by Bill Bernico
“Come back later,” Felix said, and started to close the door again.
Matt gave the door a push, just hard enough to keep it from closing all the way. Felix got mad and yelled, “I said come back later. We’re still trying to sleep here.”
“Well, you might not ever wake up again if you don’t let us in, Mr. Molnar,” Elliott explained. “There’s a dangerous gas leak and we’ve traced it to this apartment. Are you sure you’re ready to die today?”
Felix stopped trying to force the door closed and opened it all the way, his attitude drastically changed for the better. “I didn’t smell anything,” he said.
“You wouldn’t,” Elliott explained. “It’s an odorless gas but no less deadly. Now, would you like to show me where your oven is located?”
Felix, with his long greasy hair, dressed only in a pair of filthy jeans and nothing else, turned and led Matt and Elliott to the kitchen, which was every bit the pigpen that the Chevy was. He pointed to the stove, with its circular heating elements on top.
“This is an electric stove,” Elliott said. “You must have some other gas appliance in here somewhere.”
Felix looked stumped now. He couldn’t think of anything in the apartment that was powered by gas.
“I see you don’t have electric baseboard heat,” Matt said. “What about your space heater? Where is it?”
Even Felix couldn’t see the small heater buried under a mound of junk in the living room. Elliott started to move some of the debris away and discovered the arm of a sofa at one end of the room. When he’d pulled enough garbage off the sofa, he could see a pair of legs stretched out across the filthy furniture. Elliott and Matt removed the rest of the trash from the sofa and the entire body of the person stretched out on it became visible now.
“Who’s this?” Elliott said.
Just then another bare-chested man with several tattoos stumbled out of a bedroom somewhere down the hall and slowly walked into the living room, scratching his ass and yawning. “What’s all the noise out here?” he said. “Can’t a guy get any sleep, for crying out loud?”
“Who are you?” Matt said to the new man.
The man frowned. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
Elliott held the PGE card up again and said, “Pacific Gas and Electric. You have a gas leak.” He turned back to the guy stretched out on the sofa. “Now who is this?”
Felix looked down at the man on the couch. “That’s just Alfie,” he said casually. “Let him sleep.”
Elliott and Matt exchanged glances and then turned their attentions to the man stretched out on the sofa. They each grabbed the man by his limbs and turned him face up on the couch. Elliott withdrew the three by five photo that Lindsey Hill had given him earlier and compared it to the face of the prone man. He looked up at Matt. “That’s him, all right. Come on, let’s get him up and back to his sister.”
“Hey,” Felix protested, “You guys aren’t from the gas company. Who the hell are you?”
Elliott ignored Felix and his protests and pulled Alfie to a sitting position. As soon as they released him, Alfie dropped back down again. Elliott’s eyebrows furrowed and he pressed two fingers into Alfie’s neck. He didn’t find a pulse and quickly stood upright again, pulling the .38 from under his arm and pointing it at Felix. Matt drew his revolver and covered the second man while Elliott fished his cell phone from his pocket and dialed the twelfth precinct.
“Eric,” Elliott said into his phone. “Remember that woman I brought in this morning who was looking for her lost brother?”
“Sure,” Eric said. “What about her?”
“Well, we found the brother,” Elliott said.
“Good work, Elliott,” Eric said. “So take him back to sis and collect your fee.”
“Normally I would,” Elliott explained, “But I don’t think she’s going to want him back in this condition. He’s dead. Better get over here with a crew.” He gave Eric the address before he closed his phone and dropped it back into his pocket. He looked at Matt. “They’re on their way.” He turned to Felix. “You might as well sit down until they get here. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
“What?” Felix protested. “He was okay last night when he decided to crash on my couch.”
“Well he’s not okay now,” Elliott said. “What happened here last night?”
Felix took a defiant stance now. “I don’t have to talk to you,” he said. “And you can’t hold us, either.” He stood up and took just one step before Elliott pushed him back down onto the chair he’d been sitting on.
Elliott immediately wiped his hand on his pants leg and looked at it, as if it was on fire. “Gees, haven’t you heard about this new invention called a bathtub? Alfie smells better than you do and he’s dead.”
Matt switched his gaze to Felix now and said, “Who’s your other buddy here?” He gestured with his chin toward the man he was holding at bay.”
“Him? That’s just Butch,” Felix explained.
Matt turned to Butch. “You got another name, Butch?”
Butch eyed Matt suspiciously and finally said, “I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”
“It doesn’t matter either way to me,” Matt told him. “You’re in just as much trouble as Felix there.”
Felix tried to stand again but Elliott pushed him back down again. “Me?” Felix said. “What’d I do?”
Elliott gestured toward the dead man with the barrel of his .38 and said, “You two are the first ones the police are going to suspect when they get here and find Alfie lying there at room temperature. If you didn’t do this to him, then who did?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Felix said. “Alls I know is he was alive when I went to bed last night.”
“Yeah, right,” Elliott said. “I supposed he did this to himself.”
Felix didn’t get a chance to answer before the knock came on the door. “That you, Eric?” Elliott yelled from where he stood.
The door opened and Lieutenant Anderson let himself into the apartment, flanked by two uniformed patrolmen. County medical examiner Andy Reynolds followed them in. Elliott pointed to the body on the sofa. “He’s over there,” he told Andy.
Eric walked up to Felix and pulled him to his feet. “Break out some I.D.,” he told the man and then looked down at his hand. He looked around the room for something to wipe it on before pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.
Felix reached around him and started to go for his wallet when Eric stopped him. “Hold on,” Eric said. “I’ll get it.” Eric used his handkerchief to pluck a wallet from Felix’s back pocket, flipped it open to the driver’s license compartment and read, “Felix Molnar. Is that you?”
“I didn’t do this,” Felix protested.
“Is that you?” Eric repeated.
Felix nodded, visibly shaken now. “I’m telling you, I didn’t do nothin’ to Alfie.”
Eric turned to Elliott. “Alfie?”
Alfred Hill,” Elliott explained. “Missing since last night. One of the clerks at the grocery store said they saw young Alfie there talking to two other guys outside their store. He also described this missing link’s car to a tee. We found it in the parking lot and came in here looking for the owner.”
After a few moments, Andy Reynolds turned from the body and looked up at Eric. “Overdose,” he said. “He’s got track marks on the inside of both arms.”
“That’s what I was tryin’ to tell ya,” Felix said, more to Elliott than to Eric.
The story was beginning to unfold now. Elliott turned to Eric. “I think I’m starting to get the picture here. Alfie there makes up some lame excuse and tells his big sister that he’s going to the grocery store for his bag of Tootsie Rolls or whatever. Instead he meets up with these two slugs and scores a couple of hits. They all come back here and get high, only Alfie must have figured he still wasn’t high enough and gave himself another shot after Felix and Butch went to bed.”
“Butch?” Eric said.
/> “That other imitation of a human being,” Elliott said, gesturing toward the tattooed lowlife.
Just then two ambulance attendants rolled a gurney into the apartment and loaded Alfie’s body onto it. Once they had lifted him off the sofa, Elliott could see a syringe almost buried behind the cushion. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and picked up the used needle, handing it, hanky and all, to Eric. “There’s your killer,” he said.
One of the officers who had come in with Eric turned around after checking the immediate area. He held up a plastic bag by the corner and showed it to Eric. “Looks like crack cocaine, Lieutenant,” he said, handing Eric the bag. The other officer patted the pockets of both occupants of this apartment. In Butch’s pocket the cop found an amber medicine bottle with no label on it. Inside were half a dozen red and white capsules. He handed that bottle to Eric as well.
Eric almost had to laugh as he looked back at Felix. “You guys aren’t too bright, either, are you?”
Felix pointed to the baggie of cocaine. “That’s not mine,” he protested. “Alfie must have brought that with him last night.”
“Then why would he need you two?” Matt said.
Felix didn’t have an answer. Butch made a dash for the front door but Eric caught him under the chin with his outstretched arm.
“Clothesline,” Matt said. “Good move, Eric. You should turn pro.”
Eric smiled and turned to the two officers. “Cuff these two and take them in for questioning. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“Yes sir,” one of the officers said, pulling the cuffs off his utility belt and snapping them on Felix’s wrists. The other officer did the same with Butch and led him out of the room and out to the patrol car.
“I don’t envy you your job today,” Eric said, gesturing with his chin at Alfie’s body on the gurney. “His sister seemed like a nice woman. She’s probably going to take this one pretty hard.”
“I know,” Elliott said, suddenly overcome with the urge to scratch his neck. “I never liked this part, either, but someone’s got to tell her and it might as well be me. You need anything else from us, Eric?”
“Not right now,” Eric said. “I’ll catch up with you later if I need any more information.”
Elliott turned to Matt. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m starting to itch.”
Matt followed Elliot back to his car and stopped before getting in. He looked at Elliott. “You really itching bad or is it all in your head?”
“I itch,” Elliott said. “I mean, I really itch. I’m surprised you don’t itch, too.”
“Well, I don’t,” Matt said. “And I don’t think I want you bringing your cooties into my car.”
Elliott rolled his eyes and reached for the door handle. It was locked. Matt unlocked his own door and slid in, starting the engine. He remotely opened the passenger window just enough to be able to talk to Elliott through the slit. “Stay put, I’ll send a cab back to pick you up. Try not to be scratching yourself when he gets here or he won’t want you in his cab either.” Matt pulled away from the curb, laughing to himself as he watched Elliott’s image get smaller in his rear view mirror.
During breakfast the next morning, Elliott sat there in his bathrobe, fresh from his second shower in the last thirty minutes. He’d taken three showers the night before, right after the cab had dropped him in front of his house. It was dark by then and Elliott had managed to undress on the front porch while Gloria brought him a towel. Elliott’s clothes stayed on the porch in a pile while Elliott went inside and made a beeline for the shower. From behind the bathroom door, he told her to throw that towel on the pile with his clothes on the porch. He’d burn the whole lot later the following day.
“Think you got ‘em all?” Gloria said, almost smiling at Elliott’s dilemma. His body was covered with little red splotches and smears of calamine lotion. He looked like some spotted creature right off the pages of a Dr. Seuss book.
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel really clean again,” Elliott said. “You should have seen that apartment, Gloria.”
“Tell me some other time,” Gloria said. “I’m about to have my breakfast. You’d better have some, too, before you leave for the office.”
“I’ll have to get something on the way,” Elliott said. “I can’t even think about eating now.”
Just then there was a dull thud at the door. Gloria went on eating her oatmeal and munching on her toast. She looked at Elliott, who wasn’t doing much of anything at the moment. “Would you get that, Elliott?” she said, sipping from her glass of orange juice.
Elliott stepped over to the door and pulled it open in time to see the paper boy pedaling away toward the next door neighbor’s house. Elliott picked up the morning paper, unfolded it and quickly glanced at the headlines before turning the paper over to see what was below the fold. There was a smaller headline telling of the overdose death of Alfred Hill, twenty, of Hollywood. He started to read the accompanying article when Gloria held out her hand.
“Could I have the classified section, please?” she said.
Elliott passed the back section of the paper to his wife and continued reading the Alfie Hill article. He had just finished the article when Gloria caught his attention.
“Well,” she said, pointing to a spot on the page that she was holding, “here’s our ad for the other spare bedroom.” She read the ad aloud to Elliott. For rent—furnished room in Hollywood. Utilities included. Close to bus stop. $65 per month. She stopped and looked again at that last part. “Oh hell,” she said in disgust. “They left out one decimal place in the price. That was supposed to read $650 a month, not $65. Now we’re going to be deluged with calls all day. I’d better call the paper right away and have that corrected.”
“Let me see that,” Elliott said, reading the ad. Gloria had the telephone in her hand when Elliott looked up from the paper and said, “Hang it up, Gloria.”
“What?” she said, her face scrunched up.
“Hang it up,” Elliott repeated. “We won’t be getting any calls. That same dufus who screwed up the monthly rent figure also screwed up the phone number. I don’t know whose number this is, but is surely isn’t ours. Here, take another look.”
Gloria took the paper from Elliott and read the ad through again. When she got to the last four digits of the phone number she read them aloud. “Four, seven, one, six. That four should have been a five. I wonder whose number that is.”
Elliott shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. Somewhere on the other end of town a phone was ringing. It would continue to ring for the rest of the day and well into that night.
The next day when Elliott finally made it into the office an hour and a half late, he found the office empty and then he remembered the bet he’d made with Matt. His son was probably already out on the street corner with his sandwich board. Elliott almost felt bad for Matt before he realized it could just as easily have been him on that corner had he not run into Lindsey Hill outside of the twelfth precinct. Elliott locked up the office again and rode the elevator to the lobby. He checked his mailbox before exiting to the street. Matt was there, all right but something didn’t look right.
Elliott could see his son standing on the corner holding a six foot long one-by-four pine board. Stapled to the edge of the board were several sheets of typing paper with homemade signs printed with a marking pen in thick black ink. Each sheet said Cooper and Son Investigations, along with the office phone number and the street address. Lying on top of the board Elliott could make out six little bundles wrapped in plastic wrap. On top of each little bundle was a white sticker of some sort with smaller printing on them. Matt twisted his body to the side, the board twisting with him. Elliott watched as a man approached Matt and started up a conversation with him. When the conversation ended, Matt balanced the board in one hand and plucked one of the small wrapped bundles from it and handed it to the man, along with a business card.
“What have you got there in your hands, Matt?
” Elliott said, gesturing with his chin at the board. “And what are you handing out, besides our business cards?”
“I’m handing out sandwiches,” Matt explained. “When these last five sandwiches are gone, I’m done for the day. I’ve already handed out seven sandwiches and business cards in the past forty-five minutes. This is quite a gimmick you thought up, Dad. I’ll have to give you credit for that.”
“I thought it up?” Elliott said. “What are you talking about?”
“The sandwich board,” Matt explained. “Pretty clever, I must admit. I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if we got a few new clients from this promotion.”
Elliott rolled his eyes and turned his head. When he looked back at his son, Matt was waggling his eyebrows up and down, like Groucho Marx. “Found myself a loophole, I did,” Matt said, turning his attentions back to the passersby. “Free sandwich with every business card,” Matt said, smiling wryly at his dad.
Elliott turned away and walked back into his building. He was secretly laughing to himself, but he surely didn’t want to let Matt know that he found the loophole humorous. Once back behind his desk, Elliott put in a call to Eric to let him know that his cousin could come to the house and take a look at the spare bedroom. Then he called home and told Gloria of her devious son’s interpretation of what a sandwich board should be.
“You have to admit, Elliott,” Gloria said. “That was some pretty quick thinking. Be honest, if you’d lost the bet I’ll just bet you wish you’d have thought of it.”
“What the hell,” Elliott said. “The kid might actually drum up some business for us with this little stunt. More power to him. Say, how’s it coming with the new ad for that spare bedroom? Did you get any calls yet?”
“Just one,” Gloria explained. “From a young man who’s studying drama and hopes to break into films someday soon. Seems like a nice enough kid but I told him you’d want to talk to him before we made our decision. You want me to send him to your office?”