Blood Count

S U N D A Y
CHAPTER 33

I t was a beautiful, bitter-cold morning, clear black sky, an icy slice of moon, the stars still out just before dawn. I could see them from Lily’s window. I could see the faraway lights downtown on the skyscrapers. On the dark, quiet streets closer to the Armstrong, there was only a solitary figure coming in the back door with a big, shaggy dog, somebody who couldn’t sleep, somebody whose pooch had begged for an early walk. Something else caught my eye, but I was distracted by Lily; dressed in a black skirt and jacket, green shawl over her shoulders, she was rummaging in her bag for her gloves.

“I have to go,” she said, picking up her coat. She kissed my cheek and rubbed off some lipstick.

I said I wanted to go to the cemetery with her. She said no.

“Just wait for me, will you? Please?”

I said I’d wait. As soon as she closed the door behind her, I looked out of the window again. My car, a slick of white ice over the red, was parked in the lot surrounded by wire fencing. On the ground a figure sprawled, face down.

I shoved the old sash window up and leaned out as far as I could, looked down, saw the row of gray metal garbage cans, one on its side, maybe knocked over by the wind, or by somebody falling. And the man, spread-eagled, black blood already pooling on the crusts of snow and ice. He was hurt bad, or dead, and then I recognized the Harris tweed jacket.

I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing, figured from fourteen stories up maybe I was wrong. I yanked on my clothes and, not waiting for the elevator, ran down the fourteen stories to the basement, hurried along the endless corridors, banged through the heavy metal door that led outside.

On the ground, face down, Lionel Hutchison was still wearing the jacket he’d had on when he came to the club a few hours earlier. It looked, first glance, like he’d skidded on black ice, fallen over a garbage can, collapsed on the ground, maybe had a heart attack, a stroke. I knelt down beside him. The light over the back door spilled a pool of white light over the body.

The garbage can was on its side, rolling back and forth in the stiff wind. Cigarettes, the Lucky Strikes I’d seen Hutchison smoke, were scattered on the ground. One of his velvet slippers lay on top of a ridge of dirty snow. There was no blood on it.

I got down and put my hand against his neck, and right then I suddenly felt somebody was watching me.

Hutchison was dead. There was no pulse. But there was too much damage to have come from a simple fall, too much broken for a man who had simply tripped on a garbage can. His limbs were skewed in strange positions, at least one arm and one leg looked broken.

I stood up fast because, again, I had the feeling somebody was watching, that I wasn’t alone out by the garbage cans with a dead man on the ice. I should have come back to the Armstrong with Hutchison last night, I thought, I should have paid more attention when he came to the club. But I’d been all wrapped up in Lily.

By now, I was dialing Virgil Radcliff on my phone, trying to get through, then finally reaching him, waking him up. He said he was at his apartment, a couple of blocks away over on 145th Street. He had just climbed into bed, but as soon as he could throw on some clothes he’d get to the Armstrong. I knew he’d been working most of the night.

When Virgil arrived, he found me crouched by Lionel Hutchison’s body. It was still dark.

“Christ, Artie,” he said, clutching two cups of Starbucks coffee, handing me one. “It’s Dr. Hutchison, isn’t it? Jesus, Artie. Shit. I liked the guy so much. Is he gone?”

“Yeah. I called for an ambulance.”

Virgil crouched near the body, his phone already out. At the bottom of his jeans, green flannel pajamas hung out over his boots. He looked like a little kid.

Gently he put two fingers alongside Hutchison’s neck, the way I had done.

“Fuck,” Virgil said. He gulped the coffee. “You’re thinking what?”

“He liked coming out for a smoke. I don’t know.”

“Heart attack?”

“What about all the blood?”

“Where’s Celestina?” said Virgil.

“Last I talked to her, at the party, she was going over to stay at her sister’s. You know where that is?”

He punched something into his iPhone. “I can find out. What time did you see her?”

“Midnight? I’m not sure. Poor bastard. We should check in case she came home. Somebody should go up to the apartment.”

Virgil got up. “I’ll go.”

“I was thinking it looks like he fell from somewhere high up. His bones look all broken.”

“Old people break easily,” said Virgil. “You don’t have to fall off anything, all you need is to trip.”

“You’re an expert?”

“Yeah, if you want to know. My grandmother broke her hip last year. Lionel’s age, you can break bones if you just trip and fall over, stumble on the ice, slip. It happens. But does that give you a stroke? Does it make you bleed like that?”

“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.