The Recycled Citizen (5 page)

“Will the janitor let us in?”

“There’s only one way to find out. What the hell, it’s on our way. Unless you’d rather take a cab straight home?”

“Darling, I’m fine. Truly, I’ve never felt better. Don’t I look well?”

Max had to admit she did and switched his fretting to whether the house at Ireson’s Landing would be finished in time for the coming-out party. The baby would be born here at Phillips House, of course, where Sarah herself had been born. Aunt Appie was terribly upset about their plan to go directly to Ireson’s Landing afterward.

“She was all set to pop over every day and baby-sit for us,” Sarah explained.

“Did you tell her that’s why we’re getting out of town?” Max asked her.

“No dear. I told her we simply couldn’t afford to have all that land sitting out there without our getting any good from it. She could accept that, though she still can’t imagine what possessed us to tear down the dear old house.”

The dear old house had been hideous, dilapidated, uninsulated, unheatable, totally unlivable during nine months of the year and endurable in the summertime only among those who believed in rising above physical discomforts and keeping their thoughts fixed firmly on the higher planes. It was the sort of house Bronson Alcott would have parked his family in.

Max Bittersohn was less transcendental in his ideas. He believed in plumbing that worked, heaters that heated, windows that let in the light and kept out the drafts, rooms that were planned to serve their functions efficiently, and architecture that didn’t lacerate the eyeballs. Sarah, having learned to her astonished delight that such amenities might yet be hers, had cheered on the wreckers and couldn’t wait for the new house to be done.

Since they’d gone to the expense of renovating the apartment over the old carriage house, they’d decided to keep that building standing as a separate guest house. Aunt Appie could stay there, in’ the unhappy event that she couldn’t be dissuaded from coming at all. Appie herself was tolerable for brief periods at well-spaced intervals but couldn’t be trusted not to turn herself into a Trojan horse and let in her son Lionel, along with his awful wife, Vare, and their fearsome foursome: Jesse, Woodson, James and Frank. Sarah would sooner have thrown her forthcoming babe into a den of wolves than let Lionel’s rat pack near him.

She and Max were discussing the possible advantages of a moat and portcullis as they struggled up the steep, narrow streets on the back side of Beacon Hill but had to set the question of fortifications aside when they got to the address Loveday had copied out for them. Number 47B took a good deal of finding. At last they located the minuscule door that led to the basement, not only below street level but also tucked into a niche down an alley so narrow as to be almost invisible to the naked eye.

“It’s a good thing we came when we did,” Sarah remarked as she edged her way into the alley, trying not to let her white coat rub against the sooty bricks. “By tomorrow I doubt if I’d be able to squeeze through.”

Max started to say, “Maybe you should wait up on the sidewalk,” but remembered he wasn’t supposed to be overprotective and confined his admonition to, “Take my hand going down. These steps must have been built by a midget with the hiccups.”

At least they hadn’t sought in vain. The janitor was just inside the door, banging trash cans around and not at all loath to be interrupted. Max opened negotiations.

“My name’s Bittersohn. This is my wife.”

“Yeah? My name’s Montmorency and what the hell is it to you?”

“We’re from the Senior Citizens’ Recycling Center, Mr. Montmorency. It’s about Chester Arthur. We understand he was a tenant of yours. I expect you know what happened to him last night?”

“Oh sure. The police woke me up. That’s right. Chet was with me—let’s see, I moved in here right about the time Kennedy was assassinated.”

“Nineteen sixty-three,” said Max. “And Arthur moved in then too?”

“Nah, he didn’t come till after George Wallace was shot. Nineteen seventy-two. See, how I happened to get this place was, the guy that was here before me got shot in a robbery. So I applied for the vacancy.”

“Naturally,” said Max. “And how did you acquire Chet Arthur as a tenant?”

“I was coming to that.” The janitor sounded a trifle hurt. “What happened was, I was in a bar down on Charles Street. They had this program on the TV about Abe Lincoln getting shot, so I’m sitting there watching and Chet’s sitting next to me. So we got to talking. You know how you do. So he tells me the rooming house he’s been living in ever since that guy took a potshot at Harry Truman and got the other guy instead is going to be torn down on account of urban renewal. He wants to know if I know of a place he could stay. Cheap.”

Mr. Montmorency rattled another trash can. “So I figure what the heck, I can use a few extra bucks a month. So I said sure, I could rent him one of my rooms. I got two, see, and I don’t need them both because I’m kind of what you might call a man about town. I don’t stick around here any more than I have to. And I didn’t have to charge him much because I get the place for free as part of the deal. I never told Chet that, but that’s how it is. Anyway, Chet said that was fine with him, so he moved in and it worked okay, so he never moved out.”

“I suppose you and he got to be great friends,” said Sarah.

“Nah. We got along okay, don’t get me wrong, but Chet was never much for company. Maybe he’d go down to the corner with me on a Saturday night for a beer, but mostly he’d sit in his room and watch the fights on television or read the old magazines the tenants threw out. It didn’t make no never mind to me what he did. Chet paid his rent on the button and never bugged me about nothing. That’s all I cared about. I got trouble enough with them kooks upstairs.”

“Nevertheless I expect you’ve been wanting to know about the funeral plans.”

“Not ’specially. It isn’t like he was shot instead of just mugged. This is my week to wash the hallways, and I got to clean out Chet’s room. There’s a guy I know down at the bar who’s still got a bullet in him from when he used to drive for the mob. He wouldn’t mind moving in.”

“Sounds as if you two were made for each other,” said Max. “We might be able to help you a little by. taking Chet’s things away. Some of his friends at the center might like something to remember him by.”

“You can if you want, but Chet didn’t have much. And what there was ain’t worth taking. The television’s mine, remember, and the lamp. I rented Chet the place furnished, and I’ll need all the stuff for the next guy. He don’t have much, neither.”

“At least he’s bringing his own bullet,” Max reminded him. “Then we’ll just go take a look.”

“Be my guest. The door’s unlocked. Turn left at the boiler and look out-for the busted drain in the floor. I got to get on with my work.”

Max drew Sarah aside while the janitor went upstairs, thumping his mop and bucket against the railings. Then they navigated the basement by the light of one dust-coated forty-watt bulb and found the place that had been Chester A. Arthur’s home ever since George Wallace was shot.

They had no problem deciding which of the two rooms was Arthur’s. His had to be the one that didn’t have newspaper clippings about assassinations stuck up all over the walls. In fact, it didn’t have much of anything: an iron cot with a once gaudy Indian print bedspread some tenant must have discarded years ago; a small chest of drawers with a gap where the bottom drawer should have been; a dingy, padded armchair with a rickety metal table drawn up beside it. On the table was a lamp some misguided person had made from a large purple plaster pig, the kind they give as prizes at carnivals. Pink toenails and a pink snout had been daubed on with nail polish and a pink shade with purple ball-fringe added as a final insult to the eyes.

An old portable black and white television set was propped up on an orange plastic milk crate facing the chair. The rug underneath was so filthy, there was no telling what its color might have been. On the whole, though, the room was reasonably clean and almost painfully neat. There was no closet, but hooks had been screwed into a board fastened to the concrete wall and a few garments hung from them.

“I suppose we ought to take those,” said Sarah. “Somebody might be able to get some use out of them.”

“Who, for instance?” Max demanded. “Why don’t you just stand there and try not to inhale while I go through the pockets?”

“I could search around a little.”

“Go ahead, but be careful what you touch. Leave the bed to me.”

There weren’t really many places to look. Those of the dresser drawers capable of holding anything didn’t hold much: a change of underwear; a few holey socks; some ragged T-shirts; a thick sweater with the elbows worn through. There was a helmet of imitation leather with earflaps and a thick fleece lining that might have saved Chet Arthur’s life if yesterday had been cold enough for him to put it on.

Sarah got excited over some packets marked sugar and instant coffee, but when she called them to Max’s attention and he’d slit them open with his pocketknife, they proved to contain only sugar and instant coffee. They found no sinister packet taped to the back of a drawer, nothing stuck between the pages of the dogeared magazines that had beguiled Chefs leisure hours. They found, as Max said in disgust fifteen minutes later, not a damned thing.

“Except this.” Sarah held up a heavy brown paper envelope she’d just discovered tucked in between the speckled glass and the buckled cardboard backing of a cheap mirror that hung over the ruined dresser. In it were a tidy bundle of bills and four savings bank certificates from a Boston bank. The sum to which they added up was by no means meager.

“F
ORTY-ONE THOUSAND, THREE
hundred and twenty-six dollars.” Max whistled. “Not bad for a guy who lived in a cellar.”

“Do you suppose it’s possible Chet bought the certificates with his retirement money?” Sarah asked.

“I might, if I knew where he worked and how much he earned. And when he started investing. These certificates were issued within the past two years, but it’s conceivable he’s been renewing them over a long period of time. He could have been taking the interest for living expenses, though I can’t see what the hell he spent it on.”

“Maybe he gambled.”

“Or squandered it on loose women. Or gave it away to the deserving poor, like that uncle of yours who inherited a fortune and lived like a bum.”

“But Chet Arthur
was
the deserving poor. At least he made Dolph and Mary think so.”

“You’re right, he did. Let’s have another look at that mirror.”

With the blade of his helpful pocketknife Max probed carefully down into the backing and eased out another envelope. “Well, well. Look at this,
kätzele.”

It was a will form, the kind that can be bought in stationery shops, meticulously filled out in ungraceful but perfectly clear printing, signed by Chester Alan Arthur, and leaving everything of which he had died possessed to Mrs. Mary Kelling of Chestnut Hill and the Senior Citizens’ Recycling Center.

“Damned good thing Mary has an alibi for last night,” Max grunted. “This is exactly what we don’t need. If the police see it, they might get the idea Dolph and Mary had Arthur rubbed out to start their fund drive.”

“And if we report the heroin you found in his collecting bag, they’ll say Dolph put him up to peddling drugs to raise the money. Max, what are we going to do?”

Sarah looked stricken, then faintly hopeful. “Maybe the will isn’t legal.”

“That wouldn’t cut any ice, the intention would still be there. Anyway, the will looks okay to me. Arthur had it properly witnessed. Joan Sitty and Anne somebody or other.”

“Joan Sitty? What a delightful name. Darling, do you suppose she’s the woman who brought us coffee at the center? Mr. Loveday called her Annie, remember, and she said her name was Joan. This Anne whose name we can’t read might be the Annie who hadn’t come in yet.”

“It certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask,” Max agreed. “The odds are that Arthur would have asked people from the center because it looks as if he didn’t have anybody else. Except his landlord, and he’d surely have more sense than even to hint to El Moppo that he had anything to leave. Let’s get out of here before that guy comes back and starts asking questions.”

He quickly scooped up the contents of the drawers and the clothes from the hooks, and dumped them in a heap in the cot. “Got a pen in your handbag? We can leave a note saying we didn’t see anything here worth taking, but maybe he can find a use for it. If you’re set on making a donation to the center, I’ll give you something of mine. Like that necktie your Aunt Appie knitted for me.”

“Or perhaps those pink silk shirts you got from that luscious widow in New York?”

“Will you lay off those shirts? Mrs. Vanderschlep was only showing her gratitude because I got her Jan Steen fornicating scene back for her.”

“And she has so much to be grateful with,” Sarah murmured. “How did she happen to know your size?”

“She didn’t. They’re too long in the sleeves and too small in the neck. Look, next time the Mafia runs a rummage sale, you contribute the shirts and I’ll take them off my income tax as a charitable deduction. Now where do you want to go?”

“To a bathroom, since you ask. Uncle Jem’s is probably the closest to here.”

Men with pregnant wives either adjust to the facts of female physiology or spend nine months with red faces. Max wasn’t the sort to embarrass easily. He merely took Sarah’s arm and helped her over the worn brick sidewalks to Pinckney Street, indulging in rude jocosities along the way. Luckily the elevator was in the foyer, so they made it up to Jem’s apartment in the nick of time.

Learning from his man Egbert that he had company, Jeremy Kelling decided to get up. He emerged from his bedroom wrapped in a dashing tobacco-colored velveteen bathrobe with black turnover collar and cuffs and a big sash knot riding jauntily atop his little round tummy.

“Good morning, good morning. To what do I owe the honor?”

“To your niece’s delicate condition,” Max told him. “She’ll be out in a minute. We’ve been over collecting Chester A. Arthur’s personal effects. We didn’t wake you up, by any chance?”