Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

The Girl on the Second Floor by Harry C. Robert

He got the job he coveted in an ugly way... and left Death to do the tidying up.

When my wife walked out on me I hit the sauce and went on a three-day bender. I must have made every cheap gin mill in Cleveland. I came to about nightfall the third day when I was thrown out of a joint down at the end of Euclid Avenue. That shook me up. I may not be Ivy League, but I’m not that far down either.

I turned out my pockets and after the price of a bus ticket to Buffalo I had about nineteen dollars left. So I took off.

I used to live in Buffalo for awhile, so I knew my way around. But it still took me the better part of a week to find what I wanted. But I found it. Just about right, too — a medium-small building on Delaware Avenue, not too far uptown. It was what I was looking for. Not too big, about twelve rooms — they called them apartments — easy to take care of. But somebody else was in the job.

I hit the owner anyway.

“The guy I got is all right,” he said. “He’s a good man, long as he lets liquor alone. That’s the only thing that worries me a little. I can’t trust him out of sight once he starts drinking. He’s fine when he behaves himself. But let him get one drop down his gullet and he’s through. He’s been taking care of himself pretty good lately and I hope he won’t have any more trouble. He’s a good Joe when he’s on the wagon. Anything happens, though, I’ll keep you in mind.”

“Will you?” I asked.

“Didn’t I say so?”

I knew that wouldn’t do me any good, so I looked the guy up. He was a real nice fellow. Big guy, pleasant round face, real friendly.

“Hello,” he said. “Looking for somebody?”

“Looking for a job like this,” I said. “I used to take care of a building in Toledo. I hit town a couple of days ago, and thought I might locate something.”

“Ain’t a bad town,” he said, “if you can stand the winters.”

“Can’t be worse than Chicago,” I said. “I was out there a couple of years.”

“Pretty bad when the wind and snow come off the lake.”

“Don’t know a place about like this that could use a man, do you?”

“Can’t rightly say I do. Ain’t many like this around.”

“How long you had this?”

“Close to a year now. And I aim to be here a few more. It’s a comfortable place. Boss ain’t hard to please, so long as you keep your nose clean.”

“You hear about a spot like it, lemme know.”

“How’m I gonna let you know?”

“I’ll double-check you,” I said.

I had about seven bucks left out of my nineteen. I didn’t have any time to fool around. I made out on an egg sandwich and a cup of Java that night and then I bought a pint. Next afternoon I stopped by again.

“Hi,” he says. “Locate anything?”

“Nothing but nothing,” I said. “You sure you don’t know a similar place I could try?”

“Wish I could for your sake. Why don’t you try down the docks? You might catch on loading grain. Only the season’s out now. The lake’s still froze tight.”

“I don’t want a dock job. This is the kind of place I’d like.”

“Better look some other neighborhood then. Ain’t nothing in this area I can bring to mind.”

I brought out the pint from my pocket, unscrewed the top and took a drink. I held it out to him.

His eyes glistened and he licked his lips. “I better not,” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Sort of gives me trouble, mostly.”

“Well, in that case, you’re right. Better not.”

I tilted it up to my lips like I was drinking again but I was tonguing the bottle and nothing went down my throat. Then I put it back in my pocket.

“Getting colder out there,” I said. “Little nip sort of helps in this weather.”

“Thass right,” he agreed.

He took a look at the heater. It was a cinch, an oil burner with a thermostat a baby could have run.

“Might better give ’em a little more heat if it’s turning off cold,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

I brought the bottle out again, put it to my mouth and tilted it. Then I took it down, put the cap back on and put it away. He watched it like it was the fourth ace in the deck and he had one in the hole.

“Gonna get pretty cold tonight,” I said. “Little drink feels good in this weather.”

He didn’t say anything.

After awhile I pulled the bottle again and went through the motions of having another shot.

“Maybe just—” he said and stopped.

“No, I wouldn’t if it don’t agree with you,” I said.

“Just a nip wouldn’t hurt if it’s gonna be cold.”

“Yeah, you’ve got something there. Just a little one, then.”

I handed him the bottle. He turned it up and took a short drink.

“Oil burner don’t warm a basement up good like an old coal furnace used to,” he said. “Man can stand a little something to warm his insides down here.”

“You said it.” I tilted the bottle again but didn’t drink.

This time I didn’t put the bottle away. After a few minutes he held out his hand for it. This time he took a real drink.

Then we passed it back and forth. I didn’t drink but he did. In less than an hour it was empty. He’d had the whole pint except the first drink I’d taken. He staggered when he went to look at the thermostatic control.

“Why don’t you take a little rest?” I asked him.

The door to his little room was open. I led him in and put him down on the single bed. He mumbled something about a few winks and turned over. I went outside the room and waited a few minutes. When I looked in again he was asleep.

I went over to the thermostat. I had in mind dropping it down and cooling the place off but when I looked at it I had a better idea. I pushed it up close to 90, which was more like what a drunk would do with the cold coming in.

I stepped outside. You know Buffalo. It was getting colder when I came in, like I said, but it was still bright and sunny. Now the sky was all smoke-gray and the snow was coming down. That’s the way it is up there. It snows before you can drop the hat.

I walked around in it for about an hour and a half. Then I went back into the basement. He was still asleep. There were a few drops left in the bottle. I spilled them over his collar and shirt and laid the bottle by him on the bed.

Then I went just outside the street door and waited. I figured something would happen soon.

It did. Before long I heard the door from the apartments upstairs open and the owner yelled, “Hey, Grimm, what the hell’s going on down there? The place is steaming.”

I let him hear me open the door and came in like from the outside.

“Hello,” I called. “Where are you, Jake?”

“Who’s that?” yelled the owner.

“It’s me,” and I got where he could see me.

“Oh, you,” he said. “I remember you, asking for a job.”

“Where’s Jake?” I asked.

“That’s what I want to know. The place is cooking.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s hotter up there than the hinges of hell. I want to find Jake, so he can see what’s wrong.”

“Come on, let’s take a look.”

I wanted him down to see everything for himself. When he got down the steps I walked over to the control.

“Well, no wonder,” I said in big surprise. “He’s got this thing shoved up nearly to ninety.”

“What?” he screamed.

“See for yourself,” I said. “Here, I’ll take care of it. Man, that could be dangerous. He could blow his boilers that way.”

“Where is he?” he screeched.

I knew he’d find out soon enough, so I let him look for himself. He went to the open door of the room and there was Jake, dead to the world.

The owner went in, saw him, saw the bottle and said, “That does it. I gave him every chance, but he can’t let the stuff alone. When he comes near blowing up the place, he’s finished.”

P. S. I got the job. It was a lousy trick, but I wanted in.

Like he said, it was a real nice, comfortable spot. My little basement room wasn’t anything you’d entertain Queen Elizabeth in, but it was good enough for me. The work was a cinch. All I had to do was regulate the heater, look after a few big lockers where the people upstairs could keep their bags or trunks if they didn’t want them in their rooms, keep the halls upstairs clean and take out the trash every day.

I didn’t even have to worry about the rooms. They had a housekeeper sleeping in the end room on the second floor who did them. She made a pass or two at me the first two days I was on the job, but she was a slob. I let her alone and then she let me alone.

The owner lived in the front apartment on the third floor corner and that was about the only one you could really call an apartment.

I saw it one day when Maggie, the housekeeper, was cleaning it up. A big room with heavy red curtains and one of those big oversize beds with the same heavy red covers, big easy chairs and couches, a 24-inch blond mahogany TV set, leopard skin rugs and things. A fancy bath you could run the four-forty in and a classy kitchenette and dinette.

He was a bachelor, Maggie told me, and a handsome devil as I’d seen for myself — tall, slim, dark hair and eyebrows, very grey eyes, a skin like an Indian’s even in this weather, and that casual way that knocks the women dead. Where he got his money I don’t know but he had it. He stayed off my back as long as I did my work and I stayed out of his way.

The third day I saw the girl on the second floor but she didn’t see me.

The job didn’t pay much but there was no reason it should. The heater control was as simple as any in a home. The control was down in the basement but it worked off a thermostat up in the hall, just about in the center of the building.

I spent most of my time lying around on my bed, reading paperback books and magazines.

The only time I went up into the building was during the early afternoon, when Maggie was finishing up the rooms. She’d leave the trash outside the doors, and I would make sure the halls were clean and take the stuff down and empty it in barrels outside, and bring the containers back upstairs.

There weren’t any rooms on the ground floor. That had a couple of offices and a small bar and restaurant on the corner, but I had nothing to do with them. They weren’t even connected with the upstairs rooms. From the middle of the second floor a long stairway led down between the restaurant and offices into the basement where I stayed.

Going along with Maggie from day to day you’d get some idea of the people in the place without ever knowing them. Maggie was a young, strong woman, a little fat, and she couldn’t move without yakking. Listening to her and even allowing for those she liked and the ones she didn’t like you got to feel as if you knew them.

Maggie was the second floor back. Next to her was a little old lady but not like the little old lady in the song passing by. This one was a grandmother still trying to be flaming youth. She painted up and yellowed up her hair and made the bars if she could get anybody to buy.

In the room next to her was a waiter. His wife slept in most of the day and in the afternoon when he went to work she went to the movies. Then there was the girl. Then a big, strapping guy, a lineman with the telephone company. Then in front a B-girl at one of the downtown bars. Maggie said she was the best looking girl anywhere around. She slept until noon or after, went out early in the afternoon to eat and walk around and then came in and read until it was time to bathe and dress and go to work at night.

In the third floor back was a lino typer on The News. He went to work early in the morning. Then a floater who’d come in from Syracuse a couple of weeks before and would move on, nobody knew when. Then a bartender from a place up Main Street. Then a vacancy and then the owner’s layout took up the whole third floor front.

Once in awhile I’d see some of these people, like one night I saw the B-girl starting out to work and I guess you could call her the prettiest girl around if you liked that style. A silver blonde with a round baby face — nice in a regular way but empty.

The grandmother was a clown. Anybody would spend money on her must be turning it out on his own presses. But I mostly stayed out of their way and didn’t go up into the building except the times I was pretty sure they’d be out. I didn’t want the girl on the second floor to see me in a job like that.

When we’d be going through the place, cleaning it up and straightening up, Maggie would go into her monologue. She knew all about the other tenants. She labeled the telephone lineman for a great guy and while she didn’t say it I pretty soon suspected she developed that impression in bed. She didn’t like the waiter, because she thought he beat his wife. The linotyper and the barkeep weren’t around much.

The only time anybody saw the floater was when he got up and started out in the mornings and Maggie thought he was a card sharp. But she said he wasn’t a bad fellow and quite a comic.

Once in awhile I’d ask a question about somebody but I didn’t ask any about the girl. I let Maggie take her own sweet time to tell about her. She did, all right. She said the girl hadn’t been with them long. She’d grown up in Buffalo and then she went away and now she was back, working in one of the department stores. Maggie said her name was Catherine and they all called her Caddie. It seemed just right for her.

I stayed away from her. I wasn’t going to foul things up by trying to mix with any of them. But sometimes I’d watch for her when she’d go out to eat after coming back from work at night. There weren’t any cooking arrangements except in the owner’s apartment. Everybody went out to eat. They had breakfast in the little corner restaurant but usually they’d go other places for dinner.

I could get across the street under the trees along the sidewalk and see her light go out in her room and then in a little while she’d come out and I’d see her walk up the street with the arc light throwing a thin, flickering sparkle on her hair and her hips swaying under her coat wrapped tight around her and the smooth muscles in her legs below her skirt.

I’d watch her going up the other side of the street as far as I could see her. Then I’d go back to my room and lie on the bed awhile and try to read. But I’d think about the way she walked and her slim legs and how every move she made almost ran you crazy.

She was out all day, so I didn’t have to worry about bumping into her in there. The others weren’t around much, either, and it was pretty dark along the hall, even in the daytime. If any of them came along when I was sweeping or carrying out the trash I sort of looked the other way and shuffled along and made myself scarce and nobody noticed me. Maggie and the owner were the only ones ever really saw me.

Then one time when Maggie was out shopping and nobody at all was around I got the long magnesium ladder from down in the basement and took it up and changed the bulbs in the hall so they were dimmer. Then you couldn’t really see anything very plain. Maggie didn’t even notice it; she was dumb as an ox, anyway.

Sometimes when we would be up there cleaning up the place, I’d stop with her in the girl’s room for a couple of minutes like going on with some conversation we were having and then I would smell her perfume hanging over the dresser and see her stockings and things where she had thrown them over a, chair and the blood would start thumping in my neck and head.

Another thing that got me, they were all pretty friendly together up there. I’d hear them and I got to where I’d leave the door to the basement open a crack and I’d stand there and listen and hear them calling to each other around the halls when they were getting out in the mornings.

The guy from Syracuse would make funny cracks and I’d hear her laugh, high and light and gay, like running water, and sometimes she’d say something back in that happy-sounding voice as she’d go downstairs on her way out. Then I’d wonder if she went out with him sometimes or if she saw him upstairs and everything would go sort of hazy and I’d feel the pulse in my temples and it would be a long time before I’d feel all right again.

It got so I didn’t feel much like eating, thinking about her and her short, curly hair and her narrow hips and the way she walked. I didn’t drink anymore, either.

Then I began to slip up into the halls at night when everything was quiet, sliding along and listening at some of the doors to see if I could hear her anywhere. I never did hear anything, though.

It was getting along toward spring, which you could tell by the calendar but nothing else. Until one morning the lineman had gone out early for something and I was sort of listening, especially for her, on the way to work, when I heard him come busting in and go running up the stairs. “Jeez,” he yelled. “It’s nice out!”

It wouldn’t happen anywhere but Buffalo, where summer is such a short season, July Fourth. So now spring was coming in. I wasn’t supposed to leave the place except for a good reason but now when I watched her going out at night, I began to follow along behind her a way.

I went just far enough to watch her walk along in her spring dresses, tight around her hips and thighs, her legs flashing in the brittle arc light flickering through the trees. It was just like she sent out electricity, every step she took.

The joker from Syracuse had moved on, so he didn’t bother me anymore. Once in awhile she’d walk out with the lineman at night and I’d watch for them when that happened. But he’d either come back first by himself or she would. I’d wonder about it anyway and then I’d listen outside his door in the night. But I never heard her.

Then late one afternoon Maggie came down and opened the basement door and yelled for me and I said what did she want and she said the owner wanted to see me. I went up and knocked on his door and he called for me to come in.

He was laying back in one of his big chairs in a silk bathrobe, with a drink on a little table by him and a record player going nice and low with music. He really had it made.

“Have a drink?” he said.

“No, thank you.”

“You don’t drink, do you?”

“Not much,” I said.

“You’re better off. What I wanted to see you about, have you seen anybody hanging around this place?”

“How do you mean?”

“A prowler or anybody might cause us trouble?”

“I haven’t noticed. I don’t get outside too much.”

“We got a girl on the second floor — well, we got two girls down there, in fact. But the one I’m talking about is the girl they call Caddie.”

Everything turned over inside, but I didn’t move a muscle. “I don’t know any of ’em but I think I know the room she’s got. About the middle of the floor down there?”

“That’s the one.”

I waited for him to go on and after a few seconds he said, “She kind of thinks somebody’s been watching her around here. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Who is it?”

“She just seems to think somebody.”

“What would they do that for?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if somebody’s watching her at all. You know how girls are. She may be dreaming it. But try to keep a look out and see if you find anybody suspicious hanging around.”

“I don’t get much chance to get out but I’ll do the best I can.”

So I went back down to the basement and he’d done me a big favor. Now I could tail along and watch her and if anybody ever asked me anything I could always say he’d asked me to keep an eye on her.

Now things were quieter in the morning. There wasn’t much jolly talk up in the halls when everybody was starting out. There weren’t any funny cracks from the Syracuse guy and you didn’t hear her bubbly laugh. She just went out sort of silent.

Couple of days later Maggie and I were working up there and she says, “The place don’t seem the same lately.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Oh, I don’t know exactly. Since Jack moved on it ain’t so pleasant around here. And Caddie’s getting awful nervous.”

“You mean the girl in that room? What’s she nervous about?”

“She says somebody around here is watching her. You ain’t seen anybody around shouldn’t be here, have you?”

“No, I haven’t. What about the other girl, the one up front?”

“You mean Esther? She ain’t said anything but she ain’t got enough brains so she’d know it, anyway. Oh, she’s a nice girl, all right. But she’s got the personality of a dead fish. Caddie’s different. She says she ain’t really seen anybody but she can feel somebody’s around. She says she can feel things like that. She’s got imagination, Caddie has.”

“Maybe she’s got too much.”

“No, she ain’t like that. I know it sounds funny but she’s that way, she says she can just feel it even if she ain’t seen him.”

“I’ll keep a look out for anybody,” I said.

“I wish you would, honest. I don’t like to see that sweet little girl so scared.”

That made two of them and it really gave me the green light but I decided to lay off for a few days. I just stayed put in the basement, but it was tough, lying there and thinking about her and the way she looked and walked, her shiny hair and smooth legs, and wondering if she went out with the guys up there.

Finally one night I stood in the basement door to the street and watched her go walking up toward Main Street and I sort of hung around later to see her come back. But I didn’t see her or hear her and I figured she must have come in before I was looking for her.

So I stepped across the street and looked up at her window. But there wasn’t any light in her room and I kept waiting and listening and I never heard her come back. I laid there on my bed but I couldn’t sleep and all I did was think about her.

It was that way all night, until about four o’clock in the morning I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I tiptoed upstairs and listened at the lineman’s door. I could hear him snoring and then I listened at her door but I didn’t hear anything. Then I heard a door open on the third floor.

I scuttled back and from the top of the basement stairs I could just about see the front of the hall on the third floor because it was all open up that side. In the light from the owner’s room I saw them standing there in a clinch and then she kissed him again and turned around and came to the stairs and tiptoed down, holding her dress together with one hand and carrying her shoes in the other.

After that I didn’t try to sleep anymore.

And then I didn’t listen for her anymore or watch for her in the evenings. I just stayed down in the basement and never left it unless I had to, helping Maggie or something like that.

Everything was real quiet around there until four days later. I was ready to move on, just waiting one more day for payday so I’d have some money to take with me. It was early night again, just after the time most everybody went out for dinner when I heard the door to the basement open and the owner and Maggie talking.

“I don’t see how he’d know anything,” she said. “He don’t go out much.”

“I know,” he said, “but we’d better ask him, anyway.”

“I can’t understand it,” she said. “All her clothes and things still up there.”

They were coming down the stairs but I’d heard them and I slipped over to the door to the street and stood just outside it, where I could still hear them but they couldn’t see me.

“Where the hell is he?” he asked and yelled for me.

After a little wait, Maggie said, “He ain’t in his room. Maybe he just stepped out for something.”

“Watch for him, will you? And when he gets back, ask him to come up. But I don’t suppose he knows anything, anyway.”

They started away and then Maggie gave a real loud sniff and said, “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That smell,” Maggie said.

Then he sniffed. “Yeah,” he said. “That is something. What’s he keeping down here?”

“Whatever it is, it’s gone bad,” she said. I heard her walking across the floor again. “It ain’t in his room. It ain’t so bad over here.”

“I wish he’d get back. I want to ask him about this, too. Look around and see if you can locate it.”

They walked around the floor here and there and then he said, “Whoo! It’s terrible over here.”

She walked over and said, “I’ll say it is.”

“It’s in here,” he said. “He must have something in one of these lockers. Help me open it.”

I heard them working on the door and a creaking sound and then I heard my wife fall out on the floor and Maggie screeched.

“Good God,” he said.

“Saints preserve us,” she yelled. “It’s Caddie.”

“With a belt around her neck,” he said hoarsely.

That’s when I left.

So here I am, pounding the Thruway. Heading for New York. It may not be easy getting out when they open up to unload but I’ll just be a bum hitching a ride. Or maybe I can sneak out like I sneaked in.

I was just walking to get away from the place when I came across this van they were loading up on a moving job. I heard them say they were off for New York as soon as they were loaded and when they went in to get one of the heavy pieces, with the thing about half loaded, I slipped in and scrounged down in a little space behind one of the big chairs.

After a long time they got it loaded and locked the doors and we’ve been rolling through the night ever since.

I don’t know just what I’ll do when I get there. Maybe hitch another ride off to somewhere. East, west, north, south, it won’t matter to me. Or maybe I can ship out on a boat.

I know they’ll get me sometime but you have to run, that’s the way it is. And I had to do it. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything. Except what I did.