“Humor me, okay?”
He looked at me oddly, bobbed his head, and disappeared for a moment. He came back out pulling on an overcoat. It was bitterly cold, about ten degrees. The sky was pale blue and utterly cloudless, giving the white world around us the look of a dazzling, gigantic wedding cake. The brilliance burned straight to the back of my skull and made me feel slightly woozy.
“I can’t believe my story isn’t already in your files ten times over.”
I didn’t answer, despite a long opportunity, so he finally gave up with an exaggerated sigh. “The cab driver knocked on my door and said he wasn’t getting any answer from Miss Harris’s apartment. That had happened to me before. Usually people call several cabs and take the first one that comes. That way, they’re sure of not being late. You know, the cabs around here are not famous for being on time.”
“Go on.” We were standing in the entrance tunnel, our hands in our pockets, our mouths and nostrils spewing vapor like chimneys. I wondered why he hadn’t invited me in.
“Well, anyway, I didn’t think that’s what she was doing because she’d never done it before, you know, and she used cabs a lot. So I knew it had to be something else, like maybe she had forgotten or had changed her plans, or maybe was even in the shower.”
“So you went to her door.”
“Right. And I knocked and got no answer. That’s when I noticed through the window that the place was a mess. I called you people first s pekno thing. I never even went inside, not until they took the body away a long time later. Even then, it was horrible. I threw up the first time I went in to clean up.”
“Show me the apartment.”
“Oh, I can’t do that. It’s rented.”
“Is anyone there now?”
“No. She’s at work.”
“Then there’s no harm done.”
He looked at me anxiously, torn between caving in and telling me to take a hike. The conflict made him grumpy. “I don’t know if this is right. Anyway, it’s ridiculous.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. If I was a prospective renter, you’d show me one of your apartments in a flash, wouldn’t you?”
“This isn’t the same.”
I officiously looked at my watch, hoping to hell he wouldn’t ask for a warrant. “You want to get the key, please?”
He reluctantly stepped back through his door and reappeared with a large key ring. “You’d think you people had better things to do.”
I let him grumble. He led the way, stepping awkwardly through the snow he hadn’t yet shoveled. We ended up at the door nearest the brick wall on the first floor.
“I hope you aren’t going to stir this whole thing up again. The publicity last time almost cost me my job, and it took me months to rent this unit out.”
“Don’t worry. I’m just clearing up some details-pure paperwork.”
He paused at the door. “You want in?”
“That was the idea.” I pressed both palms against my eyes for a moment’s relief from the light.
While he pounded on the door to make sure the place was empty, I looked around the corner at a narrow alleyway between the back of the building and the high brick wall. It was more of a slit, really, just a bit wider than the breadth of my shoulders, and barred at the far end by a tall chained gate. A glance across the courtyard showed the same layout for the opposite wing of the building.
I walked down the alleyway, which was fairly free of snow, to a small rectangular window mounted head-high on the wall. The manager appeared at the corner. “No one’s home. I’d appreciate it if we could get this over quickly. I’ve got shoveling to do.”
I nodded to him and cupped my hands around my face to ward off the sunlight as I peered through the window. I was looking straight into the bedroom and the bathroom beyond-a perfect view of the glass-walled shower stall.
“What are you doing, anyway?” Boyers’s voice had a whine to it I was finding increasingly unattractive. I didn’t answer him and retraced my steps to the apartment door.
Lightly scented warm air billowed out as he opened the door and ushered me in. He called, “Hello? Is anyone here?” and then closed the door behind us. The darkness was a pure ss wight="0em" blessing.
We were standing in a small living room, boxy but pleasant. Nice wall-to-wall, nice furniture, good paint job. There was a short hallway beyond, kitchen on one side, closets on the other. The bed and bathroom I’d seen from the window were at the back. It wasn’t imaginative, but it was clean, tidy, and well maintained.
“Do you rent this furnished?”
“Yes.”
“Did you when Harris lived here?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What did you charge her?”
“Let’s see. I think it was two seventy-five a month, heat included. It was close to that anyway.”
“And now?”
“Three twenty-five. Why, you interested?”
I ignored that. “Who rents it now?”
“A young lady.”
I looked around the bedroom and picked up a framed photograph on the bedside table. A good-looking blonde girl in her twenties, arm-in-arm with some hunk with football on the brain. “Is this her?”
Boyers sidled up and peered around my shoulder. “That’s right.”
“Pretty.”
“Oh, yes. Friendly, too.”
“Did Harris pay her rent on time?”
“Every month like clockwork.”
“How?”
“With a check. Vermont National.”
“How do you think she was set financially? Well off? Scraping by?”
“Well, she wasn’t scraping by, I know that. There are cheaper places to rent than this, and for most of her stay here, she didn’t seem to have a job.”
“What did she do with her spare time?”
“I don’t know everything, of course. In fact, all I can say is that every time the sun came out, she was tanning by the pool. She had beautiful skin.”
“What kind of swimsuit did she wear?”
He glanced at me, quickly and nervously. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was a bikini.”
“You don’t know if it was a bikini?”
“Well, I imagine it was, if that’s still what they call it.”
“In other words, she didn’t wear much of anything.”
His face reddened. “It was a small suit.”
“Tell me about Davis.”
He straightened s stign his back-safer ground. “That was a mistake.”
“What was?”
“My hiring him. I felt sorry for him-a Vietnam vet down on his luck. He said he’d come here to get away from the stink of the city. Instead, he brought it with him.”
“Where did he live?”
“Across the courtyard. It’s the match of this apartment, in fact, on the ground floor, but it’s an efficiency to allow for the laundry and utility rooms.”
“Did you ever notice Harris and Davis having anything to do with one another?”
“No. They’d be out by the pool together on sunny days, but only when he was working out there. And of course there were usually other people too-you know, other tenants. I never saw them even speaking to each other.”
“Did Davis mix with anyone here that you know?”
“No, never. He came and went and minded his own business, so it seemed. Of course, God only knows what he was doing during his time off in other parts of town.”
“Did you ever see him drunk or doped up?”
“Oh, no. I would have fired him if I had.”
“No friends ever dropped by to see him?”
“Not that I ever saw.”
“How about Harris? Any friends there?”
“You know, I never did see anyone. That’s strange, but I guess they both were loners. I’d never thought of that before.”
I walked over to the bedroom window. The light was pretty dim because of the brick wall.
“Isn’t that a shame? There used to be a pretty view out that window years ago. But they built that mess out there-that storage rental place. That’s when people started trespassing to use the pool late at night; there were some ugly incidents, as I’m sure some of your people would remember. That’s why they built the wall. The view was ruined anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.”