He had spent the first week doing research on the place. It was a floor-through, which meant some privacy from other tenants, and the super, Barton, had the whole block to take care of, so he wasn’t around much.
The second week he had placed the ad in the Sunday Times. He was very careful — the apartment wasn’t undervalued too much, and the furniture being as old and motheaten as it was, it was easy to say his elderly aunt had just died and he was trying to unload the apartment so he could get back to L.A. and his acting career.
The calls had started coming in on Saturday evening, right after the early editions of the paper were unloaded at Grand Central Station. By Sunday evening, he had raked in almost twenty-five thousand, a large percentage of it in cash-under-the-table bribes.
Unfortunately, while he had been out at the bank depositing the money in his account, one of his marks had come back to look at the apartment again (pushy New Yorkers) and had run into Barton, who was repairing a faucet in the apartment below.
Damn.
Collin took one last, cautious sip from his mug, careful to leave a slosh at the bottom for the tea leaves, and twirled the mug three times, just like Madame Dora did. He couldn’t very well call her right now and explain the situation, so he tried to read the patterns himself but he didn’t see anything that made sense to him.
He glanced at his watch. It was almost three. Ethel was due back around six. That gave him three hours to come up with a plan for disposing of Barton’s body. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he couldn’t just leave him there. Ethel might have a heart attack finding him, and he was afraid he might have given her some clue to his real identity when they had met.
He checked under the sink for garbage bags. Barton was a little guy, but still too big for a regular Hefty. Maybe a lawn and leaf bag. He hied himself down to the local supermarket, bought a ten-pack and some rubber gloves, and raced back, wondering what he’d do with the body once he bagged it.
Trash day was tomorrow, but it might leak, or attract animals before then. And God forbid some bag person coming along looking for empty soda cans or food. No, this required a car. And then he thought of Barton’s. Barton drove an old Mercedes — probably had a brother in the business, Collin thought.
Collin frisked the corpse, removing his I.D., the Walkman, and the key ring Barton kept on his belt, about seventy dollars from his wallet, and a nice diamond pinky ring that he thought he could have sized to fit him, then stuffed Barton into the trash bag, all scrunched up. It was a tight fit, but he had gotten the job done before Barton had started to stiffen up too much. He wasn’t too keen on touching him, since he was cooling off a bit, but what can you do? It was an emergency. He walked around the bag a couple of times, realized it looked very much like there was a body inside, and lifted a couple of ancient towels from the bathroom to round out the shape a bit.
By now it was almost five o’clock, and Collin was beginning to perspire. Sooner or later he was going to have to go out. He had cleaned the apartment up the night before. Now he did a quick swipe of all the surfaces he could find, trying to remove fingerprints, and then stacked his belongings by the door. He did a couple of trial runs, taking trash out to the containers in the basement well by the front door. Fine. Rush hour was starting, and the street was full of pedestrians.
He took a walk around the block, found Barton’s car not far away, went back to the apartment, took a few deep breaths, and started out with his backpack, his suitcase, and the body on a king-sized luggage carrier. He prayed the bag wouldn’t break.
Things went fine at first. No problem. Then he hit a rough piece of pavement and the body shifted. Collin almost wet his pants. He waited until a young couple with briefcases passed him, then righted his burden and went on, more carefully this time.
He fumbled with the trunk lock — Jeez, Barton carried a lot of keys — all the while trying to keep himself from looking around to see if he was being watched, and deposited his trash bag, trying to lift it as though it had clothes in it instead of a body wrapped in terrycloth. He slammed the trunk, went around to the back door and deposited his backpack, the suitcase, and the luggage carrier.
Collin hastily went back to the apartment, cleaned up the blood, the rolling pin, and the sink, and gave the place one last fond glance before he left. He stuck Ethel’s keys in her mailbox, as they had agreed, and went out to the Mercedes.
Collin hadn’t driven in a long time — there wasn’t much need to in New York, and he couldn’t afford car insurance anyway — but he managed to get the car revved up and going. He raced down to his apartment, took a shower, and tried to get Ariana on the phone. He wasn’t sure what to do with the car, but he thought he should leave it somewhere. Barton wasn’t exactly going to be reporting it stolen, and he lived alone, so there wasn’t much danger for a while of anyone’s noticing it was gone. He certainly had plenty of time to get to the airport with Ariana tonight if he could persuade her to come with him.
He didn’t see much problem with that. After all, Iosop, the psychic he’d seen last week, had said he saw Ariana getting married and going away, which had cheered Collin up immensely.
Meanwhile, in another brownstone, this one in the elegant Murray Hill section of New York in the East 30’s, on a quiet, treelined street where every other mahogany door had the brass nameplate of a medical practice or a foundation, a distinguished looking middle-aged man, elegantly dressed, was fumbling with a Phillips head screwdriver in the fading evening sunlight. The street was deserted, and even the sounds of traffic were distant, muted.
“Damn,” he whispered as a tiny screw resisted his efforts. The brass doorplate read The Porphyria Foundation, est. 1922. Inside, he could hear the shuffle of boxes and furniture being moved.
A beautiful young woman — dark-haired, olive-skinned, with the palest of violet eyes — opened the door cautiously from the other side and glanced up and down the street. Seeing no one, she stepped up on tiptoes to kiss him, pressing her body into his.
“We’re almost done, Carl.”
“Okay, Ariana,” he whispered back. “Call Gunther and have him come with the van now. I’ll help you move things out front when I’m done here.”
The phone rang at eight that night, waking Ethel Berg from a sound sleep. She was so tired that she hadn’t even bothered to unpack. She pulled herself to a sitting position, fumbled for her glasses on the nightstand, and glanced foggily at the bedside clock.
“Hi,” the voice said. “I copied down the phone number when I was there yesterday, and thought I’d call and see if I can move in a few days early... Who is this?”
“You have the wrong number,” she said, dropping the phone back on the receiver with a yawn.
A few seconds later it rang again, and the caller repeated his little spiel.
“Young man, I’m afraid you have the wrong number. There is no apartment available here.”
“Is this 555-1916?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.”
“And the address is 1607 East 52nd Street, apartment three?”
“Yes.”
“Well... the man I talked to yesterday said his Aunt Ethel had died and he was renting her apartment.”
Ethel, by then, had gotten her mental processes in some semblance of order, but when she figured out what the caller was saying, she began to feel her face go pale under the layers of now-caked-on old-lady face powder.
“Well, my name is Ethel, but I’m certainly not dead, nor do I have any intention of giving up my apartment.” And with that she slammed down the receiver again.
After the third such call, she removed the jack from the wall, vowing, if she could remember to do so, to call Mr. Barton in the morning.