Sunday afternoon
RANNIE SAT BY THE FLOWER GARDEN IN RIVERSIDE PARK, THREE HUNDRED dollars worth of new keys in her pocket, sections of the Sunday Times weighing heavily in her lap.
It was an Indian summer Sunday. Nate had taken off to see Alice at Yale, and whereas a Sunday by herself with no one to answer to was sometimes a treat, this morning being in the apartment alone had been unbearable. The bright sunlight and the sight of other people made Rannie feel safe.
All around her, Upper West Fall Fest was in full swing. Children were getting their faces painted and decorating orange-frosted cupcakes. A little farther off, a horse-drawn wagon, its tiny passengers perched atop bales of hay, circled the grove of crab apple trees that stretched from 91st to 95th Street. Fifteen years ago, she and Peter would have been among the waving parents…. Had they been happy back then? Or was she already assuaging herself with the rationalization that their marriage was no worse than most others?
Right after the divorce, her mother—astute to a fault and never one to mince words—remarked, “Darling, be honest. Peter didn’t break your heart; what’s upsetting you most is how unhappy the kids are.” Absolutely true: Peter had never been essential to her being, not in the way Nate and Alice were.
Watching one mini-melodrama made Rannie so wistful she felt her throat tighten. A little boy, dissatisfied with the leaf collage he’d made, dripping with glue, its few leaves already sliding off, collapsed in his mother’s arms, wailing.
“I think it’s beautiful,” the mother soothed. Rannie envied her. Small children. Small problems.
Her thoughts were an agitated jumble, as if her brain was on spin cycle. She felt disoriented without her watch, jumpy from the mugging, distressed about the incident at the dance, and embarrassed by her behavior at Tim Butler’s last night. And yet here she was sitting on the promenade where joggers came loping by, at exactly the same spot where she’d seen him before, more than half-hoping to encounter him.
What was it Tim Butler had said? The only item of interest the police had come across in Tut’s apartment was a pair of earrings? Surely they belonged to Ms. Hollins, but what if there were other things that wouldn’t necessarily raise suspicions in the minds of the cops but might in hers? Something that might jump out, catching her attention, in much the same way that errors in manuscripts did. Of course, Ms. Hollins had already seen to some housecleaning. Still, if there was a way to gain entry into Mr. Tut’s apartment…What Rannie wanted, pure and simple, was to discover an overlooked clue.
The thick Real Estate section, at the top of the heap, suddenly started sending signals that were impossible to ignore, and in spite of herself a plan began to take form in her mind.
Sunday in Manhattan—the day desperate New Yorkers searched for apartments. After the divorce, if the kids were busy and she wasn’t, Rannie sometimes staved off depression by checking out open houses in the neighborhood. If her mother was in town, the two of them would go together. It was visual eavesdropping, a chance to see the way other people lived—what possessions were dear to them, how they arranged their furniture, all the little ingredients that assembled together made up a home. Rannie still remembered one cramped apartment that was basically storage space for the owner’s vast collection of old toasters.
A blue pencil in hand, she began scanning ads for open houses, circling those in the West 90s, Tut’s neighborhood. The ruse taking shape in her mind was more than a little Lucy Ricardo-like. Still it might get her in the door.
From the park exit at 95th Street she headed to an apartment building that had advertised an open house at one o’clock. It wasn’t long before people emerged from the lobby holding floor plans. Rannie spotted a woman, frowning and shaking her head at a male companion.
“So? What’d you think?” Rannie asked.
“Don’t waste your time,” the woman advised Rannie. “It’s a chopped-up studio.” She willingly relinquished the layout advertised as a “convertible two-bedroom apartment.”
Now Rannie had her prop. During the short walk to 94th Street, she rehearsed what to say.
In the vestibule of Tut’s building, she kept pressing intercom buttons until finally a guy picked up and told her to see Mike in One-B, an identical brownstone, two doors down.
Mike appeared in an undershirt and beltless gray trousers. He had gray hair rippling off his forehead in thinning waves, slick with hair tonic.
“I’m not supposed to show the apartment. It’s not for rent.”
“Please. I know a friend of Mr. Tutwiler’s—”
“Then you know he got murdered.” The door to the man’s apartment was partially open, a Giants game in progress on a portable TV. He glanced back to catch a play.
“But he didn’t die in the apartment. It’s not a crime scene, is it? Please. I’m desperate. I’m—I’m moving back to New York. My friend, she told me about the apartment…”
“Jeez, I don’t know, lady.” He was shaking his head but his tone grew a fraction more amenable. “Like I told you. I’m not supposed to let anybody in. If the cops found out…” He cleared his throat. “I mean…I’d like to help you out.”
Rannie smiled gratefully. The man made no move. Then suddenly she got it—and almost smacked herself on the forehead. As Homer would say, “Doh!”
“I understand, and for your time and trouble…” Rannie cradled the newspaper and floor plan under her chin while fishing for the loose bills in her pocket. She handed over forty dollars, earmarked for grocery shopping.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, his palm still outstretched.
Neither should I, Rannie scolded herself. It took six more ten dollar bills, doled out one at a time, before he went and threw on a flannel shirt, then accompanied her to Tut’s apartment. Rannie stifled the urge to babble on about the difficulty of finding living space in New York, the outrageous rents, and so on. The man’s canny eyes gave her the distinct impression he wasn’t falling for the b.s. Why pile on more?
“Pretty,” Rannie commented while looking around Mr. Tut’s apartment, a comfortably furnished one-bedroom that had access to a small yard carpeted in yellowing leaves from a gingko tree.
It surprised and saddened her to see how much in evidence Tut’s illness was. A cane, something Rannie had never once seen Tut use, was propped against an armchair. There was also a hospital bed and an invalid’s high-seat toilet with railings in a bathroom stocked like a small infirmary—gauze pads, bandages, heavy-duty painkillers. The closets were empty; the tabletops already cleared. So what had she learned coming here? Only that this was the home of a very sick man. Rannie was about to leave the bedroom when she paused before two large oval-framed black-and-white photos over a bureau. In one, Mama and Papa Tutwiler—also a man who liked bow ties—posed formally with their two young sons, the taller boy undoubtedly the brother who, according to Ms. Hollins, had drowned. Tut was still young enough to be in knee pants.
The other photo was a seated portrait of his mother, her hair pulled in a bun, a double strand of pearls at her neck. A stately looking woman, the kind of woman you didn’t see much anymore, with strong, well-delineated features and a no-nonsense expression, a woman who might be described as “handsome” or “battle-ax” or both.
“You about done?” Mike called to her.
Rannie turned to face him. “I’m afraid it’s a little too small.”
“Having a yard helps. My place, I got a grill, a picnic table. Nice.” A note of regret had crept into his voice. He raked a hand through his oiled hair. “I’m gonna miss that.”
“You’re moving?”
“Not by choice. I told you before, the apartment’s not for rent.” He held the keys, pointing one gun-like at Rannie and she followed him. “Take a look on the street,” he said, locking up. “You’ll see most of the apartments are already vacant. The ones of us still here, the building owner’s trying to force out. Cutting off heat, turning off the boiler. There’s going to be a big fancy high-rise.”
“This whole row of brownstones, it’s all going?”
“Yeah, the ones on Ninety-third Street, too. The fronts—the facades—they’ll keep them like they are, but there’ll be a forty-story building on top. Mr. T. was fighting Ross every step of the way.”
“Ross, you said? David Ross?” Suddenly Rannie felt as if one of the slot machines at the Ross Riviera casino in Atlantic City had just paid off, going, “Ding! Ding! Ding!” and spewing forth quarters.
“Mr. T. knew he was dying. So really what’d it matter to him? But he hired a lawyer. He told us, ‘I’m gonna stop this bastard.’ Legally, Ross can toss me out, but the old folks here, they’ll be here ’til they get carted out feet first. And David Ross can’t do anything about it.”
As he showed her out, Rannie silently congratulated herself on the sleuth-worthy way she’d discovered this latest bit of info. Mr. Tut was double-whammying his long-time enemy, David Ross. Which current offense was more egregious in Ross’s mind, Rannie wondered, sticking it to his only son or stymieing a business deal?
“Look, if you find an apartment and need furniture, a lot of stuff in there is gonna be sold. I have the name and number to call. It’s a woman from the school. Maybe it’s your friend—her name’s Augusta Hollins?”
“No! I don’t know her! Never heard of her before!” Rannie yelped. “Thanks for your time. I—I have another apartment I have to look at.” And she made a rapid getaway.