Blood Count

by Reggie Nadelson

  “My wife, Celestina,” said Hutchison. He picked up the kettle, tossed the remains over one of the plants, where it hissed and steamed, and retreated into his apartment.

  I had the feeling Lionel Hutchison had seen Marianna Simonova recently. I had the feeling he already knew she was dead. He had engaged me in a lot of talk to see what I knew. It had been a fishing expedition.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lily found me in the dead woman’s apartment looking at a photograph on the mantelpiece.

  “Good shower?” I said.

  “Great.” She had changed her clothes and fixed her hair. She wore a deep, soft green turtleneck, skinny black jeans, ankle boots, gold hoops in her ears, an old stainless Rolex she had been left by an uncle. I had always coveted the watch. I’ll leave it to you, she’d always said jokingly. Though I plan to live forever, she would add. In those days, when we were first together, she was unstoppable, optimistic, full of life.

  Lily was the best looking woman I had met in New York, or any other place. I always remember the first time I saw her: It was a hot summer night. She was tall, almost as tall as me, long legs, red hair, blue-green eyes. Sexy. Husky voice. Smart as hell. She was a grown-up. I had never liked girls, not really. I knew right away, but for once I had let things take a little time, time for us to listen to music, go for a walk, laugh. We laughed a lot.

  “You look nice,” I said.

  “Thank you.” She was composed, almost disengaged. The feverish look had gone, as if she’d taken something to make her calm. When I looked at her, I couldn’t see anything in her eyes—not what she was feeling or what she knew—as if in putting on lipstick she had pulled down the shades.

  She held up a little Russian doll made of painted wood. “Here,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  Lilly pulled the wooden doll apart and took out a key. “Marianna’s storage room. You said you’d go look for the stuff she said she left me.”

  “Did I?”

  “I think you did, Artie,” she said. “Where’s Virgil?” She put the doll on a table. “Marianna loved these things. They give me the creeps,” Lily added. “Where is he? Virgil, I mean.”

  “He said he had to go, said he’d be back soon,” I said. “You have the doctor’s number?”

  She nodded. “I called Dr. Bernard. It’s fine.”

  “She’s coming?”

  “Soon, Artie, OK? Said she’d be here soon as she could get by. Relax.”

  I picked up a framed photograph. The picture had been copied from a newspaper clipping and it was faded now. It showed a little girl handing a bunch of flowers to Stalin. I could barely make out the girl’s face.

  “Who’s this?” I said, and Lily crossed the room and looked at the picture in my hand.

  “It’s Marianna. She was a gymnast when she was a little girl, a little star.”

  “Jesus. She met Stalin?”

  In another photograph, this one in a leather frame, was a young woman I could just make out as Simonova; it was only her profile. Behind her was the Statue of Liberty. She held a kid’s hand, a little boy of about three, his back to the camera as he stared in the direction of the statue. He wore a tiny dark suit; he looked small and somehow lonely.

  “Did she have a child?”

  Lily picked up the photograph. “Marianna wouldn’t say. I got the sense this was her little boy, and I got the feeling he had died. She wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Do you want to wait here until the doctor comes?”

  “You don’t need to stay,” she said. “I’m fine now.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” I said.

  “Thanks,” said Lily. “The pictures are pretty amazing, right?” She watched me. Somewhere in the building—maybe next door—I heard footsteps on old wooden floorboards, and the sound of people yelling at each other. No words came through, but the sounds were from the direction of the old doctor—Hutchison’s—apartment.

  “Yeah.”

  “Marianna kept everything, pictures, diaries, letters she liked to surround herself with it all, she told me,” said Lily.

  I looked at more photographs crammed on the marble ledge: Simonova in a striped summer dress on a beach near a river; Simonova in Red Square with Paul Robeson; Robeson alone in front of Lenin’s Tomb, wearing an overcoat with a fur collar and a Karakul hat. There was a tumble of digital snaps, too, piled on the mantel and some of them were recent, I could see by Simonova’s face. In one, she was playing a guitar. In another she posed, mugging for the camera with Lily and Dr. Hutchison.

  “I met the doctor from next door,” I said. “Hutchison.”

  Lily looked up from the picture she held. “How come?”

  “He was out on the terrace smoking.”

  Lily laughed briefly. “He does that. His wife doesn’t like it. Celestina is ninety, and she rules that roost. Poor Lionel. She keeps him on a tight leash. This building, most of them are old. Most of them never leave. Until they die.”

  “I got the feeling that Dr. Hutchison already knew about Simonova.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lily said. “Why?”

  “You tell me. When’s Simonova’s doctor coming?”

  “I told you, I called. She’ll be here.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as she can, OK? I left a message.” Lily hesitated. “Listen to me, I thought about this while I was in the shower.” Her voice was low now, almost a whisper.

  “What is it?”

  “I feel I have to tell you something.”

  “Go on. It’s fine. Whatever it is.”

  “It was me, Artie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I killed her. Marianna. Give me a minute.” Lily turned her back to me, walked across the room, opened the door and disappeared onto the terrace.

  Lily’s face was red with cold and there was snow in her hair when she came back inside. “I think I can tell you now,” she said. “I need to sit.”

  There was a small couch on one side of the room. It was covered with a blue plaid blanket. Lily sat on the edge. I sat next to her.

  “Whatever it is, I’m here,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You said you killed her. Lily?”

  “I made her tell me those stories over and over, sometimes she could hardly breathe and I would say, ‘Go on, just finish,’ so I could tape it. I thought I could write a book. I killed her. I murdered this woman who was my friend, I made her tell me all her stories and I killed her.”

  “For her stories?”

  “You don’t think people kill for that?”

  I put my arm around Lily’s shoulder, but she shrugged it off. “I didn’t check on the meds, either. I was supposed to check. I forgot.”

  I waited.

  “Last night I went out to a party and I forgot. This morning I counted the pills, like I always do, and she had missed a dose.”

  “Which meds?”

  Lily was rattled. “I’m not sure, I think the bottle’s in the bathroom.”

  “Look. Look at me.” I got hold of Lily’s hand. “Simonova’s doctor will tell you she didn’t die because she missed a pill. It doesn’t work like that. Dr. Bernard, that’s her name? At Presbyterian?”

  “I already told you it was her name.”

  “It’ll be fine. You didn’t kill her, Lily. You didn’t do anything. You were her friend, isn’t that right?”

  Lily didn’t answer. I could hear the second hand on my watch. I waited.

  And then, Lily just jumped up. Looked at me. “That’s right, Artie, you’re right, of course,” she said. “Dr. Bernard will explain it. Of course. Anyway, I have to go now. I have things to do.” Lily was brisk now, her mood changing again.

  “What things?”

  “Errands. Christmas. Things,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you? I won’t be long. You can wait over in my place if you want. Yeah, that’d be good, you can wait for Dr. Bernard. Or whatever.”

  “Don’t yo
u want somebody here with Mrs. Simonova?”

  “What for?” said Lily. “She’s not going anywhere,” she added. “Wait at my place. I made coffee.”

  “I should move my car first. It’s in the driveway. I don’t want to get towed,” I said. We were both lying now.

  “That’s a really good idea.” She kissed my cheek. “You do think it’s OK to leave Marianna for a little while?”

  “Will anybody come in?”

  “Nobody else has her keys,” said Lily. “I told you. I’ll call you when I hear back from Dr. Bernard, Artie, and I can always get Lionel to call her. Lucille Bernard was his protégée, he told me once. I’ll do that. I’ll ask him. They worked together. He was her teacher.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ll call you, Artie, and you have my cell. It’s the same number, you know that, right?”

  “Lily, listen to me, you didn’t do anything wrong, OK?”

  “Sure, Artie. Right.”

  She went to the TV set, picked up a remote, and pressed a button. A woman appeared on the screen. It was Marianna Simonova.

  “Lily.”

  “Just watch.”

  “Hello, Lily darling, this is what you want? You are certain you want this old woman she sings for you?” Simonova paused, smiling and smiling, then she spoke again, her blue eyes shining, as she spoke into the camera.

  Her face was alive, her voice clear. She wore a red sweater; gold silk scarf wrapped around her head. “I sing for you old folk song from my country,” she said, and raised her hand. She was holding a wine glass. I couldn’t see if the finger was intact. “When I shall be gone, my darling, you toss away stupid video, yes? So nobody see how bad I am singing.” She reached down, picked up a guitar. “OK, I sing famous song everybody know, so if you want you can also sing,” she said, as if there were an audience.

  She sang “Moscow Nights.” She sang it simply, no melodrama, just a voice that was surprisingly young and clear, singing the familiar song about the river and the silver moon and the dawn and Moscow evenings. Behind me I could hear Lily humming along very softly.

  Watching Marianna Simonova so alive on the dusty screen, I could understand why Lily had been seduced. Simonova finished the song. Lily picked up the remote and froze the picture. Simonova remained on the screen.

  Hands in her lap now, back straight, staring at the woman on the TV, Lily sat so still she made me think of a little girl waiting for her punishment. “I killed her,” she said again.

  CHAPTER 9

  Well, I’m off,” said Celestina Hutchison as she emerged from her apartment. She was wrapped in a mink coat. In one gloved hand was a leash, a black Lab at the end of it. “You all been visiting with Miss Marianna?”

  We had just left Simonova’s apartment when Mrs. Hutchison appeared, popping out of her apartment like a jack-in-the-box, as if she had heard us. Lily stroked the dog’s nose. Then she introduced me.

  “How do you do,” Mrs. Hutchison said. “And this is Ed, Ed for Edward ‘Duke’ Ellington, you know.” She tugged at the Lab on the leash. “Lionel’s idea. Ed’s name. I don’t care for jazz music. I must go now; my sister is expecting me. She always so looks forward to a little visit with Ed.” She said, turning to lock her door. “I always have to lock up when Lionel is home alone.

  “Lily, dear, you know how he just wanders about, going out on the terrace or up on that damn roof for a smoke. It’s fine for him, but what about me? What am I to do if he drops dead from smoking? What if he just falls down dead from being out in the cold? Such selfishness.”

  Moving toward the elevator, with Lily and me in tow, this tiny woman—she wasn’t five feet tall—was an imperious figure. She pressed the button, holding her dog tight on its leash.

  “Are you just visiting?” she said to me.

  “Yes.”

  “I believe I saw you talking to Lionel earlier, you were on Marianna’s terrace. Isn’t that right? You had something to say to each other?”

  “Lily asked me to fix a leak in Mrs. Simonova’s apartment.”

  “It takes some gall the way that woman gets other folk to do her chores. I think she believes she’s some kind of aristocrat and we were all put upon this Earth to serve her,” said Mrs. Hutchison. “I guess I should ask how she is feeling, her being so sick, or so she claims,” she added. “Damn elevator appears to be stuck on the third floor. You’d think those people could just walk instead of holding the elevator so long.”

  “Why don’t you sit down,” said Lily indicating a chair near the elevator. “I’ll hold Ed while you rest.”

  “Thank you, dear girl.” She gave Ed’s leash to Lily, then snapped open her black leather purse and pulled out a little bottle of hand lotion, removed her gloves, and began to rub it into her hands.

  “Jergens lotion,” said Mrs. Hutchison. “I have always favored it over the more expensive brands, like all performers back when Walter Winchell’s radio show was sponsored by Jergens, and his sign-off line was ‘With Lotions of Love.’ I enjoyed that: lotions of love, and I always did relish the cherry-almondy scent. Lotions of love,” she said again. “Nothing like it for dry skin, I have even made Lionel use it in the winter. Would you like some, Lily dear?”

  The elevator arrived, finally. In it was the doorman I’d seen when I first arrived at the building. He wore a North Face jacket and a fancy peaked cap with gold braid on it. His name tag read Diaz.

  “How very nice,” said Mrs. Hutchison. “We have an elevator man at long last.”

  Ignoring the sarcasm, Diaz held out a stack of mail to her.

  “Oh, dear, Lily, take the mail for me, won’t you please?” Mrs. Hutchison took the dog’s leash and stepped into the elevator.

  Before he pressed the button to shut the door, Diaz looked at me and said, “That Caddy, that belong to you, man?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “You blocking the front drive, man, you wanna move it?”

  “Soon as I can.”

  “How about now?” said Diaz as the door slid shut.

  “Poor Celestina,” Lily said, after the elevator had gone. “All she wants is to sell her ‘damn apartment,’ as she calls it, and go somewhere warm. She’s always in that ratty old mink.”

  “Why doesn’t she?”

  “Lionel won’t move.” Lily held out the stack of letters she had taken from Diaz. “Artie, I have to go get my purse. Can you put these under the Hutchisons’ door, the one next to Marianna’s?”

  “You know everybody around here.”

  “They’re old. I listen.”

  “Mrs. Hutchison didn’t like Simonova. What was that about?”

  “She hated Marianna. She decided Lionel was having an affair with her, if you can imagine.”

  “Was he?”

  “What do you think?” she said, and I took the mail from Lily, who went into her own apartment and shut the door.

  Before I put the mail under the Hutchisons’ door, I glanced through it. Habit.

  There were what looked like Christmas cards. A few bills. A letter from a real estate agency in Florida.

  The last envelope was addressed to Dr. L. R. N. Hutchison. Idly at first, I looked at the return address. Then I opened it, carefully as I could. Inside was a letter indicating that Hutchison was a founding member of an organization promoting assisted suicide, along with a flyer announcing a new edition of a book called Final Exit.

  From somewhere a radiator clanged.

  From one of the apartments—I couldn’t tell which—the radio blared out an all-news station.

  A toilet flushed.

  Somewhere else, Ella Fitzgerald sang “Give It Back to Indians.” The words ran in my head on a loop after that—“Broadway’s turning into Coney / Champagne Charlie’s drinking gin”—and I couldn’t make it stop.

  From Lily’s place I could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner.

  Behind the door of apartment 14C, a dead woman, Marianna Simonova, lay on the sofa in a freezing room.
r />   As I got into the elevator, I looked at my watch. It was ten a.m. I’d been in the building, what was it, three hours? Four?

  I felt enclosed, almost suffocated: the building, its faded grandeur, the leaking rooms and cracked plaster, the dead Russian, the Hutchisons who would never leave. Who else lived in this fortress on Sugar Hill where gargoyles guarded the door? There were signs somebody was fixing the place up, all the notices on the front door, the paint and ladders. The wallpaper on the fourteenth floor was new. And there was Lily’s behavior, febrile, scared, moody. Her claim she had killed Simonova. Had killed her friend.

  There was a small window at the end of the hallway, and when I looked out, I saw the city was socked in now by snow, ice, and fog. Sleet battered the window. People in the street below were like smudges on a Japanese print.

  “You thinking of moving that car or something?” said Diaz the doorman, confronting me in the lobby.

  “Sure,” I said. I could see the guy was looking to assert his authority, and I wasn’t giving him any. Still, I didn’t show him my badge. I didn’t want him thinking I was here on a case, so I kept my temper. “You want to tell me where’s a good place to park?”

  “Yeah, OK, I can show you,” he said. Spotting somebody at the front door, he adjusted his fancy cap and rushed to let the man in.

  Black cashmere overcoat, handmade shoes, yellow scarf, the man stopped to talk to Diaz, who practically saluted. I waited.

  It was Saturday morning and the Armstrong lobby was busy with people, some collecting packages from a long table near the mailbox, others lugging suitcases out of the elevator as they headed off for the weekend, or tried to. The airports were shutting down fast that day, I figured. Maybe trains, too. The city would be cut off.

  A group of elderly people, two in wheelchairs, one leaning on a walker, had gathered near the fireplace; they chatted and laughed. A woman cajoled two little boys, twins, it looked like, burdened by violin cases. Saturday morning. Music lessons. The majority of people I saw that morning, though, were old. The lobby was their village green.