Blood Count

CHAPTER 34

B undled up in a North Face jacket, Jimmy Wagner pumped my hand. “I’m really glad to see you, Artie, man. But how come you’re here?”

I said I’d been visiting somebody. To Radcliff he said, “What the fuck’s going on?”

Virgil told him what had happened.

“Poor bastard,” said Wagner. “I met the old man once or twice at community meetings. He was a pistol. He didn’t put up with no shit whatsoever. He fought for his community. I liked him. You think he just slipped, Artie?”

“I have no fucking idea, Jimmy. I had a good look at the area around the garbage can, that stuff, but we’ll need the ME to figure it. Hutchison was old, maybe bad heart, he smoked like a chimney, the ground was icy.”

“You believe that, Artie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you meet him before?”

“Yeah. Couple times.”

“You got a lot of interest in this building, that right, man? Some friend of yours was wanting to buy an apartment, something like that?” Wagner said. “You got a lady here or something? Nice girl?”

Radcliff looked at me.

I kept my mouth shut.

The woman from the ME got up from beside the body, came over to talk to Wagner, told him her preliminary thinking. Then Wagner huddled with some of his guys-a detective, a couple uniforms, the women from the ME’s office. It was hard not to notice most of them were white except for Virgil.

Some people who had emerged from the building, wrapped in sweaters and jackets, stopped to watch. Then I saw Wagner motion for Radcliff to join his group. I waited. A few minutes later, he turned to me. “I’m gonna need you, man,” he said. “Radcliff is cool with it. He’ll work it with you. I’ll call whoever it takes to get you the time off.”

I told him not to bother. It was Sunday morning early, and what was the point of waking people up. I told him I was mostly on fraud cases these days, Russian stuff; nobody went in on Sundays for that. He didn’t need to call anybody.

“But if I work with Radcliff, it’s his case, right? His precinct?” I said.

“For chrissake, man, yeah, fine, all them fucking niceties, man,” said Wagner. “Also, I only just heard an old lady died in the building Friday night. You knew about this?”

“I heard.”

“You didn’t bother to tell me?”

“It wasn’t my business. You want my help, Jimmy? I’m happy to do it.”

He said he wanted it. “We got cars sliding around crazy, on icy roads, like Dancing with the Stars,” Wagner said. “Not to mention our other homicides. So you’re cool with Virgil Radcliff. You asked me about him when you came by yesterday, right? He’s good, man, he is really good, very sharp, does his work.” Wagner glanced at Radcliff, who was talking to the ME. “He also likes to fly by the seat of his pants, so keep an eye on him, see that he don’t fucking reinvent the rules.”

By now, more people had come out of the Armstrong’s back door and others from around the front. They’d heard the sirens. News was spreading. Some pretended to walk their dogs.

From across the street, still more onlookers stopped by, the cops fending them off, or swearing at them for hanging around, for gawking at the dead, or trying to. One kid held up his phone to take a picture and a cop gave him an earful. Made me remember, for some reason, the time I was down at Ground Zero, after 9/11, and fucking tourists were taking pictures. Dust was everywhere. One cop got so crazy, he just looked at some tourist assholes and yelled, “You know what that is? That’s people.”

“So you’re on it,” said Wagner, obviously nervous as fuck about this incident.

“I told you, Jimmy. Yes. Sure.”

“Thanks, man, I owe you.”

“It’s fine.”

“Listen, Artie, the old man had a wife, right?”

“She’s at her sister’s. Radcliff’s going.”

“I’ll go,” said a voice. I looked up to see Carver Lennox in a thick orange silk bathrobe, his bare feet stuck in a pair of driving mocs, staring at the body. He was crying.

“Where is she?”

“Her sister Vanessa lives over at the Hurston-it’s a new condo on Broadhurst,” Lennox said. “Let me go.” He took my arm. “Please let me go. We’re close. Celestina helped me out when I first got here. She was like my mom, swear to God. How did this happen?”

“Fine,” I said. “Listen, you knew Amahl Washington?”

“What? Sure. You asking me that now? Why?”

“Never mind.”

“That’s it?”

“For now. Give me your number,” I said, and I got out my phone and punched it in.

“Artie?”

“Yeah, Jimmy.”

“That girl from the ME says she can’t say until she looks at X-rays and they start the autopsy if the old guy just toppled over by the garbage cans or what. Jesus, you can’t even say girl-I mean officer,” said Wagner. “She says her guess is he fell off something high up, the way the body was splayed out on the ground. I don’t know, a terrace, or the roof, the building could be liable and then we have a shitstorm coming down.” He wheezed and began coughing.

“Or he was pushed.”

Wagner looked up at the building. “Christ, no, not another homicide. You think? Shit, man.” He hacked again, turned his head, spit into a big handkerchief, and I saw there was blood on it.

“Take it easy.”

“The cold weather stinks,” said Jimmy. His big face, the reddish hair going gray under his black wool watch cap, the veins in his nose, the way he gulped at the air once in a while, he was a very sick guy. He pulled his jacket tight around his bulky body and turned up the collar. “This sucks,” he said. “Christmas coming, an old man dead, one of the best buildings. Fuck.”

“Don’t ask me exactly why right now, but can you get me Amahl Washington’s medical records? I need to know if he really just passed, if that was all.”

“I ain’t asking why, but I’m asking why, Art.”

“Personal favor.”

“Then consider it done.”

“If Lennox is going over to find the wife at her sister’s, I want to go up to the apartment with Radcliff, take a little look before anyone else goes up. You can do that, Jim? I need twenty minutes. Thirty. Tell your guys to hang on down here, or let them canvass the building or whatever.”

“You got it,” he said. “One more thing, there’s a time component.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s Sunday. Things are quiet. Come tomorrow morning, maybe before, I’m going to have officials on the phone. Hutchison was a big deal in the community, and I’m not even sure one of them churches doesn’t own part of the land the Armstrong is on. They’ll all be on me, the preachers, the rest, Christ, for all I know, Al fucking Sharpton will show. You hear me?” He coughed some more. “I’ll feel a whole fucking lot better when Dawes gets back on Wednesday.”

“I’m ready, Artie,” said Virgil, who had been talking to the medic. Next to Jimmy Wagner, Virgil looked tall, young, and easy. It was like looking at Obama and McCain. I think Jimmy Wagner saw it, too. He shuffled away to join the other cops, then he turned around.

“Tomorrow,” Wagner called out. “You hear me?”