Mrs. Whitcombe Wants the Apartment With the Body

Flo and Mrs. Whitcombe were still in the kitchen as I hurried across Walter’s apartment. I could hear their excited voices saying something about transom windows. Or maybe it was transition widows.  Hurrying out into the lobby, I bounded up the long oak stairway. Flickers of rosy light glittered through the stained glass window on the second floor landing. Stanley lived in apartment 3A, on the third floor. I pounded on his door.

“Stan!” An index card taped below his apartment number read: Stanley Wojcik, Building Maintenance.” The calligraphy must have been drawn by the same person who designed his tattoos. The Y and the J looked like smiling snakes. I knocked again. “Stanley, we need you!”

“Gabbie? Is that you?” The plaintive voice called from below. I leaned over the railing. Amanda Smythe stood on the landing outside apartment 2D. The purple shawl draped around her thin shoulders looked iridescent in the rosy light. “Has something happened?”

“Have you seen Stanley?”

“I’m trying to work on my dissertation.” Amanda pulled her shawl tighter. She was always cold. “Is all this noise really necessary?”

I turned to knock on Stanley’s door again. His kitten, Raphael mewed inside. “STAN!”

Behind me, the door to apartment 3A flew open to reveal the shadowy form of Ajeek Khurana, the foreign exchange student. “You call me?”

“No, I’m looking for Stanley. STAN!”

Ajeet’s enormous eyes were dark and brooding. “Perhaps I can assist?
   
“Some of us are trying to study here,” Amanda shouted from below.

I raised my hand to pound Stanley’s door one more time and landed instead on his stubbled chin. Except for his enormous size, Stanley looked a lot like his kitten with yellow hair frizzed around a boxy face. Hovering on his threshold in baggy overalls, wet at the knees, I must have looked more like a drowned rat. An overweight, middle-aged drowned rat. But I couldn’t worry about that now. “We have a problem downstairs,” I said.

“Don’t let Raphael out.”

Raphael crouched behind Stanley’s big boots as I slipped inside. Stanley listened mutely, his tattooed arms folded across his white T-shirt, while I described our dilemma. “She needs to be moved quickly.”

He scratched his ear. “So where should I take her?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Detox, if you think she needs it.” Stanley would know about such things. He’d gone through the hospital detox ward many times and did two stints in rehab before he ended up at the halfway house for recovering men, which was where Flo found him.

His big head nodded slowly. “I’ll get dressed.”

“Quickly!”

Minutes later I was back in Walter’s apartment. Mrs. Whitcombe was still in the kitchen. She and Flo leaned against the stainless steel counter, their white heads bent close over a chipped saucer that they were using for an ashtray. A haze of smoke surrounded them with that quiet intimacy smokers have.

“Goodness gracious!” Mrs. Whitcombe exclaimed. “And you ladies fixed up this enormous building all by yourselves?”

Flo flicked her cigarette over the saucer. “Gabbie can fix anything.” She threw me a wink. “I think we have a new member of our little family.”

And so, while Stanley clumped across the living room with the drunken girl, Flo and I entertained Mrs. Whitcombe with information about laundry facilities and off-street parking. “You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for a place just like this!” She held her cigarette high with the air of someone who smokes only on special occasions.

*

“She never did see the bathroom,” I said later, after Mrs. Whitcombe drove away in a sparkling new silver beetle.

“A lady like that doesn’t have to see the entire apartment,” Flo said. “She recognizes quality.” 

There’s always an atmosphere of festivity when we sign on a new tenant, especially a distinguished one like Mrs. Whitcombe. She had come prepared with a long list of references neatly typed on buff-colored stationery. I sat at Flo’s kitchen table to pore over the names. A pot of hazelnut coffee burbled on the counter. The tall radiator she’d painted cranberry red made bell-like pings. An angel gets its wings! Wisps of smoke drifted from Flo’s ash tray and circled overhead.

“She’s listed Mayor Stratton,” Flo pointed out.

“Six references,” I marveled. “And we only asked for two.”

“I’ll bet she knows people on the Historic Commission.”  Last year the Historic Commission passed us over for a heritage award. They gave it to the owners of a swanky house on Avon Road. “I’ll bet we can get that award this year,” Flo said.

A heavy knock rattled at Flo’s back door. Stanley’s square face peered through the frosted window. Flo waved him in.

“Done!” Cold air wafted from his snow-flecked parka. “Just like you asked,” he said, stamping his big boots on the speckled linoleum. Melting ice formed muddy puddles.

“Thank you, Stanley! We owe you!” Flo pointed to the coffee pot. “Help yourself!”

“I almost didn’t make it.” Stanley wriggled out of the bulky coat and let it drop to the floor. “A cruiser drove by.”

 Gruff, quiet men like Stanley are like stray cats. They seem aloof, but they need a lot of strokes. I handed him a steaming mug. “I don’t know what we’d do without your help, Stan.”

He wrinkled his nose. I’d forgotten: Stanley didn’t like flavored coffees.

“Did the cruiser slow down?” Flo wanted to know. “Do you think they suspected anything?”

“Nah. I got her into my truck okay.” He rested his hands on the edge of the enamel table. The sleeves of his flannel shirt weren’t long enough to cover his thick wrists. “Jeeze, Flo. You know I’d do anything for you. You too, Gabbie.” For a moment his cat-like eyes - amber, like his bushy hair - met my gaze. I should have changed out of the baggy overalls. He tugged at his shirtsleeves. “I just kept driving and driving. I drove around for hours.”

“Hours?” Flo blinked.  

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not complaining or anything, but Gabbie didn’t tell me where to put her. And, Jeeze. It’s not easy to get rid of a dead body in Schenectady.”