“Will Carver help with that, too?”
“Carver will do what I ask,” she said. “With him, I don’t have to pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“All of it. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re white.”
“I see.”
“You don’t see, detective, you can’t see. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t kill Lionel, I don’t believe in killing, and if you need to check, you’ll find I was at my sister’s house all night after I left the party, I can give you the receipt from the taxicab I took from the club to my sister’s, if you like, and not only was she there but so were several of her friends. I shared the guest room with one of them. You can call her. Her name is Miss Sophia Roberts.”
“I believe you.”
“Do you? You seem mighty suspicious, especially about Carver.” She put a yellow silk scarf around her neck. “He helped me out, as I said. I wanted to leave this place a long time ago. I wanted to leave this city. I wanted to live somewhere warm. I thought about Hawaii. Or a lovely condo in Sarasota, Florida, quite a few wealthy African American executives have retired down there, Carver tells me. Or perhaps I’ll go to Trinidad. Every year, Carver has always purchased two tickets for me for one of the islands, though Lionel only ever accompanied me quite grudgingly. Said he didn’t like the heat. One year I just went with my sister. I did like Barbardos, but not Jamaica. I would certainly not choose that island,” she said with contempt. “Carver thought it would help persuade Lionel if he saw how nice life could be.”
“What did Carver want?”
“He wanted us to sell him the apartment. I promised him that we would. I didn’t care if it was a bribe; it was just lovely to have those two weeks to look forward to, and every year at this time, when it started turning cold, I’d say to Lionel, dear boy, I want to spend our remaining days near the sea, under the sun, and if we sell this apartment, we can live a really fine life with the money, and he refused me. Every year, he refused. He said his people were here. What people?” she asked. “Was I not his people? After all I had done for him?” She was enraged. “I was sick of it, of this city, of its memories. Oh, you think that I relish all this, the past, everything that’s dead and dying? If you do, it’s because you’re still young. Because you don’t know what it all meant, especially for women. To be colored and female,” she said. “Never mind. I don’t dwell on the past,” she added. “He wouldn’t leave. Lionel said the Armstrong was his life.”
I looked at her carefully. “So there was good money if Lennox bought the apartment?”
“Yes, indeed. In fact, he has already given me some.” She smiled. “As a sort of down payment.”
“And the vacations?”
“Money, too, and little gifts to make life agreeable. I believe he did the same, or proposed it, to the others.”
“What others?”
“Marianna, Amahl Washington, and Regina McGee, though I don’t know that any of them was smart about it as I have been. I have put a little money into property here and there,” she said.
“The apartment is in your husband’s name, isn’t it?”
“It was,” she said, expressionless. “Until this morning.”
“It’s yours now.”
“Naturally,” said Celestina Hutchison. “Carver Lennox is the only real man in the building, the way he’s helped us and put up with so much from so many silly old people.”
“You can sell it to him now.”
“Yes. But I won’t have my Ed.” She placed a photograph of the dog in her suitcase. “I’m going to say good-bye to him now. Will you come with me?”
In the mint green bathtub was a large wet bundle. It was the dog-or the pieces of the dog-wrapped, the sheets and blankets like a kind of shroud, blood on it. There was blood in the bathtub. The smell was bad.
Celestina went to the tub, looked down, kissed her fingers and placed them lightly on the bundle, nodded at me, and turned, and I followed her out.
In her room, I picked up the suitcase, and we went to the living room, where Alvin took it from me and escorted her to the door. He was a tall guy, and with her hand in his, she looked even smaller, small as a child.
At the door, Mrs. Hutchison turned to me.
“When will you arrest that woman for killing my Ed?”
“What woman?”
“That African,” she said. “Marie Louise. She hated my Ed. She said he was a devil, not to my face, but I knew it was what she believed. Who could think my Ed was a devil?”
“When did you last see the dog?”
“I told you, for heaven’s sake, or I told somebody, I came home from my sister’s to change for the party last night. I left Ed with Lionel. I assume that woman came by to help out with the cleaning at Carver’s. Perhaps she heard poor Ed crying, barking and crying, and she couldn’t stand it. She’s a crazy woman, but what can you expect? She’s from Africa.”
“How would she get in to your apartment?”
“Maybe Lionel let her in.”
“I see.”
“Maybe she killed Lionel, too,” said Celestina Hutchison. She walked out of her apartment, Officer Alvin following her with her suitcase, and didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 45
It’s Marie Louise, isn’t it?” Virgil was waiting at the back of the Armstrong when I went to get my car. “Fuck,” he added. “I like her. Where is she?”
“Gone. I went to see if she was anywhere in the building, but she’d gone.”
I was sure Lily had warned her. For all I knew, Lily had given Marie Louise money, told her to get her kids and leave the country. I knew Lily was capable of it. There was that side of her, the bleeding-heart liberal, that sometimes made me crazy. And she liked fixing things. I wasn’t in the mood to make nice, but I didn’t want to lose what little ground I’d gained with her. I hadn’t stopped at her place, I just left the building.
“I figured it was her. Who else would do that to a dog? We should have paid attention when she told us she fucking believed in spirits and evil dogs. That damn dog was a sweet old pooch. I had a Lab all the time I was a kid,” Virgil said. “I’ll have Amahl Washington’s medical records for you tomorrow. Wagner told me to get hold of them and give them to you.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I’m a detective, Artie.”
I looked around. The lot in back of the building was empty except for Virgil’s car and mine. The garbage cans were still on their sides. The yellow police tape that had marked out the scene, the place where I’d found Lionel, drooped on the ground. Just beyond the wire fencing, near the gas station, was a cop in uniform.
I told Virgil-I’d forgotten earlier-that Diaz had possibly packed away Simonova’s oxygen tank in the basement, the way he had with Washington’s. “He’s also due to drive Ed to the pet funeral home in Brooklyn,” I said. “Celestina apparently made a reservation with All Pets Go to Heaven.”
“The what?” Virgil tried not to laugh.
“You heard me.”
“All Pets Go to Heaven?” He bit his lip, but he couldn’t hold it and he started laughing. I looked at him and I cracked up.
For a few seconds, in the desolate parking lot, the two of us stood, laughing like fucking crazy guys, repeating the name of the pet funeral home, laughing because of it, to release the lousy tension, to remind ourselves we were still alive.
“I’ll get one of the uniforms on the oxygen tanks. I sometimes think Diaz feels about black people the way Marie Louise feels about black dogs. Cubans can be pretty fucking racist like everybody else,” Virgil said. “I’ll find some petty cash for him if I have to.” I got out my car keys.
“I was on my way back to see Marie Louise,” I said. “Now I’m thinking it would be better if you went. I’m probably already in deep shit with her. I doubt she’ll talk to me.”
“Why’s that?”
“I went to see her kids.”
“Without their mother?”
“Bad fucking idea. I know.”
“You get anything?”
“They told me she didn’t come home last night. They said she had a babysitting job. Who leaves two young kids alone all night for a crappy babysitting job?”