Blood Count

CHAPTER 45

It’s Marie Louise, isn’t it?” Virgil was waiting at the back of the Armstrong when I went to get my car. “Fuck,” he added. “I like her. Where is she?”

“Gone. I went to see if she was anywhere in the building, but she’d gone.”

I was sure Lily had warned her. For all I knew, Lily had given Marie Louise money, told her to get her kids and leave the country. I knew Lily was capable of it. There was that side of her, the bleeding-heart liberal, that sometimes made me crazy. And she liked fixing things. I wasn’t in the mood to make nice, but I didn’t want to lose what little ground I’d gained with her. I hadn’t stopped at her place, I just left the building.

“I figured it was her. Who else would do that to a dog? We should have paid attention when she told us she fucking believed in spirits and evil dogs. That damn dog was a sweet old pooch. I had a Lab all the time I was a kid,” Virgil said. “I’ll have Amahl Washington’s medical records for you tomorrow. Wagner told me to get hold of them and give them to you.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“I’m a detective, Artie.”

I looked around. The lot in back of the building was empty except for Virgil’s car and mine. The garbage cans were still on their sides. The yellow police tape that had marked out the scene, the place where I’d found Lionel, drooped on the ground. Just beyond the wire fencing, near the gas station, was a cop in uniform.

I told Virgil-I’d forgotten earlier-that Diaz had possibly packed away Simonova’s oxygen tank in the basement, the way he had with Washington’s. “He’s also due to drive Ed to the pet funeral home in Brooklyn,” I said. “Celestina apparently made a reservation with All Pets Go to Heaven.”

“The what?” Virgil tried not to laugh.

“You heard me.”

“All Pets Go to Heaven?” He bit his lip, but he couldn’t hold it and he started laughing. I looked at him and I cracked up.

For a few seconds, in the desolate parking lot, the two of us stood, laughing like fucking crazy guys, repeating the name of the pet funeral home, laughing because of it, to release the lousy tension, to remind ourselves we were still alive.

“I’ll get one of the uniforms on the oxygen tanks. I sometimes think Diaz feels about black people the way Marie Louise feels about black dogs. Cubans can be pretty fucking racist like everybody else,” Virgil said. “I’ll find some petty cash for him if I have to.” I got out my car keys.

“I was on my way back to see Marie Louise,” I said. “Now I’m thinking it would be better if you went. I’m probably already in deep shit with her. I doubt she’ll talk to me.”

“Why’s that?”

“I went to see her kids.”

“Without their mother?”

“Bad fucking idea. I know.”

“You get anything?”

“They told me she didn’t come home last night. They said she had a babysitting job. Who leaves two young kids alone all night for a crappy babysitting job?”

“It’s what poor people do,” said Virgil, and I wanted to say, How would you know, but I bit my tongue.

“Yeah, well, maybe, so you want to do this, Virgil? I mean, I got Jimmy Wagner on my case. He keeps calling to say what do we have.”

“Me, too, since you mentioned it, Artie.” Virgil looked at his watch. “I’m under the gun. He’s got some bug up his ass about getting this done tomorrow. I mean, he’s fucking nuts.”

I told him about the will.

“Jesus,” he said. “Then it really could be Marie Louise. I mean, there’s those three truths, right? Follow the money, follow the woman.” He tossed his cigarette on the dirty snow and ground it out with his foot.

“What’s the third one?”

“I read it somewhere but I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m thinking if we can get one more person to tell us Marie Louise didn’t go home last night, and we can get somebody to say she showed up at the Armstrong, it’s enough to take her in. At least we’ll have something.”

“Tolya Sverdloff’s driver supposedly took her home, he’s trying to get hold of the guy. What about a security camera, anything in the building that might have caught her? There’s one over the front door, right? I saw it earlier.”

“Maybe I’ll get that kid Diaz calls the Goof. He seems willing,” said Virgil. “Just find out what time your pal Sverdloff’s driver dropped her home?”

“I’m on it, I just fucking told you.” I was upset about Lily. “Wait a minute.” I dialed Tolya. Come on, I said half out loud. Come on.

There was no answer.

“So, Artie, listen, with Marie Louise, are you happy for me to find a little pressure point?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I have friends here and there, Artie, since you’re asking, let’s say hypothetically, like at the Justice Department. It’s a Harvard thing, if you want to know,” he said, heavy on the irony. “I got a few at Homeland Security, too. But not,” he added “from Harvard.”

“Your call,” I said. “You’re assuming Marie Louise is illegal. Why not Immigration?”

“They’re overworked. Also, if she’s from Mali, she’s probably Muslim. Could be she’s on somebody’s watch list.” His face was creased with ambivalence, but he had taken charge. He was working the case the best he knew how. “I’m going to make some calls.”

“It’s Sunday. You have home numbers for those people?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t mess around, do you?”

“Not when I’m on the job.” He zipped up his jacket, set his face in a blank expression, and made for his ugly car, the burgundy Crown Vic. I started for mine, when the phone rang.

“Meet me,” said Tolya.

“Soon as I can. What happened?”

“I can’t get hold of this driver you wanted. Asshole should be grateful I give him work. The driver who took Marie Louise home? I’m sick of waiting. But I know where to find him. I’m going myself,” he said. “Unless you meet me.”

I didn’t like the idea of Tolya running around trying to do things himself, or leaning on the guy so hard the evidence would be useless. I knew Tolya kept a gun in his glove compartment.

“I’ll meet you.”

“I’ll pick you up,” he said.

“Not here.”

At the corner of 155th Street, Tolya pulled up. I got into his SUV.

“How’s your head?”

I put my hand on the back of my head. “OK.”

“I still want you to see my doctor.”

“You told me. Where are we going?”

“Washington Heights.”

“Why”

“Because this asshole driver, his name is Pavel, he lives there.”

“I didn’t know there were still Russians up there. I figured it was almost all Latino,” I said, and remembered I’d promised to call Gloria Lopez. I dialed. Her mother answered. “Sorry,” said Mrs. Lopez, “Gloria say to tell you she go out on a date.”

“What is it?” Tolya said.

“Somebody telling me to fuck off,” I said. “I deserved it.” I knew Gloria would get me the information on the pills, though, she was a real pro when it came to work. “So, Tol, there are Russians around here?”

“A few. This guy, the driver, he has a brother with a grocery store, 180th, 182nd Street.”

Tolya broke the speed limit. I ignored it. There wasn’t any traffic on the streets, and we made the twenty-five blocks in ten minutes. Most of the signs were in Spanish. Tolya pulled up outside a small shop that was getting ready to close. Its name out front was in English and Russian.

“Come on,” he said, getting out of the car.

A couple of guys, bundled in North Face jackets, were smoking on the street. One of them was Tolya’s substitute driver. As soon as he saw Tolya jump out of the SUV, the guy, it was Pavel, tossed his smoke into the gutter, fussed with his jacket, and stood up straighter. I thought he might salute.

Adjusting the collar of his enormous black coat, Tolya looked at Pavel and asked, in Russian, why he had not returned his calls. Pavel looked plenty nervous.

“Good evening, Anatoly Anatolyvich,” he said.

“I’ve been looking for you,” said Tolya in a steely autocratic voice. Pavel apologized. He apologized again. The other guy, hearing Tolya’s voice, wandered away into the dark night, cigarette clamped in his teeth.

“Please,” Pavel said. “Please come inside the shop. Maybe you will see something you like.”

The long counters in the shop, the glass cases and shelves, were full of Russian goods-cookies, pastries, chocolate, fish, cheese, cosmetics, folk remedies, Astrakhan hats, Russian dolls, samovars. It was a little brightly lit Russian island in the middle of a vast Hispanic ocean.

Pavel introduced us to his brother-his name was Goga-who was behind the counter. He offered us a drink and produced a bottle of good Georgian wine, and poured it into glasses. We toasted the holidays.

“Good,” said Tolya, somehow decreeing with one word that the getting-to-know-you period, the toasting and smiles, was finished. “What time did you drop the lady off last night?” he said to Pavel.

“The African?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t drop this one at home, no.”

“I told you to take her home.”

Pavel moved backwards, away from Tolya. “After I take you home, I tell her, ‘Okay, lady, I will drop you,’ but one block from her apartment, she says she needs air. I think maybe she is sick.”

“You didn’t wait?”

“It was late. I watch in rear view, see she’s OK. I think she did not go home. I think she turns around to go in other direction.”

“But you’re not sure.”

He hung his head as if expecting a blow, but Tolya didn’t touch him, merely took a fifty from his money clip and handed it over.

“It’s not your fault. Relax.” He sipped his wine, turning to me, speaking English now. “Artyom? What this Pavel says, it helps you?”

“It helps.” I was sorry Marie Louise had not gone home, sorry the evidence against her was piling up, but if she had killed Lionel Hutchison, and Marianna Simonova, I wanted her locked up fast.

I thanked Goga in Russian, thanked him for the drink, and complimented him on his shop. “Great place,” I said and asked about the name. I had seen the sign out front, but I wanted to hear it from him, why he had used it. He’d be proud of it, he’d like me for asking. I might need Goga again, and he was a guy you could easily get to talk to you, like you, look forward to your visits, even. He tried to give me a free bottle of wine. I accepted. I rarely took shit from Russians, but this was different. “So the name?”

He lit up. He was a bald, short, fat man with a weary, cheerful face. He poured some more wine. He told me he had named his shop Tolstoy, for his favorite writer.

I remembered. It was the shop where Marianna Simonova had bought her Christmas presents, her ointments and creams, the wooden dolls, chocolates, the samovar. There had been silver stickers with the name on the packages.

I asked if Simonova was a customer.

“Many, many years,” he said. “Of course. Very good customer.”

“She came lately?”

“Once in a while. Sometimes with friends who help her.”

“Which friends?”

“Black man. Old doctor, I think. She tries to persuade him Russian medicine is best.”

Lionel Hutchison.

“Anything else?”

“Sometimes she stops here to talk to other customers in Russian, about this and that.”

“What’s this and that?”

“Politics? Who can say. She is still believer, believer in Communism, crazy, right? But she is good customer, so I listen politely.”

“Artyom, time to go,” said Tolya, softly now, still in English. “You OK with this, about the African lady, this information from my asshole driver?”

“Yes,” I said. “Fine.” I got the shop owner’s card, and Pavel followed us out to the sidewalk to see us off and into Tolya’s SUV. He looked relieved.

“Where do we go?” said Tolya.

“Drop me at the station house.”

“Which?”

I gave him the address, and before Tolya started the car, he threw off his big black coat-it was warm in the SUV-and revealed that underneath, he was wearing a Santa costume.