The Night and The Music

by Lawrence Block

  The bed was unmade. I sat on the edge of it and looked across the room at a poster of Mick Jagger. I don’t know how long I sat there. Ten minutes, maybe.

  On the way out I looked at the chain bolt. I hadn’t even noticed it when I came in. The chain had been neatly severed. Half of it was still in the slot on the door while the other half hung from its mounting on the jamb. I closed the door and fitted the two halves together, then released them and let them dangle. Then I touched their ends together again. I unhooked the end of the chain from the slot and went to the bathroom for the roll of adhesive tape. I brought the tape back with me, tore off a piece, and used it to fasten the chain back together again. Then I let myself out of the apartment and tried to engage the chain bolt from outside, but the tape slipped whenever I put any pressure on it.

  I went inside again and studied the chain bolt. I decided I was behaving erratically, that Paula Wittlauer had gone out the window of her own accord. I looked at the windowsill again. The light dusting of soot didn’t tell me anything one way or the other. New York’s air is filthy and the accumulation of soot could have been deposited in a couple of hours, even with the window shut. It didn’t mean anything.

  I looked at the heap of clothes on the chair, and I looked again at the chain bolt, and I rode the elevator to the basement and found either the superintendent or one of his assistants. I asked to borrow a screwdriver. He gave me a long screwdriver with an amber plastic grip. He didn’t ask me who I was or what I wanted it for.

  I returned to Paula Wittlauer’s apartment and removed the chain bolt from its moorings on the door and jamb. I left the building and walked around the corner to a hardware store on Ninth Avenue. They had a good selection of chain bolts but I wanted one identical to the one I’d removed and I had to walk down Ninth Avenue as far as Fiftieth Street and check four stores before I found what I was looking for.

  Back in Paula’s apartment I mounted the new chain bolt, using the holes in which the original had been mounted. I tightened the screws with the super’s screwdriver and stood out in the corridor and played with the chain. My hands are large and not terribly skillful, but even so I was able to lock and unlock the chain bolt from outside the apartment.

  I don’t know who put it up, Paula or a previous tenant or someone on the building staff, but that chain bolt had been as much protection as the Sanitized wrapper on a motel toilet seat. As evidence that Paula’d been alone when she went out the window, well, it wasn’t worth a thing.

  I replaced the original chain bolt, put the new one in my pocket, returned to the elevator, and gave back the screwdriver. The man I returned it to seemed surprised to get it back.

  It took me a couple of hours to find Cary McCloud. I’d learned that he tended bar evenings at a club in the West Village called The Spider’s Web. I got down there around five. The guy behind the bar had knobby wrists and an underslung jaw and he wasn’t Cary McCloud. “He don’t come on till eight,” he told me, “and he’s off tonight anyway.” I asked where I could find McCloud. “Sometimes he’s here afternoons but he ain’t been in today. As far as where you could look for him, that I couldn’t tell you.”

  A lot of people couldn’t tell me but eventually I ran across someone who could. You can quit the police force but you can’t stop looking and sounding like a cop, and while that’s a hindrance in some situations it’s a help in others. Ultimately I found a man in a bar down the block from The Spider’s Web who’d learned it was best to cooperate with the police if it didn’t cost you anything. He gave me an address on Barrow Street and told me which bell to ring.

  I went to the building but I rang several other bells until somebody buzzed me through the downstairs door. I didn’t want Cary to know he had company coming. I climbed two flights of stairs to the apartment he was supposed to be occupying. The bell downstairs hadn’t had his name on it. It hadn’t had any name at all.

  Loud rock music was coming through his door. I stood in front of it for a minute, then hammered on it loud enough to make myself heard over the electric guitars. After a moment the music dropped in volume. I pounded on the door again and a male voice asked who I was.

  I said, “Police. Open up.” That’s a misdemeanor but I didn’t expect to get in trouble for it.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Open up, McCloud.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. He sounded tired, aggravated. “How did you find me, anyway? Give me a minute, huh? I want to put some clothes on.”

  Sometimes that’s what they say while they’re putting a clip into an automatic. Then they pump a handful of shots through the door and into you if you’re still standing behind it. But his voice didn’t have that kind of edge to it and I couldn’t summon up enough anxiety to get out of the way. Instead I put my ear against the door and heard whispering within. I couldn’t make out what they were whispering about or get any sense of the person who was with him. The music was down in volume but there was still enough of it to cover their conversation.

  The door opened. He was tall and thin, with hollow cheeks and prominent eyebrows and a worn, wasted look to him. He must have been in his early thirties and he didn’t really look much older than that but you sensed that in another ten years he’d look twenty years older. If he lived that long. He wore patched jeans and a T-shirt with The Spider’s Web silkscreened on it. Beneath the legend there was a sketch of a web. A macho spider stood at one end of it, grinning, extending two of his eight arms to welcome a hesitant girlish fly.

  He noticed me noticing the shirt and managed a grin. “Place where I work,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “So come into my parlor. It ain’t much but it’s home.”

  I followed him inside, drew the door shut after me. The room was about fifteen feet square and held nothing you could call furniture. There was a mattress on the floor in one corner and a couple of cardboard cartons alongside it. The music was coming from a stereo, turntable and tuner and two speakers all in a row along the far wall. There was a closed door over on the right. I figured it led to the bathroom, and that there was a woman on the other side of it.

  “I guess this is about Paula,” he said. I nodded. “I been over this with you guys,” he said. “I was nowhere near there when it happened. The last I saw her was five, six hours before she killed herself. I was working at the Web and she came down and sat at the bar. I gave her a couple of drinks and she split.”

  “And you went on working.”

  “Until I closed up. I kicked everybody out a little after three and it was close to four by the time I had the place swept up and the garbage on the street and the window gates locked. Then I came over here and picked up Sunny and we went up to the place on Fifty-third.”

  “And you got there when?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I wear a watch but I don’t look at it every damn minute. I suppose it took five minutes to walk here and then Sunny and I hopped right in a cab and we were at Patsy’s in ten minutes at the outside, that’s the after-hours place, I told you people all of this, 1 really wish you would talk to each other and leave me the hell alone.”

  “Why doesn’t Sunny come out and tell me about it?” I nodded at the bathroom door. “Maybe she can remember the time a little more clearly.”

  “Sunny? She stepped out a little while ago.”

  “She’s not in the bathroom?”

  “Nope. Nobody’s in the bathroom.”

  “Mind if I see for myself?”

  “Not if you can show me a warrant.”

  We looked at each other. I told him I figured I could take his word for it. He said he could always be trusted to tell the truth. I said I sensed as much about him.

  He said, “What’s the hassle, huh? I know you guys got forms to fill out, but why not give me a break? She killed herself and I wasn’t anywhere near her when it happened.”

  He could have been. The times were vague, and whoever Sunny turned out to be, the odds were good that she’d have no
more time sense than a koala bear. There were any number of ways he could have found a few minutes to go up to Fifty-seventh Street and heave Paula out a window, but it didn’t add up that way and he just didn’t feel like a killer to me. I knew what Ruth meant and I agreed with her that he was capable of murder but I don’t think he’d been capable of this particular murder.

  I said, “When did you go back to the apartment?”

  “Who said I did?”

  “You picked up your clothes, Cary.”

  “That was yesterday afternoon. The hell, I needed my clothes and stuff.”

  “How long were you living there?”

  He hedged. “I wasn’t exactly living there.”

  “Where were you exactly living?”

  “I wasn’t exactly living anywhere. I kept most of my stuff at Paula’s place and I stayed with her most of the time but it wasn’t as serious as actual living together. We were both too loose for anything like that. Anyway, the thing with Paula, it was pretty much winding itself down. She was a little too crazy for me.” He smiled with his mouth. “They have to be a little crazy,” he said, “but when they’re too crazy it gets to be too much of a hassle.”

  Oh, he could have killed her. He could kill anyone if he had to, if someone was making too much of a hassle. But if he were to kill cleverly, faking the suicide in such an artful fashion, fastening the chain bolt on his way out, he’d pick a time when he had a solid alibi. He was not the sort to be so precise and so slipshod all at the same time.

  “So you went and picked up your stuff.”

  “Right.”

  “Including the stereo and records.”

  “The stereo was mine. The records, I left the folk music and the classical shit because that belonged to Paula. I just took my records.”

  “And the stereo.”

  “Right.”

  “You got a bill of sale for it, I suppose.”

  “Who keeps that crap?”

  “What if I said Paula kept the bill of sale? What if I said it was in with her papers and canceled checks?”

  “You’re fishing.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “Nope. But if you did say that, I suppose I’d say the stereo was a gift from her to me. You’re not really gonna charge me with stealing a stereo, are you?”

  “Why should I? Robbing the dead’s a sacred tradition. You took the drugs, too, didn’t you? Her medicine cabinet used to look like a drugstore but there was nothing stronger than Excedrin when I took a look. That’s why Sunny’s in the bathroom. If I hit the door all the pretty little pills go down the toilet.”

  “I guess you can think that if you want.”

  “And I can come back with a warrant if I want.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “I ought to rap on the door just to do you out of the drugs but it doesn’t seem worth the trouble. That’s Paula Wittlauer’s stereo. I suppose it’s worth a couple hundred dollars. And you’re not her heir. Unplug that thing and wrap it up, McCloud. I’m taking it with me.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “You want to take anything but your own ass out of here, you come back with a warrant. Then we’ll talk about it.”

  “I don’t need a warrant.”

  “You can’t — ”

  “I don’t need a warrant because I’m not a cop. I’m a detective, McCloud, I’m private, and I’m working for Ruth Wittlauer, and that’s who’s getting the stereo. I don’t know if she wants it or not, but that’s her problem. She doesn’t want Paula’s pills so you can pop them yourself or give them to your girlfriend. You can shove ‘em up your ass for all I care. But I’m walking out of here with that stereo and I’ll walk through you if I have to, and don’t think I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

  “You’re not even a cop.”

  “Right.”

  “You got no authority at all.” He spoke in tones of wonder. “You said you were a cop.”

  “You can always sue me.”

  “You can’t take that stereo. You can’t even be in this room.”

  “That’s right.” I was itching for him. I could feel my blood in my veins. “I’m bigger than you,” I said, “and I’m a whole lot harder, and I’d get a certain amount of satisfaction in beating the crap out of you. I don’t like you. It bothers me that you didn’t kill her because somebody did and it would be a pleasure to hang it on you. But you didn’t do it. Unplug the stereo and pack it up so I can carry it or I’m going to take you apart.”

  I meant it and he realized as much. He thought about taking a shot at me and he decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe it wasn’t all that much of a stereo. While he was unhooking it I dumped a carton of his clothes on the floor and we packed the stereo in it. On my way out the door he said he could always go to the cops and tell them what I’d done.

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” I said.

  “You said somebody killed her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You just making noise?”

  “No.”

  “You’re serious?” I nodded. “She didn’t kill herself? I thought it was open and shut, from what the cops said. It’s interesting. In a way, I guess you could say it’s a load off my mind.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  He shrugged. “I thought, you know, maybe she was upset it wasn’t working out between us. At the Web the vibes were on the heavy side, if you follow me. Our thing was falling apart and I was seeing Sunny and she was seeing other guys and I thought maybe that was what did it for her. I suppose I blamed myself, like.”

  “I can see it was eating away at you.”

  “I just said it was on my mind.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Man,” he said, “nothing eats away at me. You let things get to you that way and it’s death.”

  I shouldered the carton and headed on down the stairs.

  Ruth Wittlauer had supplied me with an Irving Place address and a GRamercy 5 telephone number. I called the number and didn’t get an answer, so I walked over to Hudson and caught a northbound cab. There were no messages for me at the hotel desk. I put Paula’s stereo in my room, tried Ruth’s number again, then walked over to the Eighteenth Precinct. Guzik had gone off duty but the desk man told me to try a restaurant around the corner, and I found him there drinking draft Heinekens with another cop, named Birnbaum. I sat at their table and ordered bourbon for myself and another round for the two of them.

  I said, “I have a favor to ask. I’d like you to seal Paula Wittlauer’s apartment.”

  “We closed that out,” Guzik reminded me.

  “I know, and the boyfriend closed out the dead girl’s stereo.” I told him how I’d reclaimed the unit from Cary McCloud. “I’m working for Ruth, Paula’s sister. The least I can do is make sure she gets what’s coming to her. She’s not up to cleaning out the apartment now and it’s rented through the first of October. McCloud’s got a key and God knows how many other people have keys. If you slap a seal on the door it’d keep the grave robbers away.”

  “I guess we can do that. Tomorrow all right?”

  “Tonight would be better.”

  “What’s there to steal? You got the stereo out of there and I didn’t see anything else around that was worth much.”

  “Things have a sentimental value.”

  He eyed me, frowned. “I’ll make a phone call,” he said. He went to the booth in the back and I jawed with Birnbaum until he came back and told me it was all taken care of.

  I said, “Another thing I was wondering. You must have had a photographer on the scene. Somebody to take pictures of the body and all that.”

  “Sure. That’s routine.”

  “Did he go up to the apartment while he was at it? Take a roll of interior shots?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I thought maybe I could have a look at them.”

  “What for?”

  “You never kno
w. The reason I knew it was Paula’s stereo in McCloud’s apartment was I could see the pattern in the dust on top of the dresser where it had been. If you’ve got interior pictures maybe I’ll see something else that’s not there anymore and I can lean on McCloud a little and recover it for my client.”

  “And that’s why you’d like to see the pictures.”

  “Right.”

  He gave me a look. “That door was bolted from the inside, Matt. With a chain bolt.”

  “I know.”

  “And there was no one in the apartment when we went in there.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “You’re still barking up the murder tree, aren’t you? Jesus, the case is closed and the reason it’s closed is the ditzy broad killed herself. What are you making waves for?”

  “I’m not. I just wanted to see the pictures.”

  “To see if somebody stole her diaphragm or something.”

  “Something like that.” I drank what remained of my drink. “You need a new hat anyway, Guzik. The weather’s turning and a fellow like you needs a hat for fall.”

  “If I had the price of a hat, maybe I’d go out and get one.”

  “You got it,” I said.

  He nodded and we told Birnbaum we wouldn’t be long. I walked with Guzik around the corner to the Eighteenth. On the way I palmed him two tens and a five, twenty-five dollars, the price of a hat in police parlance. He made the bills disappear.

  I waited at his desk while he pulled the Paula Wittlauer file. There were about a dozen black-and-white prints, eight by tens, high-contrast glossies. Perhaps half of them showed Paula’s corpse from various angles. I had no interest in these but I made myself look at them as a sort of reinforcement, so I wouldn’t forget what I was doing on the case.

  The other pictures were interior shots of the L-shaped apartment. I noted the wide-open window, the dresser with the stereo sitting on it, the chair with her clothing piled haphazardly upon it. I separated the interior pictures from the ones showing the corpse and told Guzik I wanted to keep them for the time being. He didn’t mind.