Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

Maggie was the second floor back. Next to her was a little old lady but not like the little old lady in the song passing by. This one was a grandmother still trying to be flaming youth. She painted up and yellowed up her hair and made the bars if she could get anybody to buy.

In the room next to her was a waiter. His wife slept in most of the day and in the afternoon when he went to work she went to the movies. Then there was the girl. Then a big, strapping guy, a lineman with the telephone company. Then in front a B-girl at one of the downtown bars. Maggie said she was the best looking girl anywhere around. She slept until noon or after, went out early in the afternoon to eat and walk around and then came in and read until it was time to bathe and dress and go to work at night.

In the third floor back was a lino typer on The News. He went to work early in the morning. Then a floater who’d come in from Syracuse a couple of weeks before and would move on, nobody knew when. Then a bartender from a place up Main Street. Then a vacancy and then the owner’s layout took up the whole third floor front.

Once in awhile I’d see some of these people, like one night I saw the B-girl starting out to work and I guess you could call her the prettiest girl around if you liked that style. A silver blonde with a round baby face — nice in a regular way but empty.

The grandmother was a clown. Anybody would spend money on her must be turning it out on his own presses. But I mostly stayed out of their way and didn’t go up into the building except the times I was pretty sure they’d be out. I didn’t want the girl on the second floor to see me in a job like that.

When we’d be going through the place, cleaning it up and straightening up, Maggie would go into her monologue. She knew all about the other tenants. She labeled the telephone lineman for a great guy and while she didn’t say it I pretty soon suspected she developed that impression in bed. She didn’t like the waiter, because she thought he beat his wife. The linotyper and the barkeep weren’t around much.

The only time anybody saw the floater was when he got up and started out in the mornings and Maggie thought he was a card sharp. But she said he wasn’t a bad fellow and quite a comic.

Once in awhile I’d ask a question about somebody but I didn’t ask any about the girl. I let Maggie take her own sweet time to tell about her. She did, all right. She said the girl hadn’t been with them long. She’d grown up in Buffalo and then she went away and now she was back, working in one of the department stores. Maggie said her name was Catherine and they all called her Caddie. It seemed just right for her.

I stayed away from her. I wasn’t going to foul things up by trying to mix with any of them. But sometimes I’d watch for her when she’d go out to eat after coming back from work at night. There weren’t any cooking arrangements except in the owner’s apartment. Everybody went out to eat. They had breakfast in the little corner restaurant but usually they’d go other places for dinner.

I could get across the street under the trees along the sidewalk and see her light go out in her room and then in a little while she’d come out and I’d see her walk up the street with the arc light throwing a thin, flickering sparkle on her hair and her hips swaying under her coat wrapped tight around her and the smooth muscles in her legs below her skirt.

I’d watch her going up the other side of the street as far as I could see her. Then I’d go back to my room and lie on the bed awhile and try to read. But I’d think about the way she walked and her slim legs and how every move she made almost ran you crazy.

She was out all day, so I didn’t have to worry about bumping into her in there. The others weren’t around much, either, and it was pretty dark along the hall, even in the daytime. If any of them came along when I was sweeping or carrying out the trash I sort of looked the other way and shuffled along and made myself scarce and nobody noticed me. Maggie and the owner were the only ones ever really saw me.

Then one time when Maggie was out shopping and nobody at all was around I got the long magnesium ladder from down in the basement and took it up and changed the bulbs in the hall so they were dimmer. Then you couldn’t really see anything very plain. Maggie didn’t even notice it; she was dumb as an ox, anyway.

Sometimes when we would be up there cleaning up the place, I’d stop with her in the girl’s room for a couple of minutes like going on with some conversation we were having and then I would smell her perfume hanging over the dresser and see her stockings and things where she had thrown them over a, chair and the blood would start thumping in my neck and head.