Tales of the Black Widowers

'You prefer your privacy, Henry?" asked Avalon.
"Perhaps I would not quite put it-" began Henry, and then, interrupting himself, he said, "Yes, I would quite put it that way. I want my privacy. But I want something more. I want to quiz Mr. Rubin."
"What for?" asked Rubin, his eyes widening behind the magnifying effect of his thick-lensed spectacles.
"Something I have heard this night puzzles me and I cannot get you to answer my questions."
"Henry, you're drunk. I've been answering every question."
"Nevertheless, may I quiz you formally, sir?"
"Go ahead."
"Thank you," said Henry. "I want to know about the annoyance you have been having."
"You mean the carpenter, and his lullaby of Broadway?"
"My line," said Drake quietly, but Rubin ignored him.
"Yes. How long has it been going on?"
"How long?" said Rubin passionately. "For months."
"Very loud?" asked Henry.
Rubin thought a while. "No, not loud, I suppose. But you can hear it. It comes at odd moments. You can never predict it."
"And who's doing it?"
Rubin brought his fist down on the table suddenly, so that his coffeecup clattered. "You know, that's it. It isn't the noise so much, irritating though it might be. I could stand it if I understood it; if I knew who it was; if I knew what he was doing; if I could go to someone and ask him not to do it for a while when I'm having particular trouble with a plot line. It's like being persecuted by a poltergeist."
Trumbull held up his hand. "Wait a while. Let's not have any of this poltergeist horse manure. Manny, you're not going to try to bring in the supernatural, here. Let's get one thing straight first-"
Halsted said, "It's Henry that's doing the quizzing, Tom."
"I'm aware of that," said Trumbull, nodding his head frigidly. "Henry, may I ask a question?"
"If," said Henry, "you are about to ask why Mr. Rubin, hearing a, noise, can't tell where it's coming from, it is what I am about to ask."
"Go ahead," said Trumbull. "I'll help myself to more coffee."
Henry said, "Would you answer the question, Mr. Rubin?"
Rubin said, "I suppose it is hard for you all to understand. Let's see now, two of you live across the Hudson, one of you lives down in one of the older sections of Brooklyn, and one of you is in Greenwich Village. Tom lives in a reconverted brownstone. I'm not sure where Henry lives but I'm sure it's not a modern beehive, as Avalon calls it. None of you live in one of these modern apartment complexes with twenty-five stories or more, and twenty-five apartments on a floor, and nice sound-carrying concrete for a skeleton.
"If someone had a good loud record player on, I might be able to tell if it's from upstairs or from downstairs, though I wouldn't bet on it. If I wanted to, I could go from door to door all along this floor, then door to door all along the floor beneath, and again all along the floor above, and I guess I would be able to tell what apartment it is by plastering my ear against the right door.
"If it's just a soft hammering, though, it's impossible to tell. You can listen at a door and it wouldn't help. Sound doesn't carry so much through the air and the door. It goes through the walls. Listen, I've gone from door to door when I got mad enough. I don't know how many times I've crept through the corridors."
Gonzalo laughed. "If you get caught doing that, that doorman downstairs will be getting reports about vicious-looking hoodlums sneaking around."
"That doesn't worry me," said Rubin. "The doorman knows me." A look of coy modesty suddenly dripped over Rubin's face. "He's a fan of mine."
"I knew you had one somewhere," said Trumbull, but Henry pushed at the turkey on his plate and seemed more distressed than ever.
"Suppose your fan isn't on duty," said Gonzalo argu-mentatively. "You've got to have doormen around the clock and your fan has to sleep."
"They all know me," said Rubin. "And this one, the guy at the door now, Charlie Wiszonski, takes the four-to-twelve evening shift weekdays, which is the heavy shift. He's senior man… Look, let me clear the table."
Henry said, "Could you have someone else do that, Mr. Rubin? I want to continue questioning you and I want to get back to the carpenter. If sound carries through the walls and you hear him, don't many other people hear him, too?"
"I suppose so."
"But if he disturbs so many-"
"That's another irritating thing," said Rubin. "He doesn't… Thanks, Roger, just pile all the dishes in the sink. I'll take care of them afterward… This carpenter doesn't seem to bother anyone. During the day husbands are away and so are lots of the wives and the apartment house isn't rich in children. The wives that are home are doing housework. In the evening, everyone has the television set on. What does anyone care for an occasional banging? I care because I'm home night and day and I'm a writer. I care because I'm a creative person who has to do some thinking and needs a little quiet."
"Have you asked others about it?" said Henry. "Oh, occasionally, yes." He tapped his spoon restlessly against the cup. "I suppose your next question is to ask what they said."
"I should guess," said Henry, "from the look of frustration about you, that no one admitted ever hearing it."
"Well, you're wrong. One or two would say something about hearing it once or twice. The trouble is, no one cared. Even if they heard it, they didn't care. New Yorkers get so deadened to noise, you could blow them up and they wouldn't care."
"What do you suppose he's doing to make that noise, whoever he is?" asked Avalon.
Rubin said, "I say he's a carpenter. Maybe not professionally, but he works at it. I could swear he has a workshop up there. I can still swear it. Nothing else will explain it."
"What do you mean, you can still swear it?" asked
Henry.
"I consulted Charlie about it."
"The doorman?"
"What's the good of the doorman?" asked Gonzalo. Why didn't you go to the superintendent? Or the owner?"
"What good are they?" said Rubin impatiently. "All I know about the owner is the fact that he lets the air conditioning blow out every heat wave because he prefers to patch it with the finest grade of chewing gum. And to get the superintendent you have to pull in Washington. Besides, Charlie's a good guy and we get along. Hell, when
Jane had the run-in with the hoodlum, and me not there, Charlie was the one she called."
"Didn't she call the police?" asked Avalon.
"Sure she did. But first Charlie!"
Henry looked terribly unhappy. He said, "So you consulted the doorman about the banging. What did he say?"
"He said there were no complaints. It was the first he had heard of it. He said he would investigate. He did and he swore up and down that there were no carpenter's workshops anywhere in the building. He said he had men go into each apartment to check air conditioners-and that's one sure way of getting in anywhere."
"So then the doorman dropped the matter?"
Rubin nodded. "I suppose so. And that bugged me, too. It bothered me. I could see that Charlie didn't believe me. He didn't think there was any banging. I was the only one to mention it, he said."
"Doesn't Mrs. Rubin hear it?"
"Of course she does. But I have to call it to her attention. It doesn't bother her, either."
Gonzalo said, "Maybe it's some gal practicing with castanets, or some percussion instrument."
"Come on. I can tell something rhythmic from just random banging."
"It could be a kid," said Drake, "or some pet. I lived in an apartment in Baltimore once and I had banging directly overhead, like someone dropping something a few hundred times a day. And that's what it was. They had a dog that kept picking up some toy bone and dropping it. I got them to put down a cheap rug."