He began to close the door. I stuck my foot out and stopped it.
“Watch it, man. I don’t have to talk to you.”
I held up both my hands in surrender. “That’s true. But we’re investigating a murder, and we would appreciate any help you could give us.”
He looked at me in astonishment. “You’re shitting me. Toby was tied in to those murders?”
I remembered the name from the mailboxes downstairs. “Look, let’s back up a bit. Are you Mr. Weller?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re looking for Toby because we think he may be in danger. All we want to do is talk to him. We have no hassles with you at all; in fact, we’d appreciate your help.”
I left it at that. He looked at both of us, finally shrugged and let the door swing back. “All right; come on in.”
It was a small apartment, in which he apparently lived alone, accompanied by the bedlam and odor of smelly socks and stale food that most young bachelors seem to find inescapable. The one detail of interest to me, however, was the sight of a narrow, metal circular staircase leading up.
Weller headed off into a living room, swept some clothes off the bedraggled couch, killed the television, and sat in a straight-backed chair. Sammie and I remained standing.
“So what do you want to know?” Weller said, looking up at us uncomfortably.
“When did you last see Toby?”
“A couple of months ago. But I heard him yesterday.”
I could hardly believe our luck. “Why the distinction?”
“He lives upstairs, in the tower. He comes and goes through the back window, over the roof-uses the fire escape.”
“He’s living here now?”
“He was. I went up there this morning and found he’d cleared out. He does that, though; comes and goes. Usually he stays longer.”
“How long had he been here this time?”
“I’m not really sure, but it couldn’t have been more’n a couple of days.”
“How do you know him?” Sammie suddenly asked.
Weller actually smiled. “I’m a writer, or I’d like to be. I started putting this idea together, a biography of the homeless. I’d interview as many of them as I could, get them to tell me their stories, a Studs Terkel kind of thing. I met Toby way early on. He was a real tough nut to crack, but he interested me, you know? I was finding out that a lot of the people I was talking to really didn’t have anything to say, or they couldn’t say it ’cause they were too tanked, or screwed up, or whatever. But Toby wasn’t your average drunk bum; he doesn’t drink, as far as I know, is pretty well educated, and is tidy, given the people he hangs out with.”
“Could we see where he lived?” I interrupted.
“Huh? Oh, sure.” Weller walked over to the circular staircase, at last the affable host. “Watch your step on this thing. I don’t think it was designed for adults.”
We followed him up gingerly, arriving at a room fitted with only a table, a chair, and a bookcase.
“That’s where I do my writing.” Weller didn’t break stride but continued up the stairs.
“Here we are,” he announced at the top, with a one-handed flourish, purposely leaving the lights off.
The room matched his own recent change of attitude. Its dim interior wasn’t much: low, stained ceiling; walls seriously in need of paint; and a floor covered with trash and a bare mattress. But the impression it made was magical. More than a room with a view, as Toby had described it, it gave the impression of being a crow’s nest above Brattleboro. Each window dominated the wall it inhabited, exhibiting at this time of night a sparkling urban vista of lamp-lit streets, buildings, and roofs. I felt utterly on top of the town.
Weller understood our silence. “Pretty neat, huh? I tried putting my office up here at first, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the view. Had to give it up.”
“How did Toby come to live here?” I asked.
“It was kind of an exchange. At first, he wouldn’t talk to me-real reserved, almost hostile. He was that way with everybody. But then, I don’t remember how, the tower room came up, and he saw it might be to his advantage to have a cubbyhole available when he needed it. I promised to leave him alone, let him come and go as he pleased. As payment, he agreed to talk to me and introduce me to a few people. It was a pretty fair exchange; I learned a lot.”
I located the light switch near the stairs and turned it on, flooding the room with a garish brightness that both diminished the view and revealed the starkness around us. There wasn’t much to look at. Other than the mattress, there was no furniture, and the floor was littered with food wrappers, old newspapers, and a couple of rags. I stepped carefully over to a tin ashtray that was parked under one of the windows.
Squatting down, I pulled a pen from my pocket and picked a balled-up candy wrapper out of the ashtray. Underneath, instead of cigarette butts, there were several enormous wads of chewing gum. “Likes his gum, huh?”
Weller laughed. “Oh, yeah. Chewed that stuff like other people chew tobacco. Used to put three sticks in his mouth at once. Made him look like a cow.”
I looked back at the wads of gum, perfect matches for the ones Klesczewski had found under the Elm Street bridge. Weller shook his head, his face growing serious. “Is he really in trouble?”
“I think so. If you see him, you better tell him to get hold of us. I’m afraid someone else is looking for him.” I straightened up. “We’ll want to put some coverage on this place, just in case he does come back. Is that a problem with you?”
“No, not at all. What’s this other person look like, the one looking for Toby?”
His tone of voice sent a chill down my back. “We don’t know. Why?”
“That’s why I bit your head off earlier; you’re the second guy today asking about him.”
I felt Sammie become very still next to me. “Who was it?”
“I don’t remember his name. He pounded on the door late this afternoon, saying he was the building inspector or something; said he’d heard I was running a hotel for bums up here, letting them run up and down the fire escapes and over the roofs. He was real obnoxious about it. I denied it, of course, which didn’t make things any better. Real asshole. I thought he’d sent you guys.”
I turned the light back off and found myself staring down Main Street, five flights below, thinking about a question Brandt had asked me on Milly Crawford’s roof the day he was killed.
“His name wasn’t Fred McDermott, was it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“‘What did McDermott tell you?’ Brandt had asked. DeFlorio mentioned he was here when the shooting started.”
I’d forgotten all about McDermott. A cold ball began to form in my stomach. It had been an unforgivable oversight.
Sammie caught my change of mood. She touched my elbow. “Are you okay?”
I stared at the street in silence, wondering where Toby had gone. “No, I don’t think I am.”
24
It was almost midnight. I hit the off button on the small dictaphone I’d been using to record my daily report. I popped out the microcassette and chucked it into the wooden out-tray. Harriet Fritter would retrieve it in the morning and have it transcribed and circulated within an hour. A frighteningly efficient woman, I thought. A hell of a lot more efficient than I was.
I sat back in my office chair, the dictaphone still in my hands, and stared at the fan shaking its head sadly on the corner of my desk, as if in sympathy with my own self-assessment.
The odd thing was that Fred’s name surfacing in the context of Milly’s murder was not as earth-shattering to me as the fact that I’d initially overlooked it. The priority of both revelations had been switched by my wounded ego.
I am not by nature a vain or self-glorifying man. I’ve met too many people whose minds are far superior to mine to have an overly inflated view of myself. But I have my pride. I have taken the time on occasion to glance back and consider my progress through life, if only to ascertain that my own standards, however modest, were not being reduced through laziness or self-contentment.