natural instincts. WE LOVE OUR TREE/PLEASE CURB YOUR DOG.
Number 194 was a renovated brownstone with a front door the color of Astroturf. There were five apartments, one to a floor. A sixth bell in the vestibule was marked SUPERINTENDENT. I rang it and waited.
The woman who opened the door was around thirty-five. She wore a man's white shirt with the top two buttons open and a pair of stained and faded jeans. She was built like a fireplug. Her hair was short and seemed to have been hacked at randomly with a pair of dull shears. The effect was not displeasing, though. She stood in the doorway and looked up at me and decided within five seconds that I was a cop. I gave her my name and learned that hers was Elizabeth Antonelli. I told her I wanted to talk to her.
'What about?'
'Your third-floor tenants.'
'Shit. I thought that was over and done with. I'm still waiting for you guys to unlock the door and clear their stuff out. The landlord wants me to show the apartment, and I can't even get into it.'
'It's still padlocked?'
'Don't you guys talk to each other?'
'I'm not on the force. This is private.'
Her eyes did a number. She liked me better now that I wasn't a cop, but now she had to know what angle I was working. Also if I wasn't on official business, that meant she didn't have to feel compelled to waste her time on me.
She said, 'Listen, I'm in the middle of something. I'm an artist, I got work to do.'
'It'll take you less time to answer my questions than it will to get rid of me.'
She thought this over, then turned abruptly and walked into the building.
'It's freezing out there,' she said. 'C'mon downstairs, we'll talk, but don't figure on taking up too much of my time, huh?'
I followed her down a flight of stairs to the basement. She had a single large room with kitchen appliances in one corner and an army cot on the west wall.
There were exposed pipes and electrical cables overhead. Her art was sculpture, and there were several examples of her work in evidence. I never saw the piece she was currently working on. A wet cloth was draped over it. The other pieces were abstract, and there was a massive quality to them, a ponderousness suggestive of sea monsters.
'I'm not going to be able to tell you much,' she said. 'I'm the super because I get a deal on the rent that way. I'm handy, I can fix most things that go wrong, and I'm mean enough to yell at people when they're late with the rent. Most of the time I keep to myself. I don't pay much attention to what goes on in the building.'
'You knew Vanderpoel and Miss Hanniford?'
'By sight.'
'When did they move in?'
'She was here before I moved in, and I've been here two years in April. He moved in with her I guess a little over a year ago. I think just before Christmas if I remember right.'
'They didn't move in together?'
'No. She was living with someone else before that.'
'A man?'
'A woman.'
She didn't have any records, didn't know the name of Wendy's former roommate. She gave me the landlord's name and address. I asked her what she remembered about Wendy.
'Not a hell of a lot. I only notice people if they make trouble. She never had loud parties or played the stereo too loud. I was in the apartment a few times. The valve was shot on the bedroom radiator, and they were getting too much heat, they couldn't regulate it. I put a new valve in. That was just a couple of months ago.'
'They kept the apartment neat?'
'Very neat. Very attractive. They had the trim painted, and the place was furnished nice.' She thought for a moment. 'I think maybe that was his doing. I was in the place before he moved in, and I think I remember it wasn't as nice then.
He was sort of artsy.'
'Did you know she was a prostitute?'
'I still don't know it. I read lots of lies in the papers.'
'You don't think she was?'
'I don't have an opinion either way. I never had any complaints about her.
Then again, she could have had ten men a day up there, and I wouldn't have known about it.'
'Did she have visitors?'
'I just told you. I wouldn't know about it. People don't have to get past me to get upstairs.'
I asked her who else lived in the building. There were five floor-through apartments, and she gave me the names of the tenants in each. I could talk to them if they were willing to talk to me, she said. But not the couple on the top floor-they were in Florida and wouldn't be back until the middle of March.
