Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

“That’s too much to carry with you in this neighborhood.”

“Is it enough to hire you?”

I didn’t want to take her money. She had five hundred dollars and a dead sister, and parting with one wouldn’t bring the other back to life. I’d have worked for nothing, but that wouldn’t have been good because neither of us would have taken it seriously enough.

And I have rent to pay and two sons to support, and Armstrong’s charges for the coffee and the bourbon. I took four fifty-dollar bills from her and told her I’d do my best to earn them.

After Paula Wittlauer hit the pavement, a black-and-white from the 18th Precinct caught the squeal and took charge of the case. One of the cops in the car was a guy named Guzik. I hadn’t known him when I was on the force, but we’d met since then. I didn’t like him and I don’t think he cared for me either, but he was reasonably honest and had struck me as competent. I got him on the phone the next morning and offered to buy him a lunch.

We met at an Italian place on 56th Street. He had veal and peppers and some red wine. I wasn’t hungry, but I made myself eat a small steak.

Between bites of veal he said, “The kid sister, huh? I talked to her. She’s so clean and so pretty it could break your heart if you let it. And of course she don’t want to believe Sis did the Dutch act. I asked is she Catholic because then there’s the religious angle, but that wasn’t it. Anyway, your average priest’ll stretch a point. They’re the best lawyers going, the hell, two thousand years of practice, they oughta be good. I took that attitude myself. I said, ‘Look, there’s all these pills. Let’s say your sister had herself some pills and drank a little wine and smoked a little pot and then she went to the window for some fresh air. So she got a little dizzy and maybe she blacked out and most likely she never knew what was happening.’ Because there’s no question of insurance, Matt, so if she wants to think it’s an accident I’m not gonna shout suicide in her ear. But that’s what it says in the file.”

“Did you close it out?”

“Sure. No question.”

“She thinks murder.”

He nodded. “Tell me something I don’t know. She says this McCloud killed Sis. McCloud’s the boyfriend. Thing is, he was at an after-hours club at 53rd and Twelfth about the time Sis was going skydiving.”

“You confirm that?”

He shrugged. “It ain’t airtight. He was in and out of the place, he coulda doubled back and all, but there was the whole business with the door.”

“What business?”

“She didn’t tell you? Paula Wittlauer’s apartment was locked and the chain bolt was on. The super unlocked the door for us, but we had to send him back to the basement for a bolt-cutter so’s we could get through the chain bolt. You can only fasten the chain bolt from inside and you can only open the door a few inches with it on, so either Wittlauer launched her own self out the window or she was shoved out by Plastic Man, and then he went and slithered out the door without unhooking the chain bolt.”

“Or the killer never left the apartment.”

“Huh?”

“Did you search the apartment after the super came back and cut the chain for you?”

“We looked around, of course. There was an open window and there was a pile of clothes next to it. You know she went out naked, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“There was no burly killer crouching in the shrubbery, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You checked the place carefully?”

“We did our job.”

“Look under the bed?”

“It was a platform bed. No crawl space under it.”

“Closets?”

He drank some wine, put the glass down hard, and glared at me. “What the hell are you getting at? Have you got reason to believe there was somebody in the apartment when we went in there?”

“I’m just exploring the possibilities.”

“You honestly think somebody’s gonna be stupid enough to stay in the apartment after shoving her out of it? She musta been on the street ten minutes before we hit the building. If somebody did kill her — which never happened — they could of been halfway to Texas by the time we hit the door. And don’t that make more sense than jumping in the closet and hiding behind the coats?”

“Unless the killer didn’t want to pass the doorman.”

“So he’s still got the whole building to hide in. Just the one man on the front door is the only security the building’s got, anyway, and what does he amount to? And suppose he does hide in the apartment and we happen to spot him. Then where is he? With his neck in the noose, that’s where he is.”

“Except you didn’t spot him.”

“Because he wasn’t there. And when I start seeing little men who aren’t there is when I put in my papers and quit the department.”