Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

Letitia went to the door.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Compton. I’m so sorry!”

“What in the world—?” Letitia asked.

“It’s your husband, Mrs. Compton — it’s Al — he — he—”

“What is it?”

“I hate to have to tell you — I’m so sorry — it must have been a heart attack!”

Letitia looked convincingly shocked.

“Right on the seventh green,” George sputtered, “right there across the street!”

She’d always suspected that Alfred emptied his flask long before the game was over. What justice! He didn’t even get to finish the front nine!

“What happened, you see, he aced the hole! Imagine that, Mrs. Compton? All these years — wanting to get a hole in one again — and on the same day as that first time!”

George had taken her arm and was leading her toward the golf course.

“Oh, Alfred, my dear Alfred,” Letitia moaned.

The other two men were standing by his body. They mumbled comforting words to her.

Letitia looked down at her dead husband. To her amazement she felt dizzy. Her knees trembled. She’d never fainted in her life, but—

“Grab her, George! She’s falling!”

“The poor woman—”

“Wow! She really passed out!”

“Here, rest her head on my golf bag.”

“This is awful, George. We’ve got to tell her the truth.”

“Are you crazy? And have her say we murdered him?”

“Come on! Who could have known a hole in one would give him a heart attack? That’s not murder!”

“It is when you think how we tricked him—”

“But it was a joke — just a joke! He’d have laughed about it himself!”

“Sure, he knew we were sick of listening to him tell about his ace in 1950.”

“Listen, we kept him busy in the rough hunting for our hook shots. You dropped his ball into the cup. And that makes all three of us responsible for his heart attack.”

“Okay, maybe we are to blame for a stupid practical joke. But that isn’t murder! And think about this — when Al walked up to this green and realized his ball was in the cup, he was as happy as a man can be! Why, he was in Heaven before his heart stopped! Could any duffer ask for a better way to go?”

“Well...”

“Listen, we’d better do something about his wife.”

“I’ll get Al’s flask out of his bag. That stuff ought to bring her around.”

“Sure. Hold up her head, George, while I pour this into her.”

“Come on, Mrs. Compton, drink this down. It’ll do you good.”

This is the 440th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. .. Jamie was the youngest of the elevator “boys,” but not too young to want a piece of the action. ..

The author, S. L. Burns, has been a writer for more than ten years — on the staff of the “New York Herald Tribune,” then on “Scholastic Magazine,” and currently as a freelance. But until now all S. L. Burns’s published writing has been nonfiction. “The Man in 13-B” is the author’s first plunge into fiction.

If S. L. Burns has a hobby, “it is the time-consuming one of dog-walking.” The author has “often thought that being a dog-walker is a perfect disguise for snoopers, legal and illegal. It is a good excuse for loitering at all hours and in strange places.” Would EQMM be interested “in a story about a rather fussy busybody attached to a dog — one of those people who notice everything, who spend their idle moments at the other end of the leash speculating about other people’s business?” We would indeed be interested in a dog-walker detective...

It was strange about the man in 13-B. Jamie never saw him in the elevator. Neither did any of the other boys who worked in the building. “Boys.” That’s what they called each other, but Jamie thought he was the youngest of them all. He wondered if he, too, would still be wearing a cap and white gloves at the age of 65.

The “boys” used to meet at the coffee machine in the basement. Sometimes when Jamie arrived, one of the day men was still there, changing his clothes and talking about “the one horse” or “the five” — the horse he should have bet, wanted to bet, and would have bet if one of the other boys had not thrown him off it by a chance remark. Jamie found out from the others what happened in the building while he was off duty.

No one else ever saw the man in 13-B on the elevator, either. A grocery boy in a white jacket delivered cartons of food to 13-B. The cartons, Jamie saw, were stacked with TV dinners. A man from the dry cleaner delivered 13-B’s suits, which hung over the delivery man’s shoulder from a crooked finger. Anyone could see through the clear plastic covers that the suits were not very expensive. “I’d never live that way if I had the money for Park Avenue,” said Jamie to the day man.

“Neither would I,” said the day man. Both fell into a dreamy silence.

If I had the money, thought Jamie. Would he ever be able to get out of this uniform? He had taken the four-to-midnight shift originally because he wanted to go to night school. He had signed up for an accounting course. He was beginning to understand the flow of money now. But he felt like a hunter in the forest without a gun. As an accountant, he could track his quarry as it moved from place to place, but he could not bring it down. He was no closer to capturing some money for himself.

Jamie reflected on the perversity of money, which stuck to those who didn’t use it or those who didn’t seem to need it or even to enjoy it. For them, money sat around and multiplied with biblical fruitfulness. But for people like Jamie, money just dwindled, grew thin, and expired in moments of stress.

Shortly after four, when Jamie took his station by the door, the tenants began returning. Some came in cabs, with tight faces, their briefcases full of work. Some toiled from the bus or subway stop. Others floated in from cocktails. All seemed preoccupied. Their thoughts were turned inward, and the view there seemed to depress them. Jamie soon learned that this was a bad time to try to start a conversation.

The post-dinner crowd was always more cheerful. Some of them noticed him and joshed or smiled. Usually, though, neither tenants nor visitors spared a glance at the elevator men in uniform. Nevertheless, Jamie knew a great deal about the people who didn’t look at him.

He knew about the woman in 4-B, for instance. She was a juicer. She sat on the back stairs with a bottle between her knees while her husband watched television. Did he really think she was doing the dishes all that time? For a while the boys kept track of how many bottles they took out in the trash from 4-B.

Jamie knew that 7-D was out of a job and worried about it. He received unemployment checks and carried in his own groceries. No tips from him. 6-A’s boy friend had walked out on her. She was wondering how to pay the bills too. She spent many evenings in a nearby bar. Good luck to her. The old man in the penthouse was off his nut. Round-the-clock nurses for him, and a regular visit from the trustee at the bank.

But no one knew anything about the man in 13-B.

Then, late one evening, 13-B called Jamie upstairs. No one else was in the lobby. Jamie was too curious to wait for the other man to return from a trip to the basement. He locked the front door while he took the elevator up.

13-B was standing at his door when Jamie arrived. He was a middle-sized man with a bland white face like the face of a clock with the works concealed behind it. He was in shirt sleeves. “I’d like you to do something for me, if you will,” said 13-B politely.