Free Wax Apple by Donald E. Westlake Page B

the raincoat and expose himself to the people in a subway car just before the doors were shut, then jump out onto the platform while the witnesses were all whisked away to the next station.
    But Edgar Jennings was thirty-two years old. Dewey was older than that.
    Which left Phil Roche. But Phil Roche was a man who’d suffered most of his life from an inferiority complex, in part created and very much aggravated by a defect he had as a result of an illness in infancy. A shriveled left arm, with a useless tiny hand dangling from it higher than his waist.
    Dewey hadn’t had a shriveled left arm.
    There had to be something wrong somewhere. I frowned at my lists, I made check marks after all the male names, I counted the lists of names, and it always came out the same. I hadn’t left anyone out, I had every one of the twenty-two names written down there, of the twenty-two there were only four men I hadn’t yet met, and it was absolutely physically impossible for Dewey to be any one of them.
    So who the hell was Dewey?

8
    T HEY WERE STILL AT IT , Cameron and Fredericks, when I walked in without knocking, and they both looked at me in irritation. But I didn’t care. If it had been going on for half an hour since I’d left, and they could both still have those expressions on their faces, there was no point my being polite and waiting till they were done before I spoke to them.
    Cameron said, very testily for him, “Tobin, we’re still in the middle of—”
    “You two can work that out later,” I said. “But I think I’m onto something important.”
    Fredericks said coldly, “Tobin, when you left here you offered to wait in your room until we decided what would be best—”
    “I’m really tired of you, Fredericks,” I said. “You aren’t going to shut me up, but unless you’re very careful I will shut you up. So just sit down and be quiet for a minute.” In Fredericks’ stunned silence, I turned to Cameron and said, “Do you remember I mentioned to you a resident named Dewey that I met last night? This morning, really.”
    Fredericks was looking at me in bewilderment, still trying to think of something applicable to say, so Cameron had an opportunity to answer the question, which he did ungraciously. “I remember the conversation,” he said. “And I remember telling you I had no idea which of the residents he was. I still have no idea. If you want to know who he is—”
    “He isn’t anybody,” I said. I understood that Cameron was in a foul mood because of Fredericks, and I didn’t take offense.
    Cameron closed his mouth and frowned at me. Fredericks acted as though he was just about deciding to become superior and bored and walk out on the scene. I said, “You have ten male residents here now, and Dewey isn’t any one of them. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    “No,” Cameron said, and Fredericks, smiling slightly, said, “Tobin, you wouldn’t be in the process of inventing an extra little mystery here, would you, to keep your employment alive?”
    I continued to look at Cameron. “He’s a fool,” I said, “but you’re not. You know how little I wanted this job in the first place. Besides, I already mentioned Dewey earlier today, before any question about my job came up. Whether I pack or not, the fact remains that at five o’clock this morning I met a man in the second floor hall of this building who was neither of you two and who was none of the male residents, but who knew the building intimately, who led me to the kitchen and actually made my breakfast for me, who told me he likes to meet the new arrivals and chat with them, who told me most of the history of The Midway, and who said I should call him Dewey. If he wasn’t either of you and he wasn’t any of the male residents, then who in the name of God was he?”
    Cameron had been standing, leaning forward slightly with his fists pressed down on his desk top, but now he settled slowly backward into his chair while Fredericks