Hard Luck And Trouble

by Gammy L. Singer

  He smirked and I rolled my eyes at him. I had organized the desk and bought a new filing cabinet. But the rest of the room looked as if an explosion had taken place. A dusty filing cabinet stood against one wall, stuffed with everything except the paper you’d expect to be in there—string, wire, canned foods, rat poison, everything. Buckets of paint, tools, rusted pipes, an old commode, lightbulbs, doors, fuses, condoms, and a bit of everything else was jammed into the rest of the space, in every nook and cranny and spread across every surface.

  “It’ll take the rest of my life,” I replied.

  Seltzer started to leave, then turned at the door and said, “Tell you what, though, I am going to cut me the somebody who walked off with my sweet Susie. I know that dog. She wouldn’t have gone easy.”

  He paused.

  “Maybe they killed her.”

  He turned his head away from me and drew his sleeve across his nose.

  I thought, oh, shit, if he’s crying, I’m leaving.

  “Had her guarding the basement across the street for the last two days,” he said, then looked back up at me. “You know a squatter’s been living there?”

  I nodded, overjoyed that he’d pulled himself together.

  And then he held out his hand, palm up. “Pipe’s busted across the street. Water’s leaking. Need to replace the pipe and replaster the wall.”

  I reached into my back pocket. Yes, I knew about the squatters. Empty take-out boxes of Chinese food and trash lay strewn on the floor alongside filthy mattresses that still carried the stench of wretched humanity. I put locks on both doors, only to see the rooms trashed again the following week, and the locks broken.

  “Yeah, locks didn’t do no good,” I said.

  I also knew about Susie. It was me that called the ASPCA to come get the vicious mutt. A fucking Great Dane. Can you believe it? Her paws were as big as my feet. The animal had lunged at me when I entered the basement apartment. I thought the squatters had left the dog there. Since I’m not a fool I didn’t mention this fact to Seltzer.

  I looked down at his outstretched hand, sighed, peeled some bills off the roll from my pocket, and gave them to him. I had hocked ten of my three-piece suits at Bunky’s for a lousy three hundred bucks—custom-made, too—and that accounted for what money I possessed at the moment, and was all that stood between me and the poorhouse. I had meant to chill Harry down with the money as a good-faith payment until I could lay my hands on some more bread.

  “Thanks,” he said and eyed the remaining money in my hand. I stuffed the bills back into my pocket.

  He moved to the door. “I’ll pick up the supplies today and bring you your change—if there is any. I’ll start on the work tomorrow. Ain’t playing about that stuff in your car. You better get it out ’fore it’s gone. You moving in?”

  I nodded. “Don’t have a choice.”

  “Well, number four was your dad’s. Stuff’s all gone. Plenty of room. I’ll paint it up for you.”

  “Better paint those basement apartments across the street first. They look like shit. Want to hurry up and rent them out.”

  He held out his hand again, and reluctantly I threw some more bills into it.

  “Seltzer, man, I’ll tighten you up soon as I collect some rent, okay?”

  He nodded and left the room. The door slammed behind him.

  I gnawed my lip and made a decision. The unpacking would have to wait. I threw on my jacket and headed out. Guess I have to go see a man about a dog.

  Chapter 3

  Saturday morning and I was up early, all shit-shaved-and-bathed, and crossed the street to see whether Seltzer had started working on the apartments yet. I saw a pile of refuse stacked up outside the building, so I figured he was there. I descended into the basement when I heard the low growl of the demon dog Susie, who crouched and slinked her butt toward me.

  “Seltzer,” I called. “Come get your damn dog. I’m coming in.”

  Big old dumb-ass dog, she forgot already who had saved her ass. Yesterday, she had licked and lapped all over me in the car. Just like a bitch. Fickle.

  Seltzer appeared around the corner.

  “Susie, come here, girl. You don’t want to poison yourself with no tough meat. Don’t bite the man, come over here, girl.”

  “I wish that dog would bite me. I’d shred her ass through a meat grinder.”

  Susie growled again. She didn’t like what I said.

  “Hey, old dog, I’m just fooling with you, come here, you rotten spoiled thing.”

  I held out my hands, and her dog brain remembered who had previously fondled her. She let me rub her hard behind her ears. Her tail was whipping her to death, and she slurped her tongue in pure joy.

  “Funny how old Susie just come back by herself,” Seltzer said.

  “How’s that funny? She probably let herself out to take a leak and get a little nookie and got locked out.”

  “Yeah,” said Seltzer, “you probably right. That’s one smart dog though, you got to admit. Not only did she let herself back in, she locked the doors behind her, changed her water, and fed herself. Yessir, you can’t get no smarter than that.”

  “Sure can’t. That’s one smart dog. Listen, she’s back, ain’t she? You ought to be grateful.”

  “Oh, I am, I am. And I don’t have to cut me no nigger.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and stepped inside the front apartment.

  “Paint job looks good.”

  “Yeah, almost finished with this one. Get to the other one tomorrow. If you hurry up and rent this place, won’t have to worry about squatters. I’ll get to your apartment on Monday.”

  “No problem, man.”

  I went to the rear studio apartment and opened the door. Susie bolted past me and began sniffing the wall. I looked around. The rooms had been cleared out, but a damp smell hung in the air. Susie kept sniffing at the wall.

  “Seltzer, Susie ain’t about to piss on the wall, is she? That’s all we need in here.”

  We both looked at Susie. Now she was pawing at the wall. Then she growled and crunched plaster between her teeth.

  Seltzer moved to her. “Susie, what the hell you doing? Come here, girl.” He took her by the collar and pulled her away from the wall.

  “What you got, girl, huh? What you got?”

  He leaned closer to the wall to inspect.

  “Jesus, Amos, come here.”

  “What’s the matter?” I said and stepped to the wall.

  “What’s that look like to you?”

  I looked and then I touched the wall. It was damp. The second-floor leak must have traveled down to the basement and loosened the plaster. Parts of it had chipped away, leaving a sizeable hole, and a bone sticking out of the wall. I touched it gingerly.

  “What’ll we do now, boss?”

  I looked at Seltzer, then back at the bone. “Fuck I know. Call the police?”

  I edged closer and knelt down. “Looks like bone from someone’s leg. And this ...” I rubbed a fragment of cloth lodged in the wall. “... This looks like a piece of a dress.”

  Chapter 4

  First squad car that showed up from the Twenty-eighth Precinct, I knew one of the cops. He was a brother that used to live over on East 130th Street. I knew his mama and his daddy. Both of them played the numbers every day. Curtis Charles, his name was. He looked good in his uniform. Good to see a brother making something of himself. He was surprised that I was the landlord. I was starting to get used to that. Whole lot of people were surprised, myself included.

  Curtis and his partner fooled around inside the apartment, asked us a few questions, then strung yellow tape across the entrance to the basement, keeping me and everybody else out. That was okay with me. I wasn’t one of the morbidly curious.

  Susie, Selz, and me waited out on the front stoop of the brownstone. The news spread fast. The neighbors collected on the sidewalk as if they were waiting for the Second Coming or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Honest to God, one woman bro
ught a beach chair and lunch, introduced herself as Mabel, and sat on the sidewalk and talked to everyone and their mama about what was going on. It was like a block party and everyone showed up.

  Fortunate for me, most of the tenants were nosy, too. Seltzer introduced me to a bunch of them, and I started collecting rents right there on the stoop. Wasn’t rolling in dough, though. As fast as I raked it in with one hand, Seltzer took it from the other.

  Counting both buildings, I had seven apartments empty. Each of the brownstones had been cut up into eight apartments, and with rent control that meant profits were pitiful.

  My oldest tenant was Miss Ellie, a former Cotton Club dancer. Next in age, Seltzer said, was Zeke, an old guy with a sour disposition who used to be best friends with my father. Huh, as far as I was concerned, that information was all that was needed to explain Zeke’s personality defect. The man got real hostile when I asked him for the rent. He stomped his cane down next to my foot, almost nipped my toe, then took off in a fury down the street.

  I didn’t know what the old guy’s problem was, but we sure as hell were going to have to talk.

  Winnie Martin, who had dimples in her cheeks and probably in her butt as well, brought me some food with her rent money. She passed potato salad and barbecue ribs among all of us who had settled on the stoop.

  The Fag (Wilbur was his real name, and it looked like I was going to have to start using it) knew a social occasion when he saw it and flew out of the brownstone front door in a flowing robe, and flitted among the crowd like A’Lelia Walker or one of them other famous hostesses and served people potato chips. I had to admit he wasn’t a bad sort, and in fact, he was kind of funny. The other kind of funny, you know, comical.

  Wilbur was tall and thin with keen features and long processed hair that he was currently flipping all over the chip bowl. Came up here from Texas—where men were men, he told me—and that’s why he had to leave. He asked straight out if his sexual persuasion—his words—was going to be a problem. I told him hell no. His money would spend just like everybody else’s. He thanked me and left me a cake.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. Miss Ellie had appeared like the star she was and eased her petite frame down beside me on the stoop. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had more wrinkles than she did. She wore carefully applied makeup and had herself perched atop the highest heels I had ever seen, and I knew the woman was old enough to be my grandmother.

  “You got the rent for this month, Miss Ellie?”

  “Listen, boy, and you’d better write this down—my Social Security comes the fifteenth of every month. You catch me then, or you don’t catch me at all.”

  She leaned away from me and looked me up and down. I found myself blushing. Jesus.

  She noticed my discomfort, but decided to overlook it.

  “Boy, don’t mind me. I’m just noticing how much you resemble your father. He was handsome, you know. Tall Negro, had high cheekbones and a big old square jaw just like yours.”

  When she said “jaw” she reached for mine and squeezed it tight between her fingers and waggled my head back and forth. I let her have her jollies for a few seconds, then I unclamped her fingers from around my jaw.

  Seltzer informed me his day ended at two and he was taking Susie and going on home. The cops didn’t stop him, so it must have been okay, although, hell, if I was them I would’ve held Susie as a material witness.

  By the time the second police car drove up, and the police pulled me to the side and questioned me again, I got the idea that my apartment might be tied up for more than a day. The cops were frustrated that I wasn’t giving them more answers, but I was doing the best I could.

  “Look,” I repeated to Detective Bundt, “I have no information on who lived here before or how long. I don’t even know how long that basement apartment’s been unoccupied. I’m new at this, give me a break.”

  He slid his eyes over me, wrote something down, and moved on to the next subject.

  “How long has your father been dead?”

  “Maybe five months now.”

  The other detective butted in, “He have a good relationship with his tenants?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t have a good relationship with him. I never knew my father. I saw him once when I was twelve.”

  Bundt raised his eyebrows, but that was all. Two other police vehicles had pulled up, one was a van. He said to the other cop, “Okay, Caporelli, let’s wrap this up here.”

  And then to me, “Mr. Brown, the police are probably going to be working here for a couple of days. We’re sure it’s human remains. The skeleton is lodged in cement and that’s a problem. Got some people coming now who are going to help us figure out what to do about that. We’ll let you know what we decide, sir. We’ll try not to be a bother, but you do understand, we got our jobs to do.”

  Did I understand? Was a pig’s pussy pork? If he only knew. I was elated at the news. And I liked the way they called me “sir.” Must have something to do with me being a homeowner. And police protection, too? Harry won’t try to fuck with me with the cops around. I could’ve kissed Bundt smack on his lips, Caporelli, too.

  “I understand. You’ll have my full cooperation.”

  And I meant that.

  Oh yeah, and the squatters would be losing their nest. Things were looking up.

  Chapter 5

  Six days later the tape was still there. All the tenants in the brownstone across the street had been complaining. The police had used jackhammers, drills, and God knows what else on the wall of the basement, and as far as I knew, they still hadn’t removed the skeleton. If they wanted to bring it in one piece to their lab, they had to take out a concrete chunk of wall to do it. The whole situation seemed kind of absurd to me, but I had other things to think about and the skeleton was the least of my worries.

  Now that the tenants knew me, and knew where to find me, they were real comfortable about seeking me out any time of the day or night. Since most of them had paid their rent, their demands accelerated and they felt I owed them.

  Zeke, with his no-rent-paying ass, had the balls to complain about a leaking toilet, but would he let Seltzer in to fix it? Of course not. I suspected his place was a rat’s nest that he didn’t want disturbed.

  Seltz told me that he personally hadn’t crossed the man’s threshold in over twenty-plus years. Zeke allowed only a select few to enter his domain. So Selz slipped him tools through a cracked door and the nut fixed the toilet himself. Good. Anyway, Seltzer was kept hopping and so was I. I finally had to announce office hours and tacked a sign on my door to that effect.

  Today I was working on cleaning out the office. Seltzer worked upstairs, painting the hallway. Most of the big stuff had been cleared out of the office. Thank God that rusty commode had been removed.

  I sorted out the bales of junk inside the old bureau dresser that stood in the corner. Had two piles in front of me. Keep and Go. The Go pile looked like the Eiffel Tower. The smell of paint hung heavy in the air and reminded me that money was going out faster than it was coming in. Both buildings needed a lot of work and the clock was ticking. I wasn’t close to six hundred, let alone six thousand, dollars.

  The brownstone was getting unwanted publicity, too. Ever since the story about the skeleton came out in the New York Times, all kinds of city inspectors discovered me and descended on this building like rabid wolves.

  The fire inspector bugged me the most. The work he wanted me to do was going to cost me a couple of grand. As soon as I heard “refit the sprinkler heads, install fire alarms,” I stopped paying attention. But I didn’t miss his wink, or his not so subtle request for me to grease his palm. No way was I going to play Let’s Make a Deal with this turkey. I had principles after all—and by the way, a lack of money.

  He wrote up a couple of violations, handed them to me, and told me to make an appointment with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development
, HPD. Right away I knew the deal was not going to be about me preserving anything I owned.

  I was mucking around in the bureau when I ran across a red velvet bag stashed in the bottom drawer. I pulled it out and, curious, rummaged through its contents. Jesus. My hand closed around a twelve-inch-long pink rubber dick that was decorated with veins and everything. There was even pubic hair attached in weepy tufts on the base of it.

  A light tap-tap-tap sounded at the door of my office, and a mouse of a voice called my name.

  I jumped, startled, threw the dick on the Go pile, and shouted, “Come in.”

  Patty, second floor rear, edged through the door with her two-year-old, Josephine, on her hip. She inched her body into the room, like she was afraid of taking up too much space. The baby had crammed half her little fist into her mouth, and her head rested quiet against her mother’s shoulder.

  The pink dick seemed to glow from the Go pile. My face got hot. I hoped Patty didn’t notice.

  “Mr. Brown?”

  “Yeah, what can I do for you?”

  Patty was thin as a piece of spaghetti, not more than nineteen years old, with Jell-O pudding chocolate skin and defeated eyes. I waited. Everything about her said I can’t pay you this month.

  “Uh, Mr. Brown,” she said, “I can’t pay you this month. My check ain’t come, and I ain’t been able to get down to Social Services offices ’cause of Josephine being sick. And I can’t never get nobody on the phone as hard as I be trying. They won’t answer they phone.”

  Since I had called about five city offices myself this week, including the HPD, I could relate.

  “It’s okay. I can wait.” Where in the hell did that come from? That was the biggest lie I’d told all day. “How’s the little one doing?”

  “Um ... not so good. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She ain’t eating, don’t even cry much.”

  “You taken her to the doctor?”