The Sins of the Fathers

He lived with her like brother and sister. He killed her and shrieked that he had fucked his mother. He rushed out into the street covered with her blood.

I knew too few facts, and the ones I did know did not seem to fit together.

I drank a few drinks and sidestepped a few conversations. I looked around for Trina, but she had left when her shift ended. I let the bartender tell me what was the matter with the Knicks this year. I don't remember what he said, just that he felt very strongly about it.

Chapter 5

Gordon Kalish had an old-fashioned pendulum clock on his wall, the kind that used to hang in railway stations. He kept glancing at it and checking the time against his wristwatch. At first I thought he was trying to tell me something. Later I realized it was a habit. Early in life someone must have told him his time was valuable. He had never forgotten, but he still couldn't entirely make himself believe it.

He was a partner in Bowdoin Realty Management. I had arrived at the company's offices in the Flatiron Building a few minutes after ten and waited for about twenty minutes until Kalish could give me a chunk of his time. Now he had papers and ledgers spread out on his desk and was apologetic that he couldn't be more helpful.

"We rented the apartment to Miss Hanniford herself," he said. "She may have had a roommate from the beginning. If so, she didn't tell us about it. She was the tenant of record. She could have had anyone living with her, man or woman, and we wouldn't have known about it. Or cared."

"She had a female roommate when Miss Antonelli moved in as superintendent. I'd like to contact that woman."

"I have no way of knowing who she was. Or when she moved in or out. As long as Miss Hanniford came up with the rent the first of every month, and as long as she didn't create a nuisance, we had no reason to take any further interest." He scratched his head. "If there was another woman and she moved out, wouldn't the post office have a forwarding address?"

"I'd need her name to get it."

"Oh, of course." His eyes went to the clock, then to his watch, then again to me. "It was a very different matter when my father first got into the business. He ran things on a much more personal basis. He was a plumber originally. He saved his money and bought property, a building at a time. Did all his own repair work, put the profits from one building into the acquisition of another. And he knew his tenants.

He went around to collect the rent in person. The first of the month, or once a week in some of the buildings. He would carry certain tenants for months if they were going through hard times. Others he had out on the street if they were five days late. He said you had to be a good judge of people."

"He must have been quite a man."

"He still is. He's retired now, of course. He's been living down in Florida for five or six years now.

Picks oranges off his own trees. And still pays his dues in the plumbers union every year." He clasped his hands together. "It's a different business now.

We've sold off most of the buildings he bought.

Ownership is too much of a headache. It's a lot less grief to manage property for somebody else. The building where Miss Hanniford lived, 194 Bethune, the owner is a housewife in a suburb of Chicago who inherited the property from an uncle. She's never seen it, just gets her check from us four times a year."

I said, "Miss Hanniford was a model tenant, then?"

"In that she never did anything to draw our attention. The papers say she was a prostitute. Could be, I suppose. We never had any complaints."

"You never met her?"

"No."

"She was always on time with the rent?"

"She was a week late now and then, just like everybody. No more than that."

"She paid by check?"

"Yes."

"When did she sign the lease?"

"What did I do with the lease? Here it is. Let's see, now. October 23, 1970.

Standard two-year lease, renewing automatically."

"And the monthly rent was four hundred dollars?"

"It's three eighty-five now. It was lower then, there've been some allowable increases since then. It was three forty-two fifty when she signed it."

"You wouldn't rent to someone with no visible means of support."

"Of course not."

"Then she must have claimed to be working. She must have provided references."

"I should have thought of that," he said. He shuffled more papers and came up with the application she had filled out. I looked at it. She had claimed to be employed as an industrial systems analyst at a salary of seventeen thousand dollars a year. Her employer was one J.J. Cottrell, Inc. There was a telephone number listed, and I copied it down.

I asked if the references had been checked.

"They must have been," Kalish said. "But it doesn't amount to anything. It's simple enough to fake. All she needs is someone at that number to back up her story. We make the calls automatically, but I sometimes wonder if it's worth the trouble."

"Then someone must have called this number. And someone answered the phone and swore to her lies."

"Evidently."