Scent of Evil

23

The phone startled me, shattering the late-night stillness of the empty office. It was Sammie Martens.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Someone I’d like you to talk with, on Elliot Street.” Sammie gave the address in an obviously strained voice. “He’s a little reluctant to leave home right now.”

“Be right there.”

The address she’d given belonged to one of the most notorious of our city’s flophouses. The entrance was a narrow doorway wedged into the far-left side of the building. The rest of the first floor was occupied by a series of ever-changing storefront businesses. I climbed the dimly lit wooden staircase, keeping my hands away from the stained and rotting smashed plaster walls, acutely aware that I was ascending into a closed and poisonous atmosphere of urine, sweat, and years’ worth of unwashed bodies. The stench, sharpened by the sauna-like conditions, made my head swim. It also made me think that Sammie Martens had been crawling these halls, and others like them, for days now in search of her elusive bridge-dweller. For her sake, if for no one else’s, I hoped she’d hit paydirt.

I reached the top floor, walked down the corridor, stepping around a pile of something that looked vaguely organic, and stopped before the open door of number 33. Sammie Martens, pale, exhausted, but obviously exultant, was standing in the middle of the room. Sitting on what passed for a bed was our odorous friend Milo.

I nodded to them both, although Milo, either depressed or half comatose, was staring at the floor.

“Thanks for coming, Lieutenant. Milo here has something he wants to get off his chest.”

There was dead silence in the room, apart from Milo’s breathing, which sounded a little like air escaping from a water pipe.

Sammie kicked him in the shin, hard. “Don’t you, Milo?”

He grabbed for his leg and slipped off the bed, howling in protest. Normally, I would never have tolerated such a move by a cop, but I also knew Sammie Martens well and realized that what I was witnessing must have been the culmination of a lot of back-and-forth between these two, in which Sammie had probably been receiving the short shrift. It was an angry outburst I would let pass, but just once.

She was down on her knees in front of him now, her face inches from his. “Come on, you son of a bitch. I’ve looked like a jerk once because of you, and it’s not going to happen again.”

Her face was shining with sweat, which matted her hair at the temples and streaked the back of her shirt. Whatever Milo had told her could have been put in a report, or she could have brought him to me, as she had done before. But that would have been under normal circumstances, and right now, I realized, not much was normal about Sammie’s behavior. I’d let her overextend herself and hadn’t reassured her enough about her earlier mistake with Milo.

I knelt down next to them. “Milo, what’ve you got?”

“I got a fuckin’ broken leg is what I got.”

Reluctantly, I reached out and lifted his chin until we were looking straight at one another, from so close I thought my eyes might water. “Concentrate, Milo. Talk to us now and we’ll get out of your hair.”

His one good eye blinked at me a couple of times. “Toby paid me off to lie to you people.”

I looked sharply at Sammie. “Toby? Wasn’t that the same guy who was offered five hundred bucks to identify the bridge bum?”

Her expression was bitter. “The one and only. Talk about coincidences.”

Milo shook his head free of my hand and snorted. “Coincidence, bullshit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was the one got offered the five hundred. I told Toby about it, and he came up with the idea to switch places.”

“Why?”

“How do I know? He paid me twenty bucks. If he’s stupid enough to pay me to jerk you around, I’m not gonna ask why. I wasn’t gonna get no five hundred, ’cause I didn’t know who’d been under the bridge.”

“Where’d he get the money?”

“Beats me.”

“Where’s Toby live?”

This time he actually chuckled, or made a noise like it. “Shit, he lived in a goddamn Dumpster once. How the hell am I suppose to know that?”

Sammie shoved his shoulder to get his attention. This time I grabbed her hand, which she ignored. “You knew his Dumpster address, didn’t you?”

“If you don’t know, then who might?” I tried.

He stared malevolently at Sammie, as if I weren’t even in the room. “Try Mother Gert’s.”

Sammie scrambled to her feet and headed for the door. I patted Milo on the shoulder and put a ten-dollar bill into his hand. “Thanks.”

I caught up to Sammie in the hall. “Hold it.”

She turned and faced me. “What?”

I let a moment of silence elapse, during which I just looked at her. She stared back, defiantly at first, and finally she let her gaze go to the floor.

“How much sleep have you had in the last three days?”

She didn’t reply at first, as if choosing from a selection of answers, some of which she knew she’d regret upon utterance. Suddenly, her shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh. “Guess I messed up.”

I couldn’t resist smiling. “Christ, no-you got him to talk. Of course, if you’d kicked me that hard I would have talked too. Don’t do that again, okay?”

“No,” she muttered. “You going to pull me?”

I squeezed her shoulder and steered her down the hall toward the stairs. “No. But I am going to give you a sit-down job for a while; you’re working on half a battery.”

The air outside was no cooler, but its mere cleanliness was a relief. “Go back to the Municipal Building and get me some help. Toby might be at Gert’s, but I’m not counting on it, and if he’s not, we better find him fast. If what Milo says is true, maybe Toby did see something, which means his life is hanging by a thread. Make some calls-the Retreat and the hospital and anywhere else you think he might have gone to ground. I’ll let you know what I find out at Gert’s.”

Mother Gert’s, on Western Avenue, was located between the twin municipal clusterings of West Brattleboro and Brattleboro, in a kind of no-man’s land, neither suburb nor city. Its geographical identity was linked to the interstate, which sliced through the map like a meat cleaver.

Gert’s was a privately funded halfway house for society’s rejects, mostly the homeless and alcoholics. It dated back to the altruistic sixties and was presently run by a no-nonsense, lapsed Catholic nun named Gertrude Simmons, who lived in a room on the top floor of what had once been an almost statuesque Greek Revival mansion.

I parked at the front of the building, locked my car, and went around to the rear door, the official entryway. A tough looking young woman wearing a Hard Rock Café T-shirt and camouflage combat trousers walked down the central hallway into the reception room I’d just entered.

“Hi, Joe.”

“Suzanne. How’re you?”

“I’m doin’. What’d you want?”

Suzanne didn’t like cops, having spent many of her pre-reform years in and out of our detox cells in the Municipal Building’s basement.

“Is Gert around?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“I’ll let her tell you.”

She scowled at me and jerked her thumb down the hallway. “In her office.”

“Thanks.” The hall was lined with doors leading to bedrooms, dormitories, and small counseling rooms, all catering to the various needs of the establishment’s frequently strung-out clientele. It wasn’t fancy; it was run on a shoestring. But if I’d been in need of advice, comfort, or simply a place to spend the night, Mother Gert’s would have been my first stop. I obviously wasn’t alone in my appreciation-every open door I passed revealed one or more tenants.

I found Gertrude Simmons in the glorified closet they called her office, pounding away at an ancient manual typewriter.

“Hi, Gert.”

She got up and gave me a hug, a greeting I’d seen her give most everyone she met, and no less personal for that. “Hi, Joe. Long time. I was sorry to hear of your troubles.”

I parked myself on the only other chair in the tiny room, which put me right up against the side of Gert’s desk. “It’s mostly media fanfare. We’ll sort it out.”

She looked at me closely. “I hope so. But I sense it’s more than fanfare.”

Gert was as instantly intimate and comforting as her Attila-at-the-door, Suzanne, was combative. It was, of course, the perfect combination for this kind of place, for if you survived Suzanne’s scrutiny and actually gained admission, you became highly appreciative of Gert’s motherly attention.

Nevertheless, I didn’t yield to the unspoken invitation to spill the contents of my heart. “I gather one of your regular customers is a man named Toby.”

The motherliness was replaced by the seldom-seen steel I knew was necessary to run a place like this. “Joe, you know I’m not happy with that kind of inquiry, not without just cause. And the proper paperwork.”

This was why I’d decided to come here myself, instead of having Sammie simply call. “Gert, he’s not in any trouble from us, but he may be the target of someone who has a lot to lose if Toby gets conversational.”

A crease appeared between her eyes. “Toby saw something?”

“Maybe. Someone is looking for a bum who may have seen the burial of Charlie Jardine from under the Elm Street bridge. Toby paid a guy named Milo to feed us some cock-and-bull story about Milo being that bum. It sounds like a run for cover to me. I want to find Toby before the other guy does.”

It was the kind of condensed information for which McDonald or Katz would have killed, but I had no qualms about sharing it with Gert. Not only did I trust her discretion, I also knew that unless I was utterly straight with her, she’d wish me a nice day and escort me to the exit.

“Where does your policeman fit into all this, the one whose wife was having an affair with Jardine?”

“Maybe he did it, maybe he didn’t. But we won’t know if someone kills Toby first.”

“How do you know his life’s in danger?”

I had to admire her determination to gather the facts. It showed how highly she rated privacy, even that of a street bum. “A man offered Milo five hundred dollars to lead him to the guy who was under that bridge.”

“And this Milo didn’t turn in Toby, not for five hundred bucks?” Her incredulity showed how far she’d come from believing in the milk of human kindness.

“Milo didn’t know who’d been under the bridge; nor do we, for that matter. It’s just that Toby is being suspiciously slippery. In fact, he told one of my officers that he was the one who’d been offered the five hundred.”

Gert shook her head, a gesture with which I could sympathize. “Why would he do that?”

“I think he may have switched roles with Milo to cover his tracks as completely as possible. On the other hand, it may be more complicated than that. Maybe he’s involved somehow in Jardine’s death.”

Gert shook her head. “I don’t believe Toby’s involved. His one ambition in life is to be left alone. He doesn’t want help, as we call it.

He just wants to be free, to do as he wishes. If he did see something, he’d do what he could to deny it. You know, he may not be in as much danger as you think. He may have just left town.”

“How would I find out?”

Satisfied with my motives, Gert stood up and opened the top drawer of a tall filing cabinet that crowded the other side of her desk. She pulled out a folder and began leafing through it. “Like I said, Toby was worse than most about staying put. He wandered around.”

She finally stopped at a single sheet of paper and studied it for a while. “Well, it’s a bit of a long shot. He had a girlfriend once, named Melanie Durocher, lived up on Spring Street, behind the fire department. That was about a year ago, which was the last time I saw him. From what you tell me, I guess they broke up, which doesn’t surprise me.”

I shrugged and stood up. “If I come up dry, I’d like to circulate a description of him. You wouldn’t have any historic details, would you? Place of birth, parents, military service, anything like that? A photograph?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I can give you a description, though-he looks just like Ernest Hemingway as an old man.”

“White beard and fondness for turtlenecks?”

“The spitting image. If you copy Hemingway’s photo from The Old Man and the Sea, you’ll have Toby exactly.”

“What’s his real name?”

“That’s the only thing I do know. He’s quite proud of it, in his quiet way, although I may have been the only one he ever told. It’s Tobias A. Huntington.”

I stood in the middle of Spring Street, looking up at the lighted windows above a locked auto-repair shop, wondering where the front door was. As far as I could tell, the building was boxed in on both sides by its neighbors and was built almost flush against the hill behind it, in true Brattleboro fashion. I’d already checked out the narrow alley back there, as best I could in the gloom, and had found nothing aside from several decades’ worth of junk, piled up almost to the second floor.

I was about to resort to hurling pebbles against the windowpanes, like some latter-day Romeo, when I noticed not only that all the windows were open, but that someone’s shadow was moving about inside, which would have made my contemplated gesture appear considerably more hostile.

I fell back to a less subtle but less damaging approach. “Hello you in the second-floor apartment. Could you come to the window?”

The shadow paused, grew larger, and finally blocked one of the windows. Spring Street, being at best an aggravated alleyway, squeezed between the hill and the back of the looming Elliot Street Apartments, had no lighting to speak of, so the figure that addressed me remained a one-dimensional black void, for all the solidness of its voice.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a policeman. My name’s Gunther.”

The shadow didn’t respond.

“I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.”

“Got a warrant?”

I couldn’t make up my mind on the sex of my quarry, since her, or his, voice hovered somewhere between both possibilities, as did the size of the shadow. “I’m just after some information, about someone you might know. Could I come up?”

“No.”

That stalled me for a moment, until I realized he or she wasn’t moving away from the window. The implication held some hope: I could still hold an interview of sorts, from the street. I glanced around. The street looked deserted.

I gave a mental shrug and cleared my throat. “I’m looking for Toby.”

“Don’t know him.”

Ah, I thought, I hadn’t followed the proper protocol. “Mother Gert sent me. Said he used to live here. You Melanie Durocher?”

There was a pause. “Yeah.”

“Seen Toby lately?”

“Not since he moved out.”

“When was that?”

“Soon as the weather got warmer.”

I smiled at that. “Do you know where he might be now?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Lived in a Dumpster once. Could be anywhere.”

The Dumpster had obviously made history in certain circles. Unfortunately, Melanie Durocher was right: Toby could be living anywhere, including, as Gert had suggested, out of town.

“Said he once had a room with a view.”

“What?” The comment had come after a moment’s contemplation and jarred oddly with my images of dumpsters and bridges. “Where?”

“Don’t know. Said it was real small, had a window on each wall, like a lighthouse.”

“He didn’t identify the building itself?”

“Nope. All he said was that it was hot shit when a storm came in.”

“But in Bratt, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Do you know how long ago this was?”

“Nope. I gotta go, okay?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but the shadow had already left. I stood there for a few seconds, enveloped by the gloom, hearing the town’s nocturnal hum all around me. I half wondered if I’d made the entire conversation up. I scratched my head and walked back to my car, hoping to find out what Sammie had dug up with her calls.

As I drove back toward the Municipal Building, I turned Melanie Durocher’s last words around in my mind, trying to match Toby’s cryptic description of his “room with a view” to some recognizable piece of architecture in town. Simple logic dictated certain givens: It was high up, for upcoming storms to be impressive; it was small; it had windows on all four walls.

I had stopped at the red light on the corner of High and Main streets, feeling like the one idiot in a game of charades, when I suddenly stuck my head out the car window, and looked straight up at the one place in town that fit Toby’s lair like a glove.

I pulled over in front of the Paramount and radioed Dispatch.

“What’s up?” Sammie asked, once she’d been brought to the radio.

“You had any luck?”

“Negative. You?”

“Maybe. Can you meet me at the Brooks House Main Street entrance right away?”

“Sure.”

I parked my car in a legal spot and got out, eyeing what I was increasingly sure was my goal. The Brooks House, built as an upscale red-brick hotel in 1871, as announced by a large bas-relief plaque on its wall, filled the southwest corner of the intersection like the bow of a masonry ocean liner. Its first floor was entirely made up of retail businesses, and the three floors above were residential, unremarkable in both price and appearance. But at the corner, on top of the illusory prow of the building, was a single, squatty, fifth-floor Victorian tower room.

Sammie Martens parked her car in front of Brown and Roberts Hardware and crossed the street to join me. “What are we looking at?”

“I hope it’s a lead.” I led the way to the entrance hall, checked out the names over the mailboxes, and pushed the button for the elevator. The manager’s apartment was on the third floor.

“You found Toby?”

“No, but I think I may have found one of his hideaways.”

We wandered down the dark hallway in search of the proper door. The Brooks was a high cut above where Milo had been festering, but it was still no home for the fainthearted. As with most American cities, large or small, the downtown dwellings, despite their convenience, didn’t cater to a high-class crowd.

I pounded on the door. There was a brief silence, followed by some shuffling footsteps and the turn of a lock. A young man, thin, narrow-chested, and sallow-faced, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a sour expression, pulled open the door.

“What?” It was less an inquiry than a challenge, making me aware not only that it was getting late for house calls, but that managers of low-rent buildings seemed, for the most part, to carry their burdens with remarkably little grace.

“Are you the manager?”

“Who wants to know?”

I pulled out my badge and made the introductions.

It had a remarkable effect. The young man’s face turned fuchsia. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. What is it with you people? The guy was a guest, all right? As far as I know, it is not against the law to have a guest in your house. He’s just a poor son of a bitch who wants to be left alone. Like I do.”

Sammie and I looked at one another and then back at the manager. I spoke first. “I think we’re missing something here. We just dropped by because we’re looking for someone.”

“Who?” The voice was no less hostile.

“His name’s Toby.”

Again he exploded. “Who the hell you think I been talking about? What did he do, anyway, rob a bank? I know nothing about it, all right? So get off my back.”

He began to close the door. I stuck my foot out and stopped it.

“Watch it, man. I don’t have to talk to you.”

I held up both my hands in surrender. “That’s true. But we’re investigating a murder, and we would appreciate any help you could give us.”

He looked at me in astonishment. “You’re shitting me. Toby was tied in to those murders?”

I remembered the name from the mailboxes downstairs. “Look, let’s back up a bit. Are you Mr. Weller?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re looking for Toby because we think he may be in danger. All we want to do is talk to him. We have no hassles with you at all; in fact, we’d appreciate your help.”

I left it at that. He looked at both of us, finally shrugged and let the door swing back. “All right; come on in.”

It was a small apartment, in which he apparently lived alone, accompanied by the bedlam and odor of smelly socks and stale food that most young bachelors seem to find inescapable. The one detail of interest to me, however, was the sight of a narrow, metal circular staircase leading up.

Weller headed off into a living room, swept some clothes off the bedraggled couch, killed the television, and sat in a straight-backed chair. Sammie and I remained standing.

“So what do you want to know?” Weller said, looking up at us uncomfortably.

“When did you last see Toby?”

“A couple of months ago. But I heard him yesterday.”

I could hardly believe our luck. “Why the distinction?”

“He lives upstairs, in the tower. He comes and goes through the back window, over the roof-uses the fire escape.”

“He’s living here now?”

“He was. I went up there this morning and found he’d cleared out. He does that, though; comes and goes. Usually he stays longer.”

“How long had he been here this time?”

“I’m not really sure, but it couldn’t have been more’n a couple of days.”

“How do you know him?” Sammie suddenly asked.

Weller actually smiled. “I’m a writer, or I’d like to be. I started putting this idea together, a biography of the homeless. I’d interview as many of them as I could, get them to tell me their stories, a Studs Terkel kind of thing. I met Toby way early on. He was a real tough nut to crack, but he interested me, you know? I was finding out that a lot of the people I was talking to really didn’t have anything to say, or they couldn’t say it ’cause they were too tanked, or screwed up, or whatever. But Toby wasn’t your average drunk bum; he doesn’t drink, as far as I know, is pretty well educated, and is tidy, given the people he hangs out with.”

“Could we see where he lived?” I interrupted.

“Huh? Oh, sure.” Weller walked over to the circular staircase, at last the affable host. “Watch your step on this thing. I don’t think it was designed for adults.”

We followed him up gingerly, arriving at a room fitted with only a table, a chair, and a bookcase.

“That’s where I do my writing.” Weller didn’t break stride but continued up the stairs.

“Here we are,” he announced at the top, with a one-handed flourish, purposely leaving the lights off.

The room matched his own recent change of attitude. Its dim interior wasn’t much: low, stained ceiling; walls seriously in need of paint; and a floor covered with trash and a bare mattress. But the impression it made was magical. More than a room with a view, as Toby had described it, it gave the impression of being a crow’s nest above Brattleboro. Each window dominated the wall it inhabited, exhibiting at this time of night a sparkling urban vista of lamp-lit streets, buildings, and roofs. I felt utterly on top of the town.

Weller understood our silence. “Pretty neat, huh? I tried putting my office up here at first, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the view. Had to give it up.”

“How did Toby come to live here?” I asked.

“It was kind of an exchange. At first, he wouldn’t talk to me-real reserved, almost hostile. He was that way with everybody. But then, I don’t remember how, the tower room came up, and he saw it might be to his advantage to have a cubbyhole available when he needed it. I promised to leave him alone, let him come and go as he pleased. As payment, he agreed to talk to me and introduce me to a few people. It was a pretty fair exchange; I learned a lot.”

I located the light switch near the stairs and turned it on, flooding the room with a garish brightness that both diminished the view and revealed the starkness around us. There wasn’t much to look at. Other than the mattress, there was no furniture, and the floor was littered with food wrappers, old newspapers, and a couple of rags. I stepped carefully over to a tin ashtray that was parked under one of the windows.

Squatting down, I pulled a pen from my pocket and picked a balled-up candy wrapper out of the ashtray. Underneath, instead of cigarette butts, there were several enormous wads of chewing gum. “Likes his gum, huh?”

Weller laughed. “Oh, yeah. Chewed that stuff like other people chew tobacco. Used to put three sticks in his mouth at once. Made him look like a cow.”

I looked back at the wads of gum, perfect matches for the ones Klesczewski had found under the Elm Street bridge. Weller shook his head, his face growing serious. “Is he really in trouble?”

“I think so. If you see him, you better tell him to get hold of us. I’m afraid someone else is looking for him.” I straightened up. “We’ll want to put some coverage on this place, just in case he does come back. Is that a problem with you?”

“No, not at all. What’s this other person look like, the one looking for Toby?”

His tone of voice sent a chill down my back. “We don’t know. Why?”

“That’s why I bit your head off earlier; you’re the second guy today asking about him.”

I felt Sammie become very still next to me. “Who was it?”

“I don’t remember his name. He pounded on the door late this afternoon, saying he was the building inspector or something; said he’d heard I was running a hotel for bums up here, letting them run up and down the fire escapes and over the roofs. He was real obnoxious about it. I denied it, of course, which didn’t make things any better. Real asshole. I thought he’d sent you guys.”

I turned the light back off and found myself staring down Main Street, five flights below, thinking about a question Brandt had asked me on Milly Crawford’s roof the day he was killed.

“His name wasn’t Fred McDermott, was it?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“‘What did McDermott tell you?’ Brandt had asked. DeFlorio mentioned he was here when the shooting started.”

I’d forgotten all about McDermott. A cold ball began to form in my stomach. It had been an unforgivable oversight.

Sammie caught my change of mood. She touched my elbow. “Are you okay?”

I stared at the street in silence, wondering where Toby had gone. “No, I don’t think I am.”