So I hefted my suitcase, killed the lights, opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and there was Mrs. Hesch.
She was wearing a shapeless housedress with faded flowers on it. (Printed on it, that is. Not pinned to it or anything like that.) She had cloth slippers on her feet and her gray hair was pinned up in a sort of sloppy chignon. An unfiltered cigarette with a good half-inch of ash hung from the right corner of her wide mouth. I’d seen her in this outfit before, or in one very much like it. I’d also seen her dressed to the nines, but I’d never seen her without a cigarette smoldering in the corner of her mouth. She never took it out to talk and I’m not positive she removed it when she ate.
“Mr. Rhodenbarr,” she said. “I thought I heard you moving around in there. Meaning I thought I heard somebody. I didn’t know it was you.”
“Uh,” I said. “Well, it was.”
“Yeah.” Her bright little eyes took in the suitcase. “Going someplace? Not that I blame you. Poor boy, you got some kind of trouble for yourself, huh? The years we live across the hall from each other, you and me, and whoever would guess a nice boy like you would be a burglar? You never bothered anybody in this building, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Exactly what I said. You know the kind of conversations you hear in the laundry room. There are crazy women in this building, Mr. Rhodenbarr. One the other day, she’s running off at the mouth like a broken record. ‘We ain’t safe in our own beds!’ I said to her, ‘Gert,’ I said, ‘in the first place you’d be safe in anybody’s bed, believe me.’ And I said to her, I said, ‘When did Mr. Rhodenbarr ever hurt anybody? Who did he ever rob in this building, and who cares what he does over on the East Side, where the rich momsers deserve whatever happens to them?’ You might as well be talking to a wall.” Ashes spilled from her cigarette. “We shouldn’t stand here like this,” she said, her voice pitched lower. “Come on into my place, I got coffee on the stove.”
“I’m really in sort of a rush, Mrs. Hesch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You always got time for a cup of my coffee. Since when are you in such a rush?”
I followed her into the apartment as if hypnotized. She poured me a cup of really excellent coffee and while I sipped it she stubbed out her cigarette and replaced it immediately with a fresh one. She went on to tell me how I’d brought no end of excitement to the building, how the police had been in and out of my apartment, and how there had been other visitors as well.
“I didn’t see them,” she said, “but the door was wide open when they left. It was yesterday afternoon when Jorge put the new lock on it. I saw what they did to your apartment. Like animals, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Except an animal wouldn’t do nothing like that. Who was it? Cops?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You know who it was?”
“No, I wish I did. You didn’t see them?”
“I don’t even know when they were there. Such a mess they made you’d think I’d of heard them, but when I got the set going I don’t hear nothing. You don’t know who did this thing? Is it mixed up with the man you killed?”
“I never killed anybody, Mrs. Hesch.”
She nodded thoughtfully, neither buying nor rejecting the statement. “I can imagine you a burglar,” she said slowly. “But killing somebody is something else again. I said as much to the cop that questioned me.”
“They questioned you?”
“They questioned the building, believe me. Listen, I didn’t tell them a thing. I’ll be honest with you, I got no use for the momsers. The time my niece Gloria was raped all they did was ask her stupid questions. What I told them about you was you’re a nice boy who would never hurt a cockroach. I wouldn’t tell a cop if his pants was on fire, believe me. But what he told me, the cop, he told me you ran into this Flaxford-that’s his name?”
“Flaxford, right.”
“He says when Flaxford discovered you, you panicked, but I thought about this, Mr. Rhodenbarr, and I don’t know if I can see you killing somebody in a panic. You didn’t do it?”
“Definitely not, Mrs. Hesch. In fact I’m trying to find out who did.”
“If you say so.” She was still keeping an open mind on the subject. “Though to be frank, those momsers on the East Side, what do I care if you did or didn’t? They got it coming is how I look at it. This is good coffee, isn’t it?”
“The best.”
“Coffee’s one thing I make a fuss about. You got to take the trouble or you’re drinking dishwater. Maybe you’re hungry, I didn’t think to ask. You like cinnamon buns?”
“I just had breakfast, Mrs. Hesch, but thanks.”
“Sit anyway. Where are you going? Sit, you’ll have another cup. You don’t have to be in such a hurry. One more cup of coffee ain’t gonna kill you. Sit!”
I sat.
“So you’re a burglar,” she said. “You mind a personal question? You make a pretty decent living at it?”
“I manage.”
She nodded. “Exactly what I told Whatsername in 11-J. I said a bright boy like that, clean-cut and a good dresser, always a smile or a nice word for a person, I said if he ain’t making a living he’ll get into something else. But it’s like talking to a wall, believe me, and then the other one, Gert, she starts in how she’s not safe in her bed. The people in this building, Mr. Rhodenbarr, take it from me, it’s like talking to a wall.”
Chapter Twelve
Most people who checked into the Cumberland had either a suitcase or a girl in tow. I was unusual in that I had one of each with me. My canvas suitcase looked slightly disreputable, but then so did my girl. She was wearing skintight jeans and a bright green sweater a size too small for her with no bra under it. And she’d done something moderately sluttish to her hair, and she was wearing dark lipstick and several pounds of eye shadow. She looked remarkably tawdry.
The clerk looked her over while I registered us as Mr. and Mrs. Ben G. Roper of Kansas City, which might have made more sense had my luggage been monogrammed. I gave him back the registration card along with a pair of ten-dollar bills, and while he was finding my change Ellie slid an envelope onto the counter. The clerk gave me $6.44 or thereabouts, then spotted the envelope with Brill’s name printed on it and blinked. “Where’d this come from?” he wondered.
I shrugged and Ellie said she thought it was there all along. The clerk didn’t seem terribly interested in this or much of anything else. He stuck it in a pigeonhole numbered 305.
Our own key was numbered 507. I grabbed my bag-there was no bellhop at the Cumberland -and Ellie walked with me to the elevator, her behind swaying professionally to and fro. The old man in the elevator cage chewed his cigar and took us up to the fifth floor without a word, then left us to let ourselves into our room.
It wasn’t much of a room. The bed, which took up most of it, looked as though it had had hard use. Ellie sat lightly on the edge of it, removed make-up, did something to her hair to make it as it had been originally.
“A lot of trouble for nothing,” she said.
“You enjoyed the masquerade.”
“I suppose so. I still look like a tramp in this sweater.”
“You certainly look like a mammal, I’ll say that much.”
She glowered at me. I checked my wig and cap in the bathroom mirror. They hadn’t made much of an impression on Mrs. Hesch, who never even noticed that my hair had changed color.