“No, Captain. Actually, he did so to save money—at least he said, when he came here, about ten months ago, that he had no money to waste on high rent. He moved in with but four pieces of second-hand furniture—no, five pieces—well, six pieces. One kitchen table on which to write. One swivel chair in which to sit back in, while thinking what to write—or maybe what not to write. One kitchen chair alongside table or elsewhere, if he should have a visitor—which, however, he never did. One cot to sleep on, in the bedroom—one kitchen chair on which to undress—one chiffonier to put his clothes and all his other things in. Plus—yes, plus!—one typewriter—one frying pan—a couple of cooking pots—a few cracked dishes—a big gas-heater he used all of last winter but since then sold to me—a mop and pail—a desk incinerator—a—”
“You mean one of those gadgets to burn up discarded papers in, right on your desk?”
“Correct. They are today sold in all stationery departments, particularly in—”
“What did he want a desk-incinerator—for?”
“For burning up, each day, the discarded pages of—”
“—the Great American Novel, of course! Yeah, I get it. Well, what’s his name? Or had I better put it now—what was his name?”
“His name was Lythgoe Crockett.” Mr. Joseph Marchesi painstakingly spelled out the name of his tenant.
“Lythgoe—Crockett, eh? Very Anglo-Saxophonish handle, if you ask me! Well, now, Mr. Marchesi, when did you last see him alive?”
“I saw him about one hour ago. And even talked with him in the half-opened door of his flat. He was dressed, as usual, only in bathing trunks and grass slippers—”
“Bathing trunks? Has he got a play-beach in his flat?”
“He believed clothes are un—unhygienic. Or shall I put it—unnatural. He went about—inside, that is—at least now that summer has come on, in bathing trunks and heelless grass slippers.”
“Well, that’s a man’s priv’lege, I guess, in the priv’cy of his own domycile. All right. Well, what did you and him talk about? Listen—I hope he ain’t alive all the time we’re gassing here, and bleeding to death—”
“He is as dead as a doorknob, Captain. He’s so dead, Captain, that— Listen, Captain, if he’s not dead, I’ll give you the Marchesi Flats.”
“I don’t want ’em, Mr. Marchesi. I got troubles enough already. Well, what did you and him talk about? Were you giving him 24 hours’ notice or something?”
“Oh, heavens no. He was always paid up on his rent. Always. No, I was asking only if he would not like a certain nice little flat down on the lowest floor, on the other street. So that my signora—” Mr. Marchesi had unconsciously slipped into his own tongue at this moment, or perhaps it was a term definitely showing affection. “—and I could take his flat. For my signora has become, as she has become older, fearful of cat burglars—”
“Cat burglars? Now I know what that would mean to me as a policeman. But does it mean the same thing to you? You don’t mean prowling cats, I take it, but burglars who come down from roofs, or off fire-escapes? Is that right?”
“That is correct, Captain. And Mr. Crockett’s flat has swinging steel gratings, each locked with stout Yale steel padlocks, on the inside of every window in it, from front to back—”
“Steel gratings? Swinging, padlocked steel gratings—on every window? Why, did he put these in—”
“Oh no, no, no. A bootlegger of absinthe, the sale of which, it seems, is forbidden in this country—I’ve even heard rumors the fellow was a dope seller, too—who lived here when I took the flats over, he had the gratings put on. He evidently was afraid, continuously, of being assassinated. When I took over, and heard the rumors about him, and realized from the gratings he was no good, I was just about to take action in court to eject him. But fortunately he was assassinated in some other district, and solved my problem in that way. Sam Bellanco never even got to return to his flat; so—”
“Bellanco? Sam Bellanco? Yes, lone wolf. Lived alone and liked it! Stabbed to death, in the back, around Orleans Street and West Superior. He was a drug-dealer—far more than an absinthe bootlegger. Sold badly-cut drugs, and some addict finally gave him whats-what.”
“You know the crime-history of these parts, Captain! Well, Bellanco had this flat we’ve been talking about, and I didn’t have to put him out. For the reason that the day I went into court for an ouster order, he never came back, being dead, dead, dead. And it is those gratings, of Bellanco’s, still there today on the windows, I do surmise, that induced Mr. Crockett to rent that flat.”
“No doubt! He didn’t want nobody to steal the gre–e–eat American novel from under his nose. All right. What next? What did he say when you tried to subtly shoehorn him out of his luxur’ous quarters?
“He said, indignantly, ‘I like it here—I like it right where I am—I am going to stay right here, by godfrey—I have a lease—you cannot throw me out—I—
“I said, ‘All right, all right, Mr. Crockett. If you don’t like to move, you don’t have to move. I want you to be happy. Good day, Mr. Crockett.’”
The name “Crockett’ was coming up so frequently now, and sounding so much, at least to the Captain, like “croquette”, that he was licking his lips. And making mental reservation that, when this conversation was over, he would phone the hamburger man across the way and tell him to bring over turkey-meat croquettes on toast, instead of hamburgers on rye. Went on.
“We don’t seem to be getting to the vital thing here, Mr. Marchesi—the suicide. However, we’ll carry on—now that we’ve embarked on the ins and outs of slum real-estate business. All right. What next?”
“Well, next, I am downstairs—at the front door—the street entrance door, that is—thinking how much it might cost me to have, for my signora, steel gratings put on all the windows in our own flat—when comes along the postman. A black Negro. Yes, mail-delivery we have last of all in Little Italy. And the Flats Marchesi at roughly 2:15 p.m. each day. Well, the black postman he had, it seems, for Mr. Crockett, what he said was a first-class package. You know? All sealed? Wrapped in white paper with gold spicules in it? You know—”
“Spicules? My daughter calls those things sparklets. Gift paper, in short. Go ahead?”
“Well, he said, this black postman, ‘This package is too big to go into Mr. Crockett’s mailbox, there on the wall with all the rest—nor can I leave it on the stairway here, for the children will steal it. Now you, sir,’ he said, ‘are the landlord; you have to take it up yourself.’”
“I said to him,” Mr. Marchesi recounted indignantly, “‘Listen here, Mailman, you are paid to deliver first-class mail to the door—whenever it is a big package, or anything like that—I don’t do Uncle Sam’s work for him—I only pay him his income taxes, that’s all.’ Said he, ‘All right. Stairways and dogs—dogs and stairways—what a life!’ And he trudged upstairs with his mailbag on his shoulder and the package under his arm. I, after him. But to go to my own flat. I turned off at Floor 3—where my own flat was. And as I searched for my key so as not to bother my signora, I heard him knocking on the door above—I heard Mr. Crockett come to the door—heard him say ‘Ah there, my Senegambian friend, what brings you skyward?’—I heard the postman say ‘First-class package for you, Mr. Crockett’, and I heard Mr. Crockett say ‘Thanks a million for bringing it up. I’ll reward you when my ship comes in.’ And I heard the door close. And as I finally found my key, and went in, I saw the Negro coming down, muttering again about dogs and stairways—stairways and dogs—then I closed the door and was home.”
“Home sweet home, eh? Well, what next?” The Captain was beginning to wonder at this juncture whether they must not be