A Long Line of Dead Men

When we'd finished with a four-block stretch of First Avenue, we walked west on Ninety-fourth to Shorter's rooming house. I'd have rung his bell if I knew which one it was. Instead I rang the bell marked SUPER. When it went unanswered we left and walked to Second Avenue, where we wasted some more time checking more bars and restaurants, from Ninety-second to Ninety-sixth and back to where we'd started. I found a phone that worked and called Shorter's number and it didn't answer.

I was starting to get a bad feeling.

There was no point combing the city for him, I thought, because we weren't going to find him that way. And there was no point dialing his number because he wasn't going to answer the phone.

I walked quickly back to the rooming house, TJ tagging along beside me. I rang the super's bell, and when there was no answer I poked other buttons at random so that someone could buzz me in. No one did, but after a few minutes a very large woman emerged from one of the first-floor rooms and waddled to the door. She frowned through the glass panel at us, and without opening the door she asked what we wanted.

I said we wanted the super.

"You're wasting your time," she said. "He ain't got no vacancies."

"Where is he?"

"This is a respectable house." God knows who she thought we were. I took out a business card from Reliable and held it against the glass. She squinted at it and moved her lips as she read it. When she was done her lips settled into a tight narrow line. "That's him on the stoop across the street," she said grudgingly. "His name's Carlos."

There were three men on the stoop she'd pointed to, two of them playing checkers, the third kibitzing their game. The kibitzer was drinking a can of Miller's. The players were sharing a carton of Tropicana orange juice. I said, "Carlos?" and they all looked at me.

I held out my card and one of the players took it. He was stocky, with a flattened nose and liquid brown eyes, and I decided he must be Carlos. "I'm concerned about one of your tenants," I said. "I'm afraid he may have had an accident."

"Who's that?"

"James Shorter."

"Shorter."

"Late forties, medium height, dark hair-"

"I know him," he said. "You don't have to describe him for me. I know all of them. I just tryin' to think if I seen him today." He closed his eyes in concentration. "No," he said at length. "I don't see him in a while. You want to leave your card, I call you when I see him."

"I think we should see if he's all right."

"You mean open his door?"

"That's what I mean."

"You ring his bell?"

"I don't know which bell is his."

"Don't it got his name on it?"

"No."

He sighed. "A lot of them," he said, "they don't want no name on the bell. I put the name in, they just take it out. Then their friends come, ring the wrong bell, disturb everybody. Or they ring my bell. I tell you, it's a big pain in the ass."

"Well," I said.

He got to his feet. "First thing we do," he said, "is we ring his bell. Then we see."

We rang his bell and got no response. We went inside and climbed three flights of stairs, and the house was about what I'd expected, with a Lysol smell battling the odors of cooking and mice and urine. Carlos led us to what he said was Shorter's door and banged on it with a heavy fist. "Hey, open up," he called. "This gen'man wants to talk to you."

Nothing.

"Not home," Carlos said, and shrugged. "You want to write him a note, put it under the door, an' when he comes home-"

"I think you should open the door," I said.

"I don't know about that."

"I'm worried about him," I said. "I think he might have had an accident."

"What kind of accident?"

"A bad one. Open the door."

"You say that," he said, "but I'm the one gets in trouble."

"I'll take the responsibility."

"And what do I say, huh? 'This guy took the responsibility.' It's still my ass i

"If you don't open it," I told him, "I'll kick it in."

"You serious?" He looked at me and decided I was. "You think maybe he's sick in there, huh?"

"Or worse than that."

"What's worse'n sick?" I guess it came to him, because he winced at the thought. "Shit, I hope not." He hauled out a ring of keys, found his master passkey, and fitted it in the lock. "Anyway," he said, "you wouldn't have to kick it in, less'n he got the chain on. These locks is nothin', you can slip 'em with a plastic card. But if the chain's on, shit, you still go

But the chain wasn't on. He turned the lock, paused to knock on the door one final u

The room was empty.

He stood in the doorway. I pushed past him, walked around the little room. It was as neat and bare as a monk's cell. There was an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, a bedside table. The bed was made.

The drawers were empty. So was the closet. I looked under the bed. There were no personal articles anywhere, just the thrift-shop furniture that had been there when he moved in.

"I guess he moved out," Carlos said.

The telephone was on the beside table. I slipped a pencil under the receiver and lifted it enough to get a dial tone, then allowed it to drop back in place.

"He didn't say nothin' to nobody," Carlos said. "He pays a week at a time, so he's paid through Sunday. Fu

TJ walked over to the bed, picked up the pillow. There was a booklet under it. He took a close look at it and handed it to me.

I already knew what it was.

"It don't make sense," Carlos said. "You go

"Let's hope so."

"Course I do." He frowned, puzzled. "Maybe he's comin' back."

I looked at the AA meeting book, the one I'd bought him, the only thing he'd left behind.

"No," I said. "He's not coming back."

25

Martin Banszak took off his rimless glasses and fogged the lenses with his breath, then polished each in turn with his handkerchief. When he was satisfied with the results he put them on and turned his sad blue eyes on me.

"You must know the caliber of men we get," he said. "Guard work pays just one or two dollars an hour over the minimum wage. It's a job that requires no experience and minimal training. Our best men are retired police officers looking to supplement a city pension, but men like that can usually find something better for themselves.

"We get fellows who are out of work and looking for stopgap employment until something opens up for them. They're often good workers, but they don't stay with us long. And then we get men who work for us because they can't do any better."

"What kind of checks do you run on them?"

"We do the minimum. I try not to hire convicted felons. After all, this is security work. You don't hire the fox to guard the henhouse, do you? But it's hard to avoid. I can run computer checks, but what good is that when the name's a common one? 'Query: Has William Johnson been an inmate in the New York State prison system?' Well, there are probably half a dozen William Johnsons in prison in this state on any given day, so how am I to know? And when a man comes to me and says his name is William Johnson, how can I tell if it's the name he was born with? If a man shows me a Social Security card and a driver's license, what can I do but accept it?"

"Don't you run their prints?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It takes too long," he said. "By the time I get a response from Washington, two weeks or more have passed. The applicant's found other work in the meantime."

"Couldn't you hire him provisionally? And let him go if he doesn't check out?"