Styx & Stone (17 page)

“Did you overhear anything besides lewd behavior?”

“His girlfriends were often jealous. They carped at him a lot.”

“How many were there?”

“Couldn’t say,” she spat, shaking her head. “There were two regulars and lots of brief affairs. What kind of girl visits a man in his apartment? Really!”

Nice girls, sometimes, I thought. Other times not-so-nice girls. But I kept my thoughts to myself.

“Would you be able to recognize the two regulars?” I asked.

“I ought to. Used to bump into them in the morning when they crept out of here, hair all mussed and sleep in their eyes. The young one didn’t like to look me in the eye in the morning. I suspect she was ashamed. The older one just smiled a dreamy smile and said hello on her way to the stairs. Probably doesn’t have much reputation left to protect.”

“Did Ercolano have a cleaning lady?” I asked.

Tillie shook her head, a smirk stretched across her wrinkled face. “No, but the older girlfriend used to scour that place at least once a week. I saw her on all fours in the open doorway, hair tied up in a red kerchief—a red-and-black kerchief—scrubbing his floors right out into the hallway.”

McKeever and I exchanged glances. Ercolano seemed to have had some system.

“How old were these two women?” asked the detective.

“I wouldn’t rightly call the younger one a woman,” she said. “No more than twenty-one, twenty-three years old. About your age, dearie,” she said to me. “A shame when a young girl loses her way and is spoilt like that.”

“What about the older one?” I asked.

“Thirty-five, forty? I don’t know. No debutante, but pretty enough and well preserved.”

“You said they often quarreled,” said McKeever. “Did you ever hear anything violent? Any fights?”

“Nope. The young one cried a lot, begging him, you know, to love her proper and all. The old one stood up for herself a little more. She mostly complained about the other women. In the end, though, he always had his way with both of them.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” I asked.

“He was Italian. Need I say more?” I was sure she would. And she did: “That’s all they think of:
amore!
Lust. After a while it poisons the soul.” She shook her head in pity.

McKeever and I took another tour of Ercolano’s rooms, leaving Mrs. Arnsberger to her post of chief snooper and morals warden. We poked through Ercolano’s drawers, looking for something that might help trace the two women. There was nothing.

“What was he wearing that day?” I asked.

“Kinlaw told me he found a pair of trousers and a shirt on the bed. It looked like he took them off just before getting into the bath.”

“Did he empty his pockets?”

“The guys from the Twentieth bagged everything. They found a wallet with cash, Italian passport, keys. The usual. This wasn’t a robbery if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I shook my head. “No, but I’d sure like to have a look at that stuff.”

“I can get it,” he said. “What do you think you’ll find, anyway?”

“Who knows? You just have to look, that’s all.”

“Say, where does your nosiness come from?”

“I’m a reporter,” I said, slightly exaggerating my modest role at a small, upstate daily. I wanted to impress him.

“If you were a man, you’d make a good detective.”

I’m sure he thought he was complimenting me, but that identity—a girl wanting to do a man’s job—had throttled me for too long. I wasn’t trying to blaze any trails for women; I just wanted to be a reporter, one who didn’t need to swat hands off her behind at every turn. For McKeever, I let it slide, though he noticed something was wrong.

“Don’t you find it strange,” he asked, trying to cover his gaffe—whatever it was—by changing the subject, “that there is no evidence a woman ever came here?”

“Not really,” I said, still thinking of what he’d said. “The lady next door said his girlfriends were both jealous types. Maybe he didn’t want to ruin a good thing by leaving someone’s phone number lying around. Jealousy will make you rip up the floorboards to find that one hidden something that’ll break your heart. It’s that ache, that paradoxical desire to dig deeper and deeper until you finally uncover the thing that destroys your happiness. Compelling.”

“You talk like you understand jealousy,” he said.

“Not really. I understand broken hearts.”

Downstairs, I stood in the lobby, staring out the door while McKeever pulled on his overcoat. The streetlamp on the corner of Eighty-Seventh and Amsterdam swayed in the cold breeze, tossing its light from side to side. A crumpled newspaper tumbled across the street and wedged itself beneath a mailbox in front of a cocktail bar: the Crystal Lounge.

“Have you checked his mail?” I asked, watching as the newspaper freed itself, pirouetted into the avenue, and was flattened by a speeding taxi.

McKeever’s eyes grew.

“He must have a mailbox here,” I said. “Have you checked it?”

The black mailboxes hung in a row on the vestibule wall to my left. An open slot in each door let you know if you had mail. Ercolano did.

The locks on most mailboxes are no great shakes. If someone wants your mail, he’ll get it, Postal Service–approved lock or no. And so, we pried open the box with little trouble.

McKeever and I shuffled Ercolano’s mail back and forth between us in the foyer. A phone bill, some throw-away mail addressed to
Occupant
, the latest issues of
TV Guide
and
Esquire
, a yellow postal return slip for an undelivered package, and a perfumed letter, addressed by a woman’s hand.

While McKeever read the letter from the woman, I opened the phone bill, expecting a pack of hefty calls to Italy. Instead, I found a bill for $3.14. Local calls and little else.

“Take a look at this,” said the cop, handing me the letter.

Carissimo mio, January 23, 1960

How I miss you! Since our beautiful night together Wednesday and horrible argument Thursday morning, I have done nothing but think of you. I’ve waited for your call. This loneliness is unbearable! You are my drug, my love, my poison. It’s no use; I can never stay angry with you for long. When you asked me to stay away from your place, I hated you. I swore never to let you near me again. But I’ve learned to accept you on your terms, because even though I never know when you’ll call, I don’t ever want to be sure that you won’t. Come to me as soon as you receive this letter. I love you and miss you so.

Tua angela

I flipped the envelope looking for the return address but found none. The postmark was Saturday afternoon, mailed from Varick Street in the West Village.

“You know any Angelas?” asked McKeever.

“No,” I said. “Well, actually, the woman who lives next door to my father is named Angela. Angela Farber. But it can’t be her. Too much of a coincidence.”

“What do you think? The younger one or the older one?”

“Older. Sounds like she has her own place.”

McKeever nodded agreement.

“What about that?” I asked, motioning to the yellow paper in his hand. “Does Ercolano have a package waiting for him somewhere?”

“No,” said the cop, handing it to me for my inspection. “It’s from the Planetarium Branch on West Eighty-Third. A package he sent to Princeton, New Jersey, on Monday morning is still in New York: insufficient postage.”

“Monday?” I asked. “Ercolano was dead on Saturday night.”

McKeever gulped. “Well, maybe he mailed it Saturday. The post office is known to be slow.”

I shook my head, staring at the little sheet of paper. “I doubt it. I’ll bet Ercolano didn’t mail this package.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It doesn’t add up,” I said. “A letter with insufficient postage is one thing. But a package? When I send a package, I take it down to the post office and have it weighed. Then the clerk puts on the necessary postage.”

McKeever nodded. “Yes, that’s right. So, there should have been enough stamps on Ercolano’s parcel.”

“Unless he was in a rush and thought he had enough postage,” I said. “But then it’s got to be small enough to fit into a mailbox. Otherwise he would have had to go to the post office anyway. He would have weighed it. I’m curious to see this package. Do you think they’d let us have a look at the post office tomorrow?”

“No problem,” he said. “I know a guy over at the Planetarium.”

The squad car was waiting outside Ercolano’s building to take us home. McKeever dropped me off in the Village at twelve forty, promising to pick me up at nine o’clock the following morning to visit the Planetarium Branch.

“Good night, Jim,” I said. I think I surprised him with the familiarity because he blushed.

“Good night,” he answered, then paused. “Ellie.”

Ben, another of the elevator operators, took me up to the fifteenth floor.

“Last night some people came up to my father’s apartment.” I said. “You always ring to say who’s coming, don’t you?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Always?” I asked. “What about Mrs. Farber’s gentleman?”

Ben frowned. “I don’t mind nobody’s business but my own. And I don’t talk about who visits who in this place. Excuse me for saying so, Miss Stone.”

“I’m asking because the three people who visited me last night weren’t announced by Raul. When I asked him why, he said he had thought one of them was Mrs. Farber’s gentleman friend, so he let them in, no questions asked.”

“That’s right. Some tenants tell us to let certain people in at any time, no need to call up.”

“Have you seen Mr. Walter since my father was attacked?”

He shook his head. “No, miss. But I’m not on duty all the time. Why don’t you just ask Mrs. Farber about it? It’s really not my place.”

The elevator lurched to a stop on the fifteenth floor, and Ben pulled the door open. He was no Raul when it came to jabbering about the tenants.

“Good night, miss,” he said firmly.

I fumbled for my keys in front of my father’s door and dropped them onto the thick brush doormat. As I bent down to pick them up, the clicking of a latch startled me.

“Oh, Ellie, it’s you.”

“Hello, Mrs. Farber,” I said, jingling the keys in my hands. “You’re up late tonight.”

“I can’t sleep these days,” she said, letting the door open more fully.

“Would you like to talk about it?” I asked.

Angela Farber led me to her parlor, a warm, womb-like cloister with salmon-colored walls and some white Chinese silk rugs. Chiffon drapes hung in front of drawn curtains, lending a soft, shrouded intimacy to the room. A mezza-coda Steinway anchored the far wall, some Schumann romances on the music stand.

She was wearing a black-and-gold kimono that reached the floor. She’d drawn her black hair back in a simple braid, and I suddenly thought of my brother. I could see how she would have inspired lusty fantasies in the heart of a young boy.

“A drink, Elijah?” she asked, wheeling to look at me, right arm cocked as if to ask a question. Then she shook her head and laughed. “Sorry, I mean Ellie!”

I stated my preference and took a seat on the sofa, while she poured me some Scotch over ice.

“Why the trouble sleeping?” I asked once she’d handed me the tumbler. “Worried about intruders?”