Blood Count

CHAPTER 53

Virgil told me he got a tip-off from some guy he knew, homeless guy who lived up near the George Washington Bridge, guy who said he’d seen somebody in an alley behind the old synagogue nearby. Virgil went and he found Ivan, who beat him up pretty bad, but even while the creep was punching him, Virgil managed to hold on, get out his gun, and bring him in.

I got his call when I was finishing up at the Russian grocery store. I went to the station house. It was him. Same black jacket, same weird white hair. Same cultured voice, though he didn’t talk much, not at first. Ivan Ivanov.

Between us, Virgil and me, we didn’t get much out of him. We sat him in the interrogation room. He was a lot slicker than your usual Russki hood. Even sitting down, he seemed big-the big shoulders, the heavy chest and arms. His removed his jacket. In jeans and a sweater, he looked at ease, as if he knew his way around a police station. Swore his name was Ivan Ivanov and laughed as if it were a joke.

He had been at the club earlier. I had seen him run away after Lennox was knifed. We had to wait on prints, see if Ivanov’s match the prints on the knife. Did Ivanov kill the others? The guy in the cemetery? In the closet of a brownstone? Did he push Lionel Hutchison?

The creep, this Ivanov, sat calmly at the table, watching me. He smoked when Virgil tossed him a pack of cigarettes. He ate the bologna sandwich we ordered for him. He drank the coffee. But he didn’t talk. He pretended not to recognize me. He confirmed only that his name was Ivanov, and said he was Russian, a citizen of Russia with an American green card.

For half an hour, while I talked to him, Virgil sat at the table with me. I had tried to get him to go to the emergency room, but he’d stuck Band-Aids on his face and refused. Nothing broken, he said. Bastard didn’t break anything.

“Wait a minute,” said Virgil. He reached over, pushed up Ivan’s sleeves. There were the tats.

“You can read this?” he said to me.

I read: WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE. Same tats as the dead guy who’d had the Communist Manifesto skewered to his heart.

“You’re a true believer?” I said in Russian. He asked for cigarettes. “Tell me what you believe, then,” I added. “I’m interested.”

He shrugged.

“What about the dog?” I said. “You didn’t have to kill the damn dog, did you? You enjoyed that?”

Ivan’s face barely changed, but he said, very softly, “What dog?” Then he smiled slightly and pulled out a leather thong he wore around his neck and showed me the tooth on it. “Dog’s tooth, to ward off evil eye,” he said. “For luck.”

“You killed the dog for that?”

He shrugged. I yanked the tooth off the thong and looked at it. It was old. It was too big for the dog.

“It’s from a wolf,” I said in Russian. “Don’t play with me.”

“I don’t play,” he said.

“Let’s go,” I said to Virgil.

“Where are you going?” Ivan said in English.

“What do you care?” I said.

In the corridor outside the room where we had left Ivan, Virgil said, “You think he did it? All of them?”

“I think you should put something on those cuts,” I said. “At least go sit down.”

“You want him to yourself, don’t you, Artie?”

“He’s yours. It’s up to you.”

“Go on, maybe he’ll warm up to a fellow Russki.” Virgil reached out his hand for a chair to steady himself.

“Listen to me. Go in back and lie down on that bunk for a while. I’ll get you when he starts talking.”

“You think he’ll talk?”

I nodded. “If I have anything to do with it.”

“Good, you came without the monkey,” Ivan said in Russian when I went back into the interrogation room alone.

“Did you know Marianna Simonova?” I said.

Ivan looked up. In that split second, I saw he was startled. Then he shut down again. He still didn’t ask for a lawyer. I figured he was illegal after all, in spite of his green card. It was probably a fake. I picked it up from the table.

“How much are these going for?”

“You need one?” he said.

“Talk to me about Simonova. You knew her, didn’t you? She was one of your comrades,” I said. “Bitch that she was.”

“She was a good woman.”

“She was a murderer.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Anyway, she’s dead,” I said, and seeing it upset him, added, “Good thing, she was crazy and bad and she still believed in fucking Stalin. Mad old woman.” I added some choice Russian epithets. I saw it got to him. “You didn’t know she was dead? No?”

“How would I know?” It was impossible to tell if he was lying. He shifted in his seat, and took a deep drag on his cigarette.

“You think she was a good woman? Why?”

“She was a patriot.”

“That’s why you have those tattoos? You’re a patriot. You think you’re a good Russian, a true Soviet comrade?”

“Perhaps.”

“Listen, Ivan, if you didn’t kill those two Russians, and you didn’t kill Carver Lennox, tell me some more about Simonova. What’s there to lose? Maybe I could help you out.”

It was a gamble. I was pretty sure Ivan was good for Carver Lennox and the other two homicides, that the prints would be a match. But Goga had also put him in the grocery store with Marianna Simonova. I was curious. It was a hunch. Maybe it was the Commie stuff that made me connect them. As soon as I saw him react, I knew I was onto something. Now the creep wanted to talk.

“She was a true comrade,” he said. “She was not like those who just quit when bastard Gorbachev came to power. She remained true.”

“You mean she was a spy? Who did she work for?”

“There is always somebody who continues to believe.”

“Only assholes,” I said.

“Things changed. We became nothing,” said Ivan. “We were great empire. We became shitty little country. Putin has tried, he is big man, but all you hear is democracy, freedom.” He snorted. “What does this mean, this ‘democracy’?”

“You tell me.”

“It means only money.”

“So you kill people for your ideology?”

“Nothing is simple,” he said.

“Why don’t you tell me how you and Simonova were involved? Where did you meet her?”

“Suddenly, I don’t remember.” He leaned back and folded his arms.

“Try.”

“No good. I don’t remember.” He closed his eyes.

I leaned close. “Fucking tell me what you know about her.”

For three, four, five minutes, I listened to the clock on the wall tick. Ivan remained silent.

“What did Simonova tell you?”

He looked at me. “She tells me to be quiet, so this is what I will be.”

He closed his eyes again.

The door banged opened and Virgil came in, rubbing his eyes.

“Can you take it from here?” I said.

“Sure. You leaving?”

“For a while. See if you can get it out of him who he worked for,” I said, and looked at Ivan. “Do what you have to.”

Gloria Lopez met me on her way to work. She emerged from the train station at 145th Street, and we sat in Starbucks and drank coffee. She was wearing a red winter coat and a white hat. In her hand was an envelope.

“I got you some stuff on those pills.”

“Already?”

“I’m a fast worker,” she said. “I also got hold of a friend at the ME’s office and asked them to check on Dr. Hutchison. It’s all in the envelope. I wasn’t on a date last night, by the way. I was working the phone for you. I just wanted to make you jealous.”

“Fair enough. Thank you. And you look great.”

“Thanks. You look like shit. You get any sleep lately?”

“Not a lot. Listen, I know you had to call in something big for this.”

“You have no idea, Artie. I have to go.” She got up, kissed my cheek, and said, “Merry Christmas.”

“I’ll call you,” I said.

She turned. “So is it Lily?”

I didn’t answer. After Gloria left, I just sat, drinking black coffee and reading the notes the ME had faxed to her.