A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

      “I do too. At least I certainly did when he was here. Johnny, I wish you’d tell me more about this mess we’re in.”

      John led the way back into the kitchen, where he started to make himself a sandwich. “I’ll tell you what I can,” he said. Then he nodded in the direction of the bedrooms. “He could tell his own story much better than I can. I guess he thought that listening to the tape would break it to you gradually—I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you about him for about a month now, and I’m still trying.”

      “Go ahead.” Now her voice was subdued; John had his sandwich made, and she was starting mechanically to clean up the coffee cups, the paper towels, the knife with cheese on it.

      John sat at the table, munching between sentences. “All right. He’s not really my uncle, and his name isn’t really Matthew Maule. At least that’s only one of a number of names he uses. When I was kidnapped, at the age of sixteen, he was calling himself Dr. Emile Corday. Just an old friend of the family, visiting from London. The Chicago cops are probably still looking for Dr. Corday. Not that he did anything to be ashamed of then. The people he hurt were all kidnappers.”

      “Oh.”

      “So I’ll tell you what I can. But I can’t tell it the way he would. I can’t even find the right place to begin.”

Chapter Six

      Out in the corridor, heading directly for the elevators, Joe Keogh got as far as the door of the next apartment down the hall before his brisk passage was interrupted.

      She came out into the hallway smiling in his direction, making eye contact as if she was determined to intercept him and was not going to be too subtle about it. She might easily have seen him coming, for the door that she emerged from was strategically placed at a bend in the passage, so anyone looking through a wide-angle viewer from inside would command the stretch of hallway in front of the Maule apartment. She was a fortyish lady, average height, overweight but trying to carry it well, with skillfully if showily dyed hair, rich black streaked with silver. Subtle things about her face suggested that battles had been and were still being fought across that territory, again with skill, to prevent or wipe out jowls as well as wrinkles. What he could deduce about her body, swathed in a kind of robe or housecoat—Joe could never remember all the exact classifications for the things that women wore—suggested that it was well maintained, if not exactly shapely.

      She opened her door quickly and came out, light on her feet despite her heft, bumping into Joe as he moved to step around her.

      “Excuse me, I’m sorry!” Her voice was soft and pleasant, her smile a real charmer. “Were you by any chance in Mr. Maule’s apartment?”

      No, she’s not. That was all that Joe could think of in the first moment, looking the woman over carefully. He mumbled some kind of an apology for bumping into her.

      “I’m Mrs. Hassler?” As if she felt rebuffed by his failure to answer her question, the lady now seemed to be asking him if her name was quite acceptable. “It’s really none of my business, but I know Mr. Maule slightly. Through the Residents’ Association. And I was wondering if he’s all right.”

      Getting too rude with the neighbors could be a bad mistake; if none of them had called in the cops yet, after a night of strange disturbances in the corridor, one of them might easily be on the brink of doing so.

      “Mrs.—ah, Hassler, did you say?” Joe wondered fleetingly whether to introduce himself, and if so what name to use. He put off the decision. “Yes, I just came from Maule’s place. He’s okay. Was there something that alarmed you?”

      “Well…” Now the lady was going to be reluctant to commit herself. From his police days Joe could recognize the type, desperately curious but not wanting to be involved. She went on: “There were some people in the hallway last night, in front of his door. I don’t know who they were … I don’t know if you could really call it a disturbance, but it was unusual.”

      Joe shrugged lightly. “I wasn’t here last night. Actually, yes, he’s a little under the weather today, in fact he’s asleep right now. But he’s going to be all right.”

      “He’s a nice gentleman,” she said softly, fixing him with a dark-eyed, liquid stare. “It’s none of my business, but I wondered.”

      “Yes. Well. He’s quite all right.”

      Still Mrs. Hassler was not ready to be reassured and take herself away. “In the city it seems you never know your neighbors. At least rarely. You’d think that in this building we’d be a community. Or at least here on this floor. But it doesn’t seem to work that way.”

      “It would be nice if it did.” Joe gave the lady his best, most reassuring smile and a little nod. Then he turned away and moved on. He could hear her door close softly before he’d gone a dozen steps. She thought the old man was a nice gentleman. The way she said it meant she didn’t know him all that well—which was no surprise. A much less experienced seducer than the old man would know enough to keep his affairs at a reasonable distance from where he lived.

* * *

      Before Joe had gone twenty more steps he passed a man and a woman walking in the other direction. Their goal, at this point, could have been any of half a dozen apartments, including Maule’s or Mrs. Hassler’s. As the couple drew to one side of the corridor to pass him, Joe gave each of them brief but intense scrutiny. He’d be willing to bet his right arm that both these people were breathers. He didn’t think he could