“Would they lie for Lennox?”
“I don’t think so. The man said they weren’t even friends, it was just the two kids knew each other from school,” said Virgil. “You get anything from Lennox?”
“I was with him in the club,” I said. “He was trying to tell me something, but he said he needed air, he was going to throw up. He went out. The creep was waiting for him. I shouldn’t have let him go.”
“Did you see the killer?”
“I called in a description. I think I know who it was.” I was shaking. A cop in uniform got a shock blanket from the back of his car and put it around me.
“Tell me,” said Virgil.
“Guy with white hair, strange, albino hair. I sat next to him at the Christmas party,” I said. “Jesus, he was right there. He told me he liked jazz. He got a good look at me, and everybody else, including Carver.”
I was shaking so hard, I had to sit down on the steps of a brownstone next to the club.
Virgil lit up a cigarette and offered me one. I took it. I told him I realized now I’d seen the creep earlier, just before I met Lennox. I had seen him slip away into the dark. He must have known Lennox was in the club, must have waited for him outside.
“You OK, Art?” It was Jimmy Wagner, who hurried over to check on me. I told him what I’d seen at the club, the guy I’d seen who knifed Lennox.
“Give me one of them.” Wagner reached for Virgil’s smokes. Virgil held the lighter. In its flame I saw how sick Wagner was looking. Sick. Worried. Skin gray.
Then I remembered. Struggling, I got out my phone. I put the picture on the screen. My hand shook so hard, Virgil took the cell from me.
“Tolya took this at the Christmas party last night. I almost forgot. It’s the Russian,” I said.
“Lemme see that,” said Wagner, looking over my shoulder. “Jesus, Mary, Mother of God. Christ. Fucking Christ.”
“What is it?”
Around us cops checked the sidewalk for blood. There were forensics people and somebody from the ME.
I looked at Wagner. “Jimmy? What is it?”
He grabbed my cell out of Virgil’s hand and peered at the screen again. “It’s the fucker I let go. The creep we held for the homicide on that body we found in the cemetery with the piece of paper stuck to it.” Jimmy sucked on his smoke. “This prick probably killed him, probably did the guy who bled out into the closet, too. Knifed them both, and I let him go. Fuck. Fuck. Four homicides. Two dead white men that nobody identified yet, maybe creeps themselves, maybe mob shit. But what’s fucking worse is Hutchison, and now Lennox. They’re going to say somebody is killing good black men in Harlem, and it’s going to be my fucking fault, and maybe it fucking is. I didn’t sleep in forty-eight. I’m too old. But we’ll fucking get him.” He tossed away his cigarette. “You sent that picture around, Art?”
I held my cell. “I’m doing it now.”
“Anything else, Art, man? Anything you remember?”
“At the party, the guy kept pulling down the sleeve of his sweater, like he had eczema he wanted to hide, or some kind of scar.”
“Like a tattoo?”
“Could be.”
“It’s him for sure,” said Wagner again. “So he was covering his tats. I looked at those tats and they didn’t mean dick to me. Jesus, fucking stupid asshole that I am,” said Wagner, lighting up again, dragging on the cigarette, coughing. “I should have held him longer.”
“I just thought of something,” I said, shivering.
“You need some dry clothes,” Wagner said. “What?”
“You remember when I came by yesterday to see you? I was waiting by the sergeant at your house, and I saw this guy in a hoodie and North Face leaving. I got a faint impression he was looking at me, taking a look, clocking who I was.”
Wagner went to his car to get his own smokes. Virgil said to me, “I have to go.” Without another word, he moved away from the scene, through the crowd that had formed on the sidewalk and disappeared.
I knew Virgil needed to work the case his way. I knew he would hunt down the creep who did the killings if it was the last thing he did. I sent him a text. Told him I’d keep on it on my end. Call if you need me. Call.
I put on a blue jacket Wagner brought me.
“I’m sure it’s the same guy who beat me up in the Armstrong basement, too. What’s his name?”
“Ivan,” said Wagner, and snorted. “Yeah, it really is, I told you, Ivan Ivanov. Where’s Radcliff?”
“He went to find the fucker. Let him be, Jimmy. He needs to do this. He has a lot invested.”
“I gotta put more guys on it, though.”
“You do that, but let Radcliff go for it.”
“I don’t want you wandering off, right, Artie? We’re going to need a Russian speaker. I want you holding this together, you hear?”
“I’ll be around.”
“Your phone is ringing, man,” said Wagner, as more cars arrived, the flashing red and blue lighting up the dark street.
I started for my car.
“Where am I gonna find you, Artie?” Jimmy said.
“I’ll be on my phone, don’t worry. It’s just something I gotta do there, Jimmy. Something I gotta know.”
M O N D A Y
CHAPTER 52
The lobby at Presbyterian had the strange, desolate look city hospitals have in the middle of the night. Carver Lennox was dead by the time I got there.
I didn’t stick around. There was nothing I could do. I was wearing the dark blue jacket Jimmy Wagner had loaned me at the scene; everyone could make me for a cop. There was no time to change.
I was worried as hell about Lily. She was at the Armstrong. I had woken her up when I called. She was fine, she’d said sleepily. But I drove over. Ivan, if it was his real name, would have seen Lily and me at the Christmas party, and if he wanted to get at me, he might go for her. He knew his way around the building. He beat me up in the storage room. I was betting he killed the Hutchison dog. I had seen him talking to Diaz at the back door. I knew Diaz would let him in if there was cash.
On my way over, I got hold of Tolya’s voice mail, asked him to send one of his guys to the Armstrong. I was in the Armstrong lobby when Tolya called back and said he’d send somebody.
“You want me to come?” he asked in Russian.
I told him it would scare Lily. Just send a guy, I said, and went upstairs. I let myself in to Lily’s apartment with the keys she had given me. I took off my shoes and went to the bedroom.
She was on her side, fast asleep. I watched her breathing. I went around the bed and looked at her face. On it was a half smile. Lily was somewhere else, in a happy dream.
After I checked the rest of the apartment, I washed my face in the kitchen sink, got my shoes, went out, and locked the door. It was very late. Quiet, too quiet. The Hutchisons were gone, Lionel dead, Celestina at her sister’s. Simonova was buried on Long Island. Carver Lennox was in the hospital morgue.
In the dead of night, when pretty much everybody was asleep, nobody talking, no kids yelling, no music playing, the building crackled with little noises you couldn’t hear during the day: the drip of leaking water, the hiss of a radiator, floorboards that sagged and creaked under your feet, my own heartbeat as I went slowly down the stairs.
No one was on the desk. I knew Diaz or one of the others was supposed to cover all night, but no one was there. On a chair in the corner was a young patrolman, half asleep. I shook him. I yelled at him. “There’s been a fucking homicide here,” I said. “Just fucking stay awake.”
In the basement, I kept my gun out. I heard noises-voices, the rattle of machinery, the flick of a cigarette lighter. I ran in the direction of the sounds. Nothing.