The man opened the door wide.
He was a white man in his sixties, wearing only a tank top undershirt and baggy cotton trousers. He looked Kling over, and then said, “I’m Henry Watkins, superintendent of the building. What’s the violation this time?”
“No violation,” Kling said. “Okay to come in?”
“What’d you say your name was?”
“Atchison.”
“Like Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe?” Watkins said.
“That’s it,” Kling said.
“Used to be a railroad man,” Watkins said, and stepped aside to allow Kling entrance. “So what is it?” he asked, closing and locking the door again.
“Looking for a runaway,” Kling said. “I have information she may be living in the building here.”
He normally carried, stuffed into the back of his notebook, a dozen or more photographs of teenage runaways who might have found their way uptown to the headier narcotic climate of the Eight-Seven, where the grass was presumably greener and more easily obtainable than it was elsewhere in the city. He took his notebook from his hip pocket, and leafed through the pictures, selecting a graduation photo of a chubby seventeen-year-old girl beaming at the camera, black-rimmed eyeglasses perched on her freckled nose, blonde hair neatly combed, eyes sparkling. He wondered what she looked like now. If she’d come to this city—
He showed the photograph to Watkins.
“This is the girl,” he said. “Her name’s Heather Laughlin. Have you seen her in the building at any time?”
“Get a lot of traffic here,” Watkins said, looking at the picture. “Two photographers in the building, we get girls coming and going all the time.”
Photographers, Kling thought. Maybe Augusta had been here on business, after all. He took out the list of names he’d copied from the directory.
“Which one of these would be the photographers?” he asked.
Watkins scanned the list.
“Well, there’s Peter Lang on the third floor and Al Garavelli on the fourth. They’re both photographers.”
“How come they don’t list themselves as such in the directory?” Kling asked.
“If you’re a cop, you should know that.”
“What should I know?”
“Lots of burglars check out a lobby directory, spot a listing for a photographer, come back that night and try to rip off the studio. Lots of cameras in a photographer’s studio — pretty easy items to fence. Also, lots of them work with music going, you know. Expensive stereo equipment. Photographers are easy marks for burglars. You should know that.”
“Now I know it,” Kling said, and smiled. “Do these people live here as well? Lang, is it? And Garavelli?”
“No, they just got their studios here. Nine to five. Well, usually later than that. I got their home addresses inside, you want them. Case of emergency, you know. Got to know where I can reach my tenants. You should know that.”
“How about the rest of these people?” Kling said, and showed him the list again.
“Yeah, they’re residents.”
“Any of them home right now?”
“Well, I’m not obliged to check on the comings and goings of any of my tenants. You should know that. They all got keys to the outside door here, they come and go as they please, same as anywhere else in this city.”
“I’ll have to talk to them,” Kling said.
“Then I’d better put on a shirt, come up with you.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Kling said.
“That’s what I’m paid for. Tenants wouldn’t want me letting people in to wander around the building without my—”
“But I’m a police officer,” Kling said.
“Well, yes, so you are.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t expect you to—”
“Well, maybe not,” Watkins said. “Third and fourth floor’re dark, that’s where Lang and Garavelli work. You can take the steps up, try your luck with the others.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost ten o’clock, people don’t like cops banging on their doors in the middle of the night, you should know that.”
“Sorry, but my information indicates—”
“Sure,” Watkins said. “Knock on my door when you’re finished, if it ain’t too late, I’ll give you those addresses. And be sure you explain I offered to come with you, will you? When you talk to the tenants.”
“Yes, I will,” Kling said. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Watkins said.
Kling took the iron-runged steps up to the first floor. Below, he could hear Watkins closing and locking the door to his own apartment. The steps and the first-floor landing were badly lighted. There was only one door on the landing. He went to it. No bell. He knocked on the door. Silence. He knocked again.
“Yo?” a voice inside said. A man.
“Police,” Kling said.
“What?” the man said.
“Police,” Kling said again.
“Just a second,” the man said.
Kling waited.
The door opened a crack, held by a night chain.
“What is it?” the man said.
“May I come in a moment, please?” Kling said, holding up his shield. “I’m Detective Atchison, Isola Police, I’d like to ask a few questions, sir.” He had not mentioned the precinct for which he worked. He put the shield in its leather case back into his pocket almost at once.
“Yeah, just a second,” the man said, and took off the night chain and opened the door.
He was wearing running shorts and track shoes, nothing else. He was perhaps five feet, eight inches tall, a spare, balding white man with dark-brown eyes and a thin nose under which there was a mustache the color of the black hair curled on his naked chest. A fan was going somewhere in the apartment. Kling could hear the whir of its blades and could feel the faint breeze it stirred.
“Well, come in,” the man said. “Kind of late to be making a visit, ain’t it?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have to follow leads whenever we get them.”
“What kind of lead are you following?” the man asked. “Come in, come in.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Kling said, stepping into the apartment. “Are you...?” He consulted the list of names he’d copied from the directory downstairs. Apartment 11, Lucas, M. “Mr. Lucas?”
“Michael Lucas, yes,” he said, and closed and locked the door, and then put on the night chain again.
The apartment was a converted loft that obviously served now as a combined living space and artist’s studio. An easel was set up near the windows to the north, the sky outside black beyond them, a large abstract painting shrieking its colors into the room. A cot was set up against one wall, a tabletop burner and a refrigerator against another. The loft was vast. The wooden floors were paint-spattered. A rack against the third wall supported at least a dozen huge canvases that seemed to have been spattered in the same haphazard fashion as the floor had been.
“So, what’s so urgent?” Lucas asked.
“We’re looking for a runaway,” Kling said, and took the picture from his notebook. “We have information she may be living in this building. Ever see this girl?”
Lucas looked at the picture.
“No,” he said at once.
“Do you live here alone, Mr. Lucas?” Kling asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I was wondering if anyone else living in the apartment might have seen her.”
“I live here alone.”
“Got the whole floor, right?”
“The whole floor, right.”
“You’re an artist, I see.”
“I try to be.”
“That’s a nice painting,” Kling said, nodding toward the easel.
“Thanks.’
“Do you use models for that kind of stuff?”
“What kind of stuff?” Lucas said.