In the rows of pews, people, a lot of them old, including Celestina, some on their knees, worked at their beads, or stared at the priest up front, at least from what I could see. To me, it was a scene from The Godfather, except these old people were black, not Italian. So I stood in the back and waited for the service to end, and waited for Celestina Hutchison to finish praying.
Religion wasn’t something I knew much about. Didn’t care. Maybe the way I was raised. I had tried to understand once or twice. Had visited a few churches in the city.
I’d dated a girl once who made me go to a synagogue on the Lower East Side. She told me she wanted to connect with her roots. Somebody had played a guitar during the service. It made us laugh. We’d tried a few other synagogues, including one where the women sat separate from the men.
I’d been new to the city then, and it was all fine by me, the music, the holidays, the celebrating, I was OK with it. The girl, I was crazy about her; she was beautiful and funny. Once she’d said wistfully, “I like the idea of community. I like feeling Jewish. I just wish I could find a synagogue without God or pixies.” She married an Indian guy in the end.
Suddenly, as if she knew I was looking, Celestina turned, half raised herself from her seat, and stared at me. She was in a pew surrounded by other women-her sisters, friends, hard to say-all in black, half hidden by their hats. She whispered to them, and they all turned to look at me.
I started toward her, but somebody put a hand on my arm. It was Carver Lennox.
“You told her.”
“Yes,” he said. “Let her finish here, please.”
“I locked the windows, locked the doors. I tried to keep him in, I tried to keep him safe, but I had to go to my sister’s, she was not well, and poor Lionel, whatever did he do to himself, jumping like that?” said Celestina, when she reached the back of the church after the service, speaking to me in her high, small voice. “I do believe he was finished with this life, but then he must have suffered terrible guilt,” she added, adjusting her black felt hat. She handed her mink coat to Carver.
“What for?”
“For all the killing, of course,” she said. “His idea of helping people. Fifty-three years I lived with a man who was a murderer. Thank you, Carver, dear,” she said as he helped her into her coat, then took her hand in his.
“Is that what you think?” I said to her. “That he killed himself?”
“It is what I know,” she said with fury, her head snapping up so that I could see her eyes. “It served his purpose, fulfilled his belief, in a sense, it assuaged his guilt. I know for a fact he felt guilty about those poor, sick people he hurried to their deaths. Surely, for that, and to spite me,” she added. “He knew in my view that suicide is a terrible sin. What do you think, then, Detective Cohen?” She raised her eyebrows, as if actually inviting me to comment, and put her free hand on her hat.
Was this what Lionel had wanted to tell me at the party the night before? Had he planned to tell me he had helped Simonova die? Amahl Washington, too?
I started to ask Celestina where she herself had gone after the party the night before. Quickly, the women who had been sitting with her gathered. Murmuring comforting words, they surrounded her like a palace guard and forced me outside the circle.
At the back of the group of women was Lucille Bernard. She wore a belted black coat with a fur collar, high-heeled boots, and a small hat with a little brim.
She saw me and gestured for me to meet her out on the steps of the church. In the bright, hard light I saw she had circles so deep under her eyes they looked as if they had been engraved into her skin.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Dr. Hutchison was important to you.”
“Yes, he was, and I feel I should have been more tolerant,” said Bernard. “I didn’t see enough of him because I didn’t want to argue with him, and now he’s gone.”
“How did you find out?”
“Carver called me and asked me to meet him so we could tell Celestina together,” she said.
“You’re close to her?”
“I knew her through Lionel, of course. She’s a very old woman now; I’ll do what I can for her.” There wasn’t much warmth in her voice.
“You don’t like her?”
“What does it matter?”
“I’m interested.”
“Is it, detective, that you’re interested in us like some kind of sociological study? Is that what you’re saying? You have a soft spot for black folk? You like our music or something?”
“Lionel Hutchison is dead. I found him. This is a case I’m working.”
“You think this is a case?”
“It is now. The police are involved. There’s an autopsy going on. At first when I saw him, I thought he just fell over, but the ME doesn’t think so.”
“You mean, fell over suddenly, like Marianna Simonova, for instance?”
“For instance.”
“He wasn’t sick,” Bernard said.
“He seemed pretty vital to me. Unless he was sick and didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Sick and thinking of indulging in suicide? He would not have jumped. He would have used an easier way. We argued about it. I felt he’d used his skills as a doctor to kill people.” She took a deep breath. “I guess we’re both aware that this makes three people who have died at that damn building recently.”
“Yes. You knew them all?”
“You think I was involved? Do you want to question me? Is that why you’re here?”
“Only for what you can tell me about the two who were your patients-Marianna Simonova, and Amahl Washington,” I said quickly. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Let me see,” she said, adding that on Sundays, the ladies often had breakfast together after mass, usually at somebody’s apartment. Today they would go to Celestina’s sister’s, it would do Celestina good to eat, give her strength to prepare. She would have to identify the body.
“There are plenty of others who can do that.”
“Celestina will want to do it. If necessary, I’ll go with her,” Bernard said.
At the edge of the sidewalk was a girl, maybe fifteen, sixteen, and she was high on some shit. Singing to herself, she was dancing around a fire hydrant, stepping down to the gutter, back up on the sidewalk, pulling up her shirt-a dirty yellow T-shirt with silver glitter on it-pulling it back, playing with her hair, giggling, jiggling, calling out curses. Her hair was dirty, her eyes vacant, and over and over, she did her little dance, prancing out into the street as cars passed by, propositioning the drivers.
From the church steps, the women stared at her, and at least one made to go over, to help her, another pulled a sweater out of her bag and tried to put it over the girl, but she just jerked away, taunting the women, and continuing her dance.
The sun was bright but cold. I saw Alvin, the young officer, head for the girl. I told him to back off and stick around with the ladies. I told him to keep with Mrs. Hutchison when she went to breakfast and then to the morgue, to act polite, as if the department had assigned him to drive the woman officially. He nodded, and up close I saw he was just a kid, maybe twenty-two, glasses, short hair, skinny.
“Wait for me here,” said Bernard, sounding imperious but weary. She walked down the street a few yards, returned with Carver Lennox by her side.
“Carver will go with the ladies. He can go with Celestina to the morgue. That way you and I can talk,” she said to me.
“Just so long as Celestina isn’t bothered anymore, I’ll be happy to help out,” said Lennox. “She’s very agitated, not being home for Lionel, being at the Christmas party and then at her sister’s all night.” Then, quickly, offhand, as if it were a matter of course, he gave me an accounting of Celestina’s time over the past twelve hours, even before I asked for it.
I leaned close to Lennox and said, softly, because I wanted to see his reaction before he heard it from anyone else, “I think Dr. Hutchison was pushed.”
He was
silent.
“Pushed from behind, maybe from the roof, or hit first, so by the time he was pushed he was either dead, in which case he wouldn’t bleed, far as I know. Isn’t that right?” I said to Bernard.
“Most likely.”
“Or had a heart attack from the trauma when he hit the ice. Or maybe not. Maybe he lay there on the ground dying slowly.”
Lennox looked at me. “My God,” he said. “What should I do?”
I told him to take care of Mrs. Hutchison, just keep her calm, and I’d get back to him.
He lowered his voice, and there was fear on his face. “You believe whoever killed Lionel, if somebody did, had a hand in Simonova’s death, don’t you? Isn’t that right?” said Lennox, and without waiting for an answer, followed the women to breakfast.
While I waited for Lucille Bernard, I called Jimmy Wagner. Told him even though it was Sunday, I needed access to a safe-deposit box at a bank on 125th Street.
I’d found a charge for a safe-deposit box on Simonova’s bank statement earlier, and I had the address of the bank. If there was a box, maybe there was a will.
Wagner told me he’d do what he could, sounding harried. “Just find me somebody I can nail for this one,” he said. “This was an old guy, pillar of the community, Christmas is coming, it’s the best building in the neighborhood. Just get me something.”
I told him about possible prints on the Armstrong roof. I asked him to let me know what the ME came up with, if there was anything unusual in Hutchison’s system when they cut him open.
“That woman that died in the building, the one I only heard about this morning, you think we should check on that, get the ME to look at her, do a tox screen?”
“It’s too late.”
CHAPTER 39
L ionel was murdered,” said Lucille Bernard.
“How do you know?”
“I can read you, detective. It’s what you think. And whatever else you may be, you’re not stupid.”
“What do you think?” I held the door of my car open and she slid in to the front seat. I got in, too, and closed the door.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s cold out there.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve been thinking about Lionel. He was a tough old bird, and he was strong. I would have known if he was sick.”
“How?”
“He would have come to me. We disagreed, but he knew I could keep any secret. He taught me well.”
“Right.”
“Whatever his beliefs, this was a man who loved life,” Bernard said. “He held on to his misconceived ideas, such as they were, because he felt they enhanced life; the avoidance of pain, the avoidance of suffering at the end, was worth it.” Her voice wavered. “He so enjoyed himself. When he was younger, my God, I remember when I was in med school, and I saw him much more often, he would invite students over, and I don’t think we’d ever met anybody who was more involved in his subject, but who also experienced so much joy in life.” She took a deep breath. “Once in a while, even these last few years, he would call me, and we would go out and eat and talk until all hours, about music and medicine and Yeats-he loved poetry. He loved Langston Hughes, and Yeats, and Whitman. He would always gossip about the building-he adored that bloody place-and now somebody has killed him in it.”
“Can you ride with me, I have to pick something up at the Armstrong.”
“Yes. That would be better,” she said. “I don’t want the ladies from the church telling Celestina I’m talking to you, and I was thinking it might be useful for me to look at Lionel’s apartment, see if there’s anything that helps me understand this.”
“The apartment is sealed,” I said.
“I’m sure you can manage something,” said Bernard. “I got so damn fed up with that building when I lived there.” She took off her hat and arranged her hair.
I asked why, as I started the car, heading north to the Armstrong.
“When I lived there with Carver, everybody wanted help. I didn’t mind. I’m a doctor. But for every scratch, every sore throat, I was on call. They considered me not just their in-house doctor but their shrink. They’d come around, tell me their problems. I felt like telling them to watch Oprah instead. Or that Dr. Oz.”
I drove carefully. The streets were slick with ice. Harlem was quiet that Sunday morning. I still hadn’t heard from Lily. I was jittery as hell. Tell me some more, I thought, glancing sideways at Lucille Bernard.
“You ever run into a woman named Marie Louise? She cleaned for the Russian, Mrs. Simonova,” I said, not quite sure why I was asking. The idea just floated into my head.
“How come you’re asking?” said Bernard. “Sure, I know her. “African girl, French accent, right? She cleans several apartments at the Armstrong. Works for Carver some of the time. I think she used to bring Simonova for appointments before Lily Hanes took over.”
“What do you think of her?”
She shrugged. “I don’t get her. I’m sure she has a hard time in America, but she has these strange ideas about Western medicine. She said she had been a doctor back in wherever-Senegal?”
“Mali.”
“Yes, Mali. She’s an MD, but she often gave Mrs. Simonova crazy potions, stuff she bought down on 116th Street. She told me about them. I said they wouldn’t help, so she just clammed up. She was scared of me. I guess she’s illegal.”
“Anything else?”
“Why?”
“I’m asking you.”
“You can’t believe she killed Marianna, and then Lionel? Why would she?”
“I didn’t know you thought anybody killed Marianna Simonova.”
“But it’s what you’re after, isn’t it? I mean, if you were sure she died from the emphysema, you wouldn’t have been all over this even before Lionel died, you and that Virgil Radcliff.”
“You don’t like Virgil?” I pulled up in front of the Armstrong.
“I don’t know him,” said Lucille. “I’ve met him a few times at fund-raisers. I don’t understand why he’s a cop.”
“You mean he’s too smart?”
“I apologize for that, but yes. I do.”
“Or because he’s dating Lily?”
“That, too, if you want to know. I suppose there aren’t enough nice black women for him,” she said sarcastically. “Look, just forget the sociology. I want to see Lionel’s apartment.”
Lucille Bernard began, very softly, to weep, as we got to the Hutchison apartment.
A cop in uniform was on his hands and knees, looking at the carpet, peering at fiber. When he got up, I asked him to leave Lucille Bernard and me alone in the living room.
Sitting on the edge of a chair, she said, “I loved Lionel. He was good to me, he was a mentor when I was very young. He got me into the City College program. He helped me. God, I spent so much time in this apartment when we lived here.”
“When you were married to Lennox?”
“We’re not divorced. I think you knew that,” she said.
“You don’t believe in divorce.”
“That’s right. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
Lucille Bernard sat up. Her eyes wet, she looked like a very young woman, young, vulnerable, and very pretty. She was tough and I liked her. I called her Dr. Bernard, though. She had never asked me to use her first name.
From her purse she took a handkerchief and wiped her face. “I think Carver’s in big trouble,” she said.
“It matters to you.” I called her Dr. Bernard. She had never asked to use her first name.
“He’s the father of my kids.”
“What kind of trouble would it be?”
“Money.”
She told me that she and Carver had split up because of his business. It consumed him, she said. There was no room for anything else. He was generous, though, she added. Paid for the kids, the teenage girl, her younger brother. He spent time with them. Had offered Lucille money to buy her house.
According to Bernard, Lennox had made a ton of dough in the years before the crash. Hedge fund, she said. Derivatives. Whatever. But lately he had been erratic, she knew he was losing money. His obsession with the Armstrong, fixing it up, selling it off, had become his only subject. The kids told her he talked about it all the time.
“So he’s in serious financial trouble, right?”
“Yes. The market tanked, and Carver got scared. He was heavily invested in this building and others-he has other property-and then the real estate market turned bad. I think somebody’s getting ready to call in his debts. I think he’s on the verge of losing his job. I saw him at the Christmas party and I saw panic in his eyes.”
“How much panic?”
“Enough,” she said. “He wanted too much. It’s not healthy.” Bernard got up. “I want to look at Mrs. Simonova’s medication.”
“I looked,” I said. I took the bottles out of my pocket, gave them to her. She slid on a pair of glasses.
“This is what you found?”
“There was other stuff in Simonova’s place, but all of it was prescribed by you. The only interesting thing was that there were the same pills in her apartment and Hutchison’s.” I held out a vial of blue capsules.
“This is only blood pressure medication,” said Bernard.
I was on the verge of asking, of saying, Can you get these pills checked? I stopped myself. Better to ask a friend, to keep any evidence until it was needed. Use it. Ignore it.
“You let me come up here because you wanted to see my reaction to being in Lionel’s apartment?” asked Lucille Bernard. “Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for being straight with me,” she said, and left the apartment.
CHAPTER 40
G loria Lopez picked up on the second ring. In the background I could hear a radio and a little kid chattering. “Hey, Artie, good to hear from you,” said Gloria, who’s been a friend since we’d met on a case out in Red Hook. She was a detective, but when she got married and had a kid, she’d gone into forensics. After she divorced her miserable husband, she and her boy went to live with her mother up in Washington Heights.
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