Maxwell Sucony was at his post near the front door of the late Rudy Gallagher’s building. He had a shiny, silver-colored thermos in one gloved hand and a plastic coffee cup in the other. When he saw us approach, he put both on the tile floor behind a pillar and walked toward the door, grinning. His uniform looked as neat as if he’d just put it on.
He unlocked the door, opened it wide, and said, “This a real surprise.”
“Hi, Maxwell,” I said. “Could you join us out here for a minute?”
He looked puzzled, but he went along with it, letting the door swing shut behind him. “What’s goin’ on, chef?” he asked.
“These are two friends of mine, Maxwell,” I said, and introduced Gin and Ted. He allowed as how he’d seen Gin on WUA! once or twice. “I’m usually asleep that time of morning, but I sure been reading about you in the papers.”
“I’m going to ask a big favor, Maxwell,” I said.
“Must be big, you not wanting to discuss it in view of the lobby camera.”
I hadn’t wanted to discuss it at all, but the service door had been locked.
“We’d like to take a look at our late associate’s apartment.”
Maxwell frowned. “That’s one big favor, chef. There’s a lot of back-and-forth been going on about six-D. Tenants on that floor been complaining about the condition of the apartment. Management wants to clean it up, but the police say they gotta wait until they finished.”
“The police are still going over the place?” Ted asked.
“Not so I noticed,” Maxwell said. “Maybe during the day. Must be some reason they don’t want it messed with.”
“Is it still taped shut?” I asked, hoping he’d say “Yes” and we could all go home.
“I know it isn’t, ’cause one of the managers got me to go in there with some air fresheners. It’s one creepy place. I figure whoever inherited it is gonna have some trouble unloading it, no matter how much they fix it up.”
“Think you could look the other way for a minute and let us go up?” I asked.
“Why you wanna go up there?”
I put my arm around his shoulders and moved him away from Gin and Ted. Softly, I said, “Ms. McCauley thinks she may have left something of hers up there a while back. She works with Ms. Di Voss. It might be embarrassing if Ms. Di Voss should find it.”
“I understand,” he said immediately. “The man surely was a playa.”
I took a previously folded fifty-dollar bill from my pocket and slipped it to him. He started to object, but I said, “She asked me to give you this.”
He took the bill. “The apartment’s locked. You gonna need my key.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got a key.”
“Then excuse me, chef, but I got to go to the office. That security camera’s been actin’ up. I’m gonna turn it off and then back on to see if that helps.”
We waited by the front door. In just a few minutes, the red light on the camera flickered off and we went in.
Initially, I figured the occupants of the sixth floor must have had more sensitive sniffers than I. The hallway near Rudy’s apartment smelled of nothing more unpleasant than carpet cleaner and air spray. As Maxwell had noted, the door to 6D was bare of police tape.
The key that Gretchen had mentioned was under the carpet. I used it to unlock the door, then wiped it with my handkerchief and replaced it where I’d found it.
I’d left the door cracked only an inch or two, but it was enough for me to get a whiff of what the neighbors had been complaining about. We got the full blast when I pushed the door open. Rudy’s body and his bodily fluids had been removed weeks ago, but there remained a ghastly smell of sickness and spoiled food and general mustiness that the sweet aroma of lemon air freshener could never dissolve.
I ran my hand along the wall beside the door until I found the light switch.
The place was a shambles. To our right was a small dining room where Rudy had expired, judging by the taped outline of an upper body. The doors to an antique cabinet were hanging open, displaying the broken pieces of what had once been expensive glassware and dinnerware.
To our left, in the living room, a knife or razor had sliced open the cushions and the back of a maroon love seat, a cream-colored stuffed chair, and an assortment of throw pillows that rested on the carpet like little gutted animals. Next to them were books that had been tossed from a now-empty case.
A bearskin rug lay rumpled on the carpet in front of a fireplace that, judging by the stirred ash and disturbed logs, had also been searched. I pointed at the sliced and ripped bear head and said, “If there was something here worth finding, it was probably found.”
“Well, this is still pretty damned excitin’, isn’t it?” Gin said.
“If that’s what you want,” I said, “try bungee jumping. Let’s get out of here.”
“Oh, don’t be a poop,” she said.
“Where do we begin, Billy?” Ted asked.
“I don’t think it matters,” I said.
“I’ll check out this room.” He hunkered down to look under the ruined love seat.
“Well, ah’m gonna find the bedroom,” Gin said. “That’s where ah hide mah valuables.”
“Good to know,” I said, and headed for my favorite room, moving gingerly past the kill site.
The smell of rotten food was much stronger in the kitchen. Maxwell hadn’t thought to give it the benefit of one of his air fresheners. It was not the kitchen of a man who did much cooking. The gas stove was too small and looked like it had barely been used. The refrigerator was small, too. I used my handkerchief to open its door. It was dark and warm inside. Unplugged. The shelves were empty. Ditto the freezer.
Like the other rooms, the kitchen had been powdered for prints and, one presumed, thoroughly searched by both the unknown trasher and the police. Drawers were pulled out, their contents emptied on the black rubber–matted floor along with pots and pans. The cabinet doors were open, exposing empty shelves. Dishes, cups, and saucers were on the counters. One dish rested alone and unused beside an empty frozen-food carton with a familiar smiling face on it. Mine. It had contained Blessing’s Own Complete Tex-Mex Dinner for One.
Curious, I used my handkerchief to pop open the microwave’s door. The bad food smell nearly put me down. As cooked beans will after a period of time, those in the Tex-Mex Dinner had erupted inside the machine, coating its walls with not just odiferous bean paste but particles of taco and chicken enchilada now mottled with green fungus.
Using my elbow, I slammed the microwave door shut on the mess, my duck-breast dinner starting to come alive in my stomach. But I now knew that Rudy had planned on a frozen-food dinner that night and ignored it in favor of a take-out meal he hadn’t been expecting.
On my way out of the kitchen I noticed a framed blackboard, approximately one foot square, screwed to the wall just to the right of the entryway. Next to it was a piece of blue chalk on a string. The board was filled with scrawled blue notations, apparently a running list of things Gallagher was reminding himself to do. “P/U hed let, pk cher tomats.” “Omeg o, lipo at drug.” “Furn polish and air fresh.”
Yep, a little more air fresh would have come in handy.
The list was long enough to suggest that Gallagher hadn’t gone shopping since his return from the Middle East. I struggled through every abbreviated note. Only two stumped me, the bottom entries on the board, “Jewel for Berry9” and “Check: 1 or 2, F or OC?”
I got out my phone, planning to take a snapshot of the board, but it began to vibrate in my hand. The call was coming from the Bistro. A.W. or Cassandra, or both. I let the call go to voice mail. Then I took my snapshot of Rudy’s bulletin board and exited the odiferous kitchen to see how the others were faring.
The apartment seemed a little too quiet.
“You guys off somewhere necking?” I asked.
No reply.
I moved down the hall. The light from an open door brightened the far end. Approaching the door, I saw a portion of a stripped bed. And then … Ted sprawled on the pale green carpet, facedown.
I rushed to him.
He was breathing effortlessly. I was about to try and revive him when my attention was drawn to Gin in the corner of the room, draped gracelessly across an overstuffed chair. The collar of her blouse was bright with blood.
I moved past Ted and went to her.
She had a steady pulse. The skin behind her right ear was broken and starting to swell. It had been the source of the blood. As gently as I could, I lifted her from the chair and placed her on the carpet, being careful with her damaged head.
That was when I sensed rather than heard movement directly behind me. A shifting of air, a shadow. Something. Then I experienced the sensation of my skull being pierced and the room was thrown into darkness.
No. Not the room.