Blood Count

CHAPTER 50

Who was the guy I saw slip out of the Sugar Hill Club and into the ice-cold night? It was after I’d left Regina McGee at the Armstrong. I pulled up across the street from the club and I saw him, the figure in a dark jacket, hood up, emerging from the club door. In a spill of white from the streetlight, he appeared, looked pale as a ghost, then was gone into the shadow. Was he black? Hard to tell. The glistening tarmac, the ice, the light, played tricks. Light turned black people white and white people dark.

A thief in the night. The phrase came to me as I crossed the street. My head throbbed. I needed sleep, but I felt wide awake, adrenaline roaring through my body. If Carver Lennox showed, I’d get it out of him. It was him. He had killed Lionel Hutchison. He was involved with the others. He wanted the apartments. He wanted the building.

It was almost midnight when I got inside the club. The place was empty except for a young couple, her in a yellow sweater and sparkly earrings like little Christmas trees, him in a red plaid shirt, sitting at a table near the deserted bandstand, holding hands over a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Canned music came over the sound system. I didn’t know the guy behind the bar, but at the far end, last seat near the wall, sat Carver Lennox.

He saw me and raised a hand in greeting.

I climbed on the stool next to his, wondering if this was the man who had murdered Lionel Hutchison.

When Lennox had found me earlier at Amahl Washington’s apartment on the ninth floor, he had been cool about it. I had expected a fight, but he didn’t ask why I was there, just told me he’d picked up the message I wanted to meet and asked if midnight worked for me. He wanted to help his daughter with her homework. She was upstairs at his apartment, he said. Said the Sugar Hill Club was fine. He’d meet me.

Now he ordered a refill on his whiskey. “What would you like, Artie?”

“I’ll get my own.” I asked for a beer.

“How can I help?” said Lennox.

When the bartender put the bottle in front of me, I realized I was thirsty. My head hurt. I was dog tired.

“I’ve been thinking about all of the shit going down at the Armstrong, and I figure you’re the guy to paint me the picture,” I said. “Open a window on it for me, Carver. You want to do that?”

Carver ignored my question. “You all right, man?” he said. “That beating you took in the storage room, I’m sorry about that. It’s the kind of thing we have to change. That damn back door is always open, there’s always people in and out for smokes, and garbage, and to get their cars. It’s not the way you run a building, you know, I tell them over and over. Only Diaz gets it. But he can’t do everything alone.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. You have a different impression?”

“He’s very attentive.”

“You mean he eavesdrops?” Lennox laughed.

“Isn’t that what you pay him for?”

“I pay him to make my building a better place.”

“Right.”

“Help me here, Artie. You think Diaz has his hand out more than normal? I need to know.”

I didn’t answer for a minute. I downed the beer.

“I didn’t come to talk about Diaz. Your problem,” I said.

“What do you need?”

“You tell me.”

He leaned close, arms on the bar, hand gripping the whiskey glass. His eyes were bloodshot. In the whites of his eyes were tiny threads of red. In the corners was more blood. I was so close to Lennox, I thought I could see the blood in his left eye leaking.

“You don’t think I care that Lionel died?” Lennox said. He was pretty wasted. He had been drinking, a lot, I realized.

“Do you?”

“He was my friend, so I fucking care. It’s also bad news for my building.”

“Your building?”

“You fucking know what I mean,” he said, his voice low now, but angry.

“What about Marianna Simonova? And Amahl Washington?”

“They were old, man. They were old and sick and they died.”

I kept my mouth shut, and my silence got to him.

“You think they were murdered, too?” he said. “You think it’s connected? Is that what you think?” The horror that crossed his face seemed real.

I ordered another beer.

“Should I have another drink?” It was rhetorical. He gestured for another, his third, he said. Or fourth. Raised it. Drank it.

“So how many apartments you got empty, Cal?”

“There’s some,” he said. “Why?”

“Let’s say I’m a fucking financial idiot. You’re planning to turn the Armstrong into a new co-op, call it the Barack Obama, that right?”

“You don’t like our new president, man? That’s your problem.” Lennox sounded hostile.

“I’m guessing the way you got it structured, you need a majority of owners who will go along. Ready to play your game when you ask five grand for maintenance, or else sell up, right? You already got your hands on a few, isn’t that right, Cal?”

“Shares, yeah.”

“What?”

“You buy shares in a co-op, you don’t buy the apartment.”

“What-fucking-ever,” I said. “And you and the new shareholders can run the board between you, that right?”

“I don’t know what business it is of yours,” he said. “Listen to me, man, just ask me what you want to know. I want Hutchison’s murder solved, right? I loved that man. You listening?”

“Well, you’ll get hold of his place now, won’t you? I mean, his wife wants out, isn’t that right? You have enough apartments now?”

“Plenty.” He pushed his empty glass away and got up from the bar stool.

“Let me buy you one,” I said, backing off. I figured I better ease up or I’d lose Lennox before I nailed him. “You mind if I ask you about Amahl Washington?”

“You can ask me any fucking thing you want, man. You understand?” He was drunk, but he was willing to talk.

Was this his game? I still had him figured for Hutchison’s murder, but the longer I spent in the bar, the less sure I was.

“I was fucking sad, man,” said Lennox. “I played basketball in high school, and Amahl was my hero. He was a great man. He did a lot for his people. He retired and he went on to the City Council.”

“He died at the Armstrong. Your wife was his doctor.”

“Please! Lucille is the straightest woman ever walked this planet. Her religion is what makes her tick, not fucking money. She was Amahl’s doc because she’s the best lung specialist at Presbyterian.”

“Lionel Hutchison was her mentor, isn’t that right? Isn’t that why Simonova saw Lucille Bernard, too? You were friends with Mrs. Simonova?”

“I’m getting another drink,” said Lennox. I signaled the bartender. I paid for it.

“You didn’t like her?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Simonova.”

“You have no idea.” He turned so I couldn’t see his face.

“You wouldn’t be sad to get your hands on her apartment, would you? But it belongs to Marie Louise. Simonova left it to her, you must know that.”

“Nice for Marie Louise.

Oddly, Lennox seemed glad for Marie Louise, and I wondered why

“You didn’t want a shot at buying Simonova’s apartment?”

“No way,” he said, half to himself. “No fucking way.”

“You were at Simonova’s the night before she died. In fact, more than once last week.”

“She asked me over,” said Lennox. “She needed some help.”

“What with? I noticed she had presents for you and your kids; what’s that about?”

“She gave everybody presents. It was how she bribed people. Listen, man, you got anything to tell me about Lionel Hutchison? That’s why I came out on this fucking miserable night, right?”

“You knew about Hutchison’s obsession with pain relief, with assisted suicide?”

He snorted. “Everybody fucking knew. It was his religion. Times I was in the middle, Celestina saying Lionel wants to kill people, him shilling for his euthanasia thing.”

“Celestina Hutchison said you offered to buy her out, that Lionel refused, but she wanted out. You gave her money. Said Lionel told you he’d never leave.”

“I want you to do me a favor,” said Lennox, his voice soft, even, almost needy. “I’m asking you. Please.”

“What is it?”

“Tell Marie Louise I’m sorry I even suspected her, will you? Help her, if you can, if she needs an immigration lawyer or anything,” said Lennox. “There’s money in a safe behind the Warhol picture of Ali in my apartment-you’ve probably already seen it, you and your pal, Virgil? Just give it to her, tell her I’m sorry.”

The regrets about Marie Louise, the apology, the instructions to give her money, all of it made me suspect Lennox more. There was something weird about it. He was getting ready to confess. He was feeling bad. He was slumped on that bar stool now, head in his hands. Suddenly, he looked up.

“You think I fucking killed these people to get their apartments?” Lennox said, angry again now. “That’s what you’ve been thinking all along, isn’t it? You think because I’m black, I have it in me to kill people?”

“You don’t have to be black.”

“But I am.”

“Calm down,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me something. Tell me about Marianna Simonova.”

In his face I saw something I hadn’t seen before. I saw how much he hated the Russian. I saw that she was somehow connected to all of it, at the bottom of it all.

It was quiet in the club. The bartender was waiting for us to finish. I could hear the clock over the bar tick. Could hear the cars outside.

“You want me to tell you about her?”

“She was a crazy woman who made up stories about her past,” Lennox said. “Crazy like a fox. She tells everyone, ‘I was Paul Robeson’s girlfriend, I was an important person.’ All the time she’s saying how she just loves black people, seeing as how we’re so oppressed, we’re so fucking pure, we’re so decent.” He looked at me. “I couldn’t stand her-what she said, even how she looked, the way she smelled. That stink of incense and cigarette smoke, the imperious way she had, ordering everyone around.”

“Why didn’t they tell her to fuck off?”

“She seduced everybody with those fucking stories. She’d tell you she was the mother of Jesus Christ if it would get her some attention.”

Lennox’s voice possessed the fury of somebody who’d been hurt really bad.

“What else?” I said.

“You should really listen to me,” Lennox said. “I didn’t kill anybody. I’m trying to tell you something and you’re not hearing me. Hold on.” He reached for his coat that was over the bar stool next to him. He pulled out a brown leather folder, the kind where you keep photographs.

“Nobody knows about this, man,” said Lennox. “But I’m going to tell you, OK? I’m going to tell you some shit so you can go and solve your fucking crimes, you and that Virgil.”

He had the look of a man who was going to confess, wanted to confess. Then he got up abruptly, stumbling over the bar stool.

“I have to get some air,” he said. “I had too much to drink, I’m just wasted, man.” He glanced at me and smiled slightly, but it was the sad smile of a man who knows he’s washed up. “Don’t worry,” Lennox added. “I’ll be back. You can come with me. Or you can watch me through the window, watch me puke, if you want.”

My heart raced. I was sweating. I knew he was getting ready to talk. I wanted him to trust me. He waited for my permission.

I ordered another beer. I didn’t drink it. The young couple left the club. The bartender wiped down the tables and looked at me. He wanted to close up.

The time seemed to drag.

“Go on,” I said. “Get some air.”

“You coming? Or you want to trust me?” He tossed some money on the bar.

I didn’t have much time to think. I saw he was going to puke. I told him to go.

From where I was, standing close to the window, to the door, I could see the street. I saw Lennox bent double. Then I thought he was going to run after all, getting in position, a runner’s position. He seemed to take a step. I got my gun, yelled at the bartender to call 911 for help.

I’d been a jerk. You didn’t use psychology with a killer. The idea that my trusting him would make him talk had been crazy. He was a man in a rage. I ran.

For a split second, I lost sight of Lennox. There was a heavy velvet curtain over the door, the kind they put up in the winter to keep the cold out, and it obscured my view. By the time I got outside, it was too late.