And what harm could one teeny-weeny phone call do? All I wanted was to hear the sound of his luscious voice and talk to him for a minute or two, ask him to forgive me for the way I had acted last night. (Last night? Was it only last night that he’d flown into a rage and walked out on me? With everything that had happened to me since, it felt more like a month ago.)
The man who answered the phone told me Dan wasn’t there. “Street’s out on the street,” was all he said.
I hung up and smoked a cigarette, giving myself a phony pep talk, working like the devil to keep my soul from sagging to the floor. Dan or no Dan, I couldn’t afford to let my energies fall. I had a lot on my plate that day, and there was only one way to deal with it all. Stay hungry.
Chapter 15
THE CHELSEA REALTY OFFICE WAS ON THE ground floor of a three-story brownstone. The large hand-painted sign in the front window showed the name in bold black letters above a bed of orange-yellow flowers with dark centers. Looked like black-eyed Susans to me. It was odd to see them rising from a windowsill heaped with snow. The company logo appeared again on the entrance door to the office-gold letters with black outlines. Just the name, no posies.
I pushed the buzzer but I didn’t hear it ring. Thinking the bell was out of order, I knocked lightly on the door and waited for somebody to let me in. Nothing happened, so I tried the knob. To my great surprise the door clicked open, and I cautiously stepped inside.
At first I thought the place was deserted. There was nobody sitting up front at either of the two old wooden desks that-along with the bank of tall wooden filing cabinets-practically filled the long, narrow room. As I stood there, however, listening to my own jumpy heartbeat and looking around at the pale green walls, dying potted plants, and badly scuffed bare wood floor, I realized I wasn’t alone. There was somebody in the back room. A man. I couldn’t see him through the half-open door between the two rooms, but I could hear him plainly.
“So what the hell’re you tellin’ me, Lily? It’s not over yet? Haven’t you had enough? Jesus H. Christ! I did what you wanted. Give it up already!” His voice was extremely loud, and he sounded very angry. Since there was a long silence after he spoke, and no audible reply, I figured he was talking on the phone. To somebody named Lily. (Am I a masterful detective, or what?)
I stood perfectly still in the front office, trying not to make a sound, straining both ears toward the half-open door. If the man in the back room had anything further to say, I wanted to hear every word.
Big mistake. “Screw you!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “I’m through! Go find yourself another stooge!” There was a loud crash, made-I assumed-by the collision of the receiver with the body of the phone, and then a harsh string of curse words I’d rather not repeat. (Use your wildest imagination, and you still won’t come close.)
By this time I was feeling kind of scared. I mean, this guy was going off his rocker in there! There were sounds coming out of that room that brought to mind the breaking of human bones and the gnashing of vicious tiger teeth. Not wanting to meet the madman face-to-face, or madden him further with my surprise appearance, I decided to flee the Chelsea Realty office and come back later, when he was feeling better.
Good plan-bad timing.
I had just opened the front door to leave when the man came storming out of the back room, growling obscenities and flailing his fists against every wall and piece of furniture in reach. He looked like he wanted to kill somebody. And his murderous demeanor became even more pronounced when he saw me.
“What the…?!! Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing here?” His mean little eyes were blazing and his short, wiry body was poised to attack. And I may have been hallucinating, but I would swear that two big streams of fire were shooting out of his nostrils.
“I’m sorry!” I sputtered, backing away from the heat. “I rang and knocked, but nobody answered, so I came on in. The door was open.”
He banged his fist on the closest file cabinet. “I’m gonna fire that stupid girl! She never locks up when she leaves the office!” He looked at his watch and cried, “Goddamn it! It’s three-thirty already! I sent the brat to show some office space over an hour ago and she’s still not back!” He gave me a closer look and then an overt head-to-toe once-over. “Hey, can you type? You want a job?”
“Uh, no. No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I’ve already got one.”
My rejection angered him even more. He shoved his fingers through his coarse brown hair and glared at me, screwing his long skinny pockmarked face into an ugly scowl. “Then what’re you here for, sister?” he barked. “Out with it! I haven’t got all day!”
Was the man so upset he’d forgotten what kind of business he was in?
“I’m looking for a new apartment,” I said, straightening my backbone and pasting a cordial smile on my kisser. I took the ad for Judy’s place out of my skirt pocket and handed it to him. “I saw this listing in the newspaper yesterday, and it sounds just right for me. So I was hoping to see the apartment this afternoon. Is it still available?”
He looked down at the ad in his hand, then back up at me. Now he was smiling also-so broadly and intensely I thought his tiny, tobacco-stained teeth would pop out of his gums and blast out of his mouth like buckshot. “Sure, doll,” he said, suddenly acting like my best friend. “The pad’s available. And it’s vacant, too, so I can show it to you right now-soon as you fill out an application.” Scooting over to the front desk, he snatched a printed form out of the top left drawer and gave it to me. “Need a pencil?” Before I could answer, he plucked one from the holder on the desk and handed it over.
What a chameleon! I thought, marveling at the man’s quicksilver mood change. Was he merely busting to make a buck, or was he hustling to unload a bad luck rental where a young woman had recently been murdered? From the way he was smiling and sweating, I figured both motives were applicable.
“Thank you, Mr… ah… Mr…?”
“Swift,” he said, still grinning, “but you can call me Roscoe. Come sit over here while you fill out the form.”
He snaked his arm around my waist and guided me over to the guest chair at the side of the desk.
To avoid any sneaky fanny pats or pinches, I sat down quickly.
“Thank you, Roscoe,” I said, gazing up at his lizardlike face and batting my lashes to beat the band. I was trying to look alluring and flirtatious (as Abby always advised me to do), but the effort was making me kind of sick to my stomach, so I probably just looked like a bilious cow with gnats in her eyes.
Deciding to ditch the nauseating coquette routine and get down to business, I turned my attention to the application form and hastily filled it out, giving my name as Phoebe Starr and listing my address as 104 Christopher-which was just a few blocks away from where I really lived. I put down my true phone number, however, in case Roscoe decided to dial it to check me out. Then I gave Abby as a reference, stating that she was my current landlady.
The minute I finished, Roscoe swerved over to the desk, snatched the form out of my hands, and shoved it into the top right-hand drawer. Then he pulled a set of keys out of a different drawer and jingled them in the air. “C’mon, doll,” he said with another too-wide grin. “The apartment’s right around the corner. And I got a hunch it’s the perfect pad for you.”
He didn’t mention that it had been somewhat less than perfect for the last tenant.
STANDING IN THE HALL OUTSIDE JUDY’S apartment, waiting for Roscoe to fish the keys out of his pocket and open up, I studied the lock, knob, panels, and jamb of the door for evidence of breaking and entering. Terry was right. There were no unusual marks on any of the metal parts, and no telltale nicks or gashes in the wood.