checked that there was no one in the corridor, then made for the emergency stairs. I reached the street without encountering a soul. My first thought was to get as far away from there as possible, but then I changed my mind and walked as casually as I could manage to a little sandwich shop on a corner half a block away. I ordered a coffee and sat at a table by the window. If Sandy Smollett had raised the alarm, the apartment building would soon be crawling with heat. I heard a police siren, but the Doppler shift told me that the vehicle was headed uptown on Broadway.
I sat there for perhaps fifteen minutes, using the time to think about why Sandy Smollett had run out on me, and where she might have gone. There were any number of possible answers to both those questions, but my hunch—now spreading in all directions like a metastasizing cancer—led me to suspect that she might well have taken refuge at Stewart Langham’s studio, which was just a few blocks away. The sandwich shop had a phone, so I called information for Langham’s number. It was unlisted. I tried Jilly’s to see if I could get his number from her. No reply. I walked to Langham’s building and asked the doorman if a young lady had been there within the past half hour, looking for Mr. Langham. He said it was the building’s policy not to divulge information about residents or their visitors. I showed him my PI card and a twenty-dollar bill. He showed me the door.
I walked the half block to Central Park, entered through the pedestrian gate at 69th Street, and sat on a bench near Tavern on the Green in the hope of clearing my lungs of the stench of death. I suppose the trees were beginning to take on those kitschy fall colors, but I was preoccupied with thoughts of the dangling man. I didn’t want to drop Sandy in the shit, but it seemed indecent to let him just hang there with the flies buzzing around his balls, and common sense told me that someone was going to report the stiff sooner or later. I was glad I didn’t know for sure where Sandy was, but I was concerned that if I made an anonymous call to the cops they would be all over Aladdin’s Alibi like Thousand Island dressing on a Reuben sandwich.
I hoped that by now Sandy would have seen the light about not showing up for work, but with her it was impossible to be certain about anything. In any case, why was I in such a hurry to report the schmuck’s suicide? What was it to me? He’d already messed up my day. And suppose someone had seen me leaving the building? Thank God I’d been careful about fingerprints, because the cops had mine on file—which reminded me that I still had the cotton gloves balled up in my pocket. I tossed them into a garbage can and headed for 5th Avenue.
TEN
I hiked down to the Donnell Library on 53rd Street. That’s where the New York Public Library used to keep the original Winnie-the-Pooh dolls, safe behind bulletproof glass in case drug-crazed Yippies attempted to liberate them by armed force or some sex-starved and homesick tourist from Nebraska attempted to sodomize Eeyore. I wasn’t there to lose myself in the Hundred Acre Wood, but because the Donnell had a decent selection of art books and catalogues, as befitted its location across the street from the Museum of Modern Art.
I found several devoted to Stewart Langham and spent some time skimming through the biographical sections. This provided me with a few snippets. He had been born and raised in Seymour, Connecticut, the youngest of the five children of a wealthy mill owner known locally as the Copper Wire King of the Naugatuck Valley. Stew graduated from Yale, then, at the tail end of World War I, served in the Ambulance Corps. While on leave in Paris, he did the chestnuts-in-blossom bit, saw the work of Picasso, Modigliani, Soutine, and the rest of the gang, and set his mind on becoming a painter. Luckily for him, he had some chops. After a year at the Académie Julian, he returned to the Land of
I sat there for perhaps fifteen minutes, using the time to think about why Sandy Smollett had run out on me, and where she might have gone. There were any number of possible answers to both those questions, but my hunch—now spreading in all directions like a metastasizing cancer—led me to suspect that she might well have taken refuge at Stewart Langham’s studio, which was just a few blocks away. The sandwich shop had a phone, so I called information for Langham’s number. It was unlisted. I tried Jilly’s to see if I could get his number from her. No reply. I walked to Langham’s building and asked the doorman if a young lady had been there within the past half hour, looking for Mr. Langham. He said it was the building’s policy not to divulge information about residents or their visitors. I showed him my PI card and a twenty-dollar bill. He showed me the door.
I walked the half block to Central Park, entered through the pedestrian gate at 69th Street, and sat on a bench near Tavern on the Green in the hope of clearing my lungs of the stench of death. I suppose the trees were beginning to take on those kitschy fall colors, but I was preoccupied with thoughts of the dangling man. I didn’t want to drop Sandy in the shit, but it seemed indecent to let him just hang there with the flies buzzing around his balls, and common sense told me that someone was going to report the stiff sooner or later. I was glad I didn’t know for sure where Sandy was, but I was concerned that if I made an anonymous call to the cops they would be all over Aladdin’s Alibi like Thousand Island dressing on a Reuben sandwich.
I hoped that by now Sandy would have seen the light about not showing up for work, but with her it was impossible to be certain about anything. In any case, why was I in such a hurry to report the schmuck’s suicide? What was it to me? He’d already messed up my day. And suppose someone had seen me leaving the building? Thank God I’d been careful about fingerprints, because the cops had mine on file—which reminded me that I still had the cotton gloves balled up in my pocket. I tossed them into a garbage can and headed for 5th Avenue.
TEN
I hiked down to the Donnell Library on 53rd Street. That’s where the New York Public Library used to keep the original Winnie-the-Pooh dolls, safe behind bulletproof glass in case drug-crazed Yippies attempted to liberate them by armed force or some sex-starved and homesick tourist from Nebraska attempted to sodomize Eeyore. I wasn’t there to lose myself in the Hundred Acre Wood, but because the Donnell had a decent selection of art books and catalogues, as befitted its location across the street from the Museum of Modern Art.
I found several devoted to Stewart Langham and spent some time skimming through the biographical sections. This provided me with a few snippets. He had been born and raised in Seymour, Connecticut, the youngest of the five children of a wealthy mill owner known locally as the Copper Wire King of the Naugatuck Valley. Stew graduated from Yale, then, at the tail end of World War I, served in the Ambulance Corps. While on leave in Paris, he did the chestnuts-in-blossom bit, saw the work of Picasso, Modigliani, Soutine, and the rest of the gang, and set his mind on becoming a painter. Luckily for him, he had some chops. After a year at the Académie Julian, he returned to the Land of
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