The Monkey's Raincoat Read Free Page A

gets. Lot of mail. Maybe four days’ worth.
    I walked through the little courtyard past some more banana trees. Apartment 4 was all the way back on the left. That Janet. I knocked, but there was no answer. I walked back up to apartment 1, where a little sign on the door said MANAGER. A fat man built like a pear came around the mailboxes, started up the stairs, and saw me. Jo-Jo isn’t here,” he said. “He’s got the aerobics class on Tuesday.”
    â€œJo-Jo the manager?”
    He nodded. “He’ll be back around five or six. But I can tell you, there aren’t any vacancies.”
    â€œMaybe I could pitch a tent.”
    He thought about that. “Oh, that was a joke.”
    â€œYou know Kimberly Marsh?” I said. “In number four.”
    He said, “Number four,” and thought about it. “That the pretty blonde girl?”
    â€œYes.”
    He shrugged. “You see her around, that’s all. I said hi once and she said hi back, that’s all.”
    I took out the photograph of Mort. “You see this guy around with her?”
    He squinted at me. “Mr. Suspicious I don’t know who you are,” he said.
    â€œJohnny Staccato, Confidential Investigations.”
    He nodded and stared at the picture and rubbed his arm. “Well, I dunno,” he said. “Gee.” Gee.
    I thanked him and walked around until I heard a door upstairs open and close. Then I walked back to number 4. I knocked again in case she had been in the shower, then took out two little tools I keep in my wallet and popped Kimberly Marsh’s deadbolt lock. “Ms. Marsh?” Maybe she was taking anap. Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to answer the door. Maybe she was waiting behind it with an ice pick she had dipped in rat poison.
    No answer.
    I pushed open the door and went in.
    There was a davenport against one wall with a wicker and glass coffee table in front of it and a matching Morris chair at the far end. From the doorway, I could see across the living room to the dining area and the kitchen. To the left was a short hall. Above the couch was a slickly framed poster of James Dean walking in the rain. He looked lonely.
    A dozen brown daisies sat in a glass bowl on the coffee table. Propped against the bowl was a little lavender card.
For the girl who gives me life, all my love, Mort
. Papery petals had rained around the card.
    On the end table there was a Panasonic phone-answering machine. I passed it, walked back to the kitchen, then glanced down the little hall to the bedroom before I went into the bath. No bodies. No messages scrawled in blood. No stopped-up toilet with red-tinted water. There were two towels on the bathroom floor as if someone had stepped out of the shower, toweled off, then dropped the towels. They were dry, at least two days old. There was a little chrome toothbrush holder with the stains those things get when you park a toothbrush in them, only there was no toothbrush. The medicine cabinet held all the stuff medicine cabinets hold, though maybe there were a couple of spaces where things had been but now weren’t. I went back out into the living room and checked the message machine. The message counter said zero—no messages. I played it back anyway. The counter was right.
    I went into the bedroom. The bed was made and neat. There was a little desk in the corner beneath the window, cluttered and messy with old copies of the
L.A. Times, Vogue
, I. Magnin shopping bags, and other junk. Halfway down a stack of trade papers and
Casting Calls
I found the kind of 8×10 black-and-white stills actors bring to readings. Most were head shots of a pretty blonde with clean healthy features. At the bottom of the 8×10 it said
Kimberly Marsh
in an elegant flowing script. On the back was stapled a Xeroxed copy of her acting credits, her training, and her physical description. She was 5′ 6″, 120 pounds, had honey hair and green eyes. She