“Sure. Miz Doaks, Seven B. I ain’t seen her in quite a while neither, runnin’ in an’ out like she usually does. A regular jogger. Keeps in shape, all right.” His small gray eyes journeyed up and down Prudence as if they had a lascivious mind of their own. “She’s an actress or somethin’. I just figured she had a job outta town. Summer stock theater, or whatever it is them kinda people do.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t that. I talked to her literary agent. He said he’s been trying to get in touch with her, too, and hasn’t had any luck. What I’d like is for you to unlock her apartment so we can see if anything’s happened to her.”
“You mean is she up there dead?”
Pru swallowed. Dead? Not Vera. Not possible. “I’d prefer to think that perhaps she’s sick and unable to get to the phone. Or possibly she’s taken a trip and there’ll be some sign of that.”
“Summer stock,” the super said again. He used a filthy rag to wipe his gleaming face. He seemed to see for the first time the look of apprehension in this obviously refined woman’s eyes. Maybe it was because of him. He didn’t like it that his appearance might be scaring her. Slightly embarrassed he forced a smile. “I been workin’ on the plumbin’,” he explained. “Dirty work.”
“You don’t have to go in yourself,” Pru said, assuming he was concerned about smudging Vera’s apartment. These were two people who definitely couldn’t communicate on the same wavelength. It was more than frustrating for Pru. “I just want to glance around and make sure she isn’t there.”
“Then what?”
Pru’s plan was to go to the police and see if they’d list Vera as a missing person, but she decided not to involve the super in that.
“Then I’ll know,” she said simply.
The super made a big show of considering. “I don’t usually do something like that unless it’s the police or somebody like that askin’. Or unless I know there’s some kinda trouble in a unit.”
“Well,” Pru said, running out of patience, “I can get the police. But time might be important. If Vera’s up there with some sort of health problem and the worst happens, I don’t want to be in any way responsible. Nor do you, I’m sure.”
The prospect of legal responsibility did the trick. “You got a point there.” He untucked the dirty rag from his belt and used it to wipe his hands. “I’ll go get my passkey, and we can take a look-see.”
As they rode the elevator up, he said, “Miz Doaks is one of the nicer tenants here. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her, so I guess it is best we decided to look in on her.”
Covering his ass. Not so dumb. “We have to look out for each other,” Pru said.
“Used to be you didn’t have to,” the super said, “but now you do. In this city, you sure do.”
After he unlocked the door he stood back, obviously intending to stay in the hall. His visitor’s apprehension had proved contagious.
Pru opened the door to a stillness and staleness that suggested the apartment had been unoccupied for some time. She stepped inside, noting that Vera’s home was functional and fairly well decorated.
Immediately she noticed the potted plants on a windowsill. They were brown and dead.
Pru’s heart began to pound as she moved deeper into the small apartment. She held her breath as she glanced in each room.
No sign of Vera.
Now she wished the super had come in with her. She had to make herself open the door to the closet in the bedroom, and to another in the short hall. She had to make sure Vera wasn’t in one of them, that someone hadn’t locked or hidden her out of sight.
But Vera was in neither of the closets. The one in the hall held only linens; the one in the bedroom, what looked like Vera’s full complement of clothes and shoes. Pru made herself peer under the bed. There was nothing there but dust bunnies and two suitcases, one large, one small, both with wheels. Both empty.
It seemed unlikely that Vera was traveling.
When Pru went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator she found sour milk, and green mold on cheese and meat. In the produce drawer were limp brown celery stalks and two shriveled tomatoes.
This wasn’t good. The dead plants, unpacked suitcases, closet full of clothes, and the obviously old contents of the refrigerator. Something was very wrong.
Pru went back into the living room and noticed the phone with its answering machine blinking red, signaling there were messages. She thought about playing the messages and then decided against it. Maybe she shouldn’t touch anything in the apartment.
When she returned to the hall she watched as the super relocked the apartment.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
“Yes,” Pru said. “She isn’t in there.”
But where is she?
She decided that her next stop would be the nearest NYPD precinct house.
Pearl stood staring at herself in the restroom mirror. She didn’t like admitting that they were getting to her. At odd times of the day or night, she found herself wondering and had to check.
She leaned toward her mirror image and with her right hand bent her right ear forward, tilting her elbow in as she rotated her body to the left.
There, on the right side of her neck, was the mole, usually invisible behind her ear from this angle.
She leaned in closer, turning her head left at an extreme angle while looking right, so she might have a better view.
Larger.
The mole, or brown spot, or whatever it was, was definitely larger than it had been the last time she’d checked.
No. Not definitely.
She realized she was hurting her ear and released it and leaned back away from the mirror.
This was stupid, this constant self-examination. Her mother and Milton Kahn had driven her to this state of mind with their idiotic harping on the mole. Or spot. Or whatever it was. If she was going to keep examining it, she should wait at least a few days so it had time to become larger and she could actually see a difference.
As she started to turn away from the mirror, she couldn’t help herself. She folded her right ear forward and looked again at the mole. Or spot. Or whatever it was.
Not larger.
Not definitely.
What is it?
Something to worry about. That was for sure. You go around day after day and think you’re healthy and secure, and all the time something’s working on you, against you, without you even suspecting it. It could appear harmless, simply a part of you that you’ve gotten used to, but it could kill you as surely as a safe falling on your head, and almost as suddenly. Like your own body deciding it had lived long enough so it was time to turn on you. On itself.
Pearl let her ear flop back in place.
Don ’t be so morose. Don’t think that way.
But she knew it was true. Life could be like that, end like that.
In a boarded-up imported dry goods warehouse in the East Village, Vera Doaks’s hollowed-out corpse dangled motionless in the darkness. Her internal organs were reduced to a coagulated hardened mass an inch thick on the concrete floor, inedible now even to the rats and insects. Other than considerable damage to the feet and hands, the corpse itself was only moderately eaten on, as it was a tricky task even for a resourceful New York rat to traverse the crossbeam and make its way down the rope that bound the ankles. What was left of Vera Doaks was beginning to take on the look of dry mummification.