The Ninth Man (20 page)

“You’ve met my Krista?” he said, indicating his niece with a nod of his head.

She and I exchanged smiles and nods.

Gesturing to a rocking chair in the bay window at the side of the room, Schmidt said, “Sit. Sit.”

I pulled the rocker over to him as Krista disappeared into the kitchen.

Schmidt leaned forward, beckoning for me to do the same.

“Ve haff coffee und strudel,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “My Krista, she makes a strudel de angels are jealous!” He sat back in his chair, and we were quiet for a moment until Krista reentered with a tray bearing two coffee cups—on saucers—and two dessert plates of rich-looking strudel.

“There,” she said, drawing up a small stool and setting the tray on it, within easy reach of both Schmidt and me. “Now, you two men talk. I’ve got to see about the laundry.” With another smile, she left the room.

The strudel was delicious. We ate in silence, Schmidt’s fork clicking on the plate as he rapidly cut his strudel into small pieces. Having done so, he much more slowly conveyed each piece of the pastry, with a slightly shaking hand, from the plate to his mouth with obvious delight.

When his plate was empty, he returned it to the tray.

“My Krista iss a treasure,” he said. “In a museum, she should be.”

We chatted for a few minutes, Schmidt telling me of his boyhood in Germany, his coming to the United States, and his life here these past sixty-eight years. The narrative was a bit fragmentary, with certain things, places, and people temporarily or permanently misplaced; but again I was aware of how much the old have to share, if only the young would listen.

My attention, however, kept straying to the cardboard box. My mind never left it for a second. At last, Schmidt noticed my preoccupation and reached over to pick up the ledger lying on top.

“De children,” he said, “Dey opened the box, but dis, I t’ink, iss vhat you are looking for.”

He handed it to me, and I saw it was a handwritten listing of rent receipts from 2012 Hutchins Avenue for the period two years before the building had been sold. I slowly turned the pages, my eyes sweeping up and down the neat columns.

Each apartment had its own listing, under the name(s) of its tenant(s). They were all there: Alan Rogers, Gene Harriman, Kyle Rholfing/Herbert Lopez, Bobby McDermott, Arnold Klein, Arthur Granger, Cletus Barker. I wanted to turn the pages faster, but for some reason, I couldn’t. Seven apartments. Eight murdered men.

The eighth apartment was the last in the ledger.

Come on, Hardesty! Turn the fucking page!
my mind screamed at me, but my fingers were slow to respond. Aware that I was holding my breath, I turned the page.

It was blank. Near the binding were the ragged edges of two pages that had been torn from the book.

Chapter 11

Of course, you stupid shit!
my mind kept berat
ing me all the way back to the hotel.
You think you’re dealing with some sort of moron here? You think the murderer is stupid? He had to know someone would come after him sooner or later; he knew Schmidt would keep records. He’s had—when was the
first murder?

Three months, at least. Three months to find and destroy those ledger pages—assuming he hadn’t done so even before Schmidt moved to Chicago.

You’re back to square one, Hardesty. Square one!

I left a trail of clothes from the door of the room to the bathroom. What I hadn’t removed by the time I reached the shower I left in a heap in front of the tub.

Not quite square one, I thought as the warm spray began to beat against the tense muscles at the base of my neck.

The first thing I’d do when I got back home would be to go to the library and check out every single obituary column in the local papers for all of the two years before the building was sold, if necessary. I’d find that kid’s name, all right. Maybe see if I could get hold of electric/gas company records; or the phone company.

Somehow, I’d find out that kid’s name, and who his roommate was, and why eight men should have died over a dog.

It wasn’t over the dog, of course—at least, not directly. It was because the kid killed himself. The murderer blamed everyone in the building, obviously.

But why? Did one of them run over the dog? And would anyone in his right mind murder eight innocent men to get at a guy who’d probably accidentally run over a tiny dog he likely didn’t even see? For that matter, you can’t kill eight people just because one poor, mixed-up kid killed himself over a dog.

And why wait three years? It—

Ed’s knock on the shower door yanked me back to the present and scared the shit out of me. I turned off the water and opened the door. He was holding an armload of my discarded clothes.

“You leave an interesting trail,” he said, grinning. When he saw the look on my face, though, his grin faded. “What happened?”

I told him everything while I dried off. He listened, sober-faced, and said nothing until I’d finished.

“I’m really sorry,” he said at last. “I was sure you’d have your answers by now, I really was. But I know you well enough by now to know that you’ll keep on it until you have it solved. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Yeah,” I said, putting on a pair of shorts. “Time. I’ve got lots of that.”

“Look,” Ed said, trying to cheer me up against pretty heavy odds, “I’ve wrapped up everything I had to do around here. We can head back home any time you like.

“Or maybe we could stay around Chicago for a few days, if you want. I’ve got some time off coming. We could take a couple of days and just relax and enjoy ourselves, do the tourist bit—Chicago’s really got a lot going for it, you know, and we haven’t given it a chance.”

I realized what he was trying to do, and I appreciated it a lot more than I could probably manage to tell him.

“I don’t know, Ed,” I said. “It sounds good, but…”

“Well, look, then. Let’s just take it one step at a time, okay? Starting with tonight. Let’s go out and do some serious relaxing. Then, in the morning, we’ll see how you feel, and if you want to go home, we’ll go.” He looked at me and extended his hand. “Deal?”

I took the hand and shook it.

“Deal.”

“Good.”

I plugged in the hair drier and began to dry my hair and watched in the mirror as Ed went into the bedroom and began emptying his pockets onto the dresser.

Kicking off his shoes and unbuckling his belt as I turned off the drier, he said: “Now it’s my turn for the shower. You finish getting dressed, and we’ll lay out our battle strategy as soon as I get out.”

He eased by me and patted me on the rear as he got into the shower and slid the door shut. His attempts to bring me out of my funk were working, and as I watched him through the shower door, I got a tight feeling in my chest.

Damn it, Hardesty,
I thought,
just what
do
you feel for this guy?

The problem was, I was pretty sure I knew, and I wasn’t quite sure what I should do about it. I just stood there, staring at him through the closed glass door.

Love? Me? Loner Hardesty? Old “I don’t need anybody”
Hardesty? In love with some guy I’ve known for all of three weeks, if that? Come on, now!

Well, why the hell not, damn it? I was getting angry with myself by this time. Why the hell shouldn’t I let myself care for someone who ob—yes, damn it,
obviously
—cares for me?

I set the hair dryer on the counter and went into the bedroom to get dressed while my mind carried on its increasingly heated debate. I took a pair of socks out of the dresser drawer and saw that Ed’s billfold had fallen off the edge of the dresser onto the floor, spilling business cards and papers all over.

Cursing myself, I knelt to pick up the mess. Several photos had fallen out as well, and curiosity got the better of me as I gathered them up. One was a very old photo of a man and woman standing beside a snow-covered car—Ed’s parents, I surmised, probably before their divorce. An obviously newer one was of a little girl about three years old—probably one of his nieces.

And one was of a young man, about twenty-five, with light brown hair and ice-blue eyes holding a small dog. The back of the picture read:
To Ed with love always, Glenn and Big Kano
.

*

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, the billfold beside
me,
when Ed came out of the shower. His eyes went immediately from my face to the billfold.

“I didn’t mean to pry,” I heard my voice say. “It fell off the dresser and everything spilled out…”

Ed, who’d stood momentarily frozen, the towel on one shoulder, resumed drying himself.

“It didn’t fall. I deliberately dropped it,” he said, his voice gentle. “I knew before I went to Schmidt’s last night you wouldn’t give up. When you mentioned searching through the obituaries and utility records, I knew you’d find out sooner or later. I just decided that sooner would be better for both of us.”

I stood somewhere in that vast room behind my eyes and looked out at him. My body was a robot, with somebody deep inside pushing buttons and levers to manipulate my movements. I knew I had to say something but didn’t know how to say it. My mouth was so dry, I could hardly open it.

I finally managed.

“Why?” I asked.

Ed finished drying himself and sat down on the bed next to me, the towel draped across his lap.

“I met Glenn when he was twenty-two,” he began, and even in my shocked state, I was impressed by how calm he was. “He was an orphan, and he was an alcoholic. We had a very rough first year—because he was beautiful, he’d been used and abused since he was a kid. No one had ever loved him, and he thought no one ever could.

“His drinking nearly destroyed us several times, but I finally convinced him to get help, and with AA and counseling, he quit drinking completely. He even came to believe that maybe someone
could
love him, and that maybe I did. I was so proud of him.”

I could almost hear gears and wheels grinding as I turned my head to look at him, to watch his face as well as to listen to his voice.

“On the first anniversary of his being sober—recovering alcoholics call it their ‘birthday’—we went to Hawaii, and when we got home, I bought him a puppy. Glenn named him Big Kano, after a beach we’d found in Hawaii. He was really crazy about that dog—it was the first one he’d ever had, and I think he felt it was the first time he understood what unconditional love is.

“We moved into that building shortly thereafter. A gay friend at work had told me about it—he lived right across the street. The apartment was great, but the other people…the other people were something else.”

Ed had been staring off into space, but suddenly his eyes locked onto mine, almost as if they were pleading with me to believe him.

“You know something about them,” he said. “Every single one was a bastard. Glenn—you’ve seen his picture, now. You know how beautiful he was. Well, he was that beautiful on the inside, too. He was sweet, and gentle, and loving, and kind. We were good for each other. We needed each other.

“The guys in the building knew that, but they never stopped with their passes, always hitting on me, or hitting on Glenn. They knew we were together, but they never stopped. They scared Glenn, sometimes. They just made
me
angry, but I tried not to let it show, since we all had to live together, sort of.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see he had begun to knead the towel, slowly, first one hand and then the other, unconsciously.

“I didn’t travel much with my job in those days, and most of the time, when I had to be gone for a few days, Glenn would go with me. My friend across the street would look after Big Kano, though Glenn hated leaving him.

“Glenn never liked to be alone—he’d been alone all his life, he used to say, and now that he had me, he didn’t like for us to be apart. He was making great progress, but he was still incredibly insecure.

“Then, one weekend, I had to make a spur-of-the-moment trip to handle some minor glitch with some VIP arrangements. I asked Glenn if he wanted to go, but he’d made an appointment to take Big Kano to the groomers, and he said he’d stay home—it would only be for the weekend.”

Suddenly aware of his kneading, Ed stopped and awkwardly smoothed the towel out with both hands.

“When I got the call telling me Glenn was dead, I flipped out. I couldn’t get a flight for a couple of hours, but I couldn’t wait, so I rented a car and started driving back; it was only about two hundred-fifty miles. I didn’t make it. I plowed into a freeway divider about fifty miles from home.”

His voice was flat now, and he stared at the towel as he talked, head down. His fists were clenched tight.

“I was three months in the hospital. Broken leg, cracked ribs, a concussion, not to mention, shall we say, emotional problems. As soon as I was released from the hospital, the company sent me overseas.

“They were wonderful to me, considering everything. Nothing was said—nor has it ever been—about my being gay, though I’m sure it’s no big secret. Anyway, I’m sure they sent me away to help me forget, which just goes to show how naive people can be.

“My sister flew out from Detroit and handled Glenn’s burial—the fact I couldn’t even go to the funeral made matters worse—and came back to stay with me right after I got out of the hospital. When I got news of the transfer overseas, she took care of closing the apartment and selling off most of the furniture. I don’t know what I would have done without her help.”

He was silent for a long moment, then gave a deep, unconscious sigh, and continued.

“I never really knew the details of what had happened, other than that Big Kano had been run over and that Glenn had gotten drunk and shot himself with the gun we kept to protect against burglars. I couldn’t understand it, but then, I couldn’t handle it, either. Maybe I didn’t really want to know, in a way.”

I wanted to say something, do something, but I didn’t know what. So, I just sat there, feeling hollow.