Blood Count

CHAPTER 48

You any good at picking locks?” I said to Virgil as he looked at Carver Lennox’s apartment door.

“You mean because of my bad black childhood in the mean streets of Cambridge, and Greenwich Village?” He smiled. “Actually, I am pretty fucking fine at it.” He got down and inspected the lock. From his jacket he took a Leatherman, one of those little tool kits.

The doors on the floor were all shut, but you could feel the people inside, feel them waiting, alert, listening. People had heard the sirens this morning. Some had gone downstairs to see what had happened, had seen the cops, and the body on the ground. They would have seen the seal on the Hutchisons’ door. The news about Lionel Hutchison, and about Celestina’s dog, would have traveled through the building. Everyone on this floor would know by now.

Behind those doors, people were talking, making calls, angry at the intrusions into their lives, sorry about the deaths, scared for their own safety. There had been two deaths on this floor, not to mention the dog. The little fortress high above the city had been invaded.

I held my breath. I didn’t want anyone to see us, least of all Lily.

“Virgil?”

“Just don’t talk for a minute; I have to concentrate,” he said, working at the lock. A few seconds later, the door snapped open, and we were in.

From Lennox’s terrace came a noise, like somebody tapping on glass. Instinctively, both of us reached for our guns. What we were doing was illegal and probably dangerous. If Lennox had hired somebody to kill Hutchison and trash a dog, he probably had a thug on his payroll who would be happy to work over a couple of detectives like us.

“I’ll go,” I said.

Turned out the noise was only a piece of glass blowing around. But I saw how easy it would be to get from Lennox’s terrace to the Hutchisons. The terraces were adjacent. Three in a row I thought: Simonova, Hutchison, Lennox.

“Anything?” I said to Virgil who was combing the apartment.

It was a rich man’s apartment: the old oak floors, wide deep planks, covered with antique kilims; the furniture was 1950s; pictures on the wall so famous you had to blink, including an Andy Warhol silk screen of Mohammad Ali. The kind of place you see in a magazine.

As Virgil worked, he talked, softly, in a low voice, with plenty of irony. “The New Harlem, they call it.” He snorted. “New and for rich people,” Virgil said. “Who might not have any taste but sure know how to hire a decorator who has some. You know how old this prick Carver is?”

“Forty?”

“He’s thirty-six, Artie, two years younger than me,” said Virgil. “You know why I think he wants this building? I think he wants it for the history. He doesn’t have any. He’s the kind of guy who invents himself. I mean, I looked him up, it wasn’t hard, he’s been written up, young, black, hedge-fund guy, Goldman Sachs.” Virgil took some art books from a shelf. “He’s also a liar, even about his own past. He didn’t come up from the streets like he tells people, didn’t grow up in Harlem. His mom and dad are just middle-class folk who adopted him. He grew up in Queens, a bright, ugly suburban kid who made it to prep school and then Princeton on a scholarship. His mom was a secretary, his dad worked for Con Ed.” Virgil put the books back.

“Not for Clinton?”

“Sure, maybe the dad helped on Clinton’s campaign. But so what? Lennox didn’t grow up rich, or poor. Ordinary. No story. So he’s fixated on the Armstrong,” said Virgil, flipping some silk pillows on a low sofa. “I’ve been thinking a lot the past day or so, you know, you can read the whole history of this part of the city in this building,” he added. “First it was the glamorous heart of the Harlem Renaissance, then it went downhill in the Depression, got bad in the 1950s. By the seventies, it was a mess, the taxes hadn’t been paid. Bad times all over Harlem, even up here on Sugar Hill. It was not sweet, not then. People stayed on of course. Most had no choice.” Virgil examined an antique breakfront. “Marie Louise said Carver Lennox kept guns, right?” He opened the doors, peering inside. He pressed a strip of wood and a hidden drawer popped open. “Shit, Artie, look at this.”

“What’s that?”

“The guns.”

“How many?”

“Six,” he said. “But this is all collector’s stuff. Old West shit, pearl-handled revolvers. Look.”

The drawer was lined with velvet. The pistols were handmade, beautifully polished and cared for. These weren’t weapons Carver killed with.

“Maybe Lennox sees himself as a cowboy,” said Virgil. “ Blazing Saddles, right?” He chuckled. “God, I love that movie. That scene with Count Basie always cracks me up.”

“Let’s see if there’s any kind of documents, stuff we can nail him with.”

“Right,” said Virgil, following me to the study.

“Go on with what you were saying about Lennox.” I began sifting through folders piled onto the steel and glass desk.

“So, in the 1980s, 1990s, middle-class black people start buying in to Harlem, some because they want a toehold on what they think is their culture-you ever see Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever? Great, great film, Artie. Really, a great look at middle-class black families. Anyhow, the people who bought in then were smart. They bought in to some insanely good real estate, the brownstones, the big apartments,” said Virgil. “My dad wanted us to move up from the Village, where we were at the time. My mother said, No way, it’s dangerous and there’s drugs, and they’d fight like crazy about it. He was pretty tough on her.”

“What about you?”

“In my house, the kids did not have a choice, me and my sister,” said Virgil, bent over a filing cabinet, looking at more of Lennox’s papers. “I think my father wanted us to move because he felt he was raising kids who had no relationship with the black world. Maybe he was right; what the fuck do I know, Artie? Wait a minute.” Virgil knelt down, spreading documents on the floor in front of him. He was excited.

“Artie, listen. It’s all here. There’s copies of tenancy agreements for most of the apartments in this building. Some of them are really half-assed, the kind any lawyer could challenge, agreements where the former tenants bought their apartments for next to nothing. Lennox, fucking predator that he is, knows it. He must have been putting pressure on,” Virgil said, combing through the papers, picking up a document, scanning it. “Oh, man, this is priceless!”

“What?”

“He’s been doing this for a long time, all over Harlem, before the Benneton rainbow nation, the Asians, yuppies, gays, got here, Carver Lennox was in the business, buying condemned buildings, apartments, town houses. He has mortgages you wouldn’t believe.”

“And the market is crashing around him.”

Virgil laughed. “Yeah, with the help of people like him and his pals at Goldman. I don’t think he can afford the mortgages on some of this,” said Virgil. “I think he has to make a go of the Armstrong, which is the best property he has, the one where he bought apartments so cheap, even if he sells them for less than he could have a year ago, it’ll go a long way toward solving some of his financial problems. Either he does that, or he’ll be in very very very deep shit, Artie.”

“How many apartments does he own here?”

“Ten, I think. He’s been warehousing them.” Virgil gathered up the papers and put them back in their original folders.

He went to the living room, and I followed. For a few seconds, he stared at the orange Warhol silk screen.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, shifting it to one side, then placing it carefully on the floor. Behind it was a wall safe. “Presto.”

“How’d you know?”

“For some crazy reason people always put the safe behind a big picture. I swear, it’s true.” Virgil was already spinning the dials on the safe. He looked up. “You think I only do locks? I also do safes, they’re my specialty. I’m serious, Artie, when I was a kid I knew my parents kept walking-around cash in a little safe in their bedroom, behind a picture, and I got so I could steal from it really easy. My parents’ safe was behind the picture by Romare Bearden, which was considered the family treasure. I always loved those English novels about gentlemen crooks, you know, real period stuff. I figured myself for a future in the business. Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief -you know it?”

“You’re kidding.”

“You don’t have any fucking idea,” he said, his ear to the wall as he moved the dial on the safe, peering into the near distance as if the numbers would show up out of thin air. The door to the safe sprang open. He looked in.

“Anything?”

Virgil took out a flashlight and looked inside. From the innards of the safe, he pulled out a shoe box, opened it to reveal a stack of envelopes.

“Cash,” he said, “lots of cash. Envelopes with cash in them and names of people in the building on them, one for Celestina, another one for Regina McGee; there’s some with names of people downstairs on other floors.”

“Put it back,” I said. “We need a warrant now.”

While Virgil closed up the safe, I surveyed the room, made sure everything was in order. “You think he’s still out with his daughter? You don’t think he’ll forget to come home, or just decide to take a vacation somewhere with no extradition?”

“Trust me, his ego is bigger than his brain. He’s invested in this building, this apartment. He’ll be here,” said Virgil. “Anyhow, he thinks we think Marie Louise did it. He thinks the dog makes it credible.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Virgil stood up. “Well, Artie, I’m fucking sure, OK?” he said. “Sorry. But I know it’s Lennox. I know he got to Simonova, then Lionel Hutchison, and maybe Amahl Washington. Right?”

“I’m going to see Lily. ”

“Artie?”

“What?”

“We need to talk,” Virgil said. “About Lily.”

“What do you want, a duel?”

He smiled faintly. “I wish.”

“Why, because you know how to fence?”

“I do, since you ask. Yeah, I did some very pretty fencing. I was on the team. Harvard,” he said in a tone of self-mockery. “You don’t believe me, do you? There’s been black guys on that team for quite a while, cross my heart,” he added. “Listen to me, I really like her, Artie.”

“It’s Lily’s decision,” I said. “Right?”

“Is it?”

“What do you think, that I’m going to hypnotize her or something?”

“You spent the night,” Virgil said. It wasn’t a question and I didn’t answer, and for a few seconds, we were both silent. Then he held up a single piece of paper. “You should know I’m taking this, I found it in Lennox’s files. It shows what he’s been up to.”

“It’s no good without a warrant.”

“I don’t care. Carver Lennox is too connected. We might never get the fucking warrant. Don’t push me on this one, Artie. I’m just doing it.” He put his hand on the doorknob. “I’m going to get Lennox now,” he said. “Please don’t stop me.”