Blood Count ac-9

by Reggie Nadelson

  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.

  CHAPTER 54

  Lionel Hutchison died from cyanide poisoning.” I stood in Lily’s doorway.

  Lily, stared at me. “My God. Come in. Lucille is here. Take it easy when you tell her, will you? She loved Lionel.”

  I went into the apartment. Lucille Bernard got up from the kitchen counter.

  “You OK?” I said. “I’m sorry about Carver. How are your kids doing, Dr. Bernard?” This time she said she’d like it if I called her Lucille.

  “They’re with my mother. You know, I’m really sorry about Carver, too. We were once in love, and we have the children,” she said. “I came over to pick up some things they left at Carver’s place. I didn’t want them stopping by. They have their own keys, you see.” Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry. I’m just so tired.”

  “Do you want something to drink, Artie? You look cold. Lucille?”

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nbsp; I nodded and Lily poured Scotch in three glasses. Lucille pushed aside her mug of tea and took the drink.

  “How come you’re wearing that jacket?” Lily said to me.

  “He put his own jacket over Carver,” Lucille said. “I heard. Thank you. I’ll get it cleaned for you.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You were there the whole time?” Lucille asked. “With Carver?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He couldn’t speak much.”

  “You sat with him. He wasn’t alone.”

  “I was with him until they took him to the hospital.”

  “Thank you,” said Lucille.

  “Tell her, Artie.” Lily picked up her drink.

  “Tell me what?”

  “It was cyanide that killed Lionel Hutchison.”

  “My God,” Lucille said. “How do you know?”

  “This.” I gave her the ME’s notes.

  “Was it Celestina?”

  “It was Marianna Simonova,” I said. “I think she switched some of her blood pressure pills for Lionel’s. I think she opened the capsules and put them in his bottle. She could have borrowed some of his medications, they both took similar drugs.”

  “Tell me how you got the information.”

  “I took a stab. I have a friend who works for the city. She has friends at the ME’s office.”

  “My God,” Lily said. “There was something Marianna used to say. She used to say, ‘In old days, hero is never taken alive.’ In the old days, according to Marianna, soldiers and spies carried cyanide pills. If they were captured, they could bite on the tablet. It would kill them fast. ‘Hero is never taken alive.’ God, she loved saying that. I should have thought of it. But how do you get the stuff?”

  “It’s easy,” said Lucille. “Do you remember the Tylenol scare? I think it was in 1982.”

  “Yes,” Lily said.

  “I was in high school. I remember,” Lucille said. “Some nut put cyanide in Tylenol. People died. We had Tylenol at home, and my mother went bananas. She never used it again. It would be so damn easy. And Lionel was obsessive about his medication. He always always took it.”

  “Help me understand,” Lily said.

  “Let’s say Simonova told Lionel she needed some extra pills, and she borrowed his bottle,” Lucille said. “Or she switched the vials. Or she got the drugstore to deliver both their prescriptions to her. What difference would it make? Either way, she could get her hands on some of his pills, open the capsules, replace some of the medication with cyanide. Sooner or later, he’d take one with the poison. They borrowed from each other all the time, Lionel told me that once.”

  “Someone checked the prints on the bottle with the poisoned capsules,” I said. “It had Lionel’s name on the prescription and his prints, but also Simonova’s. I took a glass from her apartment earlier. They made a match. But it had Lionel’s prints as well as hers.”

  “It’s cold in here,” said Lily. “How would Marianna get the cyanide?”

  “You can buy it online,” said Lucille.

  “But Lionel fell,” Lily said.

  “What are the effects of cyanide?” I asked Lucille. “Not counting death.”

  “The effects are similar to suffocation. Cyanide stops the body’s cells from being able to use oxygen.” She looked up. “It can produce dizziness, seizure. Acute ingestion has a very fast onset. The heart can collapse.”

  “He told me he sometimes took his meds along with his coffee and went outside really early, on the terrace or the roof, so he could smoke. What if he took the capsule with the cyanide early yesterday morning, when Celestina was still at her sister’s. What if he got dizzy or had a seizure and fell?” I looked at Lucille.

  “In that case, he wasn’t pushed,” she said.

  “Cyanide works fast?”

  “If you use the right dose.”

  “Marianna killed him,” said Lily. “She did it in a way so nobody would ever know.” She smashed her fist on the counter. “She killed him even after she was dead. Artie?”

  “What?”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Lily. “How come the medical examiner didn’t spot it in Lionel right away?”

  “They wouldn’t look for it unless they knew what to look for,” I said. “It’s not part of the usual tox screen.”

  “And there’s no other symptoms you can see?” Lily said, sounding desperate. She didn’t want to believe what Marianna Simonova had done.

  “Only one,” Lucille said. “It can discolor the skin. Sometimes it makes it redden. It’s one of the symptoms that makes you look for cyanide in an autopsy. But only in some people.”

  “Some?” I said.

  “If you’re black, chances are nobody will notice.”

  CHAPTER 55

  There were red and green cupcakes on Lily’s kitchen counter. I ate one.

  “Amelie Smith brought those,” said Lily. “They were taking them to a school fair with their kids. Everybody’s out,” she added. “The floor feels empty.”

  I told Lily about Ivan.

  “Marianna knew a lot of people.”

  “Did you meet them? Russians?”

  “Some. Some just in passing. A few when I took her to Washington Heights shopping. A few once I went with her to Brighton Beach. She had an address book where she wrote everything. She always took it with her, in a big, old-fashioned leather purse,” Lily said, pouring more Scotch. “Take off that jacket, Artie, it makes you look like a cop.”

  I took it off. From my jeans I got Simonova’s address book and put it on the counter.

  “I took it from her apartment earlier,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Habit.”

  “Is this Ivan in it?”

  “Yes.” I opened the book. I showed her. Lily examined the names.

  “I remember once Marianna wanted to call the grocery store, and I picked up that address book, and she got furious when I touched it. Artie, you want to lie down? You look terrible.”

  “I’m OK. But is there anything else I should know?” I held up the address book. “What about all these marks and stars and stuff beside the names? Was it some kind of code?”

  “I guess she had some kind of system. Can you read it?”

  I flipped through the pages. Some of the names had New York numbers and addresses. Some were in Moscow. Some both. Some had moved from Moscow to New York, the Moscow numbers crossed out. A few were in Florida and Los Angeles.

  “Anything?” said Lily.

  “Tell me what else you know about her.”

  “Artie?”

  “What’s that, honey?”

  “Do you believe Marianna killed Lionel?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lily got up and went into the other room. She came back with a cardboard box.

  “What is it?”

  “Some of the notes I made about Marianna. Some of the journals she gave me. There are a couple of video tapes. She didn’t have a DVD player. I only looked at some of it. A lot’s in Russian. I don’t know, maybe I was trying to protect her, or let her keep her privacy or some fucking thing. Maybe I should have given this to you earlier, Artie.”

  “There wasn’t time,” I said. “Everything has happened so fast the past couple days.”

  “There’s more in her apartment,” Lily said. “In the study.”

  “I have to go back.”

  “I can’t go in there.”

  “That’s fine.” I didn’t want her with me. What I was going to do wasn’t legal. I had to work fast. Lucille knew about the cyanide. I was gambling she figured I’d report it. I couldn’t be sure. She might call Jimmy Wagner herself. As soon as it was out, there’d be cops crawling all over Simonova’s apartment.

  Lily gave me the keys. I put my arms around her. She didn’t push me away.

  It was so quiet in the building, I felt we were alone.

  “Will you be OK?”


  “Yes.”

  “Wait for me here.”

  “Hurry, Artie. Please. I just want all of this to end.” Lily kissed me. “Just hurry.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  CHAPTER 56

  My name is Marianna Simonova, I am born in USSR, and now I live here at Armstrong Building, Harlem, New York. Is that good, Lily, darling, is this where you want I start?”

  Lily had shown me a tape of Simonova singing when I first got to the building on Friday. There had been another tape on top of the video player. I’d put it in and now the Russian stared at me out of the TV again, as she had that first morning.

  I figured that Lily had shot it. Again I saw the jaunty Russian, her face made up, the eyes glittering. Only now I knew she was a killer. I knew she had killed Lionel Hutchison, but why? What was her motive? They had been friends.

  The whole apartment was filled with the woman’s books, letters, tapes, photographs. I was working against time. Virgil had called to say the ME had confirmed there was cyanide in Lionel Hutchison, enough to kill him. The fact that Lucille had produced bottles with Hutchison’s name on one and Simonova’s on another meant somebody was going to ask questions about the dead woman. And soon.

  “How much time do I have?” I’d asked Virgil.

  “It’s the end of the day,” he said. “There’s plenty going on, everybody is busy as hell right now. I figure you’ve got a little window, Artie, but not a lot. You have to get out of there before morning, you hear me? I know Wagner is going to want me on this, and Dawes is asking questions. I think you should hurry up. I think you should get out of Simonova’s apartment as fast as you can, and for God’s sake, try not to leave anything. You don’t want people to know you were looking around. I have to go.” He hung up in a hurry, as if somebody had entered a room, heard him talking to me, and told him to kill the call.

  The place and everything in it now belonged to Marie Louise. I had no business in here. Even by midnight, I still had work to do. Hurry, I thought.