Blood Count

by Reggie Nadelson

  “But she knew,” he said. “Simonova knew it was her boy?”

  “She knew almost as soon as she moved into the building years ago. And she watched. She had the photographs. She decided to make herself into a good mother, she decided to see what Carver needed and give it to him.”

  “You think she moved into the Armstrong by chance?”

  “I can’t prove it. I guess only Lionel suspected, but she moved in, same building, same floor. You have to think she knew. Anyway, she makes friends in the building, she hears what’s going on with fixing the place up, she gets to know Carver and his part in it. He’s her son.”

  “So she kept it to herself for years.”

  “I think, and I’m guessing, in her own cracked way she wanted to get it right, do something for him, make up for abandoning him, the way she saw it.”

  “She got to know everyone here?” said Virgil. “She knew it all.”

  “Yes, she makes herself the center of the action for the old folk in the building. Then she gives to Obama. Carver’s a big supporter. That really gives her clout. She raises money, she holds debate-night parties, she goes to Obama headquarters when she can and makes phone calls. They’re impressed. Here’s this strange white Russian woman, and she’s doing everything for their guy.”

  Virgil looked at the door suddenly.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “Not yet. I’m not finished. I think Lionel might have mentioned to Simonova that he was concerned about Amahl Washington’s death. If she had been involved, that would give her another motive to get rid of Lionel.”

  “You’re saying she had a part in that?” Virgil looked at me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did Lionel know about her and Lennox?”

  “He was sharp. It’s possible.”

  “When?”

  “A week ago, two, I’m not sure.”

  “So she decided to get rid of Lionel? Isn’t it hard to buy cyanide?”

  I showed him the transcript I had just found; it was from CNN, a report by Sanjay Gupta, the network doc, on a cyanide case, a Maryland teenager who spiked his friend’s drink with poison and killed him.

  “Listen to this,” I said, and read some of it out. “OK, so, Gupta says, ‘It’s remarkably easy to purchase cyanide online…We had some of our producers do it themselves…You can actually have it sent to your home.’ There’s more on how you can get it in pesticides, metal strippers, you can get it at hardware stores, things like that.”

  “Jesus, Artie,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah, she was reading up. I found a receipt for pesticides from a hardware store midtown. What did she need it for? She got Lionel Hutchison to prescribe extra pills for her, she put cyanide in the capsules and gave him the bottle back. That way she could be sure it would work. That day, the next day. There were five pills.”

  “Like Russian roulette?”

  “You got it.”

  “But why? I mean, unless she was crazy, why do this?”

  “For Carver Lennox. Her son.”

  “I’m still not sure I get it completely. Lay it out for me.”

  “She knew he wanted to take over the building. She knew he wanted those big apartments. And she would make it happen for him. Washington, Lionel Hutchison.”

  “Did she know she was dying when she fixed his pills?”

  “It didn’t matter to her. Either way, Lennox would get hold of the apartments. She knew Celestina had a soft spot for him; Carver would get her place, and he’d find a way to get Amahl Washington’s.”

  “It still doesn’t add up,” said Virgil. “What about the guy who killed Carver? And how come she left everything to Marie Louise Semake?”

  “I checked. She arranged it only two days before she died. On Wednesday. There was a tape with a phone call between her and Carver, telling him she had some wonderful news for him, a kind of Christmas gift.”

  “Go on.”

  “She told him she was his mother, she told him she had fixed for him to get Amahl Washington’s apartment. She didn’t say it outright, but he could have figured it out, he wasn’t dumb. It’s all on one of her phone tapes. He must have been horrified. He didn’t want it. He told her he didn’t want it.”

  “Do you think she mentioned that she had planned Lionel’s death?”

  “No. Carver would have stopped it.”

  “Why didn’t he tell somebody about Washington?” Virgil asked.

  “Maybe he intended to. But clearly, after her talk with Carver, she felt he had betrayed her, he rejected her gift, he rejected her, she made a new will. To spite him. And everyone else. And it was too late to change her plans; she had already put Lionel’s death in place.”

  “She arranged for Carver’s murder, too?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Before she died. She didn’t know she was going to die when she did, but either way, Carver’s death was in the works.”

  “The creep? Ivan?”

  “Those tapes of her phone call, I found, I’m betting I’ll find a call to Ivan. She had been a true believer, but when the Soviet system collapsed, she did favors for anyone she could—FSB, Russian mob, who the hell knows. Ivan was part of some two-bit mob who used the Commie Manifesto for tats, for a slogan.”

  “Ironic?”

  “Who knows,” I said, “but it was Ivan who beat me up. He killed the dog because it was barking too loud, maybe for fun, too, his kind of fun, and he killed Carver. All it took was a phone call from Simonova. Ivan owed her.”

  I told Virgil I was sure that during the previous six or seven months, as Simonova’s health got worse, Carver Lennox had become her obsession. She was determined to be a good mother. She intended to leave him something. She knew about his ambition for the building.

  For her son, she would make a little empire and leave it to him. Ironic, maybe, for an old Communist, she wrote in her diary. But he was her son. For him she would become a capitalist, for him, anything.

  She had outlined her ambitions on paper, certain nobody would see her journals, not for a while. She knew she was dying. She had time, though. She would destroy everything first.

  “Was she crazy, or just evil?” said Virgil.

  “Is there a difference?”

  Virgil went to the other side of the room to take a call, and when he came back, he said, “We really need to go. This is a damn crime scene,” he added. “We’ve been doing a lot of breaking and entering, you and me. No warrant.”

  “You go. I’ll go soon,” I said. “Just go.”

  “Lily’s not at home, by the way.”

  “I know that.”

  “Is she OK? Where is she?”

  “She’s with Tolya Sverdloff.”

  “Your pal.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t think you take it seriously, Lily and me,” said Virgil. “Just so you know, Artie, I’m dead serious about her, I really am.”

  “You still want to fight a duel with me or something over her?”

  “I’m not joking, since you ask. I’m going to win. I’m not letting go easy.”

  “How serious?”

  “That’s up to Lily.”

  “Demasiado.”

  The oxygen machine was in the middle of the apartment where Virgil had left it. It was a huge thing, all the dials and tubes. I stared at it. I remembered something Diaz had told me. Of Amahl Washington, he had said, “too much” in Spanish. What was the word? He had said you could die from too much oxygen. Demasaido. Too much.

  Had somebody turned up Simonova’s oxygen? Had she suffered a seizure? Did Hutchison find her like that and position, pose her so she looked at peace? My heart was jumping; cold sweat ran down my neck.

  When I looked closely at the tank, I saw I was right. The dial was turned up to the highest setting. Somebody had turned it up high, and it had killed her, oxygen had flooded Simonova’s brain, and poisoned her.

  I took a picture of the machine with my phone. I scrambled now to
read as much as I could. More paper. More journals.

  Digging into the box Lily had given me, I finally found another audio tape. I put it on. Sat and listened. Lily’s voice first: “This is for a book about Marianna Simonova.” There followed an interview.

  It was as if Simonova was daring Lily, speaking in Russian, then in English. Enough of this recording was in English that I knew Lily had understood it; for the rest, she had been waiting for somebody to translate the Russian. Waiting for me.

  Was it Lily who had urged Lionel Hutchison to sign the death certificate? To get the case closed as fast as possible? I wasn’t sure.

  But Lily had been frantic when I first got here, to the building. She had called me to come. She had been beside herself, crying, scared, shaking. My fault, Artie, she had said. My fault.

  I listened some more and realized Lily had put this tape in the box for me. She wanted me to hear, to know.

  For a long time, most of a year, she had listened to Simonova’s stories, had admired her, flattered her. Lily listened. Simonova began to trust her. She told her more and more, about her time in the KGB, how she had been sent to seduce young men, the epic adventures. Who could say if it was true?

  Then, about a week before Simonova died, the tone of Lily’s questions began to change. It was on this tape. I heard it.

  Simonova expressed great trust in Lily. She said they were comrades and she could tell her anything. Maybe it was why she had written the last-minute letter leaving her apartment to Lily.

  The last few days of Simonova’s life, she had begun bragging to Lily about loyalty, about the work she did, the way she was still in the service of her country, how the new Russians, oligarchs, officials, agents, needed her. And paid her well. The tape ended abruptly. I turned it over.

  I pressed play again.

  “Even now I am old, I give help to Russian government,” Simonova said. “Last summer, they call and say, Marianna Simonova, we need you; we are concerned about this man who lives in New York City who is called Anatoly Sverdloff.”

  “How did you help?” a voice said. It was Lily. Even through the plastic box, I could hear Lily strain for calm, could feel how it had taken every ounce of self-possession for her to remain attentive. “How did you help?” she said again.

  Simonova laughed triumphantly. “They congratulate me for my idea. I help them locate daughter of Anatoly Sverdloff. I say to them always best way to deal with father is through child. The name of girl is Valentina.”

  “When did you help them find Sverdloff’s daughter?”

  “Late in last spring,” Simonova said.

  It had been late last spring when Valentina Sverdloff was murdered.

  So I knew.

  Lily had wanted me to hear it. She had given me the box with the tapes. I knew now why Lily had wanted me to help her instead of Virgil. I knew why the oxygen had been turned too high. Simonova didn’t die because Lily forgot her medications, or because Lionel Hutchison tried to keep her from suffering. She had died from too much oxygen, that and her need to boast of her triumphs. She bragged to Lily. It had been Simonova’s big mistake.

  I turned the dial on the oxygen down to a normal setting. I wiped it off. I pushed it in the closet.

  In the kitchen I found a metal garbage can and a big black plastic bag. I took them out onto the terrace. I stuffed in everything—tapes, notes, the address book—everything with Lily’s name or references to her. I put in the old cassette player, the answering machine.

  I turned my back to the wind as best I could, lit a match and set fire to the leftovers of Simonova’s life, and waited while it burned, praying nobody would notice. When the paper had turned to ash, the plastic melted, I took the whole mess, put it in the black bag and went back into the apartment.

  I put on my jacket. I picked up the black bag. When I left the apartment, I took it all with me, all of it.

  But noise came from the hall. The kind of uninhibited noise cops make. I went back outside. I climbed over the wall to the Hutchisons’ terrace and then to Carver’s. I waited. Somebody had decided to look around. If Simonova had poisoned Lionel Hutchison, that alone gave them plenty of reason. I looked into the hallway. The cops must have been inside Simonova’s place.

  I knew I had to get away. They’d smell the stink of ash. I had to find Lily. I called Tolya.

  “She’s not here,” he said.

  I ran into her apartment, managed to avoid anyone seeing me.

  She was gone. Her clothes were gone, her computer, everything.

  CHAPTER 58

  I went home. I parked my car, saw Mike waving at me through the coffee shop window, saw him beckon to me, but I ignored him, and went upstairs. I was beat. Anxious as hell about Lily, and dead tired.

  “Hello, Artie.” She was sitting at the kitchen counter. “I borrowed your keys from Mike. I hope that was OK.” Lily looked at me.

  “Yes.”

  “I had to get out of that building for a while. I couldn’t just stay with Tolya.” She paused. “That’s not true,” she said. “I wanted to be here.”

  “I’m glad you came.” I sat across from her.

  “My own apartment is still sublet,” she said.

  “Stay here.” I said. “Lily?”

  “What?”

  “The tape you used to record Simonova, the one you put in the box of her stuff—you wanted me to find it.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t understand all the Russian, but there was plenty in English.

  “So you know what she did to Valentina?”

  “Yes.”

  “Artie, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  I cut her off. “No. There’s nothing at all. I know. Everything is fine. It’s all taken care of. It’s over.”

  “Thank you. What about the Russian? Ivan? Won’t he talk? Say he had instructions from Marianna?”

  “So what? Who will care what a pig like him says? Did you tell Virgil?”

  “Not everything,” said Lily. “He wouldn’t have understood about Valentina and Tolya. He doesn’t know that I loved Val, and you loved her, and how it is with Tolya and us.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I wanted to, God, I really did. I was going to, but then you got there, and I was so crazy, it was as if I’d fallen over into some other universe. I didn’t know if I should tell you the truth or try to mislead you, so I came up with that cockamamie story about forgetting Marianna’s meds. I was scared. I freaked out. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. Not to me. Never.”

  She reached in her bag and took out a CD. “I wanted to give you this,” she said. “Lionel gave it to me for you.”

  I opened the brown envelope addressed to me in Lionel Hutchison’s hand with his old Parker pen. In it was Anniversary, a Stan Getz album. I put it on my CD player. Then Lily and I sat on my couch and listened to “Blood Count,” Billy Strayhorn’s last song. We sat there for a long time, just listening.

  Inauguration Day,

  January 20, 2009

  That morning I ran into Sam, the doorman at the building next to mine. He was getting a cab for a woman and her kid. Then he said hi and we stopped to talk for a minute.

  “Great day,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Never thought I’d live to see this day.” Sam’s eyes welled up. “Never in my whole damn life,” he said.

  Most of the time, Sam was a quiet man. Today he wanted to talk. He was wearing an Obama button.

  “You know it’s my birthday,” said Sam, straightening his jacket. “Nice way to celebrate. I’m seventy years old today, Artie. My daughter went down to DC this morning. I said to her, ‘I want you there, I want you to see it with your own eyes and tell me.’ ” Sam paused and smiled. “Bet they don’t got anybody like Mr. Obama over in Russia.”

  “Not a chance.” I don’t know why I asked, but since he had mentioned the place where I was born, I said, “Where are you from?” I r
ealized I didn’t know. I had never asked Sam. I should have asked him.

  We stood inside the front door of the building. He told me he was from Mississippi. Bad place, he said.

  “Can I tell you something?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I was no more than six years old,” said Sam. “I went out hunting for rabbits with my grandfather—I adored him; he raised me—and I got lost in the woods.” He paused. “Lost my way, lost him. I just wandered around, and then I looked up, and he was hanging from a tree.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so we just stood there for a while until Sam said, “I have to get going. Want to be at home for the speech.”

  In spite of having voted for McCain, Mike Rizzi had made fresh apple pie that morning, and I got Sonny Lippert over to eat breakfast with me. We sat, drinking coffee, chewing the fat. It was inauguration day. He told me he had fixed it with Jimmy Wagner to lose the tape that showed my car near the van on election night. For a while, Sonny told me, there had been talk that I’d pushed the van out of place, that somehow I was involved, that I could even be had up for some kind of involuntary manslaughter. But they found the bastard who left the hand brake off, and there wasn’t much they had on me.

  Lippert had fixed it with Wagner and I was grateful. I thought about the van, and how my finding a parking space meant I had made it to the election-night party where I’d seen Lily.

  I knew Radcliff was probably still pissed off at me, thought I was trying to get Lily back. He was right. I wasn’t sure I could survive without her.

  Later that morning, when Obama was to be sworn in, I went over to Il Posto Acconto, my friend Beatrice’s place on East Second Street, to eat and watch the big TV over the bar. Lily had said she’d come by at some point, no promise when, just that she’d come for a drink. She had moved back to her own apartment, and we had spoken a few times and met for a drink once or twice. I didn’t ask about Virgil, not yet. It was none of my business. Yet.

  Bea, the best Italian cook in town, is a glamorous Roman who can always cheer you up with her talk and her food, and she was there with Julio, her husband, who’s a dead ringer for Dizzy Gillespie. I drank one of Bea’s great Bloody Marys and watched the crowd in a frozen DC, and wished I had gone.