Blood Count

CHAPTER 41

I n her will, Marianna Simonova had left almost everything to Marie Louise Semake. All of it: the apartment, furniture, clothes. She had also left her some cash. This was because Madame Semake was a worker and she, Marianna Simonova, in solidarity with the working class, had bestowed what was rightly hers upon the person who most deserved it. I looked at the date. The will had just been signed on Thursday, but when had she given the instructions to the lawyer? Who put it in the safe-deposit box? Had it been Lily who kept the key? Would she have done it without looking in the envelope? Lily had a fierce sense of what was right. She was obsessive about privacy.

The will had been executed by a woman lawyer from a midtown firm, signed and sealed and witnessed by somebody from the firm. The executor was named as Dr. Lionel Hutchison.

Had there been an earlier will?

The lawyer on the will was G. Neuwirth. She was listed. I left a message. Less than five minutes later, she called back.

Yes, said Ms. Neuwirth, she had been up to see Mrs. Simonova, along with her assistant, yes, on Thursday. She wasn’t sure about earlier wills, and she wasn’t in the city. She had picked up the message and called me back from her place in Montauk. No way she could get back today; nobody she could ask, either, not on Sunday. She’d do it first thing in the morning. What’s more, said Ms. Neuwirth, the attorney who had looked after Mrs. Simonova for years had recently died, and she, Ms. Neuwirth, wasn’t completely up to date with the previous material, at least not without looking at her files. She said she’d call first thing in the morning.

Mr. Cash was hovering now, cracking his knuckles. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, I was so relieved Lily wasn’t named in the will. The will would trump the letter.

But why the letter to Lily? Did Simonova find out something about Marie Louise she didn’t like? Was she just out of her mind? One of those people who constantly rewrite their wills depending on the state of their relationships?

For a few minutes, I sat, the door closed, the overhead light making my hands yellow. Then I put the document back in the envelope, stuffed it in my canvas bag, along with the few other things I’d found. I returned the box to the bank manager and went upstairs, and by the time I left the bank it was already getting dark.

It was only four, but it was the shortest day of the year, and only a smudge of cold, bright color was left in the sky over the Hudson.

From my car, I called Lily. No answer. I tried Virgil. Nothing. I put in a call to an ex-cop I know who had gone to law school. I needed somebody who hadn’t been involved in writing the will.

My pal had gone into estate law. Said she wanted a quiet life. Told me if the will was solid, Marie Louise Semake could inherit even if she was in the U.S. illegally.

Before I put the key in the ignition, I opened the document. Marie Louise’s address was there, but it was in Mali. She wasn’t illegal in Mali, she was a citizen. Maybe it was what she had told Simonova, that it was her permanent address. Maybe she had worried that if she was illegal, she wouldn’t get the apartment.

Either way, Marie Louise had known. How else would Simonova’s lawyer have had the Mali address?

The apartment, the money, would change Marie Louise’s life. She could hire a good immigration lawyer, stay in America, send her kids to school. Or she could sell the apartment and go back to her country and open a clinic. There were a million ways it could change her life.

Suddenly, I wondered what time she had left the party the night before. Tolya had given Marie Louise a ride from the Sugar Hill Club. It had been my idea. I left him a message, then I called Jimmy Wagner and asked him to get me the time of Simonova’s death. He put me on hold, came back, and said the ME made it for between two and three in the morning.

“One more thing, Artie?”

“Yeah, Jimmy?”

“For sure, he must have been pushed. The way the bones were broken, the angle, all the signs. I have people up on that roof right now looking. Are we getting someplace with this?”

I told him I was on it and hung up.

I married an American and then he died, Marie Louise had said. Was it true? If it was true, why did immigration scare her? If it was true, she was the widow of an American.

Immigrants get desperate. I’d met Chinese who had paid forty grand to get to America on ships where some of them died in sealed containers.

I didn’t make Marie Louise for a killer. I liked her. But she had children. She was a doctor who worked scrubbing toilets for people at the Armstrong. Money would change everything.

Did she kill Simonova? Did she think Hutchison knew? He was the executor on the will. He knew Marie Louise would inherit. Did she kill him, too, to stop him talking? She could have pushed him. She had access to most of the apartments on the fourteenth floor. She was young. Strong.

My phone rang.

“Tolya. Listen, you remember the woman you gave a ride to last night?”

“Sure, Marie Louise. Lovely young lady, sure.”

“What time did you drop her off at home, you remember at all?” I felt safer talking to him in Russian.

“I didn’t,” he said.

“What?”

“She said she felt bad making us go out of the way, that she preferred it if we went to my house on 139th Street first, and then the car could take her to 116th. I think I got to my place around one fifteen. I can ask Janet.”

“Who?”

“Nice lady I met at the party.”

“She went home with you, this Janet?”

“None of your business,” he said, sounding pleased with himself.

“Can you ask your driver what time he dropped Marie Louise and if she went inside her building?”

“I’ll try, Artyom. This guy who drove was not regular guy, just somebody I use on and off, and I think he’s gone on vacation. I’ll find him if it’s important.”

“It’s important,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

I turned my car around so fast, I almost crashed into the curb, but I wanted to see Marie Louise’s apartment. I wanted to talk to her neighbors, see where she’d been the night before, where her children were, if anybody had ever seen an American husband. When I got to the building, I found her name on the buzzer. Somebody let me in.

The fear in that apartment made it worse than I’d expected.