A Nasty Piece of Work by Robert Littell

about funny noises coming from Emilio’s apartment. What kind of noises were you referring to?”
    “Lookit, different folks have got different strokes. Emilio’s strokes were maybe rougher than the next guy’s but she was a consenting adult, so who am I to judge?”
    “Are you saying he beat her up?”
    Alvin zapped the TV and changed stations. He fell on a program about Hollywood sex scandals. “Maybe he beat her up, maybe she made noises like as if she was being beaten up.”
    “Could you give me a peek at Emilio’s apartment, Mr. Epley?”
    He finally turned to look at me. His eyes struck me as being very sad. Suddenly, eating food cooked by your late and obviously lamented wife struck me as a primitive but appropriate way of mourning her loss. “What exactly is it you’re insuring that you need to see his apartment?” he asked.
    “My company’s insuring the bond that Mr. Gava appears to have run out on.”
    This seemed to confuse him. “The bail bondsman insures that he’s going to show up for the trial. You insure the bail bondsman. Next thing, someone’ll be knocking on my door and tell me he’s insuring you.”
    “Mr. Gava was right about your having a sense of humor.”
    He accepted this with a nod. “I’m a laugh a minute. Look, there’s no purpose me showing you 17C. Place was sold to a Jewish-type lady from Los Angeles day before yesterday, so we moved Emilio’s stuff, what there was of it, into storage.”
    “What exactly was there?”
    “A queen-size double bed, a couch, chairs, lamps, a color TV, pots and pans and kitchen glasses and dishes, a sugar jar filled with sugar swiped from restaurants, a matchbox filled with toothpicks swiped from restaurants.”
    “How did you know the toothpicks were swiped?”
    “They was packaged two to a package and the restaurant’s name was on the paper.”
    “Clothing? Toothbrush? Underarm deodorant? Razor?”
    A photograph of a famous actress who had been caught sunbathing in her birthday suit on the Riviera came on the screen, with black rectangles blocking out her breasts and pubic hair. Alvin turned back to the TV. I watched closely but I couldn’t detect a flicker of interest in his lidded eyes. “Nothing like clothes or toothbrushes,” he said. “Nothing like that. Nothing personal.”
    “One more question and I think that’ll be it.” I slipped a small spiral notebook and ballpoint pen out of my pocket. “Can you tell me who Mr. Gava played poker with Sunday nights?”
    “Sure I can. There was Frank Uzzel in 4B, there was Mitch Tredwell in 14B, there was Hank Kugler and his wife, Millie, in 8D. Who else was there? There was Mrs. Hillslip in 9A—her Christian name is Harriet but everyone, don’t ask me why, calls her Hattie. Last but not least, not counting Emilio, was Cal Pringle in 16B and C, he bought both condos and knocked down the wall between them.”
    I apologized again for interrupting his meal and thanked Mr. Epley for his help. “Call me Alvin,” he said. “Everyone does.” He slipped the meat loaf into the microwave and turned the knob, which began to tick like a time bomb as it wound down. Then he saw me to the door. “You find Emilio, you give him regards from Alvin, huh? Tell him to keep the music turned down, he’ll get a laugh outa that.”

 
    Ten
     
    I touched base with Detective Awlson from a phone booth off Interstate 25. I had to shout into the mouthpiece to be heard over the din of the cars and trucks. I asked Awlson to pull the phone logs on Emilio Gava’s home phone in 17C at East of Eden Gardens and see who Gava called. “I’m one jump ahead of you,” Awlson said. “I got the phone company to send me the logs the day you told me it looked as if Gava’d skipped out on his bail.”
    “So who’d he call?” I asked.
    “A Las Cruces pizza delivery joint, a dry-cleanin’ emporium, a neighbor at East of Eden name of Frank Uzzel, another neighbor name of Harriet Hillslip, a Chicano restaurant in