Blood Count

UD.

“What’s the U for?”

He laughed. “Usnavi. You know what that is? My mami, she sees the sign near Guantanamo, U.S. NAVY, and she thinks if she gives me this name, it makes me American,” he said.

“Let’s get going, if you really have something to show me.”

Diaz led me down a hall, and as we passed the basement storage rooms, he glanced at Simonova’s, sealed up with yellow police tape now, and grinned.

Was it Diaz who beat me up?

A few minutes later, he turned a corner, led me into a room. He got a key from his pocket and unlocked it. “Here,” he said.

Inside was medical equipment. Wheelchairs folded and stacked. A few walkers propped against the wall. At the back were two oxygen tanks, cubes on wheels that looked like R2-D2. “You stole this shit?” I saw one of the oxygen tanks that looked like the one I’d put into Simonova’s closet earlier. Diaz must have swiped it. I tried to push past him. Diaz held his ground.

“My stuff. My shit,” he said. “I got other stuff I can show you, I got information. Maybe we can talk more some time.” He looked at his watch. “Right now I gotta go back up to the lobby.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Gotta go,” he said, edging me out of the room. He locked the door behind us jogged to the elevator. Punched the button and got in. I followed. Then I pushed him against the wall. I’d had it with the smug look on his face.

“What stuff? You want more money, that it?” I was furious. “You want to tell me what you were really doing on the roof? What about your pal, Carver Lennox-you work extra jobs for him?”

He shrank back from me but he managed to push the button. A few seconds later, when the doors opened on the ground floor, people waiting saw that I had a guy with dark skin pinned to the back of the elevator.