Peter Spiegelman - Red Cat

“Yeah?” said the reedy voice from behind the door.

“Mr. Arrua? I was here last week, looking for your neighbor, and I-"

“I remember you. You gave me your card and I told you to leave me alone.”

“That was me,” I said. “I was wondering if we could talk.”

“I had nothing to say then and I got nothing to say now.”

“Have you seen Holly lately?”

“You remember that number: nine-one-one?”

“I don’t need a lot of your time, Mr. Arrua, and I can pay for what I use.”

“I guess you’re still hard of hearing,” he said, but he didn’t threaten to call the cops. “You’re what, a private detective or something?”

“Yes.”

Arrua chuckled behind his door. “So, what’s my time worth?”

“You tell me.”

It was quiet for a while and I thought I’d lost him, but I hadn’t. “What’s the weather like outside?” he asked.

“Crappy,” I said. “There’s sleet coming down and the sidewalk’s like an ice rink.”

“Wait,” Arrua said. He shuffled away from the door and shuffled back in under a minute, and a slip of notebook paper appeared by my foot.

“The market’s around the corner,” he said.

It came to two bags of groceries: coffee, condensed milk, eggs, a sack of rice, a jar of dulce de leche, two papayas, a loaf of bread, and paper napkins. Arrua opened the door to 3-F and took the bags from me, and I followed him down a short hallway to his living room.

He was a small man, worn but well-kempt in khakis, a gray cardigan, and a white shirt. His apartment was much the same. The living room was a narrow rectangle with white walls, beige trim, and a hardwood floor that had seen rough use, but also a recent waxing. There were two windows that looked onto a fire escape, and that were fortified by metal accordion gates. In front of them was a sofa covered in gray fabric, with arms that had frayed and been carefully mended. There was a bookshelf in the corner, stocked with Spanish titles, and some pictures hanging above it. A photo clipped from a newspaper and yellowing under glass: Argentine soccer players in white and sky blue, and Maradona’s infamous “hand of God” goal against England. Next to it, a plaque commemorating twenty-five years of service to the Metropolitan Transit Authority- hail and farewell, Car Maintenance Engineer Jorge Arrua. Next to that, another photo, black and white, of a pale, pretty, sick-looking woman in a high-necked dress. Wife, mother, sister, daughter- whoever she was, I got the impression that she hadn’t survived her illness, and that it had all happened long ago.

Arrua pointed at the sofa and went into an alcove kitchen. I sat and watched him put his groceries in the half-sized refrigerator, and fix a pot of coffee on the half-sized stove. While the smell of brewing coffee filled the room, he toasted thick slices of bread and opened the jar of dulce de leche. A tabby cat appeared from somewhere and threaded itself between his legs and looked at me sideways.

Arrua was seventysomething and thin, with a soldier’s posture but a faltering stride. His hair was metal gray, cut short and slicked against his head, and his sallow skin was like parchment. He was clean-shaven and there were deep grooves around his mouth and pale eyes that gave him a stubborn, argumentative look even as he poured coffee and set the mugs on a tray. He carried the tray to an oak coffee table and sat opposite me, in an armchair. He added condensed milk to his coffee and sipped at it and sighed.

“Breakfast’s all I like now,” he said, “so I eat it every meal.” He spread some dulce de leche on toast. “Help yourself.”

I poured condensed milk in my coffee and drank. It was thick and sweet and powerful. I sighed too.

“When’s the last time you saw Holly, Mr. Arrua?” I said.

“I guess you can call me George. I saw her in the hall, a couple weeks ago maybe. I don’t keep track.”

“Do you usually see her more often?”

He shrugged. “I see her three, four times in a month. I go to bed early and get up early, and she’s on a different schedule, I guess. It used to be I knew this whole building- all my neighbors- but not now.” He shrugged again.

“So you don’t really know Holly?”

“I know her to say hello.”

“Is she a good neighbor?”

Arrua looked at me and drank some coffee. “Sure.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Last time I was here, you were complaining about the noise.”

“You made a racket outside my door.”

“You made it sound like it wasn’t the first time.”

He tilted his head. “I got no problem with her,” he said. “She keeps to herself and mostly keeps quiet. It’s the people she has over who make trouble. Shouting, banging, slamming doors- it sounds like they’re coming through the walls sometimes.”

“Are they fighting or partying?”

“It’s no party,” he said. The tabby rubbed its head against his trouser cuff and purred loudly.

“Is it yelling-fighting or hitting-fighting?”

“It’s yelling and throwing things. As far as anything else, I don’t know.”

“Have there been a lot of fights?”

Arrua thought about it. “Maybe ten altogether.”

“Recently?”

He shrugged. “Last time was a couple weeks back, I think. Before that, not for a long time- not since summer or beginning of fall.”

“Who is she fighting with?”

He took a bite of toast and shook his head. “I’m too old to be in the middle of anything.”

“I’m not putting you in the middle, George- I wouldn’t do that to somebody who makes coffee this good.” A smile flickered above his skeptical look. “This goes nowhere besides me.”

Arrua nodded slowly, as if against his better judgment. “Her boyfriend mainly- her old boyfriend, I guess. They went at it pretty good.”

“Any idea what about?”

Arrua shook his head. “I’d hear him yelling and banging stuff around, but I don’t know what he was saying.”

I drank some coffee and thought about that for a while. “Did you complain?” Arrua nodded. “And?”

“I knock on the door and she says she’s sorry and things quiet down for a while- but sometimes not for long.”

“You never went to the super or anything?”

Arrua colored a little. “I’m seventy-nine years old, for God’s sake. I don’t want to get into that kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing, George?”

He shifted in his seat and ran a thin finger around the rim of his mug. “The last time I went over there, the boyfriend answered. He tells me to mind my own fucking business, and if I don’t he’ll…” Arrua colored more deeply and looked down at his cat, asleep on his foot. “I don’t know…he talked some trash about what he’d do to Diego here.” He shook his head. “She tried to stop him but he pushed her away. After that, I quit complaining. Like I said, I’m too old.”

I let out a long breath. “You know this guy’s name?” Arrua shook his head. “What does he look like?”

“White guy with dark hair, in his thirties, I guess. Tall- taller than you, I think.”

“When did he stop coming around?”

“I don’t know, maybe in July or August.”

I thought for a while. “You said the fighting was mainly with the old boyfriend,” I said. “Does that mean she has other noisy visitors?”

“A month back there was a guy banging at her door pretty loud.”

“What did he want?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he ever got to see her.”

“You see him before, or since?”

Arrua chuckled and shook his head. “He wasn’t the type that hangs around here usually.”

“What type was he?”

“Looked like a banker to me, or maybe a lawyer- white hair, dark suit, white shirt, wore a tie. Not somebody I see at the community center.”