Nobody's Victims

The Ninth Tenant"The rent’s very cheap," said Mr. Dubcek, turning the key slowly with stiff arthritic fingers. "Such a bargain you won’t find every day." The lock worked smoothly, as always. He pushed the Number Four door open with a subtly dramatic flourish, long practiced. As expected, the prospective tenant gasped in astonishment at the revealed view. She took several automatic steps into the enormous front room, gaping shamelessly at the high ceilings, the tall windows with their cut-glass top panels, the hardwood floors, the dark wood paneling, the lustrous space, the size. Yes, entranced. Definitely hooked. "It’s… incredible," she almost whispered. "Only $450 a month?!" Dubcek smiled inwardly, waiting for the next question. He had it down to a science by now: the rent announcement, the inevitable variations on a theme of ‘why so cheap?’, his unconvincing evasions, the insistent and growing curiosity, the final revelation, the widening eyes and the ill-hidden fearful excitement. The mystery always drew them, flame for the moths. To her credit, Ms. Hart held her curiosity longer than most. She paced from room to room with that steady athletic walk of hers, looking, admiring, courteously silent while her mind calculated furiously and still came up with answers that didn’t compute. How long before she asked? The sixth tenant since the murder, stolid Mr. Holloway of the painfully-respectable bank, hadn’t thought to ask until he’d been there a full month. He’d taken the longest to crack, too—a year and a half—but the finish had been truly spectacular. One week after his wife had fled back uptown Mr. Holloway had filled the bathtub, placed his neatly folded bathrobe on the stool beside it, settled himself carefully in the water—and slashed both wrists clean to the bone. Precisely how he’d managed the second wrist had provided an intriguing secondary mystery to the other tenants of the building, until the coroner’s report publicly concluded that Holloway had held the knife in his teeth—and it had been slow, sloppy work. It had taken eight days for the deceased’s worried family and associates to call the police, and by then the scene in the bathroom was too grotesque for even the seasoned police sergeant to describe in much detail. The apartment had stood empty for the rest of the summer, but the spectacle had sated the other residents more than enough for the extensive time involved. It was a truly great Haunting. Perhaps Ms. Hart would do even better. Dubcek smiled openly, studying her as she inspected the apartment. One of these Liberated businesswomen, no doubt: all efficiency and no-nonsense on the surface, pent-up imagination and wells of amenable hysteria well hidden below. It would be interesting to see how she reacted; the apartment hadn’t dealt with any of that breed before—although the fourth tenant, Ms. Koker, had come close. Then again, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. Ms. Koker had been one of those Artistic types, recently divorced, trying to Find Herself through painting, basically nervous and high-strung. Her paintings had become truly amazing in her five-month term of tenure, right up to the day she ran screaming out the front door in the middle of the sunny afternoon. Her refusal to go back inside for any reason had given the neighbors a fine charitable excuse to carry out all her belongings for her—and to judge the paintings first-hand for themselves. One of the more evocative had quietly disappeared in the confusion, to end up tastefully framed on Miss Pierce’s parlor wall. That had been a satisfactory Haunting for all concerned. Ms. Koker had escaped alive, and with a story that she could no doubt dine out on for the rest of her life. Her account of the Haunting, related at great and hysterical length over Mrs. Donatello’s kitchen table and sympathetic cups of tea down in #1-B, had provided entertainment for the neighbors far longer than Koker’s stay in #4. It had also provided Mr. Glimke—alias Eric Prince, apartment #2-A—with material for a supernatural thriller that had sold nicely in paperback. He’d even gotten a nibble from a TV-movie producer, though that hadn’t panned out and Glimke was still grumbling about it. Of course, to give Glimke his due, he was the one who had insisted—even rallied the other tenants into a committee to petition the landlord—that #4 must absolutely not be rented, ever again, to any family with children. Everybody in the building had followed his lead on that one. The sad case of the little Wallinsky boy, who hanged himself in the coat-closet after his family had lived in #4 for barely six months, had been a little too much for everyone—even the cynical old Gallondri brothers in #2-B. The Wallinskys—how could such thick-skinned parents have bred such a fragile, sensitive child, anyway?—had been the first tenants after the big Bradley murder. Eight subsequent Hauntings could only make the horror more intense, whatever form it chose to take. One could feel it lurking in the walls, even now. Dubcek glanced back automatically, making certain the front door was wide open, as he followed the Hart woman through the apartment. He’d never risk coming in here alone. Ah, she was going to the front windows. Would she notice the scar on the sill where old Mr. Johnson had caught his foot during his panicked dive into the yard below? "Beautiful windows," Ms. Hart commented, looking fondly out the nearest of them, apparently not noticing the scar. "And so many!" "The apartment does cover the entire top floor," Dubcek reminded her. "Very private. Very quiet." "Lovely big kitchen, too." Ah, but she only glanced that way, seeing nothing unusual about the stove. Well, there was nothing really to see at the moment; the oven door was closed, with no ghostly body sprawled before it. No doubt that would come later. Ms. Hart proceeded down the corridor, pausing to examine the bathroom. Dubcek caught himself holding his breath as she studied the ill-fated bathtub, but she gave no sign of seeing anything odd. He grimaced, remembering the trouble he’d had cleaning that thing after the Haunting of Holloway; he’d had to flush the drain repeatedly with muriatic acid. For $450 a month on a jinxed apartment, the landlord wasn’t about to spend money on a new bathtub. Oh there: Ms. Hart was going into the bedroom! Dubcek hurried quietly after her, wondering what would happen when she saw The Stain. That was the undeniable giveaway. All these years and coats of paint later, the Bradley Bloodstain was still there on the wall, ominous and ineradicable, the watermark of the supernatural. The only problem with The Stain was that it was low down in the corner, by the baseboard, where Suzanne Bradley had fallen and blindly clawed at the wall in the last seconds of her life. Even with no furniture in the way, a quick glance might miss it. Maybe Ms. Hart wouldn’t see The Stain. But no: she was staring directly at it, bronze eyebrows pulled together. Any second now… "Mr. Dubcek," she asked, "Did anybody ever die in this room?" Oh, perfect! "What? Oh no, no…" he fumbled artfully. "Nobody was ever killed in here. I don’t know how these rumors get started. This is a fine place, really. Very nice, Ma’am. Very nice place." Ms. Hart raised an eyebrow at him, gaining a brief but startling resemblance to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock. "Is that why the rent’s so low?" she asked sweetly. "No, no, certainly not." Dubcek looked away, carefully fidgeting with his keys. "It’s just… Hmmm, this is, uhm, a very quiet old neighborhood. Mostly old folks here, you know. Old buildings. Dull. No stores nearby, no busses, not very convenient. No young folks, no big parties, no entertainments or anything like that. Boring place, that’s what it is. I guess that’s why. Wouldn’t know, myself. Landlord sets the rent. He lives out of town, but you might phone and ask him." He guessed that she wouldn’t. Even if she did phone and ask, Better Neighborhoods Realty Inc. was very close-mouthed on the subject of apartment #4. No, she’d have to get the details from the other tenants, and he knew how they’d answer. Priming the pump, old Miss Pierce had once called it. Trust Miss Pierce to do it right, too. She’d had plenty of practice, reading mysteries and thrillers for years. Of course she had autographed copies of all Mr. Glimke’s books. Those two were such tight cronies that Dubcek sometimes wondered why they didn’t just move in together and save on the rent. At other times he suspected that after sixty years of ruthless propriety, Miss Pierce got more pleasure from safeguarding her long-withered maidenhood than she could have obtained now by losing it. Her other passion, naturally, was apartment #4. Dubcek guessed that at the moment she was standing on her dining room table, one ear plastered to a water tumbler pressed against the ceiling, listening breathlessly for the slightest sound from upstairs. Well, she’d get the details soon enough. "Mhm," Ms. Hart was purring, chin lifted decisively. She turned around, actually smiling. "Never mind that; I’ll take it. An apartment like this for a rent like that— I don’t care if it’s housed a dozen murderers and a whole cult of Satanists. How much down?" Dubcek gave her his well-practiced startled/guilty look. They always said something along this line. "First month’s rent, last month’s rent, plus $200 damage deposit," he rattled off, chuckling inside. Ms. Hart reached into her purse. "I’ll give you $100 in cash right now, and I’ll be back with the rest in an hour. Can you have the lease ready by then?" "Sure." Dubcek wondered why she didn’t have a checking account; all these young modern types did. The last tenant of #4 to pay in cash had been Robbie Jackson, the fifth, a moderate-volume drug dealer who was always prepared to decamp fast. True to form, he’d taken Mr. Johnson’s way out—straight out the front window—one night during his third month of tenure, supposedly after sampling his own wares. Ms. Hart didn’t look the type; there was probably some minor, irrelevant explanation. Maybe she just didn’t trust banks. "Sure," he repeated. "My receipt book’s downstairs." On the way down the long stairway, he saw Miss Pierce peeping out through her barely-opened door, watching them go. He tossed her a polite smile and a conspirator’s wink, and saw her smile back in sweet, malicious delight. At 6PM precisely, everyone except bedridden old Mr. Brown in #3-B was in the accustomed place at Miss Pierce’s lace-covered dining room table. As usual, everyone except the Gallondri brothers drank the mint tea, and everyone except Mrs. Brown took at least a token glass of sherry. Everyone, without exception, nibbled the excellent macaroons. Miss Pierce was a meticulous hostess, and provided only the best. Nobody really paid attention to the Monopoly game on the table, or was expected to. "She came back with the money," Dubcek recounted. "All of it in cash, no less, in just over an hour. Handed it right over, signed the lease, and said she’d move in tomorrow. She’s quick, anyway." "Efficient." Glimke made notes on his perennial spiral-bound pad. "One of these new businesswoman types, all right. But then, why didn’t she have a checking account? Did she say what she did for a living?" "Not to me. There: give me $200." "You should have asked. Ah, advance three steps…" "I tried. She said something about natural food and herbal supplies." "There’re plenty of those stores downtown," Mrs. Brown quavered, reaching a slow hand toward a token on Atlantic Avenue. "Maybe she works at one of them. I want to mortgage this hotel." "Some kind of New Age artsy type, probably," sneered George Gallondri. "That kind doesn’t trust banks. Even from the window, I could see her big silver earrings." "Rich artsy-mystic type," Bruno Gallondri amended. "That fancy pantsuit of hers must’ve cost her plenty. Card here." "So, practical and businesslike on the surface, but sensitive and mystical underneath, hmm?" Glimke made notes. "Secretive and other-worldly at heart. Yes, interesting." "I wonder if she’s a slovenly housekeeper," Miss Pierce smirked, glancing around her fussily well-kept parlor. "I wonder how long it will take her to notice The Stain spreading."