Blood Count

CHAPTER 23

W hat the hell are you doing?” I said to Diaz, who was on the floor outside Simonova’s apartment.

Diaz had the ferret-like look of a man who had been waiting for somebody, for me, for Lily, a man who, as soon as he heard the door open, probably got down on his knees, pretending to fix a piece of loose carpet. I didn’t know what he was up to, but he gave me a queasy feeling. He reminded me of a low-level KGB hood, the kind who used to wait for kids outside Moscow schools to check if our hair was too long. Diaz probably made a career of watching out for the main chance, a way to make a little cash. He knew his way around the Armstrong, and he used it.

He wore workman’s pants and a shirt with the Armstrong’s logo on it. His heavy boots had left a trail of wet snow on the carpet.

“Where were you?” I pointed to the snow.

“On the roof,” he said. “The old woman is dead?”

“You probably know that.”

He grunted.

“You didn’t like her?”

He hauled himself to his feet and leaned back against the wall, putting his hand on the wallpaper. “Right.”

“Why’s that?”

“Why? Because she was a Communist.”

“So?”

“I’m Cuban, man, you get it?”

I took a twenty out of my pocket and folded it. “ Feliz Navidad,” I said to Diaz, handing him the money.

“What you want to know?” He wasn’t coy. It was the money he had been waiting for.

“What was she like?”

“Russian,” he said. “Communist.” He snorted. “Well, not now, she’s dead now, gone to be with Marx, like they used to say. Bastards.”

“How did she treat people in the building? The people who work here?”

“Like shit,” he said. “Except for the old doctor. I think they were doing it,” he said making a dirty gesture, and then made as if to puke.

“What about Carver Lennox?”

“OK. Yeah, he’s OK. He treats me good. Maybe one day he helps me get good apartment.” He looked at me.

“Here?”

“Shit, no. He has buildings in Queens.”

“So you’re friends with him?”

“No. Not friends.”

“But friendly?”

“Sure.”

“Simonova was lousy to you?” I said it again. I wanted more out of him.

“I already say, she treats people bad, and me, I hate the Commies. She doesn’t like this. Even when I tell her I got here on a fucking raft.”

“You were in her place?”

“Why?”

“Listen, why not just tell me straight? I can be generous,” I said, putting my hand back in my pocket.

Diaz sized me up. “OK, I was in.”

“Just now?”

“Before I go on the roof.”

“You have a key?”

“Passkey. I got one for all the apartments. Listen, I went inside with the funeral home guys, OK, and that’s it-I go with them, I leave with them. You ask the old doctor, he was there, OK? I didn’t take one fucking thing. I wouldn’t touch her shit.”

“So you were in Simonova’s place other times? Maybe fixing something?”

“Sure. When she asks me. I change light bulbs for her.”

“Right. She seemed sick to you?”

“Yeah. I have to get to work.”

“You like the building?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s good job.”

“So about the roof? What were you doing up there?”

“I check things is all. Doors is locked, stuff like that.”

He picked up his work gloves from the floor. From around the corner came the sound of voices, and Carver Lennox looked out into the hall. He smiled at me but didn’t seem to notice Diaz, or didn’t care, and retreated back into his apartment.

“People always treat you like that, don’t even say hello,” I said to Diaz, in a conspiratorial voice. I figured that and another twenty might put him in a confiding mood. I gave him the twenty and waited.

“Whatever,” he said.

“I thought you said you were friendly with Mr. Lennox.”

“If he gets me apartment, I’m friendly.”

“What were you in Cuba?”

“Engineer.”

“It’s hard here.”

“We do it for the kids. I go downstairs now, to sit at the front door in a stupid hat.”

“I’ll ride with you.”

“Sure,” he said. “Maybe I show you something,” he added as we got into the elevator.

“What’s that?”

“Something in the basement.”

Between the seventh and eighth floor, Diaz pushed a button on the panel and the elevator stopped. He leaned against the wall. I kept my mouth shut. I knew it was his way of showing he was in control, that he could stop the elevator, that he had some kind of power in the building.

When he spoke again, he lowered his voice, and I knew he was preparing to deliver some information.

“So, you know about somebody threw this woman off the roof.”

“When? What woman?”

“I don’t know. I hear.”

“While you’ve been working here?”

“No.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Six years,” he said.

“So this thing happened before that?”

“Sure, but I hear. I hear she is fucking whore, and this guy is some pimp, and he throws her from roof.”

“Maybe it was a long time ago. Maybe it’s just a story.”

“No.”

“Anybody who still lives here involved?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, listen,” I said, extracting a third bill from my wallet. “Did you know Mr. Washington?”

“Sure. I do things for him, fix stuff, sometimes he say to me, ‘Diaz,’ he calls on my cell phone, he say, ‘my hands are trembling, man. Can you turn the valve on the oxygen?’ OK? He is always real polite, and I say to myself, Why not Miss Regina McGee, who is girlfriend of Mr. Washington, but he wants me. One time I go, and he is all confused and puking up. I help him. He is grateful. Demasiado .”

“What’s that mean?”

“Too much.”

“What happened to it?”

“What?”

“The oxygen machine.”

“I take it away. I want to return to the rental company. Maybe I forget.”

“Where the fuck is it?”

“I can look,” he said, backing away from me.

“Did somebody tamper with it?”

“What’s it mean ‘tamper’?”

“Did somebody mess with it?”

“So many people go visit Mr. Washington, his friend, Miss McGee, who lives on fourteenth floor and runs down to nine to say hello, or bring food. The Russian bitch, too.”

“What did she have to do with him?”

“In this building, who knows?”

“What else did you do for Simonova?”

“For money. I told you, I changed her light bulbs, I cleaned up her terrace. She is Russian, she loves Russia, she loves the Soviet system, she has all the books, she tries to tell me, ‘Join union, join Party.’ Who in fuck is joining Communist Party now? She likes giving orders. Like all of them. Communists,” he said. “I grow up with this shit in Cuba, where for all my father’s life they shit on his head. But he says, ‘Fidel is good, Cubans is happy. Society is just.’ I come to America to escape that shit.”

“And Mr. Washington?”

“He is OK. This one I like, this Mr. Washington, sure. He is a gentleman to me. I even go to his funeral.”

“Who’s in his apartment now?”

“Nobody. Nice one. They call it classic seven. Somebody lucky will get it.”

“Do you think somebody hurt him?”

“You mean did somebody off Mr. Washington?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “It’s not my business,” Diaz said.

“Can you show me? His apartment?”

“Sometime. Now I have to work.”

“Start the fucking elevator,” I said to him, and he just grinned. Then he hit the button. I noticed he wore a ring with his initials: