! “I’m hoping the mayor will show. He’s been so good to us up here, he’s a man that understands development. Helps out, attends the black churches. He gets it.”

“You want to walk me out, Artie?” said Radcliff.

“I thought you were working?”

“I’m on my way,” he said, as we made our way through the crowd. “I just checked up on Ms. McGee at the hospital, by the way; it was dehydration, heat got turned up so high in her place she passed out, wasn’t drinking enough water. They’ll have her home in a few hours.”

“Good. What’s with the ‘Cal’ business? I thought you didn’t like Lennox.”

“Friends call him Cal. Name’s Carver Antoine Lennox. Sometimes you need to make friends with the enemy, right?”

“He’s the enemy?”

“I’m speaking metaphorically. More or less,” Radcliff said. “Can you do me a favor? I mean, no reason you should, Artie, but I would like to ask you to do something for me.” He was hesitant, formal.

He was going back to work. Lily was on her way to the club. I felt generous.

“Sure.”

“My dad will probably stop by. I asked him to come before I knew I had to work tonight, and I can’t get hold of him. Can you just make sure he gets a drink or something?”

“There’s something else you want, isn’t there?” I saw it in his face.

“Since you were asking, Artie, yeah. You could tell my dad being a cop is OK. Maybe if he meets you, he’ll stop getting on me to quit and go back to grad school.”

“Why don’t you tell him?”

I saw that Virgil was nervous about his father. He was fearful, not that his dad would beat him or ignore him, but of the pressure. I knew about that. I remembered my own father pushing me at school, wanting to turn me into a linguist or a scientist, something important, useful, something that would aid the socialist cause we believed in-or that he did. He was dead before I became a cop, so it didn’t matter.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” Virgil said. “Ever since I was a kid, I did stuff they didn’t approve of, couldn’t even fathom. My idea of connecting with what my dad called ‘my people’ was wearing big satin basketball shorts and gold chains that made my parents go nuts, I mean, their Virgil, in bling? And us living in Cambridge when he taught at Harvard, and then on Riverside Drive? God, were they disappointed in me,” he said, lighting up a cigarette as we reached the door of the club. “Christ, I shouldn’t have had that drink with Lennox, not when I’m working.”

He was on a roll. I was guessing he’d had more than one drink. Told me that as a kid, he had been crazy about basketball and Tupac, and his parents always saying, “Can’t you find something that doesn’t involve criminals or ball players?” and he thought to himself he needed some culture and started listening to MC Solaar.

“I can imagine.”

“Yeah? My dad dragged me around Harlem as a kid; he showed me the old buildings, the Jumel Mansion, that kind of thing, and eventually I fell in love with them. I guess he knew me better than I knew myself. So I majored in the history of architecture, and I figured afterward I’d get a degree in architecture, which I did, and then I was going for one in urban planning because by then I realized my big love was New York City, the city itself. Still is. Still love it, the good, the bad, the ugly. Then it was 9/11,” said Virgil. “I was on the subway. I was heading to the Trade Center to get some air tickets, going over to Italy to look at old buildings. I made it out of the train just in time.” He paused. “I saw them jump. The smoke made me blind, I fell over, got up, thought I was somehow in a pile of cattle, legs all sticking up, you know?”

“Yes.”

“I realized it was people. They were all dead. I couldn’t shake that,” said Radcliff. “I had to do something. You worked the pile, didn’t you?”

Yeah, I said. Yes. I knew where he was coming from. I couldn’t help it but I was getting to like him. Virgil. I’d stop calling him Radcliff. I didn’t want to look like a jealous old man, not with this guy who was one of our own, who had done the thing.

“Man, you guys were the heroes,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me on, so I worked night shifts at some of the shelters the cops and fire guys used. I served meals and whatever else they let me do. I didn’t have any other skills. I was useless. I thought, Fuck architecture, I want to do something, and I got myself into the police academy. I guess they were happy to have a black guy with a college degree.”

The club was packed now. The mix of music, laughter, chatter, made it hard to talk. We were standing near the door, and now Virgil said, “Let’s go outside. I need a smoke. It’s suffocating in here.”

I followed him into the street, he lit up a smoke, offered me one. I shook my head. He glanced up and down St. Nicholas Avenue where the club was, a few doors down from St. Nick’s Pub, a few blocks from the Armstrong.

“You know, Artie, I’ve only been in Harlem a couple of years. I feel like a fish out of water some of the time,” said Virgil. “You should hear me trying to talk with some of my ‘homies.’ People piss themselves laughing, or they get mad. White men can’t jump; black men don’t talk good English. Right? Never mind,” he added. “My dad went nuts. ‘You’re gonna be a cop?’ he said, and I said, ‘Listen, it’s that or I’m going into the military, OK?’ First time in my life I went up against him that way, you know, Artie? He blew his top. The idea of me going into the military was too much.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. Had something else in mind for me I guess. I better get going.” He looked at the street. “Maybe he’s not coming. But if you see him, say it’s OK, will you? And you can talk jazz with him. He loves that music. You guys can talk the talk.”

“Listen, there’s something else,” I said. “What do you know about Lionel Hutchison and his obsession with suffering? That stuff about euthanasia?”

“He had a brother who died young, I know that,” said Virgil. “Can we talk about it tomorrow? I’m gonna be dead meat if I don’t get back to the station house soon.”

“Right.”

“By the way, Artie, I have something for you.” From his pocket he took a small package wrapped in red tissue paper and tossed it to me.

“What’s that?”

“Consider it a Christmas present. I mean, Merry Christmas.” He zipped his jacket.

“Wait.”

“What?”

I’d been holding back. I wanted to tell him I thought Lionel Hutchison had-what? Killed Marianna Simonova? Released her from her pain? That maybe Lily had helped him? Did Virgil know?

“Can it wait?” Virgil asked, seeing my hesitation.

“Sure,” I said.