Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 2, July 1973

Diary of a Murderer by Jerry Jacobson

He was my flesh and. blood, my brother — my deadly enemy. He had taken my woman, my life, my every joy. But I had one last pleasure to look forward to — the moment he died at my hands...

Though it might be a dangerous miscalculation, I’ve come to the decision to record these last days with my brother Gordon in diary form. I am a precise sort of man in all things, from my receipts and records at the store to my letters and bills at home and I need a record of some sort.

Even if it be used in fatal evidence against me should my plan go awry, this craven need for a private record of my every thought and act is a need to which I must relent. To you, who shall bear silent witness to the events leading up to my brother’s murder, I do apologize.

Tuesday, April 20: I have decided the manner in which my brother Gordon shall die. It will be a bomb — not an elaborate kind because things with moving parts and electrical circuits have always smelled the fear in me and have rebeled against my ineptitude. Toasters spit back at me. And my ten-year old sports car snickers at me by clacking its pistons by way of saying it shall wait until we two are where no other humans can help and then will pull a wire attached to one of its vital organs. So it shall be a bomb.

Wednesday, April 21: After work today I went directly to the New York Public Library, which is just around the corner from the apartment. I share it with my brother Gordon and with Cory, my full-grown St. Bernard of uncertain parentage.

It is easy to become lost in the New York Public Library. But it is also equally easy to lose oneself in it. I spent nearly two hours in the Electrical Engineering section and one hour in the Technology section and my presence went almost entirely without notice.

I looked directly into the eyes of so many people: librarians, shelvers, people from all walks of life there in the library for all of their various educational reasons. And not one of them will ever recall me; nor will they recall the fact that for a brief instant in time, they stared into the eyes of a smallish, slender man in a trim, fashionable suit who would soon be a murderer.

For those three hours I took copious notes and detailed several diagrams of quite good detail and precision. As I worked it struck me that I could have been good at designing or drafting had I not chosen to spend my life’s work on the selling of men’s accessories in department stores around New York.

In my choosing of a profession, I admit that I have not shown much imagination. Part of the blame for that lack of imagination and success can be laid directly on me, but for part of it, the city of New York is responsible. New York has a way of pressing down upon a man with its concrete and steel, a way of making him deaf to his dreams and desires with its unceasing noise. In fact, if I am to be apprehended for Gordon’s murder, I likely shall charge the city of New York as an accessory before and after the fact of my murder. But I should not like to be my lawyer and have to try to prove such a thing.

I did not make the mistake of checking out the books which lent me the support in the construction of my bomb. Books checked out from a public library can be traced back to their borrower. You see how precise and infallibly I am thinking? That precision and infallibility will make the murder of my brother Gordon one of the few truly perfect murders in the annals of crime.

Upon leaving the library, I went to Korvette’s on Fifth Avenue. Nearly anything can be purchased there and at discount prices. I once worked there for a time in men’s accessories. I have been in men’s accessories for twenty-eight years and have not missed a day of work, even between job changes. I venture I am the steadiest, most reliable worker New York City has. The women I have dated have almost to a woman stated that those qualities are my finest. Steadiness and reliability.

You will note that the virtues of sexual attraction, desirability, or worldliness do not rank especially high. That is no matter. Throughout my life I have always known myself and my limitations.

I digress. At Korvette’s I purchased an alarm clock, and three feet of wiring. What store clerk could think anything of these but that I was a heavy sleeper, and intended to hang some pictures?

Thursday, April 22: This afternoon, after work again, I laid plans to purchase the final two ingredients for my bomb, its detonator and six sticks of Trojan stumping dynamite.

In the beginning this was not an easy matter; until my mind began to consider who used dynamite most frequently. Yes, of course, gangsters used dynamite most frequently. The New York newspaper continually spread across their pages in blood the news of the demolition of an automobile and its unbeknownst driver, the redecoration in shambles of a mobster’s home, the concussion reminder to a shopowner that he had fallen behind in his insurance. Yes, to obtain dynamite without the slightest suspicion falling upon me, it was clear that I would have to consort with gangsters.

Friday, April 23: Today Spring burst full-fledged upon the city. Gordon’s bed has been unslept in, which on the morning of a previous Friday night is not unusual for Gordon. Gordon is one to whom New York’s night life appeals like a giddy moth to the flame. On these weekends alone I sometimes go to St. Patrick’s and light a candle. Not for Gordon. For the eternal flame of the city’s night life which has kept him out of my sight and life.

At eleven I drove to a city in New Jersey which, for its relationship to strong criminal elements, shall remain nameless. At a pizza parlor I had conversation with a Mr. Blaster Borodeski, who put me in contact with a man known only as The Firefly in a cubicle in a savings and loan office, who entreated me to go to Vanduchi Construction Supply Company, at 225 South Suffolk Road.

Convinced that my intentions were completely dishonorable, Mr. Vanduchi sold me six sticks of Trojan stumping dynamite and a detonator cap, the total price for which was, as Mr. Vanduchi put it, “two U.S. Grants and two Andrew Jacksons” — $140. I was informed that the price was not so exorbitant when it was considered that the state’s registration requirements for the purchase of dynamite had been circumvented. I had to agree with him.

Saturday, April 24: Gordon is still on his weekend of charming the Big Apple out of its tree, which has given me plenty of time to construct my bomb in my bedroom in private. Well, not strict privacy, for throughout its construction and implantation in an attache case, Cory has been observing my actions with his amber tail wagging in excitement and his big, lummox head tilted in perplexion i.e., he’s excited but he doesn’t really know what he’s excited about.

I think I ought to make some attempt at presenting the physical layout of our apartment building, because that geography will play an important role in the murder of Gordon.

We live in the Hellingforth Apartments on Sixth Avenue, between W. 39 Street and W. 40th Street. It is a six-floor building which overlooks Bryant Park, a favorite midcity park for children, oldsters and lovers.

Our unit is a four-room apartment, Apt. 601. Next to us, in Apt. 602, lives Mr. Bennett. He is a swing-shift aircraft mechanic at John F. Kennedy Airport, a widower and a fanatic New York Knicks fan. On our opposite side, in Apt. 600, there is no tenant. This unit is now used as a storage room, built by Mr. Mishkin, the superintendent. Inside, it is itself partitioned into cubicles with heavy-duty padlocks, in which each tenant in the building stores personal belongings. This room, while not occupied by a regular tenant, nevertheless figures prominently in my plans, as you shall see later.

In Apt. 603, on the other side of Mr. Bennett, resides Miss Priscilla Ivy. She is the head of the Records and Tapes Department of the New York Public Library, whose path I did not cross on Thursday while gathering information there for the construction of my bomb.

Miss Ivy is a bit too tall and a trifle too bony of limb to be considered a woman of real beauty. But she is a neat, precise and affable woman and a cook of some renown, specializing in Chinese cookery. Dishes at which she is particularly adept would have to be her Dem Sem, which consists of tiny dumplings stuffed with meat and seasonings and her Plien Kuo Ba, made of sauteed chicken, rice, ham and snow peas. And I must not forget her recipe for Sweet and Sour Sea Bass, which I have come to learn is served only in a handful of New York’s better Chinese restaurants.

Also needing mention here is Miss Gigi Schwartz, who does not live in our building, but who figures prominently in my motive for murder. Miss Schwartz is employed in the Cosmetics Department at Macy’s. We were once engaged to be married. She visits here often. No, not to visit me. To visit Gordon. On these very painful occasions I am required to take Cory out for a ten-mile walk.

Also, brief mention should be made of the tenants living on the floor beneath, for my humane concern for them in the matter of my bomb. Only Gordon figures in my hatred. No others figure in the narrow scope of my revenge. At the moment of my bomb’s hideous detonation, I want no innocent lives claimed. That eternal trip down to the blast furnaces of hell is reserved for only one mortal.

Directly below us, in Apt. 501, live Luigi and Tina Barbetta, two pleasant, raucous Italians. Luigi operates the bocce-ball court at Fellini’s Restaurant and Bocce on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village. Tina Bargetta is a hair stylist at a nearby beauty school in West Broadway. Both work days.

Below Mr. Bennett, in Apt. 502, is a new tenant known only to me by his mailbox name, R. OWENS. Something of his habits and routine must be learned. I wish no innocent lives lost.

Apartment 503 is vacant. Apartment 500, located directly beneath the sixth floor storage room, is a supply room and workshop. In it, Morey Mishkin, the super, can occasionally be found mixing paints, repairing locks and threading plumbing pipe.

It is at this point that I may as well satisfy your curiosity, as to why I am so maniacally bent on the murder of my brother Gordon. Is my hatred for him justified? Is such a brutal, final act really necessary?

For the answer to these questions, some background must be presented.

It has been said that two can live as cheaply as one. That adage holds true only so long as the two involved are employed. Gordon has not been employed for six years. Up to that time he was engaged in a number of enterprises of short duration and little success.

For a time in the late fifties, he did door-to-door selling in the Manhattan area. To even the most casual observer, this would appear to be an ideal job. Because of the compactedness of apartment buildings, thousands of potential customers were within arm’s reach of each other, and correspondingly, of Gordon. All with the same human needs and the same New York aversion to going out for something when it can as easily be brought to them.

Then why wasn’t Gordon able to make a success at such a painless form of work, you ask? For one reason and one reason only. He took things, slipped them into his sample cases. To Gordon selling was only a sideline. Carpeting was only useful as a product when he could measure the floor space of a bedroom where resided jewel boxes and bureau drawers and closets. He consented to sell vacuum cleaners only because their noise during a living room demonstration could cover the noise as he ransacked desks and cabinets for objects of value while the demonstrated was out of the room.

It should be mentioned here that while Gordon and I are not twins and indeed were born four years apart, our resemblance to each other is strikingly similar. On many occasions, merchants and acquaintances have mistaken Gordon for me and I for him.

It was during this period that I began to discover around our apartment items not of Gordon’s ownership. One afternoon I had purchased a new stereo combination with four-floor-speakers. With an extension cord or tw, I planned to place a speaker in each corner of the living room, giving us lush sound and the sense of sitting right in the very midst of a symphony orchestra.

You can imagine my shock then, when I began to turn back a corner of the carpet to secret speaker and extension cord and discovered neat ranks of currency sandwiched between the rug and its pad. Each time a half-foot of rug was pulled back, a fresh rank of bills was revealed. All in all, there were ten rows of twenty dollar bills! A nifty $4,000!

At this point I conducted a systematic search of the entire apartment. Beneath the bathroom sink, I found men’s wristwatches strapped to the waterpipe. In the shoe compartment of Gordon’s bowling bag, a complete Sterling silverware service for ten. In the bottom of a laundry bag in the back of a bedroom closet, a mink stole.

Which brings us to the evening of the arrest.

On the evening of Gordon’s arrest? No. On the evening of my arrest.

Sunday, April 25: It was around six o’clock in the evening and I had taken dinner with Miss Ivy in her apartment. It was during our dessert of Brandied Lichee that I decided to call the police and inform them of Gordon’s thievery. Even though I had warned him of my intentions to inform the police should his thefts not cease, they were being continued in complete disregard. It was clear to me that even now, the police were closing in on his carefully planned trail and it was only a matter of time before Gordon’s discovery, apprehension and imprisonment. I would tell the police that Gordon, in a flash of conscience, was giving himself up voluntarily. And he would be given consideration for it at his trial.

But my phone call was never placed. Less than a minute after my decision, Gordon appeared at Miss Ivy’s apartment in the escort of two police officers.

“That’s him, officers,” Gordon affirmed, pointed an accusative finger in my direction. “My brother, the thief. My own brother, under whose roofs I have lived for over two years, unaware that I was breaking bread and sharing wine with a common thief! If one’s own brother cannot be trusted, who in this city of thieves and charlatans can one trust?”

A small black book was extracted by one of the police officers.

“You are Alden Freer, brother of Gordon Freer?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Alden Freer, you are under arrest for suspicion of burglary. You have the right to remain silent and you have the right to retain counsel. If you wave the right to remain silent, anything you say may be used in evidence against you in a court of law. Do you understand these rights as they have been explained to you?”

I said I did, as I stared directly at Gordon’s immaculate necktie knot. He knew only too well what that look meant.

The four of us returned to our own apartment, where Gordon conducted the officers on a hasty tour, being careful to keep one of them between us at all times.

“The money is under the rug there. In the northwest corner.”

“Pull it back.”

Gordon obliged and I noted that where there had been ten rows of twenty dollar bills, there now were only five. A cool saving to Gordon of $2,000! He went on:

“...and I found wrist watches under the bathroom sink, a mink coat in the laundry bag in the bedroom... and...”

“Gordon, there isn’t any doubt that I can establish ironclad alibis for the evenings these robberies took place. Are you able to do the same?”

“Well, I think I can prove I was with you in those nights, dear brother. And if you are innocent, that can only mean that our apartment has been used as a drop!”

“Gordon, do you really believe our apartment was used as a place for illegal stash?”

He only smiled.

“Gordon, I suppose you were careful to wipe your fingerprints from the goodies.”

“Fingerprints?”

“And, of course, found some way to apply my own. That will all come out when the police begin taking a closer look, you know.”

“Fingerprints?”

“You didn’t. Ahh, Gordon. Such a gross error.”

“Fingerprints?” he reiterated, slightly dazed.

He wasn’t smiling when the police led him away.

Monday, April 26: Exemplary behavior shaved Gordon’s twenty-year prison sentence to seven. He returned thinner, paler and compliant, with one battered suitcase and one plain suit. And one bleeding, larcenous heart. He knew my key weakness and he exploited it. A brother was still a brother, that was my weakness. I agreed reluctantly to let him stay under he got his bearings.

That was the year I accepted a position with Macy’s, in its Men’s Accessories Department. It was the same year my eyes fell upon Gigi Schwartz.

She was everything for which a batchelor dreams. She had an almond-shaped face framed in cascading curtains of blonde hair. And because she worked in cosmetics at the same emporium, she knew which enticements to apply to that face to make a man want to sink into it beyond all propriety and reason. She was not a woman of soaring intelligence. She was neither wit nor voracious reader, nor a cook to rival the talents of Miss Ivy.

She once began a thickly dubious novel titled Cajon: Memoirs of a Slave and that her favorite and best recipe was a dish called Freaky Beef Stew. In the face of love, some shortcomings can be overlooked.

Meanwhile, Gordon was still descending upon the unemployment office once each week, filling his days with cartoon shows on television and an all-out effort to turn the apartment into New York’s only elevated garbage dump.

But he was absent from the apartment often enough to make living there for me tolerable. During these absences I would invite Gigi Schwartz over for homecooked Chinese dinner, tea and saki. The recipes had been given to me by Miss Ivy and for a time, I felt some guilt about using them to entertain another woman. But I was ever so gradually terminating my relationship with Miss Ivy, a termination which took four weeks. She showed no animosity toward me for it, except to warm me never to use her friendship again to reserve tapes and records at the public library.

During this period, Gordon hit a fifty-to-one horse-racing bet at Aqueduct on what I think he said were four, five-dollar win-tickets. The following week he hit what is known as a twin-double at Roosevelt Raceway. About horse-racing I know absolutely nothing, but I gathered that this stroke of fortune was considerable, since Gordon was no longer coming to me for money.

In celebration of these events, Gordon even bought me the $3.85 Bouillabaisse Marseillaise at the Fisherman’s Net on Third Avenue. That dish, if you have not already linguistically deciphered it, is fish stew. But in defense of Gordon, it also should be mentioned that he opted for a five dollar bottle of white wine. Domestic.

During this period of alternating indolence and long-shots, it should be submitted that Gordon engaged in no criminal activity, except the crime of overstaying his welcome. But he was useful around the apartment. He cleaned occasionally and did the shopping. And, of course, he was also charged with the care, feeding and exercising of Cory.

Of the latter, he was miserably derelict. Each morning at ten he was to take Cory to Bryant Park for a romp. After two weeks I went to Mishkin for feedback.

“If he’s walking that dog every morning, then it’s gotta be the greatest disappearing act since Lamont Cranston and The Shadow. That dog’s been away from the park so long now he probably wouldn’t know a squirrel if it jumped up on the bridge of his nose and introduced hisself.”

I asked Mishkin for suggestions.

“Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Freer. You been a tenant here at the Hellingforth over twenty years now and that entitles you to special consideration. I’ll make you one of those doggie doors. Two of them. One upstairs and one in the front door of the building. How tall is the dog?”

I shut my eyes slightly. “Nearly two feet.”

Mishkin shook his head. “That’s a big damn dog. But I’ll do it. I can work out a lock system for the one in the lobby so’s we don’t get hit by any midget bandits. Like I say, Mr. Freer, you got tenure here and that calls for special consideration, especially with a brother like the one you got. No offense, Mr. Freer.”

Yes, I can hear you submitting already that none of these crimes against me was so heinous that I would be driven to consider murder as retaliation. Then Gordon must have perpetrated some greater crime against me, must have placed across the camel’s back some final straw which broke it.

Indeed he did. Yes, Gordon’s murder is being considered because he stole from me my most precious possession. He stole from me Miss Gigi Schwartz.

He wormed his way into her life as deftly and swiftly as a worm works its way to the core of a soft, Gravenstein apple.

On the evening of another of my dinner dates with Miss Schwarts, Gordon was malingering around the apartment. His own date with a Miss Hadley on the second floor had fallen through. He knew Gigi Schwartz was coming to dinner and it was easy to see he had designs on an introduction.

He loitered in the kitchen as I dried vegetables and bamboo shoots for Muk-Hsu, readied cabbage and crab for Tientsin Cabbage with Crabmeat, prepared frog legs for stuffing with ham and garlic sauce.

“What’s she like, Alden?”

“A bit like Miss Ivy. But much taller.”

“That Ivy chick is five-seven.”

“Who but the superficial notice superficialities in a woman?” I said.

“That’s a tall broad, all right. What’s she look like?”

“She has a face of some character and attraction. The operation, she tells me, did wonders.”

Gordon recoiled slightly. “Operation? What operation?”

“The one to which she submitted after the accident.”

“Accident?”

“Automobile collision. Head-on. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt.”

But I wasn’t scaring him off to a movie. I could tell he was trying to see through me. And that he wasn’t going to leave without at least getting a peek at the merchandise.

“Plenty of food there for two, it looks like.”

“Miss Schwartz is a sturdy eater. You have to be if you play amateur basketball and wrestle A.A.U.”

Perhaps I was laying it on too heavy. Because Gordon wasn’t at all convinced I’d be dining with the mutation I’d described.

He began searching out silverware. “Just set the table for you before I go. Just a helping hand.”

I never should have left the kitchen, but I did, to call Gigi Schwartz to learn what time she was arriving. When I returned, Gordon was stuffing frogs legs and drying extra vegetables and bamboo shoots.

“You got enough here for three people. I’ll probably end up eating in some diner on the West Side. A tough steak, greasy coffee and Sonny James records on the jukebox.”

“All right, you can stay for dinner, but right after it, I want you out of here like a fast jet. Understood?”

“Alden, you’re areal brother. Believe me, I’ll serve myself last and I won’t hog the conversation. I’ll even make the tea, pour the saki and clean up afterwards.”

One by one, Gordon broke each of these promises. He served himself second after serving Gigi, he consumed the conversation like a man speaking his dying words, and the only time he took his hungry eyes from Gigi Schwartz was when he poured the tea and saki, hers dutifully and daintily, mine with pre-occupied overspill.

But it was his final broken promise that really cut it when he mentioned the play.

“Alden tells me you two are off to see this new off-Broadway smash, The Great Con Edison Monster and How the People Came to Destroy It. I haven’t seen a play in years.”

I think it was Gordon’s hang-dog look that made the compassion sparkle wetly in Gigi Schwartz’s eyes. Gordon does just about the most devastating hang-dog look outside of the canine world I’ve ever seen.

“Well then why don’t you join us, Gordon? I’m sure it will be all right with Alden. Won’t it Alden?”

“Just love it,” I said as I swallowed my rage. “Unfortunately he doesn’t have a ticket.”

Gordon showed his perfect teeth. No cavities, I swear. And not a single filling inside his entire face. “Oh, they always have tickets at the box office for those off-Broadway things. You wouldn’t mind if I tagged along, would you, Alden? I mean, I’d just sit around here all night, staring at four walls, wallowing in my lonesomeness, drowning in my self-pity...”

“Of course we wouldn’t mind,” Gigi said. “We have time for one more cup of saki before we leave for the theater. Alden, would you pour?”

Thereafter my relationship with Gigi Schwartz went from warm to cool to cold in very short order. And I think it was about at that point that I began toying with the idea of murder. You are now, brought up to date.

Monday Evening, April 26: I returned home from work this afternoon to find the apartment very lived in. Clothing strewn about the living room, the television set on and tuned to Secret Storm, and the sounds of activity coming from the kitchen. Unmistakably, Gordon, the wandering brother, was home.

Gordon was in the process of piling a triple decker sandwich. The drain board looked like the aftermath of two produce trucks colliding.

I tried to be cordial. “You’re missing the last half of Secret Storm.”

“Oh. Hi, Alden. It isn’t my favorite show. I just turned it on so I wouldn’t miss Cartoon Carnival at five o’clock. I always watch those old Bugs Bunny and Sylvester the Cat flicks. They crack me up one side and down the other.”

“Where have you been over the weekend?” I asked.

Gordon added the last of the Swiss cheese and the last of a two-day-old loaf of French bread. I bought it fresh on Saturday at A La Duchesse Anne on Madison. It was clear he’d been packing it, and the cheese and lunch meat, in all day.

“Tasting the Big Apple, Alden,” he said as he took a pre-emptory bite of his sandwich, catsup squirting out and down his stolen CCYN sweatshirt. He always uses that phrase to explain that he’s been out on the town. Tasting the Big Apple. Very hip.

“You going to clean up your mess,” I said, “or enter it in the Good Housekeeping’s Kitchens Ugly Contest?”

“Relax, Alden. I’ll clean it up. And I got to tell you it may not be too long before you got this whole place to yourself.”

That was quite a shocker. Gordon, after all these years of thievery and deceit and mooching, was about to change his quarters?

“You mean you’ve found a place of your own?” I said anxiously.

“Yeah, I think I have, Alden. As a matter of fact, I’m moving into a little place Friday over on 68th Street. The Dutch House.”

The Dutch House. At once my heart fell apart at its seams. The Dutch House was where Gigi Schwartz lived.

“Isn’t that where—”

“—where Gigi pads, right,” Gordon said, wiping horseradish and mustard from his chin. “I’m going to move in with her, see how it works out, you know? Real sweet kid, that Gigi. I got to thank you, Alden, for introducing me to her.”

“Don’t mention it,” I replied. Though my voice wasn’t in it. I should have been please about finally getting rid of Gordon. But I wasn’t. Not at all. Not this way.

“Cheer up. There’ll be plenty of chicks for you. This Big Apple is full of them, ripe ones low on the tree waiting to be picked. You just hang in there around the old trunk. You’ll snatch a juicy one down that’s meant for you.”

To this point I had been fearful of going through with my plans to murder Gordon. I had the bomb in my attache case in the bedroom and I had a tentative plan, but I still doubted whether I could actually go through with it. But now, I needed no finer reason to murder Gordon that the one with which I was now presented. He had not only stolen the woman I loved, he was now moving in with her, with horseradish and catsup on his crummy stolen CCNY sweatshirt and no goodbye or thanks-a-lot on his lips.

Tuesday, April 27: This final note, before I drop off to sleep. I have tentatively scheduled Gordon’s death for Thursday. It is a good target date, allowing me two full days — Tuesday and Wednesday — in which to determine the routines of fifth and sixth floor tenants. Beyond the wall of my room I can hear Gordon banging and clanging around packing some of his things. Not much in our place is his so it shouldn’t take him long. The racket does not offend me and it shouldn’t take me long to drop off. Instead of sheep-counting, I shall count one by one, tenants as they leave the building on Thursday morning. And I shall count Gordon, as well, sleeping ’til noon with a bomb beneath his bed.

Following my usual routine, I left the apartment at 8:10 for work, but instead of heading for work, I crossed the street to Bryant Park where, from a bench some one hundred yards away, I could observe the routines of my fellow tenants.

I there observed Miss Ivy emerge from the building at 8:12 a.m. on her way to the library. I am not too concerned for the danger of Miss Ivy being caught in her rooms when the blast rips through the sixth floor. She is a punctual, dedicated woman of stout health who has not missed a day of work in thirteen years.

At 8:33, Mr. and Mrs. Barbetta were seen leaving for their respective jobs in Greenwich Village. There is no reason to feel their routine will not be the same on the day of the bombing.

At 8:45 Mr. Robert Owens of Apt. 501 emerged with a battered valise in hand. I suspect he is a scholar or professor bound for work. His habits and his daytime obligations still doubtful.

Leaving the building at 9:45 was Mr. Bennet in Apt. 602. About his routine there is no doubt. He returns from his job as a mechanic at J.F.K. International at 12:50 a.m. and goes immediately to bed. He wakes punctually at eight a.m. every morning and walks to The Pancake Hut six blocks away from his breakfast. He seldom returns before noon and never before ten-thirty.

At ten o’clock precisely, Cory, a St. Bernard dog, burst through the ingeniously devised trap door of the Hellingforth. Across Sixth Avenue he bounds, a huge, red monstrosity gone wild. Spotting me here in the park and not away at work caused the big, baleful eyes to stare up at me in perplexion. And then, as quickly as he had discovered me sitting there alone and adding to my journal, he bids me good-by as a bushy squirrel is spotted in his field of vision. Cory is a maniac about squirrels. He finds in them the same carnal fascination that a cat finds in a mouse.

Perhaps it is because we are both predators that I recall another morsel of habit in Gordon’s life. And it is a juicy morsel because it further seals his impending death against possible escape. It is just this. On many occasions Gordon does not even return to the apartment the next morning after an evening on the town. Except on Wednesday nights. On Wednesday nights Gigi Schwartz attends a seminar at a cosmetics clinic and then drives to Long Island for dinner with a sister, to remain overnight. Gordon always spends this night in, gaping at a lengthy string of Busby Berkley musicals and James Gagney gangster films on television’s Classic Flicks. Which means he will be sleeping late. His circumstances surrounding his death are building nicely. Habit and sloth will be his murderers.

Wednesday, April 28: My second day of surveillance in Bryant Park. Again the morning routine of each mentioned tenant is followed faithfully. With one exception, Mr. Bennett returned forty minutes early from his breakfast, at 10:22. This deviation from the norm will constrict my timetable a bit, but not so much that my plan must be scrubbed. At ten sharply, Cory appears on the stoop of the Hellingforth for his squirrel hunt in the park. And at 10:22 Mr. Bennett returns from his breakfast. So the timing for the detonation of tomorrow’s blast is clear. It must occur between 10:01 and 10:20.

In the matter of Mr. Robert Owens, it has been determined that he is a professor of Geological Science at New York University, returning to his rooms at the Hellingforth no earlier than six-thirty in the evening.

There remains now only two final matters: the security of the sixth floor storage room and Mishkin’s fifth floor workshop. No one must be in those rooms when the bomb explodes.

In the case of the first, I repaired to my apartment and there typed notes addressed to all the tenants in the building who do not work during the daytime hours.

Concerning the matter of the workshop I visited Mr. Mishkin.

“Mr. Mishkin, on Thursday morning between ten and eleven, I’m planning to tape record a radio presentation of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 7, as well as the New York Chamber Soloists performance of Handel’s Oboe Concertos.”

“That’s very nice, Mr. Freer. I think we should all strive to put class in our lives. This city, it’s nothin’ but a concrete jungle full of animals, you know what I mean? Brutes and animals.”

“But you see, Mr. Mishkin, in order to record, I require something like complete silence.”

“Of course you need silence! I know about tape recording! Most important thing for your recording on tape is silence. So is there gonna be a train wreck in the building tomorrow or something?”

“The workshop, Mr. Mishkin. As you know it is situated directly opposite the wall of my apartment.”

“You want I should make myself scarce in there tomorrow between ten and eleven, right?”

“If you would.”

“No problem, Mr. Freer. Early in the morning, me and the missus is going to visit her sister in New Rochelle. Be there all day... if she don’t start up with me about success and being a crummy super all my life and...”

“Thank you, Mr. Mishkin.”

Wednesday afternoon: I spent these hours at the store, working to diminish my anxiety and tension. At four o’clock, Mr. Dalrymple, my supervisor requested my presence in his office for a discussion of my tardinesses of the past three days.

“Not all like you, Freer. Over seven years service and now suddenly we find — lapses, Freer.”

“I haven’t been feeling at all well these past few days, Mr. Dalrymple.”

“Flu? Stomach disorder? We have our first Spring sales coming up next week and anything less than a full crew will mean an inefficient ship. You take Thursday and Friday off, Freer. Round yourself back into shape. We’ll compute it off your regular vacation time, of course.”

I affected sickliness and contribution. “Yes, sir. That might be the best thing to do, sir.”

“See a doctor, Freer. We’ll be monitored by some regional reps during our sales days and a poor showing could be dynamite.”

I smiled wanly. Dynamite. An apt phrase.

Wednesday, Evening: While Gordon was out, I liquidated. To a female U.N. interpreter living on 58th Street, I sold my stereo, speakers and phonograph records. To a commercial artist in the Village, I sold my decorator couch and arm chair. He told me he had an idea to suspend them on wire from the side of the Allied Chemical Building as part of an ad campaign. I would be traveling light.

When Gordon returned to the apartment and remarked about the skimpy living room furnishings I explained that the recording equipment was out for repairs and that I was having the couch and chair dyed orange on a whim.

Wednesday, Midnight: As expected, Gordon attended his weekly living room film festival. Alone in the bedroom, I got out my bomb, set the timer and activated it for an explosion at 10:05 a.m. I then slipped quietly into Gordon’s room and slipped the old attache case beneath his bed and as I did, checked his alarm clock to make sure he was planning to arise at his usual hour. As I read the lighted dial, my heart stirred with anticipatory triumph. The clock was set for twelve noon. Dobie Gillis would have been proud of Gordon’s slothful regularity. Perhaps they might even meet and take it under discussion in the next world.

Thursday, Morning, April 28: At seven I tip-toed out of the apartment, down the stairs and out a side door of the Hellingforth. Two suitcases and a single diary in which would be recorded one final entry: My witnessing of the blast itself from the bench in Bryant Park. Goodbye Macy’s, I whispered beneath my breath as I made my way for the Mecca All Night Cafeteria five blocks toward the Hudson River. Good-bye, old and faithful sports car, as I made my way past its battered form parked at the curb. Goodbye, Hellingforth, as I acknowledged its ancient brickwork and timeless ivy. And good-bye, New York City, town of infinite pleasures and depthless pains. Good-bye all.

Thursday Morning — Eight o’clock: I have returned from my hasty breakfast and am writing this as I sit on my park bench and wait for the exodus of the innocent. My mind’s eye sees sticks of dynamite lying in perfect repose beneath Gordon, who sleeps on his back with his hands folded across his chest. There is something funereally beautiful in that.

Out they come in perfect, timely order. At 8:12, Miss Ivy bound on birdy legs for the library. At 8:33, the Barbetta’s headed for Greenwich Village and at 8:45, Mr. Owens for his lecture classes at N.Y.U. Shortly before nine, the Mishkins emerge for their trip to New Rochelle and at 9:30 Mr. Bennett for his after-slumber breakfast.

The tenants left behind have received their messages from the City Engineering Department to refrain from using the storage room; and Mishkin’s workshop is vacant and locked. All things are progressing in impeccable order.

There is left now a single occupant to disembark the ship of immovable concrete and ivy across the street: a shaggy, spiritted, lovable St. Bernard dog of uncertain parentage.

While I wait for the safe exit of the last innocent bystander I here reflect on those years of companionship and friendship. I write of Cory’s faithfulness when weather was inclement and foul or when I was ill abed and he would pad the city with a tiny basket afix beneath his chin to fetch medicine or food. I write of the times he routed burglars from the building and I write of the many occasions when he sped after me carrying in his jaws a forgotten scarf or hat or briefcase. I write, too, of his companionship on lonely nights, and more of his kindnesses which in this hour of trouble and impending disaster have escaped my mind.

In the pocket of my topcoat is his leash, with which he shall be secured to a leg of my park bench. I long to take him with me but a man on the run from such a heinous crime as I am about to commit has no use for excess baggage, no matter how personal the attachment to it has become. Someone will find him a good home and a loving master.

It is now 10:02 three minutes until the explosive execution of a wicked, thoughtless brother. It disturbs me that Cory is two minutes late coming through Mishkin’s trap door. Always his impetuous race to the park has been Pavlovian in its punctuality.

The time has proceeded to 10:03 and still Cory has not emerged from the building. Something is delaying him and I see now, the solitary flaw in my plan. Depending on an animal’s sense of punctuality, I have not allowed time to disarm my bomb should that punctuality lapse. There will be no time now to return to the apartment and disarm the bomb. If, in the next thirty seconds Cory does not appear, he shall die an ignorant, innocent death!

It is now 10:04, sixty seconds from the blast. I put my face in my hands and pray, intermittently writing these final few words. To live, it is imperative that Cory now be pounding down the stairs from the impending holocaust on the sixth floor. And out Mishkin’s trap door in the lobby. And across the street to the safety of Bryant Park, to lick my hand a fond goodbye and then to wonder as I leash him to the bench.

Writing, I have now raised my head from my prayers. The second hand on my watch sweeps through the final minute of silence before the morning is tom apart by an explosion.

And then I see him as he comes bounding up to me across the grass. He’s made it out of the building! Cory has made it safely away!

A big, oval friendly face with a mouth as wide as the Sea Lion Caves of Oregon. My hand is covered with wet, sloppy kisses and then like a red missile he is off and away after a plump squirrel.

There are left just fifteen seconds, time enough to write these final words in my diary. There is, alas, no time to run. There is only time hurriedly to write the epitaph of a man who for the briefest time, enjoyed the exhilaration of the possibility of turning the perfect murder.

But it is not to be. For Cory, faithful Cory, has seen fit to bring me an item of which I am always forgetful.

It is at my feet, silently whirring off seconds inside. It is my atta...