Out on the Cutting Edge (4 page)

"Completely empty?"

"No, come to think of it. She left the bed linen. Tenants have to supply their own linen. I used to furnish it, but I changed the policy, oh, I'd say fifteen years ago. Her sheets and blankets and pillowcase were still on the bed. But there were no clothes in the closet, nothing in the drawers, no food in the refrigerator.

No question but that she'd moved out, she was gone."

"I wonder why she left the linen."

"Maybe she was moving someplace where they supplied it. Maybe she was leaving town and only had room to carry so much. Maybe she plain forgot it. When you pack up to leave a motel room you don't take the sheets and blankets, not unless you're a thief, and this is sort of like living in a hotel. I've had them leave linen behind before. Lord, that's not the only thing I've had them leave behind."

She left that hanging there, but I let it lie. I said, "You said she was a waitress."

"Well, that's how she earned her living. She was an actress, or fixing to be one. Most of my people are trying to get into show business.

My younger people. I've got a few older folks been with me for years and years, living on pensions and government checks. I've got one woman doesn't pay me but seventeen dollars and thirty cents a week, if you can believe that, and she's got one of the best rooms in the house.

And I have to climb five flights of stairs to collect her rent, and I'll tell you, there are some Wednesday mornings when it doesn't seem worth the effort."

"Do you know where Paula was working just before she left?"

"I don't even know that she was working. If she told me I don't remember, and I doubt she told me. I

don't get too close to them, you know. I'll pass the time of day, but that's about all. Because, you know, they come and they go. My old folks are with me until the Lord calls them home, but my young people are in and out of here, in and out. They get discouraged and go home, or they save up some money and get a regular apartment, or they get married or move in with someone, whatever they do."

"How long was Paula here?"

"Three years, or the next thing to it. She moved in just three years ago this week, and I know because I looked it up when her father was here. Of course she moved out two months ago, so she wasn't here the whole three years. Even so, she was with me longer than most. I've got a few have been with me longer than that, besides my rent-controlled old people, I mean. But not many."

"Tell me something about her."

"Tell you what?"

"I don't know. Who were her friends? What did she do with her time? You're an observant woman, you must have noticed things."

"I'm observant, yes, but sometimes I turn a blind eye. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"I have fifty-four rooms I rent out, and some of the rooms are larger and two girls will share one. I have, I think it's sixty-six tenants at the moment. All I ask is are they quiet, are they decent, do they pay the rent on time. I don't ask how they earn their money."

"Was Paula turning tricks?"

"I have no reason to think that she was. But I couldn't swear on a Bible that she wasn't. I'll say this, I'd bet there's at least four of my tenants earning money that way, and likely more than that, and the thing is I

don't know who they are. If a woman gets up and goes out to work, I don't know if she's carrying plates in a restaurant or doing something else in a massage parlor or whatever they call it this year. My tenants can't have guests to their rooms. That's my business. What they do off the premises is their business."

"You never met any of her friends?"

"She never brought anyone home. It wasn't allowed. I'm not stupid, I know people will sneak someone in now and then, but I discourage it enough that no one tries it on a regular basis. If she was friendly with any of the girls in the building, or any of the young men, for that matter, well, I wouldn't know about it."

"She didn't leave you a forwarding address."

"No. I never heard a word from her after the last time she paid her rent."

"What did you do with her mail?"

"Gave it back to the postman. Gone, no forwarding. She didn't get much mail. A phone bill, the usual junk mail that everybody gets."

"You got along all right with her?"

"I would say so. She was quiet, she was well-spoken, she was clean. She paid her rent. She was late a few times over the three years."

She paged through the ledger. "Here she paid two weeks at once. And here she missed for almost a month, and then she paid an extra fifty dollars a week until she was even with me. I'll let tenants do that if they've been with me for a while and I know they're good for it. And if they don't make a habit of it. You have to carry people some of the time, because everybody has bad times now and then."

"Why do you suppose she left without saying anything to you?"

"I don't know," she said.

"No idea?"

"They'll do that, you know. Just up and disappear, steal out the door with their suitcases in the middle of the night. But they'll generally do that when they're a week or so late with the rent, and she was the next thing to paid up. In fact she may have been completely paid up, because I don't know for sure when she left. At the most she was two days late, but for all I know she paid on the Monday and moved out a day later, because there was ten days that I didn't lay eyes on her between the last time she paid rent and the day I used my passkey."

"It seems odd she would leave without a word."

"Well, maybe it was late when she left and she didn't want to disturb me. Or maybe it was a decent hour but I wasn't home. I'm out at the movies every chance I get, you know. There's nothing I like better than going to the movies in the middle of a weekday afternoon, when the theater's next to empty and there's just you and the picture. I was thinking about getting myself a VCR. I could see any movie I wanted any time of the day, and it doesn't cost but two or three dollars to rent one. But it's not the same, watching on your own set in your own room, and on a bitty TV screen. It's like the difference between praying at home and in church."

I spent an hour or so that night going door-to-door in the rooming house, starting at the top floor and working my way down. A majority of the tenants were out. I spoke with half a dozen tenants and didn't learn anything. Only one of the persons I talked to recognized Paula's picture, and she hadn't even realized Paula had moved out.

I called it quits after a while and stopped at the manager's door on my way out. She was watching Jeopardy, and she kept me waiting until the commercial. "That's a good program," she said, turning the sound off. "They get smart people to be on that show. You have to have a quick mind."

I asked which room had been Paula's.

"She was in number twelve. I think." She looked it up. "Yes, twelve. That's up one flight."

"I don't suppose it's still vacant."

She laughed. "Didn't I tell you I didn't have any vacancies? I don't think it was more than a day before I rented it. Let me see. The Price girl took that room on the eighteenth of July. When did I say Paula moved out?"

"We're not sure, but it was the sixteenth when you found out she was gone."

"Well, there you are. Vacant the sixteenth, rented the eighteenth.

Probably rented the seventeenth, and she moved in the following day.

My vacancies don't last any time to speak of. I've got a waiting list right now with half a dozen names on it."

"You say the new tenant's name is Price?"

"Georgia Price. She's a dancer. A lot of them are dancers the past year or so."

"I think I'll see if she's in." I gave her one of the photos. "If you think of anything," I said, "my number's on the back."

She said, "That's Paula. It's a good likeness. Your name is Scudder? Here, just a minute, you can have one of my cards."

Florence Edderling, her business card said. Rooms to Let.

"People call me Flo," she said. "OrFlorence , it doesn't matter."

Georgia Price wasn't in, and I'd knocked on enough doors for the day. I bought a sandwich at a deli and

ate it on the way to my meeting.

The next morning I took Warren Hoeldtke's check to the bank and drew out some cash, including a hundred in singles. I kept a supply of them loose in my right front trouser pocket.

You couldn't go anywhere without being asked for money.

Sometimes I shook them off. Sometimes I reached into my pocket and handed over a dollar.

Some years back I had quit the police force and left my wife and sons and moved into my hotel. It was around that time that I started tithing, giving a tenth of whatever income I received to whatever house of worship I happened to visit next. I had taken to hanging out in churches a lot. I don't know what I was looking for there and I can't say whether or not I found it, but it seemed somehow appropriate for me to pay out ten percent of my earnings for whatever it gave me.

After I sobered up I went on tithing for a while, but it no longer felt right and I stopped. That didn't feel right either. My first impulse was to give the money to AA, but AA didn't want donations. They pass the hat to cover expenses, but a dollar a meeting is about as much as they want from you.

So I'd started giving the money away to the people who were coming out on the streets and asking for it.

I didn't seem to be comfortable keeping it for myself, and I hadn't yet thought of a better thing to do with it.

I'm sure some of the people spent my handouts on drink and drugs, and why not? You spend your money on what you need the most. At first I found myself trying to screen the beggars, but I didn't do that for long. On the one hand it seemed presumptuous of me, and at the same time it felt too much like work, a form of instant detection. When I gave the money to churches I hadn't bothered to find out what they were doing with it, or whether or not I approved. I'd been willing then for my largesse to purchase Cadillacs for monsignors. Why shouldn't I be as willing now to underwrite Porsches for crack dealers?

While I was in a giving mood, I walked over to Midtown North and handed fifty dollars to Detective Joseph Durkin.

I'd called ahead, so he was in the squadroom waiting for me. It had been a year or more since I'd seen him but he looked the same. He'd put on a couple of pounds, no more than he could carry. The booze was starting to show up in his face, but that's no reason to quit. Who ever stopped drinking because of a

few broken blood vessels, a little bloom in the cheeks?

He said, "I wondered if that Honda dealer'd get hold of you. He had a German name but I don't remember it."

"Hoeldtke. And it's Subarus, not Hondas."

"That's a real important distinction, Matt. How're you doing, anyway?"

"Not bad."

"You look good. Clean living, right?"

"That's my secret."

"Early hours? Plenty of fiber in your diet?"

"Sometimes I go to the park and gnaw the bark right off a tree."

"Me too. I just can't help myself." He reached up a hand and smoothed his hair back. It was dark brown, close to black, and it hadn't needed smoothing; it lay flat against his scalp the way he'd combed it.

"It's good to see you, you know that?"

"Good to see you, Joe."

We shook hands. I had palmed a ten and two twenties, and they moved from my hand to his during the handshake. His hand disappeared from view and came up empty. He said, "I gather you did yourself a little good with him."

"I don't know," I said. "I took some money from him and I'll knock on some doors. I don't know what good it's going to do."

"You put his mind at rest, that's all. At least he's doing all he can, you know? And you won't soak him."

"No."

"I took a picture from him and had them run it at the morgue. They had a couple of unidentified white females since June, but she doesn't match up to any of 'em."

"I figured you'd done that."

"Yeah, well, that's all I did. It's not police business."

"I know."

"Which is why I referred him to you."

"I know, and I appreciate it."

"My pleasure. You got any sense of it yet?"

"It's a little early. One thing, she moved out. Packed everything and took off."

"Well, that's good," he said. "Makes it a little more likely she's alive."

"I know, but there are things that don't make sense. You said you checked the morgue. What about hospitals?"

"You thinking coma?"

"It could be."

"When'd they hear from her last, sometime in June? That's a long time to be in a coma."

"Sometimes they're out for years."

"Yeah, that's true."

"And she paid her rent the last time on the sixth of July. So what's that, two months and a few days."

"Still a long time."

"Not for the person in the coma. It's like the wink of an eye."

He looked at me. He had pale gray eyes that don't show you much, but they showed a little grudging amusement now. " 'The wink of an eye,' " he said. "First she checks out of her rooming house, then she checks into a hospital."

"All it takes is a coincidence," I said. "She moves, and in the course of the move or a day or two later she has an accident. No ID, some public-spirited citizen snags her purse while she's unconscious, and she's Jane Doe in a ward somewhere. She didn't call her parents and tell them she was moving because the accident happened first. I'm not saying it happened, just that it could have."

"I suppose. You checking hospitals?"

"I thought I could walk over to the ones in the neighborhood.

Roosevelt, St. Clare's."

"Of course the accident could have happened anywhere."