Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“You here with the key?”

“I thought it was paid through the month.”

“You’re going to use it?” the man said, oddly squeamish.

“I might. I mean, it’s paid for.”

The clerk gave a your-choice shrug.

“Anybody else have keys?”

“They’re not supposed to. Just the tenant. Otherwise we have to change the locks. Why?”

“Just wondering if you ever saw anybody else. Use the apartment.”

“Anybody else who?”

“A lady, maybe.”

“I’m on days. It’s quiet days.”

“You were on that night. I saw you in the police pictures.”

The clerk looked up, a new scent in the air. Just the word police.

“That’s right. I was filling in. What’s this all about?”

“I’m his brother. I just want to know what happened.”

“He fell-I guess. Whatever it was, it was a mess.”

“And you didn’t see anyone go up that night?”

“The police asked me this. I told them, I’ll tell you-no one. I didn’t even see him.”

“He used the back door.”

“I guess. All I know is, I didn’t see anybody.”

“So she could have done that, too. Without being seen.”

“If she had a key. Which she’s not supposed to have.”

“She’s not supposed to do a lot of things.”

“That I don’t know. I just run the board and collect the rent. We’ve never had any trouble here, you know. Never. I got a lot of people upset about this. Maybe moving out.”

“Many stay long?”

“More and more. Used to be, people didn’t want the extra service expense. But the war’s been great for us. Hard to find anything, and we already had the phone lines. You couldn’t get a phone during the war, so we did all right.”

“He make any calls that night?”

“I’d remember that.”

“You might.”

“No.”

“Sure?” Ben raised his eyes, the cliche promise of a tip.

The clerk frowned. “I’m not looking for anything here. I don’t remember. I don’t keep tabs. Half the people I don’t even know. I’m on days, right? The only reason I knew him is I rented him the room.”

“So you wouldn’t necessarily have recognized everybody.”

“Not unless they’re here during the day. You’re asking more questions than the police did. What’s this about?”

“I’m trying to find out who else came here. He didn’t take the room to be alone. The family need to know. There might be money in it for her.”

Bait that bobbed back, not even a nibble.

“Then I hope you find her. Now how about I get back to work? Are you going to keep the room, or what? Hey, Al.” This to the mailman coming in with his bag.

“Joel. How’s life?”

“Overrated.”

“Hah,” the mailman said, opening the front panel of the boxes with the post office key and beginning to fill them. Catalogues from Bullock’s, a girl in a sundress, ordinary life.

“Let me know if you want to extend,” Joel said. “The lease. It’s month to month. And he was leaving at the end, so I need to know.”

“You mean he gave you notice?” Ben said, surprised. Because the affair was over?

Joel nodded. “End of the month.” Involuntarily his eyes shifted toward the alley. “I guess he had other plans.”

Ben went over to the elevator, then turned. “When he came in to rent-how did he know? There was an ad?”

“No, we just use the window,” Joel said, jerking his thumb toward it. “Put out a sign. Somebody always sees it. Like I say, it’s been busy since the war. What with the phone.”

The apartment was exactly as he’d left it, tidy, with the empty stillness of unoccupied rooms. The brandy bottle was on the counter, untouched, not even moved for dusting. He opened the French window, looking down from the balcony just as he had before, but imagining it differently. You wouldn’t need a lot of leverage with the low rail-even a woman could have done it. But wouldn’t Danny have reacted, reached out, grabbed something? No marks on the rail.

He went out to the hall, looking down the back stairs, the door that led to the roof. Someone could have gone up there, waited it out, then slipped away after the excitement died down. But why would she have to? A transient building-not even the clerk knew all the tenants by sight. She’d be just another face in the crowd. Why bother with the roof? Walk down Cherokee to Hollywood Boulevard and hop a red car. Unless she’d been driving, parked around the corner. Then no one would see her at all.

Ben went back inside and sat in the quiet. The empty bathroom, the empty desk. Whatever prints there’d been would have been wiped away by the maid. The fact was there would never be any physical evidence. The how was unknowable. The only way in was the why.

Downstairs, he put the keys in his pocket, then took them out again-one for the room, one for the back. No mailbox key. But why would Danny get any mail? An apartment registered to another name. Just a place where they changed the sheets. Still, they must have given him one, if only to clean out the catalogues and restaurant flyers. He turned back to the clerk.

“I don’t have a mail key,” he said. “For 5C.”

“You’d better find it. We’ll have to charge. We can’t keep making keys.”

Ben looked at the mailman. “He get mail here? Collins? 5C?”

“Mister, you think I keep track? If it’s U.S. Mail, we deliver it.”

“But you might notice-if it piled up. Or if someone never got any.”

“Never? I’d buy him a beer.” He waved his hand toward the boxes. “Everybody gets mail.”

“Did you check his desk?” the clerk said. “Sometimes people keep it there.”

But it wasn’t in his desk or in the desk at home, at least not in any of the shallow paperclip trays in the top drawer, where it logically should be. And not in any of the boxes on top. Ben began taking papers out of the drawer, not rummaging through as he had that first day, but systematically putting them in piles-canceled checks, bill receipts. He started with the address book, as if somehow a number would leap out at him, but none did. Who would put his girlfriend in a book? An odd scrap of paper that no one would see, even a matchbook cover, but not in a book.

The checks were more interesting, like shards of pottery you piece together to reveal a whole society: tree surgeons and pool tilers, land-scapers and caterers, an account at Magnin’s, a life so far removed from Ben’s that it seemed to be otherworldly. Like the thick terry robes by the pool, the drawers of cashmere. He thought of Howard Stein, looking around. And this was only someone with a B series about detectives. Mayer was the highest paid man in America. Still, nobody had killed him because Liesl kept a running account at Magnin’s. He flipped through the stubs. No checks to the Cherokee Arms, presumably a cash expense, discreet. The appointment book was even less revealing: no coded notes, M 5:30, just straightforward studio meetings and doctors and dentists.

No wallet, either. But he must have had one. Maybe in his dresser, with the tie clips and cuff links. He crossed the hall to the dressing room and opened the door that covered the built-in shelves, the inside panel a mirror to check your tie. He reached for the top drawer then stopped, standing motionless. The mirror, some optical trick, reflected the mirror on the partly opened bathroom door. A leg, resting on the rim of the tub, just one, her hands moving up it slowly, as if she were putting on nylons, moving together toward her thigh, then out of the mirror. The hands again, the same smooth drawing up, rubbing. Not nylons, some kind of cream, maybe suntan oil. He stood there, unable to move, his eyes fixed on the mirror. A perfect leg, arched. He imagined his hands moving along it instead of hers, slick with oil, an image that came like a pulse beat, fast, involuntary. Now the leg leaned farther in, more thigh showing, the hands moving. Close the door. Instead he held his breath, mesmerized, wanting the hands to go farther. He could feel himself fill with blood. Unexpected, just like that, without thought. He wanted to see more, where the leg met the body. But it dropped and the other one came up, the same hand motion, just for him, even more exciting because she was unaware.