Blood Count

CHAPTER 49

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” Sinatra was singing on Lily’s stereo.

She looked up from a pile of presents she was wrapping on the floor of her apartment. “Where were you?”

“Can I sit down?”

“Let him talk,” said Tolya, who, attired in his Santa suit, looked like an enormous red tomato. He sat on the floor near her and put his hand on Lily’s arm. “OK?”

I looked at all the stuff on the floor. “What is all this?”

“I’ll take it to some kids tomorrow,” said Tolya. “Nice kids. Local school.” He peered into an enormous canvas bag, handing a package to Lily. “I want to be part of this community.”

Tolya’s magic had worked on Lily. Lap full of ribbons, she sat near him. Being with Tolya made her feel safe. The place was littered with silver paper and gold and red ribbons and sparkly stuff, and stacks of greeting cards. There was a bottle of red wine on the floor, two glasses.

Lily asked if everything was OK with Marie Louise and I just nodded. I just said it was all fine now.

“Will you help her get a green card?”

“If I can, of course,” I said. “Yes. You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“Not very mad,” she said.

Tolya handed Lily a toy truck, closed his eyes for a minute, listening to the music.

“It is toss-up, Artyom. Verdi, Sinatra. I should have been Italian.”

I went to the kitchen to get some water and he followed. I swallowed a couple of aspirin.

“Artyom?”

“What?”

“I got a little information about some dead guys, dead Russians. It’s all connected, Artyom, the guy in the cemetery, the one in the closet who bled out, maybe the old lady-Mrs. Simonova, even the doctor. Nothing solid, but I don’t like it. You should be careful, you hear me? You will get beat up again. Bad. Worse.”

“Get me more information.”

“Soon,” he said.

“You’re worried about this. Is that why you’re here with Lily?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Artie? Sit with me,” Lily called out and I went and sat on the rug near her.

“Are you OK?”

“I’m better,” she said. “I’m sad, but better. I’m sad about Lionel. You’ll find out who killed him, won’t you?”

“Yes. Soon.”

“Good. I remember you used to say there was a moment in a case when you felt it was coming to an end.”

“You remember.”

“Most things,” said Lily, as I leaned over to kiss the top of her head. I got up off the floor. “Come back soon,” she added.

At the door, I turned to look at her, at Lily on the floor, the bright paper and ribbon around her, a glass of wine in her hand, Tolya in the kitchen, the music. She suddenly looked up at me and smiled in a way that told me the night before hadn’t been an accident, wasn’t just the party and a late night and too much booze.

I closed the door behind me, I was already on my phone. I wanted to make sure Virgil was on his way to get the warrant. I wanted to see Lennox, and alone. Virgil was so angry, I figured he might blow it. I got him, he told me he was at the station house. Then, I left a message for Carver Lennox. Told him I wanted to meet. I suggested the Sugar Hill Club. I hung up, got in the elevator and went looking for Diaz.

Regina McGee stopped me in the lobby, and I got the feeling she’d been waiting for me. She was nervous, shifting from foot to foot, hands clasped.

“I thought you were in the hospital.”

“They let me go. I got dehydrated. Stupid, I forgot to drink water. I felt a chill, I turn the heat up too high, must have done passed out. Sometimes I think I’m going soft in the head,” she said. “I said to them, please, send me home, soon as they ran a couple tests. I begged. I don’t hold with being in hospitals.”

I said I was glad she was better. She said she had been looking for me.

“What do you need?”

“Please, can you come to my apartment? I don’t want to talk here.” She lowered her voice as she led me to the elevator, and, when it came, peered inside, as if to make sure we would be alone.

There was an alcove for her bed, and another for the kitchen. A door led to the bathroom. There were two windows that faced south over Manhattan. The apartment was very small, the whole room jammed with record albums, hundreds of them, some on makeshift shelves, others in cartons on the floor. There were photographs of Ella Fitzgerald on the walls.

On one side of the room was an elaborate stereo system, which Regina said Ella had given her. On the small table, there was a coffee pot and the remains of a meal. Books were piled up, most of them biographies of jazz musicians.

“I found this when I went to put the garbage out.” She held up a dog’s collar. “I heard about the Hutchisons’ dog.”

I took it from her. “You think it’s his?”

“I know it,” she said. “Celestina treated me like a maid, and I didn’t take kindly to it, but I didn’t mind walking Ed from time to time. So when I see there’s fur in the garbage chute, I get the feeling somebody tried to push the dog down, and he wouldn’t go, so they stuffed him in the washing machine. Who does this type of thing?” she said, clutching a Kleenex. “Can I offer you some tea?”

I shook my head. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Regina sat down on the edge of a chair, gestured to another. I sat.

“I can’t sleep at night,” she said. “All night I think about Amahl Washington and how fast they buried him-they didn’t bury him, they cremated him before anybody could say good-bye. Then they held this big fancy funeral over to the Abyssinian. It wasn’t Amahl’s church. Why? I have asked myself over and over, and I can’t make no sense of it.”

“Who was in charge?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who organized his funeral?”

“He didn’t have much real family, just the one niece from out of town, from up near Buffalo. He had a lot of friends and associates, so first I think to myself maybe this funeral been organized by somebody from his basketball days, or from his time on the City Council. But at the church I notice it’s Carver Lennox running things. He gives the eulogy.”

“What’s happened to the apartment?”

“Do you want to see it?”

“Yes”

“It’s on the ninth floor. Come on.”

Amahl Washington’s apartment sounded empty, that strange, faint noise a vacant place makes, when all you hear is the refrigerator and the heat.

“They changed the locks on Amahl’s apartment after he died,” Regina said. “But I kept a key to this here back door. Some of these apartments have a back door that leads into the kitchen. Nobody uses them much anymore. They were for folk who did the cooking and washing,” she said, “I was counting on them forgetting about the back door, you know?”

Regina led me from room to room. The place was immaculate. It had been cleaned up and cleaned out, the floor polished, the paint fresh.

“This looks like somebody fixed it all up,” I said.

“That’s what I wanted to show you. Somebody who’s thinking of selling you’d say.”

“Right.”

“So I called that niece of Amahl’s that lives upstate, and she didn’t know much, they weren’t close, but she told me the will was still in, what do you call it-probate?-and ain’t nothing can be done until that’s fixed.”

“Does she know this apartment has been cleaned out?”

“Sure. I told her. She said that was fine, Carver Lennox told her he was getting ready to sell it and he was a big help to her. He took care of everything.”

“She’s going to sell it to him?”

“She says she don’t know, it’s not clear who this place belongs to, seeing as Amahl didn’t specify nobody in his will, he just went too fast to do it, so it’s all in a kind of mess. But I’m sure Carver has his eye on it.”

“You think Mr. Washington meant you to have it?”

“Could be,” she said. “I’d rather have him alive, tell the truth.”

“Anything else?”

Regina led me back to the kitchen and through the back door, into the hall near the back stairs. Right then I heard something; so did she. Somebody was coming toward us, along the hall. I could hear him talking on his cell phone. Fear crossed Regina’s face.

“Go home,” I said. “Just walk to the elevator like nothing happened, just go on. He won’t hurt you. I’ll be right here. I’ll wait.”

“I’m scared of that man,” she said, as Lennox got closer, his voice louder.

“It will be fine. Go on.”

“Too many old folk dying in this building,” said Regina. “I don’t want to die.”