Blood Count

CHAPTER 25

A round the perimeter of the roof was a yellow-brick wall about four feet high. One area was damaged, bricks missing. KEEP AWAY read a handwritten sign. Plastic sheets marked the area. There was snow on the roof. I saw my own footsteps in it

Hutchison had gone downstairs now. I was alone on the roof. I went and looked at the work area and my foot slipped on the wet plastic. I backed off. I was dizzy. It would be easy to topple over, fall from the roof, land in front of the Armstrong on Edgecombe Avenue where there was snow thick in the bare branches of the trees. I crossed the roof, found more broken wall, looked out, this time over the parking lot back of the building. You’d go over, and just fall, fucking splat, a mess of broken bones, dead.

My head hurt like hell. The Oxycontin I’d taken for the pain was making me wired, out of control. I needed more. I hated the side effects. What the fuck did Hutchison spend his time up here for?

I liked the old man. I didn’t believe he had killed Simonova, no matter what he’d said. But he had been with her when she died. He’d been in her apartment.

I went back to the shed, looked around, but there wasn’t anything, no sign Hutchison had been here except for a few cigarette butts on the ground. I reached in my pocket for the painkillers. Put the bottle back. Realized I still had Lionel Hutchison’s lighter.

Regina McGee was lying on a gurney when I got to the fourteenth floor. I’d emerged from the stairwell, and she was there, lying on the thing, medics pushing her toward the elevator. She half opened her eyes, saw me, and tried to smile, but couldn’t. She was trying to tell me something, and I leaned over, but she couldn’t speak. She looked frightened.

“Hold the door, will you, man?” said one of the medics, gesturing at the elevator.

“What’s wrong with her?”

He shook his head. “She’s old, man.”

“Trouble breathing,” said the other medic. “We got her on oxygen.”

I looked down the hall. Nobody was around. I looked at McGee. Was somebody else going to die here, die from lack of oxygen, die from something nobody could quite pinpoint?

“Lady said she had chest pains, couldn’t breathe, we gotta respond,” said the first medic as the elevator door opened and I held the button for them. “You a friend?”

“Yes.”

He leaned closer. “Ask me, it’s just dehydration, but better safe than sorry, you know?”

As they maneuvered her into the elevator, I looked around again, surprised nobody was in the hall. People on this floor were always alert to new sounds, movement, people coming and going. Now, nothing. The elevator door slid shut. Again, I wondered: Was Regina McGee another victim? But what of? Of living in the Armstrong?

When Mrs. Hutchison answered her door, she looked at me, my hair and clothes wet from snow, with disdain. Or was it contempt?

“She was wearing a heavy tweed jacket, a man’s jacket, too big for her. Around her neck was a woolen scarf, and on her head, the same yellow cap I’d seen her in before. The jacket had a button missing.

“I have your husband’s lighter,” I held out the Zippo.

“Do you?” said Mrs. Hutchison. “You shouldn’t encourage him.” She didn’t offer to take the lighter. I held on to it for the time being and stood in the doorway, hoping she’d invite me in. I wanted a look at the Hutchison place. I gave her my best smile.

“Cold today,” I said by way of small talk. “Is the doctor here?”

“He’s gone out. He came back from his smoking-with you, I imagine-and said he had to nip out. Cigarettes, I’m sure. I don’t like it the way he wanders about. Just do not like it, but never you mind,” she said. “Will you come in? I haven’t much time. I only came back from my sister’s to change my clothes for the party this evening. I must remember to pack my little bag, as I shall stay over with my sister afterwards,” she added. “Well, don’t just stand there, come in.”

I went into the hall, which was lit by a huge hanging chandelier, half the bulbs missing.

“Can I offer you some sweet tea?” said Mrs. Hutchison.

Taking off the yellow cap, she smoothed the few remaining strands of hair on her bald head, then put it back on. Her face was small, the skin taut and deep brown. The dark eyes peered at me, they took in everything, but they also held a barely suppressed fury.

I followed her into the living room, hardwood floors, old Turkish rugs, the same high ceilings and moldings as Simonova’s. The ancient floorboards were scrubbed and polished. The place smelled of pine oil. There was a small Christmas tree on a grand piano. The piano keys were yellow and broken.

The dog bounded in from another room.

“Ed, say hello to Detective Cohen,” said Mrs. Hutchison. “Do you know that silly girl, Marie Louise, is frightened of him? Who would be frightened of my lovely Ed? She had the gall to tell me he is possessed by some kind of evil spirit. She’s a backward one, that girl, but that’s Africa for you.” Mrs. Hutchison played with the dog’s ears. “Now your Lily, she’s a lovely girl. She appreciates my Ed. Very caring, that girl, at least so far as it goes. Interested in us old folk up here. You were her boyfriend.” It wasn’t a question. Clearly, there were no secrets in the Armstrong. “You should marry her, Detective Cohen.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“I know she’s been seeing the Radcliff boy, but he’s too damn young for her, and if you ask me, like should marry like. Wouldn’t you say? You think I’m blunt, well, as one of my sisters says, ‘Celestina, she takes no prisoners.’ What about that tea? Or would you prefer some whiskey?”

I said I’d like the tea. I called her Mrs. Hutchison, but she said to call her Miss Cellie. I wanted to get under her skin, but it was tight, that old skin, and hard to get under.

“Come with me,” she said.

It was a very big apartment. Like Simonova’s, it appeared pretty grand at first. There was old furniture in the big rooms and wood floors. When I looked hard, I saw that, same as Simonova’s, some of it was very shabby-windows loose and rattling in the frames, a musty smell emanating from behind closed doors that opened off the long hallway. I had the feeling some of those rooms hadn’t been used for a long time.

On the walls were framed black-and-white photographs. All of them included Celestina Hutchison as a very young girl-I could just make her out-with some of the greats: Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. It occurred to me that she’d hung them on her wall to represent a better past, in the way Marianna Simonova kept pictures of herself with Stalin. Neither woman could escape the past, or wanted to.

“You must know Regina McGee,” I said. “The lady who lives down the hall and worked for Ella Fitzgerald.”

“I knew Ella, naturally, but Regina was only a maid,” said Celestina. “I may have run into her once at some time, but we didn’t move in the same circles. But are you interested in stories of old times?” said Mrs. Hutchison, turning to me. “Did you know that Mr. Carl Van Vechten took that photograph of me?” She gestured to a picture of herself in a dress, hat, and white gloves. “He was quite a prominent figure. Me, I don’t care much for jazz music or the performing world; I did it because it was all I could do. But Lionel, he’s what he likes to call an aficionado.” Her tone was bitter. “He keeps those pictures up on the wall.”

“I see.”

She pointed to a picture of herself and another black woman.

“You know who that is?”

“No.”

“That is Miss Hattie McDaniel. She won the right to live in a nice section of L.A. they called Sugar Hill, another Sugar Hill out west. It was a big court case, and I knew her. I was in that house,” Celestina Hutchison said. “I met Hattie. She won the Oscar for Gone With the Wind, played Mammy, even got me an audition for the part of Prissy. People criticized her, but she said, ‘I’d rather play a maid for seven hundred dollars than be one for seven dollars.’ She was my friend. If you look right next to it, you will see Miss Bette Davis, now she was a lady. She joined with Hattie and Lena Horne and Miss Ethel Waters, with a black acting troupe, to perform for black regiments in 1942. I did meet them all. I even met Mr. Clark Gable.” She looked at me. “Otherwise, I had my fill of the entertainment world. I danced. I lived with another girl, Gladys Mae Jagger was her name, but we couldn’t get many jobs. We wanted to dance at the Cotton Club, but she was too fat and I was too black. We were out of work and no place to stay. We lived from hand to mouth. Sometimes we found a room, sometimes we sat up in a movie theater all night, or out on the street. I was fifteen then.”

I listened.

“Are you in a hurry, Mr. Cohen? I notice you look at your watch quite frequently.”

In the large old-fashioned kitchen-the appliances must have been fifty years old-she put a pitcher of iced tea on the table and poured some into a couple of glass tumblers. I thanked her, addressed her as Miss Cellie. She lightened up when I did, and now, as she spoke, it was like something out of a play.

“You put me in mind of my friend Becky Cohen. We played together as little children. My mamma worked for her people, such lovely lovely people, Southern Jews, you see, not at all pushy like those in New York. You’ve seen Driving Miss Daisy, with Morgan Freeman?” she asked.

For a while longer, she sat at her side of the old table, sipping her tea, and watched me as if inspecting a specimen in a cage.

“What can I do for you?” she said.

I put Lionel’s lighter on the table. “I told you, I just wanted to return this,” I said.

She examined it. “That old Zippo. He goes on about it and the war as if General Eisenhower himself gave it to him. I mean, after all, Lionel was just an old foot soldier. Wasn’t like he flew with the Tuskegee Airmen, not like my cousin Cecil.”

“I thought he might want it.”

“What do you really want?” she asked bluntly, as if she’d made a decision to put the charm to one side along with the lighter.

“I was wondering when you last saw Mrs. Simonova?”

She shrugged. “A few days ago, I expect,” she said. It certainly didn’t matter to her if I stopped by; I only did it out of courtesy, which is something that was foreign to that woman. Once upon a time we exchanged little gifts at this season. I made an effort; she gave me those same ridiculous Russian dolls every year.” Mrs. Hutchison looked at me. “I didn’t like her. That’s what you’re asking? I didn’t visit much. He went every day.”

“Dr. Hutchison?”

“And don’t think he was there for the doctoring.” Celestina Hutchison snorted. “God knows what he saw in her, so ugly. Big raw bones, that woman, ugly as sin.” She drank more tea. “That help you, detective?”

The bitterness was so virulent you could smell it.

When I didn’t answer, she shifted the topic. “Will you attend the party tonight?”

“I’ll try.”

“Dear Carver always does it up nicely. He tries so hard.” She slipped back into her ladylike manners. “He has so many troubles with this wretched building. I wish him well. I do. Most of the other old folk don’t like him. They’re so set in their ways.”

“Why’s that?”

“Carver tries to give good advice, tells us that should we decide to sell up, he’ll help us out, buy the apartments for top dollar. He already owns quite a few of the apartments, but I do hope he’s not in financial trouble.” She giggled. “It’s not only the Jewish people like Mr. Madoff who play this game, no, indeed.” She stood up. “What else do you want to know?”

“What else is there?”

“We’re like characters in a play up here on the top floor. Relics. Like those Southern characters out of Lillian Hellman or Mr. Tennessee Williams-you ever see those plays? That’s us, except we’re black.” She paused. “What a thought. And Carver wants this particular attic cleared out of all us old people. We’re worth a fortune to him. We have the grand apartments-seven rooms, nine rooms. All he has to do is clean them up, do over the lobby, then sell for a bundle. Well, for my part, he can buy this one. I would retire to the sunshine faster than you can say Jack Robinson. But Lionel is so damn stubborn.”

“You know a lot about Carver Lennox.”

“He has nice manners. When he came to the building, quite some years ago now, he introduced himself. I have to say I really established him in the building, talked him up, helped him get on the board. He was always grateful. I wanted him to feel right at home, and the building is, as you see, a little village.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Carver never knew his mother-he was adopted-and he saw me as the family he never had.”

“Right. And your husband? He’ll be at the party?”

“He won’t be up to it. I’ll leave something in the oven for his supper. I always make sure he’s safe and sound before I go out.”

“You just lock him in.”

“Well, he’s a bad, bad boy, you see, and I never know what he’ll get up to with all his ideas. I can’t trust him.”

In her imagination, Lionel was old, forgetful, unconnected to reality. It made her feel she was the powerful half of the couple.

I finished the tea and asked if I could use the bathroom. She gestured to the hall.

The bathroom had cracks in the plaster and broken tiles. I washed my hands with soap that smelled of almonds then left and went along the hall into a small office, where the shelves were full of CDs, old LPs, medical books, and volumes of poetry.

On the desk was a laptop as well as a portable typewriter. Hurriedly I looked through some of the drawers, listening for Mrs. Hutchison.

In one drawer I found some mail addressed to Lionel. Hearing footsteps, I stuffed them in my pockets, took a brochure from the desk, and pretended to study it.

“You found what you wanted? Your snooping around produced something for you?” said Celestina.

I held out the button I’d taken from Simonova’s dead hand.

“You found that in here?” Mrs. Hutchison asked. “It’s from this jacket I’m wearing. My husband’s, of course.”

“I found it in Mrs. Simonova’s hand this morning,” I said.

“So he was there. Yes. I thought so.” Anger crossed her face. For a moment she was silent, staring at something on the desk. It was the brochure I had been looking at.

“This interested you?” She picked it up. “Why is that?” she said. “It’s just some of Lionel’s nonsense. He joins all these silly societies.” She took the brochure from the desk and tore it in four, tossed the pieces in the wastebasket. “That sad old man I’m married to, all he thinks about is death, and just because his little brother had some pain sixty years ago. Ridiculous. I don’t understand him anymore,” she said, almost to herself. Then she smiled brightly, arranged her yellow cap, and added, “Well, I guess we are all entitled to our beliefs.”

I didn’t answer her.

“I always say life is life, after all. Don’t you agree?” She let out a humorless little laugh.

I held out the button again. She shook her head.

“Keep it,” she said. “Perhaps it will lead you to something. Perhaps it will help you find Marianna’s killer.” She paused. “Ha ha, of course I’m joking. Can’t believe old Lionel would do that. But you, detective, isn’t that what you do? Find the killers?”