fancy chairs. I went through the pictures all over again, and then, finally, I found it, the thing I had been looking for, the thing that had been rattling around in my head.
On the table near the sofa was a small mirror, about six by eight. It was on the same table where she had kept things that seemed important-pills, vodka, cigarettes, the book about Rasputin. I picked it up on a hunch, and in it I saw my own reflection, tired, at the end of my rope. My hand on the back, I felt something loose.
I pried the glass from the frame. In the back were half a dozen more photographs. I sat back on my heels, staring down at them. I knew. My God, I thought. Now I understood.
I heard of a noise.
“Who’s there?”
But it was only the wind blowing at the terrace door. Fucking wind, all weekend it had been rattling glass, sending me out of doors, prowling the terraces. Some of the time I’d felt I could hear the Armstrong itself moaning, the whole building wailing, its history, now the deaths.
I went out and looked around. I looked in the pail where Lionel Hutchison had tossed his cigarette butts the morning I’d seen him, Saturday morning. How many did he light up? Two, I remembered. There were four in the pail, and there was a piece of toast. It had stopped snowing Saturday night. Anything left out here before, would have been covered, but the two butts, the toast were visible, no snow covering them. Footprints too in snow that was now half a foot deep. There’d been no snow when I first met Hutchison. I leaned over to the Hutchison terrace. Prints there, too.
Did Lionel climb onto his friend’s terrace? Did he bring his coffee and his meds out? Did he take the pill, get dizzy and fall off? I stared at the prints. Then I heard somebody.
Somebody was at Simonova’s door.
CHAPTER 57
Virgil’s face was bruised from the fight with Ivan. His hand was resting on an oxygen tank on wheels.
“I got it off Diaz.” He dragged it into the apartment and shut the door. “Listen, you have to get out of here.”
I looked around the room.
“I can’t. Not yet. I’m not finished.”
“Artie, listen to me. I talked to Dawes. He’s taking over. He’s going to work this building, the cases- Hutchison, Lennox. You have to go. He’s not going to like your poring over this stuff. You don’t have a warrant. I can’t stop him.”
“And he doesn’t like me anyway, right?”
Virgil shrugged.
“Listen, you should know, I think Lionel Hutchison fell from the terrace here. There’s evidence, if you look for it.”
“Christ,” said Virgil. “If Dawes finds out you were here and there’s evidence on the terrace, he’ll know you saw it. He’ll go apeshit, Artie. He’ll go ballistic. You should get out. You don’t need the grief if Dawes finds you here, and we have plenty of dope on Ivan and the dead Russkis now. Go,” Virgil said. He stumbled and sat hard on the arm of a chair. “What’s all that?” He was looking at the photographs on the floor.
“Marianna Simonova was pregnant when she came to America. One-night stand in Moscow. Six months after she arrived, she gave birth to a boy. She named him Vladimir. His adopted parents changed his name. She only saw him once after that. Never tracked the father down.”
“This is her?” Virgil picked up a photograph of Simonova in New York, when she was very young, and pretty.
“You’d never recognize her, would you?”
“No,” said Virgil.
I wanted to see if he came up with the same thing I did. I put more pictures in a row. “These came from a leather folder Carver Lennox had on him when he was murdered. I had the feeling he wanted me to see them.” I showed Virgil the picture of a little boy of about three.
He was facing the camera, peering through glasses, the kind that make a child look serious and sad. He had a round face. His suit was too big for him, as if it had been cut down, and the jacket was buttoned up tight. He was holding somebody’s hand, but all you could see was her arm and hand-a woman’s hand, from the look of the cuff of her dress and her glove. He was black. You couldn’t tell about the woman. In the background was the Statue of Liberty.
“It’s Carver, isn’t it?” said Virgil. “You can see it.”
“I also found this in Lennox’s folder.”
It was the same child, same suit, looking at the Statue of Liberty, his hand in a woman’s gloved hand, but with his back to the camera. The woman was Marianna Simonova. It was the picture from her apartment, the one I had seen Saturday morning, the picture that had been missing when I went back.
“Jesus,” said Virgil. “My God.”
“I found these hidden behind one of Simonova’s mirrors.” I showed Virgil the photographs of the same little boy as a baby. I turned the pictures over. On each, written in Cyrillic with a blue fountain pen, were names and dates. “She called him Vladimir. His adoptive parents changed it to Carver.”
“He was her son?” Virgil said. “Carver Lennox was Marianna Simonova’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Did Carver know?”
“Not until recently, far as I can tell. Maybe last week. I have more paper to get through. You need to go, Virgil. You don’t want Dawes for an enemy.”
“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
