The Ticket Out by Helen Knode

corruption. I can’t imagine Lockwood will talk to me, or what’s left to say about dirty cops. But I’m not doing
him
unless you let me do
her.
If I can’t do
her,
I’ll—”
    The phone started to ring. Barry lifted the receiver and dropped it back in its cradle.
    I smiled. “—I’ll go somewhere else with two stories that any editor will pay money for.”
    Barry shook his head. I decided it was time for a bluff: I stood up to leave. He grabbed my jacket and pulled me back down. He said, “You’re not getting it. She was murdered at
my
party—it’s an embarrassment for everyone involved.”
    â€œI don’t see why. It’s not your fault she crashed the gate.” I brushed his hand off and picked up the Burger King file.
    Barry said, “I don’t want the piece.”
    â€œThen I’ll call an editor I know at the
Times.”
    I started to walk out. Behind me, Barry said, “Wait.”
    I turned around; Barry was tugging at his hair. I stood there and watched him. We’d played brinksmanship before. If Mark was right, and my position with Barry was precarious, I’d find out now.
    A minute went by on the wall clock, and another minute. One minute more and Barry nodded. “But do Lockwood first. I want twelve hundred words by next Tuesday.”
    He waved me out of the office and picked up the telephone. As I shut the door I heard him say, “Scott, it’s me.”
    Â 
    G RETA S TENHOLM had lived a block south of Hollywood Boulevard over by the Chinese Theater.
    I made a left off La Brea and cruised for a place to park. The city had renovated the Boulevard, but her street was residential Hollywood in all its eclectic squalor. Front lawns were worn through to dirt and paved over for driveways. A few bungalows survived, squeezed in by dingy apartments in every style from ’30s Spanish to ’60s Tiki Village. 7095 Hawthorn was a four-story building with mosquelike minarets. Eroded Moorish carvings framed the front door and ground-floor windows.
    I parked outside and walked up the front stairs. They led to a lobby lined with mailboxes, and a long dim hall. The mailboxes were numbered with a black pen. Stenholm’s apartment was number 1. I jiggled the lock on her mailbox. It was old and I thought it might give, but it didn’t. The building manager lived in apartment four.
    I walked down the hall and rang the buzzer to number four. A man cracked the door with the chain on. I could only see a bloodshot eye and a patch of three-day beard. I said, “Greta Stenholm—”
    He didn’t let me finish, “—can go to hell.”
    â€œWhy do you say that?”
    The guy coughed; I smelled cigarettes on his breath. “First, she gets her apartment broken into, and I gotta replace the doorknob. Then after I let her slide on rent, she takes advantage of my good nature and I have to kick her out for delinquency. Then just when I think I seen the last of her, she’s here Saturday stealing change from my candy machines.”
    He started to close the door. I stuck my shoe in the crack. “Wait! When was her apartment broken into?”
    â€œLast winter.”
    â€œWas she hurt? Was something stolen?”
    He grunted and leaned on the door. I leaned on it from my side. “When did you evict her?”
    â€œJune.”
    â€œWhere’d she go?”
    He said, “Like I give a rat’s ass?” He kicked my shoe and slammed the door shut.
    I knocked again, and kept knocking. He turned up his TV to drown me out. I walked back to apartment number one and knocked there. I pressed my eye to the old brass peephole. The glass was funky and I couldn’t see inside.
    Someone walked into the lobby from the street.
    It was a short swarthy man. He wore a Hawaiian shirt untucked over white pants, and loafers with buckles. Before I could move, he walked up and rapped at Stenholm’s door. I