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

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?”