repeated.
When men learn to be men maybe they can handle dames. There was something simpering in the way she forced a smile and stepped aside.
The boy didn't want to come out, but he did. He made himself as big as he could without it helping much. 'Yes?'
I showed him the badge I still had. It didn't mean a thing any more, but it still shined in the light and wasn't something everybody carried. 'Get your keys.'
'Yessir, yessir.' He reached up beside the door, unhooked a ring and stepped back into the hall.
The dame said. 'You wait a minute, I'll be right...'
He seemed to stand on his toes. 'You wait right there until I come back,' he told her. 'I'm the super.' He turned and grinned at me. Behind him his wife's face puffed out and the door slammed.
'Yessir?' he said.
'Berga Tom's place. I want to go through it.'
'But the police have already been through there.'
'I know.'
'Today I rented it already.'
'Anybody there now?'
'Not yet. Tomorrow they're supposed to come.'
'Then let's go.'
First he hesitated, then he shrugged and started up the stairs. Two flights up he fitted a key into the lock of a door and threw it open. He felt around for the light switch, flipped it and stood aside for me.
I don't know what I expected to find. Maybe it was more curiosity than anything that dragged me up there. The place had been gone over by experts and if anything had been worth taking it was gone by now. It was what you might call a functional apartment and nothing more. The kitchen and living room were combined with a bathroom sandwiched between two bedrooms that jutted off the one wall. There was enough furniture to be comfortable, nothing gaudy and nothing out of place.
'Whose stuff is this?'
'We rent furnished. What you see belongs to the landlord.'
I walked into the bedroom and opened the door of the closet. A half dozen dresses and a suit hung there. The floor was lined with shoes. The dresser was the same way, filled to the brim. The clothes were good, fairly new, but not the type that came out of exclusive shops.
Stockings were neatly rolled up and packed into a top drawer. Beside them were four envelopes, two with paid-up receipts, one a letter from the Millburn Steamship Line saying that there were no available berths on the liner Cedric and how sorry they were, and the other a heavier envelope holding about a dozen Indianhead pennies.
The other small drawer was cluttered with half-used lipsticks and all the usual junk a dame can collect in hardly any time at all.
It was the other bedroom that gave me the surprise. There was nothing there at all. Just a made-up bed, a cleaned-out closet and dresser drawers lined with old sheets of newspaper.
The super watched me until I backed out into the living room, saying nothing.
'Whose room?' I jerked my thumb at the empty place. 'Miss Carver's.'
'Where is she?'
'Two days ago... she moved out.'
'The police see her?'
He nodded, a fast snap of the head. 'Maybe that's why she moved out.'
'You going to empty this place out?'
'Guess I got to. The lease is up next month, but it was paid in advance. Hope I don't get in trouble renting so soon.' 'Who paid it?'
'Tom's name is on the lease.' He looked at me pointedly.
'I didn't ask that.
'She handed me the dough.' I stared at him hard and he fumbled with his pajamas again. 'How many times do I have to tell you guys. I don't know where she got the dough. Far as I know she didn't do any messing around. This place sure wasn't no office or that nosy old lady of mine would've known about it.'
'Did she have any men here to see her?'
'Mister,' he said, 'there's twelve apartments in this rat-trap and I can't keep track of who comes in and who goes out so long as they're paid up. If you ask me right off I'd say she wasn't no tramp. She was a dame splitting her quarters with another dame who paid her dough and didn't make trouble. If a guy was keeping her he sure didn't get his money's worth. If you want to know what I think then I'd say yes, she was being kept. Maybe the both of ?em. The old lady never thought so or she would've given them the boot, that's for sure.'
'Okay then,' I said, 'that's it.'
He held the door open for me. 'You think anything's going to come of this?'
'Plenty.'
The guy was another lip licker. 'There won't be...'
'Don't worry about it. You know how I can reach the Carver girl?'
The look he gave me was quick and worried. 'She didn't leave no address.'
I made it sound very flat and businesslike. 'You know... when you step in front of the law there's charges that can be pressed.'
'Aw, look, mister, if I knew...' His tongue came out and passed over his mouth again. He thought about it, shrugged then said, 'Okay. Just don't let my wife know. She called today. She's expecting some mail from her boyfriend and asked me to send it to her.' He pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. 'She don't want anybody to know where she is. Got a pencil?'
I handed him one with the remains of an envelope and he jotted it down.
'Wish I could do something right for a change. The kid sounded pretty worried.'
'You don't want nt to buck the law, do you friend?'
'Guess not.'
'Okay, then you did right. Tell you what though... don't bother giving it out to anyone else. I'll see her, but she won't know how I reached her. How's that?'
His face showed some relief. 'Swell.'
'By the way,' I said, 'what was she like?' 'Carver?'
'Yeah.'
'Kind of a pretty blonde. Hair like snow.' 'I'll find her,' I said.
The number was on Atlantic Avenue. It was the third floor over a secondhand store and there was nothing to guide you in but the smell. All the doorbells had names that had been there long enough to get dirtied up, but the newest one said TRENTEN when it didn't mean that at all.
I punched the button three times while I stood there in the dark, heard nothing ringing so I eased myself into the smell. It wasn't just an odor. It was something that moved, something warm and fluid that came down the stairs, tumbling over slowly, merging with other smells until it leaked out into the street.
In each flight there were fourteen steps, a landing, a short corridor that took you to the next flight and at the top of the last one, a door. Up there the smell was different. It wasn't any fresher; it just smelled better. A pencil line of light marked the sill and for a change there was no bag of garbage to trip over.
I rapped on the door and waited. I did it again and springs creaked inside. A quiet little voice said, 'Yes?'
'Carver?'
Again, 'Yes.' A bit tired-sounding this time.
'I'd like to speak to you. I'm pushing my card through under the door.'
'Never mind. Just come right in.'
I felt for the knob, twisted it and pushed the door open.
She was sitting there swallowed up in a big chair facing me, the gun in her hand resting on her knee in a lazy
