by Peter Quinn
“Looks like they’re sprucing up the place,” Dunne said. The hallway was half-covered with scaffolding. The receptionist’s station had been demolished.
“Today was Miss Marlene’s last day. Landlord says the tenants can answer their own phones. Put her out to pasture, if that’s where they put she-cats the likes of her.”
“Place will never be the same.”
“That’s what the landlord hopin’. He thinks he can get a better class of tenants. Least he’s sure he can’t do worse.” Hubert rode the elevator with Dunne. “You know, the cops been here lookin’ for you. Wanted me to let ’em in your office but told ’em you changed your lock and never give me a duplicate. Mind yourself. What I seen of ’em, they’ll kick your ass good, they get the chance.”
“Trick is, don’t give ’em the chance.”
“A trick for the white man, a miracle for the colored one.”
The mail that Dunne found stuck beneath his door included several bills and a notice from the landlord announcing the receptionist’s termination, the start of the Hackett Building’s refurbishment, and an upcoming rent increase. There were also three phone messages, two from Elba Corado, one from Roberta Dee. He took off his suit, hung it in the closet, and lay down on the couch beneath the thin blanket he stored for nights like this. He was almost asleep when he heard the faint but distinct music of Hubert’s sax waft up the elevator shaft. A reminder of lyrics he’d rather not recall: Yes, you’re lovely
With your smile so warm
And your cheek so soft
There is nothing for me but to love you
Just the way you look tonight.
He rolled over on the couch, face against the cool, worn leather, and pulled up the blanket till it almost covered his head. Two years ago, the last night he spent in Lily’s apartment, the singer next door practiced those lyrics over and over, her voice mingling with other sounds, traffic, sirens, the rattle of the El, all one melody. Lily undressed in the bathroom, as she always did, and got into bed naked, her handsome body exposed, that scent of hers all around. Sweet. The singing next door continued. There is nothing for me but to love you. When they were finished, he draped his arm over her.
“It’s about time, Fin, isn’t it?” she said.
He looked over at the alarm clock. It was nearly midnight. “Time for what?”
“We’re running out of it.”
“I guess.” He took away his arm and went to sleep.
On a sleeting December day, she left on a week’s vacation from her job as the choreographer at the Diamond Horseshoe and went home to Perry, Iowa, a town he’d promised to visit with her but never found time. He escorted her to Penn Station. Kissed her goodbye in front of a poster touting a vacation in Nevada. In it, a cowboy stood beside a cactus, open space all around, the sky innocent of clouds. She laughed and went on about how they could start over in a place like Nevada. Life would be easier than in New York. Open roads, no crowds, no snow.
“Give me a home where the taxi cabs roam,” he said.
“It’s a big country, Fin.”
“I got small ambitions.”
“Add mine to yours, they’ll be big enough.”
“Subtract mine from yours, they’ll be small enough.”
Just before the train left, Lily dashed upstairs to get a magazine. He followed the obtuse angle of her thigh and calf, leg against impressionable silk, faint outline of her undergarments. His unspoken thought: I’m no good at holding on to things. Never have been. But we’ll talk about it as soon as you get back. Promise.
She kissed him hard, pressing her lips onto his. The taste stayed a long time. A week turned into a month. A postcard arrived from Quebec. She was on her honeymoon. The taste of goodbye. P.S. Sorry, Fin, I grabbed it before it passed by. Afraid it was my last chance. Au revoir, Lily.
Au revoir. French for what? Time, Fin: we’re out of it.
He missed her most in this moment, on the edge of sleep, and in the one that followed, waking up and realizing she wasn’t next to him. What he remembered: angle of her leg, her kiss, laughter, that sweet smell, same as her name. Fleur-de-lis. The Signature Perfume of the House of L’Espere. In the Catholic Protectory, Brother Flavian lavished attention on his African lilies, dug them up each fall, and stored them in sand, in a corner of the dining hall he turned into a makeshift hothouse. “Lilies are the only flower Our Lord ever spoke of,” he said. “‘Behold the lilies of the field.’ Theirs is a holy scent.” Hers: the sweetness of succulent fruit, luscious. No hint of holiness.
Just after dawn, he got up, shaved, and washed in the bathroom down the hall. He put on the clean shirt and tie he kept in the bottom drawer on his desk. He took the elevator to the basement, where Hubert maintained a small, meticulously neat living area. Up to now, given the landlord’s neglect of the Hackett Building, Hubert had been allowed to reside where he worked. Pretty soon, Hubert’s quarters would probably follow the receptionist’s stand into oblivion.
Hubert sat on the edge of a neatly made cot, reading last night’s Standard.
“There a phone I can use?”
“What’s wrong with the one you got?” Hubert didn’t look up from the paper.
“Only good for wrong numbers.”
“Afraid it’s tapped?”
“Crossed my mind.”
“There’s a phone by the delivery entrance. Need a nickel, use this.” Hubert put down the paper, took several slugs out of his pocket, and handed them to Dunne.
“Slugs are illegal.”
“You complainin’?”
“Not if you cut me in next time you get some.”
“Not likely.”
The phone down the hallway was on a wall covered with phone numbers and the odds on races at different tracks. A bookie’s station. Mingled in was the name Linda. It was repeated several times, always with a different phone number. Good bet that whatever Linda was riding it wasn’t horses. Dunne was about to hang up when Elba answered. She went on for a minute about how upset her brother had been by his visit to the death house. He cut her short.
“You drive?”
“Why, yes.”
“Own a car?”
When she answered yes, he gave a corner and time to meet. If he wasn’t there, he said, keep driving. He’d call that evening. He went out the delivery entrance, rode the subway to Rostoff’s, and arrived at the tail end of the morning rush. A short time earlier, it would have been packed, Rostoff urging the tray boys to grab every empty dish and banging a rolled-up newspaper on the table to remind the lingerers that if they wanted to sit and read, the city had gone to great expense furnishing its parks with benches.
For now, the cafeteria had the quiet repose of a library. Dunne spread the newspaper in the space that the tray boy had cleared. The Babcocks were already off the front page, replaced by Sudeten-German civilians battling Czech police. On the Society Page were the usual pictures of the usual crowd in the usual poses in the usual clubs. Gent in a satin-collared tux, cigarette in one hand, the other on the shoulder of some smartgowned debutante, or some American rich girl hanging on the arm of a defunct aristocrat, or vice versa. Stalwarts of the café set, the Babcocks were gone from these pages too. Those left behind were doing their best to carry on. From the looks of it, they were doing just fine.
The tray boy came back down toward the kitchen, cart piled high with dishes. He drummed a spoon on a steel handle, the short percussions accompanied by his falsetto. He sang about the man who lusts for fame and money and lives a life that ain’t necessarily sunny. It was a song that Dunne recognized from the radio, catchy tune that even if you weren’t crazy about, once you heard was hard to get out of your head.
Jules Rostoff looked up from the newspaper atop his idle cash register, took the cigar out of his mouth and yelled, “Rudy, shut the mouth, please.” The tray boy cleared a nearby table of cups and yolk-streaked plates, cigarette butts crushed into the hardened yellow goo. He hummed loudly, then resumed singing abou
t the only work that really brings enjoyment, the labor that goes into wooing, the amorous business for girl and boy meant, the work communist and capitalist alike yearns to do, and if you can get it won’t you tell me how.
A loud repeat of the tattoo seemed a prelude to more singing. Rostoff came out from behind the cash register, into the aisle. “For the last time, Rudy, shut up!”
The tray boy shrugged. “Durante started this way.”
“Durante got talent!”
The mild, windless morning convinced Dunne to walk to the building where Mary Catherine Lynch had lived. A kid of about twelve in a felt cap, its brim turned up and serrated like a crown, sat on the front steps. He bent over so he could tighten his skates with the key hung around his neck.
“Hey, champ,” Dunne said, “where can I find the super?”
The kid stopped tightening his skates and glanced up. “Maybe across the street in Murtagh’s Bar or maybe sleepin’ it off on the roof. Then again, could be in the basement playin’ ring-a-lievo with the cockroaches.”
“What’s your best guess?”
“What’s it worth?” He held out his hand, gimme-style, palm up.
Dunne pulled him to his feet. “There, I helped you up. We’ll call it even.”
“Nothin’ more than a bum’s handshake?”
“You’re below the minimum age for shakedown artists.”
“Try the basement.”
“What’s his name?”
“Henry Draub. We call him ‘Heinrich the Slob.’ Last super was a spic, but clean. Go figure.” He crouched and began to skate with short, hard motions. In an instant, he disappeared around the corner. Dunne followed him as far as the alley, passed a row of badly dented garbage cans, and ducked into an open entranceway. Down the hall was a battered metal door, SUPERINTENDENT stenciled on it in cracked white letters. A balding man answered. Slob was a good description. Or schlub. He looked as though he’d just got out of bed. He didn’t talk. His scowl did it for him.
“The Lynch apartment been rented?” Dunne asked.
“You ain’t no cop.”
“Who said I was?”
“Who are you?”
Dunne tucked a folded bill into the super’s shirt pocket. “Dick Tracy.”
“Ain’t rented but ain’t ready to be shown.”
“Need a look, that’s all.”
“How bad?”
“Look in your pocket.”
The super kept his eyes on Dunne. “Ain’t enough.”
“Add this to what’s already in your pocket.” Dunne waved a bill in front of the super’s face. “That’s all you’re gonna get.”
The super lifted the bill from his shirt pocket, then shoved it back in and snatched the other out of Dunne’s hand. “I’ll get the key.” He tried to close the door.
Dunne held the door open with his foot. “I’ll make sure you don’t forget to come back.” He followed the super into a square room that contained an armchair and a sofa, both in the process of disgorging whatever, long ago, they’d been stuffed with. The only light struggled through a dirt-streaked basement window set high in the far wall. Beneath, looking forlorn and out of place, a tall, regal-looking chest of drawers stood on skinny, delicate legs. It was topped by a curbed, graceful pediment.
The super turned left, down a dark, narrow hallway. He switched on the light in a small kitchen. Half a dozen cockroaches zigzagged into the stove. He fumbled at a rack covered with keys draped on hooks, removed one, and held it up to a light fixture from which dangled a coil of yellow fly-studded adhesive. He examined the soiled, wilted cardboard circle attached to the key, which had the apartment number inscribed on it. “I’ll tell you right now, place was cleaned out a long time ago.”
Dunne ducked to avoid the coil of dead flies. “Just need a look, that’s all.”
“Let’s go.” The super stuck the key in his pocket and brushed past.
Dunne took another look around. Lawyer and professor, raised in sun-drunk Havana, Walter Grillo ended up here, endlessly pestered with complaints, not enough heat, too much heat, the water’s too cold, too hot, perpetual whiners yapping in a language he only half understood. Drive anybody to the edge. Maybe over.
“Come on, will you,” the super said. “You’re payin’ to see Miss Lynch’s apartment, not live in mine.”
“Wouldn’t worry about that I was you.” Dunne followed the super up three flights of stairs. They stopped in front of a door at the far end of a badly lit hallway. The super opened the door and stood back. “Don’t stay all day,” he said.
“In like Flynn,” Dunne said. “Out just as quick.”
The layout of the place was different from the super’s: bedroom straight ahead, bathroom right beside it; to the right, a tiny kitchen; to the left, two windows facing the street. It was no surprise the furniture was gone. Dunne’s footsteps echoed on the bare floors as he crossed the living room to the bedroom. Except for a few dust balls, the closets were empty. Same with the kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Mother Hubbard’s cupboard all over again.
From outside came the muffled commotion of traffic, clash of roller skates on concrete, kids shouting, laughing, sounds that might have been among the last Miss Lynch heard. According to the trial record, it had been sometime after 8:30 P.M. that a neighbor noticed her door ajar. The neighbor knocked and called her name. Fearful and suspicious when she got no answer, she went to find the super. No answer there either, she left the building and corralled Patrolman Michael Rath. He entered the apartment and found Miss Lynch sprawled amid the caked, clotted gore on her bedclothes and summoned the homicide squad.
Though it was possible Officer Rath had guarded the apartment until the other cops arrived, touching nothing and making sure no one else did until the place got an official going-over, Dunne knew from experience that it was more likely Rath had made a quick search through dressers, trunks, closets, under the mattress, for “spinster’s gold,” the fabled horde accumulated by those thrifty souls who stowed away cash and jewelry against the possibility of an old age spent in poverty. Several years before, two sisters had been discovered in a room they hadn’t left in a quarter century with nearly a million dollars in cash and negotiable bonds. The Surrogate’s Court glommed the goods that time, but with each homicide or suicide or unexplained death, the treasure hunt went on more fervidly than ever, cops, ambulance men, whoever was in first on a mad dash to find the trove before the next wave of detectives, fingerprint boys, and photographers arrived.
He lit a cigarette in the bathroom and tossed the match in the john. Wisps of smoke hung in the dead air. After a while, the place would have been thick with cops, some working, most standing around and kibitzing. Maybe somebody noticed a crucifix on the wall and called a priest. Anybody’s guess how much evidence was lost and how much gathered before the morgue crew stuck the corpse in a heavy canvas bag and hauled it away. Requiescat in pace. The person who searched Miss Lynch’s jewelry box did so carefully, the Professor said, piece-by-piece, as though searching for something in particular. Didn’t seem likely he’d been part of this crowd.
The super was in the hall, leaning on a mop. There was no pail. “Satisfied?”
“How about a word in private?”
“This is private.”
A wide, frightened eye stared at Dunne through the peephole in the door behind the super. The fate of Miss Lynch helped confirm the impression of a horde of homicidal lunatics continually on the prowl, which the Professor and his fellow tradesmen earned their daily bread reinforcing. The fact that there were a few hundred murders a year in a population of eight million, most involving people who knew one another, didn’t exactly match the tabloids’ version of nonstop mayhem. But good luck trying to convince the one-eyed peepers that they have about as much chance of being hit by lightning as getting chopped in pieces by a new, improved version of Jack the Ripper.
“More private,” Dunne said. “Your place.”
“No way.”
&nbs
p; Dunne drew close and nudged him with his shoulder, a wordless invitation: push back or start moving.
“Don’t try that tough guy stuff with me.” The super banged the handle end of the mop on the floor for emphasis.
Dunne nudged him again. “Move.”
The super hesitated, then turned and walked ahead of Dunne. He halted a few feet inside his apartment, the mop at his side like a spear. “Okay, Aladdin, this is your last wish. Make it quick.”
“Tell me, genie, where’s the highboy from?”
“Who?”
Dunne nodded toward the piece of furniture at the far end of the room. “The chest of drawers.”
“That? It was in the storage room when I moved in. Nobody knew who it belonged to, so I took it.”
“No chance it belonged to Miss Lynch?” A hunch dressed up as a question: the out-of-placeness of the piece plus a recollection of the Professor’s mention of the elegant furniture in her apartment.
“Suppose it did? Finders keepers.”
“Furniture at a murder scene should have been impounded by the Sheriff’s Office.” Dunne’s memory of the evidentiary rules for homicides was rusty, but it sounded right, and the super seemed disinclined to argue about it. “This amounts to suppression of evidence. A crime. Losers weepers, if the D.A. hears about it.”
“Ain’t givin’ it back, if that’s what you’re anglin’ for.”
“Can’t imagine you would. Goes so nice with everything else.”
The super stood aside. “Have a look. Nothin’ in it anyways. Then scat. Your welcome’s run out.”
The top drawer glided out smoothly and noiselessly. Dunne repeated the process with the drawers beneath. They were as empty as the super promised. Dunne felt their undersides. No fake bottoms. The trial record indicated that though Grillo’s prints had been found on the murder weapon, he’d managed to turn the place upside down and meticulously search the jewelry box without leaving a print anywhere else. Odd.
“Time’s up.” The super was at the door, cradling the mop in both hands, more like a rifle than a spear.