Murder Straight Up

7

“Yes?”

The landlady looked very tired, and I suspected I knew why. Tenants of hers would seldom get themselves killed, especially prominent ones. I showed her my Federated ID. “I’d just like to talk to you a little bit.”

“About David Curtis?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. She was very good at it, managing to convey the impression that she was being put upon and was used to being put upon. It nicely put me on the defensive, as if my dime-store cop ID hadn’t done that already.

She was maybe in her early fifties, wearing a tan pants outfit with a frilly white blouse. Her hair, makeup and nails had been done with reverence. She had undoubtedly been a beauty once, but those days were almost gone. She preserved what was left with expensive clothes and an angry dignity.

She pointed me to a chair, then handed me a discreet white business card with her name, Bernice Weldon, printed discreetly in black. She was a protector, Bernice was, of her tenants and of an era as dead as a ballroom where Tommy Dorsey once played. I liked her without quite admiring her.

We sat in a sun-bright room filled with tasteful but bland continental furniture. On the other side of a large window I could see dozens of cars, the least expensive being a new red BMW. David Curtis had not exactly suffered for his art.

“May I ask,” she said, “why you’re interested in his death?”

I was better at lying than I liked to think I was. I said, “One of his relatives contacted me.”

“His parents?”

Now it was my turn to sigh. “I’m sure you’re trustworthy, Mrs. Weldon, but we have to keep these things confidential.”

“Yes, I suppose you do.”

“All I’d like to know, really, is if anything strange or out of the ordinary happened in the last few weeks or so. To David Curtis, I mean.”

“Two things, really.” I got my reporter’s pad out and poised my pencil. “And last night, after I saw what happened on the news, I started thinking about them.”

I nodded. She was going to give me a prelude before she gave me the facts. A hearty man in a suede sport coat walked past the big window and waved inside. Bernice Weldon waved back. “We have some very nice tenants here.”

“Yes,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too impatient. “You were saying, about two things?”

She sighed. “The car thing, I suppose, was the most disturbing.”

“Car thing?”

“A man in a black car was waiting for David one night. I happened to be carrying some trash out to the dumpster in back. And I saw it. The man got out of his car and then went over to David, and they talked briefly and then David tried to hit him. A punch, I mean.”

“Had you ever seen this man before?”

“No.”

“Could you describe the car?”

“Black.”

“I know. But I mean—”

“You mean the make?”

“Yes.”

“Foreign. Expensive. One of our tenants had one once. An XKE I think.”

“A black XKE.”

“Yes.”

“How about the man? Did you get any kind of look at him?”

“Very big, bald.” She thought a moment. “Sinister would be a good word.”

“Could you approximate his age?”

“Perhaps forty?” She made it a question.

Another tenant walked by the window and there was another exchange of waves.

“How did their confrontation end, Mrs. Weldon?”

“They were swearing at each other — I’m glad none of the other tenants were outside to hear — and then the bald man got in his car and drove off.”

“And David Curtis?”

“Well, he just stood there as if he were stunned. For a long time. Then he drove off, too.”

I went to another page in my notebook. I wanted to signal Mrs. Weldon that things had to move along quickly. I’d driven over here more or less impulsively, thinking I had time to work in this appointment before I was to meet Kelly Ford at The Pirate’s Perch.

“How about the second incident?”

“Oh, yes, right.”

I poised my pencil again. I was getting good at this stuff.

“That involved Perry, Mike Perry.”

“The sports announcer?”

“Yes.”

I wrote his name down.

“In the lobby three nights ago they got into a terrible shouting match.”

“Curtis and Perry?”

She nodded.

“You wouldn’t happen to know why, would you?”

“A woman. Perry’s woman. Marcie Grant. A real beauty. Anyway, it was about her.”

“She had been seeing Curtis, I take it?”

She flushed, laughed. “Eventually, they all saw Curtis. He was quite the ladies’ man.” Her laughter told me that she was fascinated and repelled by the man at the same time.

“I see. How did that end?”

“With Perry stalking off. Very angrily. A few minutes later I heard a crash. Perry had put something through David’s windshield.”

I dutifully wrote that down.

“I warned David about these incidents, of course. We have a very pleasant type of people here. They’re not used to violence of any kind.”

I nodded. “Can you think of anything else, Mrs. Weldon? I mean, you’ve been very helpful and I hate to push you, but—”

“Not really. Except she came up the other night, late, and there was a little bit of a scene.”

“Who?”

“Marcie Grant.”

“What kind of scene?”

“Spurned-lover things. You know. She slammed his door and he ran after her down the hall and then he finally just let her walk out.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. I’m sorry he’s dead — he was a decent young man over all — but I was afraid I was going to have to evict him anyway.”

“All the trouble lately?”

“Yes.”

I stood up, we shook hands and before I got to the door, she was back to waving at elderly people on their way to the snug confines of Cadillacs and Continentals and Mercedes-Benzes.

When I opened the door, she said, “There was one thing about him living here, though.”

“What’s that?”

“He was a celebrity, and whenever I told prospective tenants about him, they seemed impressed.”

That didn’t seem to say a whole hell of a lot for her prospective tenants.