Blood Count

CHAPTER 39

L ionel was murdered,” said Lucille Bernard.

“How do you know?”

“I can read you, detective. It’s what you think. And whatever else you may be, you’re not stupid.”

“What do you think?” I held the door of my car open and she slid in to the front seat. I got in, too, and closed the door.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s cold out there.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve been thinking about Lionel. He was a tough old bird, and he was strong. I would have known if he was sick.”

“How?”

“He would have come to me. We disagreed, but he knew I could keep any secret. He taught me well.”

“Right.”

“Whatever his beliefs, this was a man who loved life,” Bernard said. “He held on to his misconceived ideas, such as they were, because he felt they enhanced life; the avoidance of pain, the avoidance of suffering at the end, was worth it.” Her voice wavered. “He so enjoyed himself. When he was younger, my God, I remember when I was in med school, and I saw him much more often, he would invite students over, and I don’t think we’d ever met anybody who was more involved in his subject, but who also experienced so much joy in life.” She took a deep breath. “Once in a while, even these last few years, he would call me, and we would go out and eat and talk until all hours, about music and medicine and Yeats-he loved poetry. He loved Langston Hughes, and Yeats, and Whitman. He would always gossip about the building-he adored that bloody place-and now somebody has killed him in it.”

“Can you ride with me, I have to pick something up at the Armstrong.”

“Yes. That would be better,” she said. “I don’t want the ladies from the church telling Celestina I’m talking to you, and I was thinking it might be useful for me to look at Lionel’s apartment, see if there’s anything that helps me understand this.”

“The apartment is sealed,” I said.

“I’m sure you can manage something,” said Bernard. “I got so damn fed up with that building when I lived there.” She took off her hat and arranged her hair.

I asked why, as I started the car, heading north to the Armstrong.

“When I lived there with Carver, everybody wanted help. I didn’t mind. I’m a doctor. But for every scratch, every sore throat, I was on call. They considered me not just their in-house doctor but their shrink. They’d come around, tell me their problems. I felt like telling them to watch Oprah instead. Or that Dr. Oz.”

I drove carefully. The streets were slick with ice. Harlem was quiet that Sunday morning. I still hadn’t heard from Lily. I was jittery as hell. Tell me some more, I thought, glancing sideways at Lucille Bernard.

“You ever run into a woman named Marie Louise? She cleaned for the Russian, Mrs. Simonova,” I said, not quite sure why I was asking. The idea just floated into my head.

“How come you’re asking?” said Bernard. “Sure, I know her. “African girl, French accent, right? She cleans several apartments at the Armstrong. Works for Carver some of the time. I think she used to bring Simonova for appointments before Lily Hanes took over.”

“What do you think of her?”

She shrugged. “I don’t get her. I’m sure she has a hard time in America, but she has these strange ideas about Western medicine. She said she had been a doctor back in wherever-Senegal?”

“Mali.”

“Yes, Mali. She’s an MD, but she often gave Mrs. Simonova crazy potions, stuff she bought down on 116th Street. She told me about them. I said they wouldn’t help, so she just clammed up. She was scared of me. I guess she’s illegal.”

“Anything else?”

“Why?”

“I’m asking you.”

“You can’t believe she killed Marianna, and then Lionel? Why would she?”

“I didn’t know you thought anybody killed Marianna Simonova.”

“But it’s what you’re after, isn’t it? I mean, if you were sure she died from the emphysema, you wouldn’t have been all over this even before Lionel died, you and that Virgil Radcliff.”

“You don’t like Virgil?” I pulled up in front of the Armstrong.

“I don’t know him,” said Lucille. “I’ve met him a few times at fund-raisers. I don’t understand why he’s a cop.”

“You mean he’s too smart?”

“I apologize for that, but yes. I do.”

“Or because he’s dating Lily?”

“That, too, if you want to know. I suppose there aren’t enough nice black women for him,” she said sarcastically. “Look, just forget the sociology. I want to see Lionel’s apartment.”

Lucille Bernard began, very softly, to weep, as we got to the Hutchison apartment.

A cop in uniform was on his hands and knees, looking at the carpet, peering at fiber. When he got up, I asked him to leave Lucille Bernard and me alone in the living room.

Sitting on the edge of a chair, she said, “I loved Lionel. He was good to me, he was a mentor when I was very young. He got me into the City College program. He helped me. God, I spent so much time in this apartment when we lived here.”

“When you were married to Lennox?”

“We’re not divorced. I think you knew that,” she said.

“You don’t believe in divorce.”

“That’s right. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

Lucille Bernard sat up. Her eyes wet, she looked like a very young woman, young, vulnerable, and very pretty. She was tough and I liked her. I called her Dr. Bernard, though. She had never asked me to use her first name.

From her purse she took a handkerchief and wiped her face. “I think Carver’s in big trouble,” she said.

“It matters to you.” I called her Dr. Bernard. She had never asked to use her first name.

“He’s the father of my kids.”

“What kind of trouble would it be?”

“Money.”

She told me that she and Carver had split up because of his business. It consumed him, she said. There was no room for anything else. He was generous, though, she added. Paid for the kids, the teenage girl, her younger brother. He spent time with them. Had offered Lucille money to buy her house.

According to Bernard, Lennox had made a ton of dough in the years before the crash. Hedge fund, she said. Derivatives. Whatever. But lately he had been erratic, she knew he was losing money. His obsession with the Armstrong, fixing it up, selling it off, had become his only subject. The kids told her he talked about it all the time.

“So he’s in serious financial trouble, right?”

“Yes. The market tanked, and Carver got scared. He was heavily invested in this building and others-he has other property-and then the real estate market turned bad. I think somebody’s getting ready to call in his debts. I think he’s on the verge of losing his job. I saw him at the Christmas party and I saw panic in his eyes.”

“How much panic?”

“Enough,” she said. “He wanted too much. It’s not healthy.” Bernard got up. “I want to look at Mrs. Simonova’s medication.”

“I looked,” I said. I took the bottles out of my pocket, gave them to her. She slid on a pair of glasses.

“This is what you found?”

“There was other stuff in Simonova’s place, but all of it was prescribed by you. The only interesting thing was that there were the same pills in her apartment and Hutchison’s.” I held out a vial of blue capsules.

“This is only blood pressure medication,” said Bernard.

I was on the verge of asking, of saying, Can you get these pills checked? I stopped myself. Better to ask a friend, to keep any evidence until it was needed. Use it. Ignore it.

“You let me come up here because you wanted to see my reaction to being in Lionel’s apartment?” asked Lucille Bernard. “Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for being straight with me,” she said, and left the apartment.