Blood Count

M O N D A Y
CHAPTER 52

The lobby at Presbyterian had the strange, desolate look city hospitals have in the middle of the night. Carver Lennox was dead by the time I got there.

I didn’t stick around. There was nothing I could do. I was wearing the dark blue jacket Jimmy Wagner had loaned me at the scene; everyone could make me for a cop. There was no time to change.

I was worried as hell about Lily. She was at the Armstrong. I had woken her up when I called. She was fine, she’d said sleepily. But I drove over. Ivan, if it was his real name, would have seen Lily and me at the Christmas party, and if he wanted to get at me, he might go for her. He knew his way around the building. He beat me up in the storage room. I was betting he killed the Hutchison dog. I had seen him talking to Diaz at the back door. I knew Diaz would let him in if there was cash.

On my way over, I got hold of Tolya’s voice mail, asked him to send one of his guys to the Armstrong. I was in the Armstrong lobby when Tolya called back and said he’d send somebody.

“You want me to come?” he asked in Russian.

I told him it would scare Lily. Just send a guy, I said, and went upstairs. I let myself in to Lily’s apartment with the keys she had given me. I took off my shoes and went to the bedroom.

She was on her side, fast asleep. I watched her breathing. I went around the bed and looked at her face. On it was a half smile. Lily was somewhere else, in a happy dream.

After I checked the rest of the apartment, I washed my face in the kitchen sink, got my shoes, went out, and locked the door. It was very late. Quiet, too quiet. The Hutchisons were gone, Lionel dead, Celestina at her sister’s. Simonova was buried on Long Island. Carver Lennox was in the hospital morgue.

In the dead of night, when pretty much everybody was asleep, nobody talking, no kids yelling, no music playing, the building crackled with little noises you couldn’t hear during the day: the drip of leaking water, the hiss of a radiator, floorboards that sagged and creaked under your feet, my own heartbeat as I went slowly down the stairs.

No one was on the desk. I knew Diaz or one of the others was supposed to cover all night, but no one was there. On a chair in the corner was a young patrolman, half asleep. I shook him. I yelled at him. “There’s been a fucking homicide here,” I said. “Just fucking stay awake.”

In the basement, I kept my gun out. I heard noises-voices, the rattle of machinery, the flick of a cigarette lighter. I ran in the direction of the sounds. Nothing.

I went out the back door and into the parking area, where I saw a large guy I recognized as one of Tolya’s guys. Russian. An ex-weight-lifter in jeans and a leather jacket.

He nodded at me.

I said I’d be back soon, then I hesitated. I didn’t like leaving Lily. I looked at him. I got the feeling he knew what was at stake. I hoped he knew.

The metal gate was down over the front of the Russian store named Tolstoy in Washington Heights. It was four in the morning. I called the owner, the guy they called Goga. I left a message. Told him to meet me at his store. Fifteen minutes later, he showed.

“Get in,” I said in Russian, holding open the car door. Goga’s expression turned fearful. He saw the blood on my pants. The NYPD jacket. He had grown up in a country where the arrival of cops could only mean trouble.

As Goga edged into the seat next to mine, I reached over him and shut the car door.

“It’s cold,” I said, and got out my cell phone. “Thank you for coming.”

“I am always here early, for food deliveries,” he replied nervously. “This is no trouble for me, to arrive early.”

I showed him the picture of Ivan. “You’ve seen him?”

Goga nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Mr. Ivanov. Sure. Nice guy, good manners, comes to buy caviar, cookies, cheese. Nice clothes,” he added, and said he thought Ivanov lived in Miami Beach.

“Did Mrs. Simonova ever talk to him?”

“Sure. Several times they happen to be here same time.”

“What did they talk about?”

“I don’t remember so good,” said Goga. “Maybe weather. Maybe politics. They talk so I do not hear so well.” He sounded uneasy. I pressed him. I tried to make him dredge up something, anything, from his memory. I said another detective would stop by later in case he remembered.

He told me he didn’t know anything at all.

I was about to let him go when my phone rang.