The Murderer Next Door

by Rafael Yglesias

  “Of course you should tell me! I would have killed you if you hadn’t. He’s using it for affairs,” she decided; then her doubts—or perhaps her hopes—crept in: “Right?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t!”

  “The doorman had to search for his name, like he wasn’t used to announcing visitors for Ben.”

  “Maybe she has a key, maybe they think she’s Mrs. Fliess. Maybe he’s married to someone else. Maybe he’s got twelve kids with another woman!” She squeezed her eyes together, then opened them very wide, as if she were trying to wake up. “It’s been, what…eight years since we moved in together? When I think of all his whining about money! He’s spent thousands of dollars! I feel like he’s laughing at me right now. What a creep.”

  “Ma! Ma! Ma!” Naomi screamed. We both jumped, our hearts pounding, and hurried down the hall.

  “What is it!” Wendy shouted.

  Naomi winked at us, silver skinned in the bathwater, her right eye shut tight. “I’ve got soap in my eyes!”

  The jig was up. Naomi had seen me and it took half an hour to convince her that I had to go home and couldn’t play. Wendy put on a videotape of the Wizard of Oz to distract Naomi and then walked me to the door. “I’m not going to tell Ben how I found out,” she whispered. “I think that would make it worse. He’s liable to throw such a fit about your following him that I won’t get anywhere. Please don’t let on you know.”

  “Sure.”

  “I think my marriage is…” She couldn’t finish that thought. “I’m gonna need help—”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” I said. There’s not one of my deeds or words that I can be proud of, and yet it seemed so logical, so right at the time: “He might be doing something else in there,” I hinted.

  Wendy didn’t hear, she was in a private spiral of worry and unhappiness. “I don’t know if I can afford a good lawyer—”

  “Don’t worry about money or a good lawyer. That’ll be taken care of.”

  She hugged me, suddenly, desperately. Her arms snaked down my back, the way a child does when preparing to climb into your arms. She wanted to be small, to be cared for. I felt her soft mother’s belly and smelled on her neck the perfumed shampoo Naomi liked. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said into my ear.

  I’ve told you before: she was my sister, my only family. I meant to help her. But I didn’t do her any good that day.

  “Call me any time. Remember, we’re right across the hall.”

  “That I can remember,” she said, laughing through tears.

  “Don’t worry about waking me, okay?” I went out into the hall. Her hand followed, fingers still entwined with mine. “Call,” I insisted.

  “I’ll call you from work in the morning. Tell me it’s going to be okay,” she said, her clown’s face rounder, whiter, sadder than ever.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I said, nodding my head up and down, exaggerating my confidence.

  No, I didn’t do her any good that day.

  MY EXCITEMENT AT THE DISCOVERY OF BEN’S HIDEAWAY was drained by the distress in Wendy’s face. Listening to my story I fancied she had aged in front of my eyes. I felt mean—a messenger who deserved to be killed for delivering bad news. I lingered in the foyer until I heard Ben arrive in the elevator and enter their apartment. Then I moved into the kitchen near the window that along with the pantry window were the only ones which gave me a view of their apartment. Of course, Wendy would wait until Naomi was asleep to discuss it with him, but I listened anyway for the sounds of a quarrel, although I had every reason to believe that I wouldn’t have been able to hear even if they screamed at the top of their lungs. I had never heard anything from their place except when Naomi stuck her head out and deliberately called across the courtyard. Wendy and I didn’t copy her for fear the co-op board would accuse us of tenement manners.

  When Stefan came home, I told him about my surveillance of Ben in an ashamed pose and voice, a little girl confessing her naughtiness. He expressed some amusement that I had followed Ben, but when I got to the meat of the story, his dark-bearded face looked grim. “That’s a pretty elaborate secret life,” he commented.

  “Is he crazy?” I asked with all the naivete of an ignorant yellow-haired Maine girl, my years of education and exposure to New York sophistication gone, evaporated by the heat of the moment.

  “He’s going to react vigorously.” Stefan nodded to himself, closed his bright teeth, and pursed his hairy lips, stroking them forward, as if coaxing his mouth off his face.

  “Stefan, what the hell does that mean?”

  “Just that it’s obviously a big secret. He’s put a lot of energy into keeping it secret. That energy will be released with its exposure.”

  “Does that mean he’s going to explode or fall apart?”

  “I have no idea. He might be happy to let go of it. It can be a relief to be free of that kind of burden. But you were right not to tell her about the cross-dressing. It’s better that he decide to give up that secret voluntarily, rather than be caught.”

  “Should she leave him?”

  “Oh I don’t think so. They should go into therapy.”

  We had fun, nervous, concerned, but gossipy fun, deciding what they should do with their lives. Stefan pretended to be only professional, I pretended to be only a good friend, but we were titillated, anxiously waiting for the denouement in tomorrow’s episode. We talked and ate in the kitchen in between glances at their dark kitchen and laundry windows.

  Later, I lay in bed, expecting the phone to ring. I fell asleep on guard.

  And I woke alert, nervous. While I slept my conscience must have reached me through the busy circuits and delivered its message that I had done wrong. After a swallow of coffee, I phoned.

  “Hello.” Ben’s thick voice, hoarse from exhaustion, answered.

  “Hi Ben. It’s Molly. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No.” His tone was angry.

  “Wendy and I talked about having lunch. I wanted to—”

  He dropped the phone without saying anything. I heard him call out in the background. “It’s for you. It’s Molly.”

  “Hi.” Wendy’s voice was a whisper, soft and beautiful. She had a sweet sound, even when tired.

  I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m all right. I’ll call you later, before we go to the country.”

  “You’re going away this weekend?” I was surprised. I had assumed they wouldn’t want to be up there, isolated together. “Oh, yeah. You should. It’ll be the best thing. Call you later. I’m fine.”

  I reported to Stefan. He nodded sagely and spoke with paternal confidence: “I’m sure they’ll work it out. Probably get him to open up and deal with some of his problems.”

  Part of me still tossed, uncomfortable, not at rest. Wendy didn’t phone all morning and I tried her right before lunch. She was in a meeting, I was told. She’d call back. When I returned from eating, she had left a message. I tried her. We didn’t connect until almost four.

  “I’m so exhausted,” she said. “I haven’t slept in two nights. We were up all night.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I can’t really talk about it here.”

  “Let’s meet for a drink.”

  “I can’t. I have to get home, we’re leaving in half an hour.” She sighed, groaning at the effort of rising. “He’s not having an affair. That’s the bottom line, I guess. It’s something else. I don’t really want to talk about it now—”

  “That’s okay,” I reassured her grandly. After all, it’s easy to be patient about gossip when you already know it. And I was embarrassed, anyway. I regretted my pleasure at his sickness. I thought of myself as a bully, insensitive and crude. “But he was keeping his old apartment?”

  “Oh, yeah. I saw it myself. We went there this morning. That’s gonna change, believe me.” She was firm, in control.

  Hearing her strength ca
lmed me. “He didn’t get angry, throw a fit?”

  “Oh God…” She trailed into despair. Then a grunt, an amused sound, but embittered. “We both ran the full gamut of emotions. Can we have a long lunch on Monday?” She laughed. “From my hospital bed. By then, I’ll be a wreck. I’ll talk to you then, okay?”

  “Sure, dear,” I said, gladdened by her plucky tone. Maybe I had done no harm, after all. “Get some rest. I’ll see you Monday?”

  “You will. Take care, Moll.” That was her sign-off, from the beginning of our friendship, a constant throughout the changes of the years. A gentle note, sung three times, a soothing farewell: Take care, Moll.

  I was lazy that weekend. I can’t remember doing one damn thing that was worthwhile: I didn’t even enjoy the indolence. I thought about her, naturally, and how it was going, even considered phoning up there—something I never did. Which is why I chose not to. Ben would suspect from my call that I knew they were going through something momentous and supposedly I didn’t know.

  Early Monday morning, I heard Naomi’s voice in the hallway by the elevator. I almost opened the door to say hello. Then I almost rang the bell before I left for work, but decided not to since I was uncertain whether Wendy or Ben would have taken Naomi to school. Wait for lunch, I told myself. In the office, I canceled a meeting scheduled for eleven-thirty, worried that it might impinge on my date with Wendy. When I phoned her office, I got a shock: her assistant reported that Ben had told her Wendy would be out of town for a week because of a family illness.

  I was immediately alive with horrible thoughts, which proves part of me knew, knew all along, and should have been more careful. In a panic, I called their apartment, got no answer, and now, frantic, I rang Ben’s office. “Where’s Wendy?” I said without a hello.

  “I don’t know.” His answer was blunt and uninterested.

  “What do you mean? We were supposed to have lunch. She’s not at—”

  “I told you already. I don’t know where she is. She walked out last night. We had a fight. She just walked out. I don’t know where the fuck she is. I’m furious at her for dumping everything in my lap. If you hear from her, tell her to call me. Good-bye.” He hung up.

  It came at me from all sides. Screaming at me, my skin shriveling with horror. If she had walked out, alive and well, she would have called me right away.

  I had a million questions, many of them still being asked—unanswered—to this day.

  I checked with my secretary to make sure I hadn’t missed any messages.

  I buzzed Brian Stoppard, one of the leading partners at our firm, our top litigator and criminal lawyer. I told him I was worried about the whereabouts of a friend. He said the police wouldn’t accept a report until she was missing for twenty-four hours and I would have trouble getting their attention even then because I wasn’t a family member.

  But I am, I said in my head.

  “If her husband claims he’s heard from her, for example, they’ll wait,” he said. “Might ask him a few questions, but they’d wait a while. You suspect he’s hurt her?” Stoppard touches the tenderest spot with the cool curiosity of a dentist. He urged me to tell the particulars and then impatiently cut me off after a few sentences. “Husbands and wives walk out for a few days, weeks, even months, all the time. And they don’t call home or their best friend. Believe me, it’s common. Don’t imagine the worst. If you’ve heard nothing, and he’s heard nothing, after three or four days, let me know and I’ll help with the police.” From his tone, he obviously thought I was overreacting.

  But I knew, and you must know by now, that Wendy would never leave Naomi without a word, would never choose to go on a scary and difficult path by herself.

  I LEFT THE OFFICE AFTER INSTRUCTING MY SECRETARY TO get a number or location from Wendy if she called. I went down to Naomi’s school, Riverview Chapel, the best of the private schools downtown. It occupies a trio of five-story buildings on a quiet block east of Fifth Avenue, complete with an outdoor playground, divided into swings and slides on one half, a basketball hoop and an open area for ball games on the other. I knew Naomi’s schedule. We often discussed her likes and dislikes, and one of her criticisms was that recess in the yard came right after lunch, at one o’clock: “When I’m sleepy from eating and don’t want to run around.”

  I stood across the street from the playground, far enough away so that Naomi couldn’t easily spot me, and watched. She was there, holding her end of a rope and counting the skips of the second best of her five best friends, a brilliant redhead, Sarah. Did I imagine that Naomi seemed concerned? Her smooth face was tight. With worry? Or with concentration on the game? Anyway, I had verified that it was her voice I heard in the hall that morning. I walked to our building. The afternoon doorman, Billy, was on duty. He is my favorite of the staff, a tall thin black man with a wandering eye, the left side of his head more gray than the right, as if he had begun a dye job and abandoned it half done. When not covering for one of the others, his hours are from two to ten. But he often arrives early and chats with the morning man, Pablo, and he usually stays until eleven or so arguing sports with the night man, David. I asked him if he was there when Ben and Wendy came home from the country.

  He said no, that he had left at eleven-thirty, and they still hadn’t come in. “I was surprised,” he commented with his usual attention to detail. “They usually get here about nine, nine-thirty. He always carries Naomi in. She acts like she’s sleeping, you know, while I hold the elevator, but then she opens her eye and winks, you know, while the door is closing.” He smiled. “And I say, ‘Caught you!’ So I noticed they were late.” Billy was too discreet to question why I asked. I got the impression that he didn’t like Ben either.

  I went upstairs and rang the bell. Yolanda no longer worked for them, but they did have a woman come in twice a week to clean and do laundry. I didn’t know her schedule. There was no answer. I took out the spare keys Wendy had given to me for emergencies and entered their apartment.

  I went from room to room, opening closet doors with terror for a companion.

  Nothing. I found nothing suspicious. I looked for keys to Ben’s secret apartment, unsuccessfully.

  What was I doing? What did I think I could accomplish?

  I don’t know. I was her family, you see. I had done her no good. Maybe she was somewhere, needing help. Maybe I could rescue her still.

  Downstairs, Billy proved my faith in him. “Mrs. Gray?” He knew I used my maiden name, but I was married, so this was his compromise. “David just called to ask me something, so I asked him your question. He said Mr. Fliess and Naomi came in late, about two in the morning. The little girl was really asleep, he said, no winking.”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. “Not Wendy? Not Mrs. Fliess?”

  “No.” Billy studied me, curious. “She wasn’t with them.”

  I MUST HAVE WANDERED IN A TRANCE FOR A WHILE. I came to a few blocks from our building, walking aimlessly. I didn’t remember saying good-bye to Billy or leaving. The street seemed to rise up and meet my feet, the sky jiggled in my vision. I was seated in my consciousness the way a passenger is seated on a bus, bounced along willlessly, inside myself without control.

  I stopped at a phone booth and called Stefan. He was in a session, he told me, and I had to shout at him that this was an emergency to convince him to interrupt it. He listened, uh-huhing without comment until I was finished. “You sound very upset. I can understand that. But I do think you’re jumping to conclusions. She might just want to be by herself for a while. They could have fought—”

  “I hung up. I knew he was wrong to patronize me. I was angry that I had ever listened to his reasonableness, to his civilized perceptions.

  I considered driving up to their country house. But then I would be out of reach for hours.

  Then it hit me. Of course. Wendy had stayed behind in the country, that was it.

  I called my office. Wendy hadn’t left a message. I asked my secretary to find the
country house number in my book. I dialed it, desperately, almost happy, sure that I had solved the mystery.

  No one answered. I let it ring until I began to tremble and I thought I would faint. “It can’t be,” I whispered. “Can’t be.”

  I wandered the streets, checking my messages every fifteen minutes, hoping that the next woman I passed would turn out to be her. I arrived across the street from Riverview Chapel School at four forty-five, fifteen minutes before dismissal from the after-school program.

  I wasn’t sure why I was there until after I arrived. Had Wendy sent me? Certainly I knew she wanted me to: no spirit world was necessary to direct me to this duty.

  Besides, she would be there, if anywhere. Wendy would come for her daughter. If she was alive.

  But it was Ben who arrived. He went inside the school, and came out with Naomi. They held hands. Naomi skipped all the way; Ben lumbered slowly, dragged by her energy and animation. I followed them, walking half a block behind.

  I waited outside our apartment building for only a minute or so before going up. I stood in the hallway, between my front door and theirs, and made my choice. At last I did the right thing.

  I greeted Ben with a cheerful smile. “Hear from Wendy?”

  He shook his head no, moving his hairless head sullenly, the thick bloodless skin on his face glowing white, immobile and expressionless. He had the look of a sluggish zoo animal, eyes wary, hands closed, defensive, but beaten.

  Thought I’d make you some dinner and help out.” I pushed in, bumping him slightly. “Okay?” I smiled into his face, daring him to find anything in my eyes but help.

  “All right,” he conceded in his slow speech. “Thanks,” he added with the slightest suggestion of a sneer.

  I knew then, struggle though I might against it. I despaired in my heart, while I pretended to be calm for Naomi’s sake, because that was when I knew my friend was gone. I knew because all evening long (even when I probed about their quarrel and he mumbled that she wanted him to change, “and I can’t change who I am”) Ben never asked, not once, if Wendy had called me. He didn’t have to—he knew she couldn’t have.