The building at 110 West Tenth Street was in the part of Greenwich Village taken over years ago by well-paid fringe artists-editors, copywriters, commercial artists, theatre producers, designers, professors. People who had once wanted to be real artists, free livers, and who came to live where others where still trying. But they had jobs and children, needed to be clean and safe. The aspiring or stubborn real artists were careless, dirty, and not always safe, so were driven out by those who had come to love them. Only the few artists who had been highly successful could stay. The rest had to find lower rents on less careful streets, evicted by those who wanted the name of artist, but who, in the end, feared the game.
The street was clean, tree-lined and expensive, and Anne Terry’s brownstone building silent in the early afternoon. A ring got no response. I used my rectangle of stiff plastic to open the vestibule door, and the ninth key on my ring of master keys opened the apartment door. It was the top floor; flooded with sun, and empty.
There were two rooms and a kitchenette, laid out much like Sarah Wiggen’s apartment, and with not much more furniture, but there the resemblance ended. The difference, as with the sisters themselves, summed up in a few words-spark, verve, style, the intangible. Everything blended, yet there was nothing ‘arranged’ about the place. All casual, even careless, and, yes, warm. I had not expected a warm apartment-‘I don’t need losers, Gunner. Bring me the winner.’
I began work with the closets. Those in the bedroom held only female clothes, and not as many as I expected. Few outfits for a woman, especially a theatre woman-one or two good ensembles for each occasion, no waste, like a general planning a battle. In the living room closet there was a man’s green tartan jacket, a pair of grey slacks. The jacket had a name strip sewn to the collar: Theodore Marshall.
He was her partner, he came here often, it told me nothing. Her bedroom chest-of-drawers did. There were four shirts still in laundry wrappers; three pairs of socks, size thirteen; brief undershorts; two ties; an electric razor, male; all but the ties and razor with the same sewn name strip: Theodore Marshall. So Ted Marshall was more than her partner: surprise!
The chest-of-drawers yielded another less than surprising find. A single cuff link initialed R. V., and a green tie figured in gold with crowns and tiny initials: R. V. At least it was solid evidence that Ricardo Vega had known her well.
I found nothing under cushions, under furniture, under the big bed, under the rugs, in the corners, or in the table drawers. Nothing on shelves, on the mantelpiece, or in the various vases and decorative boxes. The apartment had been cleaned, and some time ago by the layer of grit undisturbed inside the one open window. The window confirmed that Anne Terry had not expected to be away long-in New York no one leaves a window open if they plan to be away long.
I finished with the one odd feature of the apartment: an old desk, and a cardboard filing cabinet, in a corner behind a screen. The file held a folder of the lease and rent receipts; another of time-payment contracts for the TV, clothes, some furniture; and a thick folder labelled: New Player’s Theatre. No bankbooks and no tax records, which surprised me-she was a neat, efficient girl.
I went through The New Player’s Theatre folder. It showed the theatre to be in the red-usual for an Off-Broadway venture. But it wasn’t too far into the red; it had been well-managed. Programmes proved that it was a serious theatre, producing the difficult work of avant-garde play-wrights, as well as the work of pseudo-avantists who dealt in shock-and-snicker. The shockers had run longer, naturally, but none of the plays had run long.
The bulk of the file was Projected Plans, and they were ambitious. The New Player’s had been planning for better quarters. Profit-and-loss, rentals, and the needed capital had been worked out for all theatres. Plans for new productions were detailed: ambitious productions, daring. Hard work had gone into the planning, not just dazzling verbal dreams over booze, and it added to busy work for a future, a real future. Bold, needing money, but not the work of a girl who wanted to vanish.
The desk, too, was neat, the top pigeonholes empty except for the usual paid bills, and a day-calendar book. The datebook explained that over worked, underslept face I had seen in the rain. Days began early, ended late: The New Player’s; auditions for paying shows; a modelling job, regular, and a host of irregular jobs like artist’s model, photographer’s model, product demonstator, even typist. At night there were classes, and nameless appointments. There were sparse weeks, almost blank pages, but no page totally blank-always The New Player’s.
The top drawer explained her nights. A litter of matchbooks, stirring rods, coasters, all from night clubs, cafes, hotels; male business cards, many with lip prints. Par for the course again; a girl with looks and ambitions surviving in New York. I didn’t envy the police if she were really missing, and if her closer friends knew nothing. A life of casual encounters, one-night stands. A busy fly in a world of toads? Caught at last? Except, I saw Anne Terry as more of a hornet, with sting.
The bankbooks were in a bottom drawer. A savings account with nothing: $197. A checking account, the stubs showing no pattern of deposit except the weekly modelling cheque, and showing near zero too often-saved by a sudden deposit, sometimes good, sometimes not. The weekly pay cheque from the regular job interested me. Most companies like to pay monthly or biweekly at most. It had to be an arrangement she had wanted.
The cancelled checks themselves seemed uninteresting at first: mostly bills from the payees, and regular ones to The New Player’s-she was a real owner, not a decoration for Ted Marshall. But after I had stacked them, I had a small pile of cheques made out to cash. Normal, except that there was a pattern. Almost all the cash-cheques were for the same amount, fifty dollars, and almost all were dated on Fridays. I checked the calendar.
I sat back and stared at the cash-cheques. She was neat, but was anyone that regular in her kind of life? It could be nothing, but-? There were missing Fridays, yes, a few drawn on Thursdays, but in general the uniformity of day and amount was too much coincidence. In a hectic life, did a girl always run out of cash on Friday? And could she always need exactly fifty dollars? All right, a special need; regular, routine. What? Blackmail? Fifty dollars? A regular contribution? But in cash, so she wasn’t sending it home, or anywhere by mail.
I was still mulling it, turning it over and considering all angles, when the doorbell rang. I jumped a foot in the chair, then had a surge of something like joy. Anne Terry, coming home? I was coming to like the girl, and not in the way Ricardo Vega liked girls. I was also losing my grip. Would a girl ring her own doorbell?
I was out of the chair. The police? They would have been here to check that she was really gone, but, from the look of the place, they hadn’t searched much. She had not been gone long enough to make them take it seriously at first-off on a binge, ninety-nine percent. But they would have another, closer, look if she didn’t turn up. So I had my leg over the window sill to the fire escape when the door was tried and given a violent kick.
I came back inside, and trotted lightly to the door. The police don’t kick in doors of empty apartments; they get the super to open up. I slid behind where the door would open as a second good kick cracked the lock. The third kick would do it. It did. The door flew open and all the way back to me. I took a bash on the knuckles, but held the door from swinging back out.
The man stumbled into the room, off balance. I got one quick look at him as he went by the crack between door and frame. The blond again-Rick, or Sean, McBride. Vega’s new volunteer helper-for friendship. I stayed where I was, out of sight, my lone hand ready in a fist if he closed the door. He didn’t, he was that much an amateur, and that nervous. He hurried for the bedroom. When I heard a drawer open, I went after him, picking up a handy, large, but not too heavy vase on the way.
He bent over a drawer in the bedroom, his back to me. I wanted to ask him what he was up to, but it’s not often that easy. I had no gun, and I didn’t expect he was going to tell much without heavy pressure. I did the next best thing. I whacked him good with the vase. Not too good, just enough. It was a pleasure. He collapsed in a heap. I got out of there fast.
I was out the door, and one flight down, when I heard them coming up. Two men who had not rung the girl’s doorbell, and a pair of lighter feet coming behind them. I beat it back up. McBride was moving inside clearly, with groans. I made the stairs up to the roof, hidden from Anne Terry’s doorway. The two men had eyes only for the open door. I heard them go in. There was a scuffle, and voices.
‘Who are you? What’s the story?’
‘Someone hit me!’ McBride’s outraged voice. The two newcomers had to be the police, and McBride wasn’t worried about them yet, only about me. He had a. lot to learn.
‘Breaking-and-entering, mister.’
‘Who are you? We got the super for a witness.’
‘You broke that vase? Looking for what? Jewels?’
‘Where’s the girl?’
McBride, ‘I don’t know, I come to see her. A friend, like.’
‘Your name, mister!’
‘Sean McBride.’
A rebirth for Rick McBride! Maybe a star was being born.
‘You busted that door? Why?’
‘It was open, you know? Like, I told you I’m a friend. The door was open, so I come in. Someone hit me. Maybe it was you two, yeh!’
I revised my estimate of Rick, no, Sean McBride. He wasn’t dumb, and he thought fast under pressure. It was a good story if he stuck to it. They couldn’t prove it was false, he wasn’t a criminal, he did know Anne Terry more or less, he had kept Ricardo Vega out of it, and he hinted at a possible charge of police brutality. Reasonable doubt all the way.
I left by way of the roof. They would hammer him more, take him to precinct, let him sweat, but they would get no more from him now that he had his story. He had been around, and he had more brains than I had guessed.
I went down to the street through another building. I wondered just how well McBride had known Anne Terry.