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I asked you a few questions,” said Burt with a friendly smile.
    Mr. Allspice made no effort to cloak his annoyance. “Let me put these bags down,” he said as he pushed past Burt and into his apartment. Burt held the door open and followed him in.
    “A Fire Investigator, hmm?” said Mr. Allspice, lighting a cigarette. “Do you have any identification?”
    Burt showed him his gold Town of Lackawanna Fire Investigator’s shield. That seemed to suffice.
    “What’s this all about?” asked Mr. Allspice.
    “I’m regretful to inform you that your landlord Albert Olivetti was killed in a barn fire at his home late last night.”
    Mr. Allspice’s abrasive demeanor softened and he sat down in his chair. “Albert’s dead?” Felix Allspice had rented his apartment from Albert Olivetti for thirteen years. He would not have called them friends, but they were definitely acquaintances.
    After Felix Allspice’s wife died, he sold the house and took the first apartment he looked at. He felt a kinship towards Albert because he too had just lost his wife. As far as the house was concerned, he needed to get away from it. He wanted to forget about the unbearable final months of his wife’s stomach cancer. He wanted to forget the doctors, the Hospice people, and even his own family. There was not a room in his house where he could stand and not hear the echoes of his wife’s agonizing death moans. After his wife passed away, both his sons and his daughter had asked him to move in with their families.
    “This apartment is only temporary,” he had said. “Daddy just needs some time to himself.”
    A year turns into two and on and on, until one day an old fire investigator informs you your landlord is dead and you realize you have been living in the same damned small apartment for thirteen years. Mr. Allspice thought about Albert living alone all those years in his big house. Now he was with his wife. Lucky Albert. He wasn’t a bad sort, thought Felix Allspice. But he did rent to some real losers.
    “Was that fat oaf next door involved?” asked Mr. Allspice.
    “Why do you ask?” asked Burt.
    “It just wouldn’t surprise me,” said Mr. Allspice. “He is a bad element. He is unclean. His mind is unbalanced, unfocused and impure. He’s miles and miles down the Road to Crazy. Do you know that he blows a giant horn in that apartment? You have never heard such a racket. I ask you, what sort of person takes up a giant mountain horn as a musical instrument? He keeps all hours. I hear him moving things around over there in the middle of the night all the time. Yesterday morning I heard him banging around in there like he was wrestling a bobcat. Last night I heard a commotion out front and went to see why the porch light was off. I found him packing the trunk of his car.”
    “You don’t say,” said Burt. “About what time was that?”
    “Just after ten,” said Mr. Allspice.
    “Pretty late to be packing,” offered Burt.
    Mr. Allspice lit another cigarette and offered one to Burt. He took it.
    “He said he was moving to Switzerland. Switzerland! I told him, good riddance to bad rubbish. That’s why I thought you might be the new tenant. I don’t know whether to believe that fool or not. For four years it’s been like that. Say, you didn’t take my
Buffalo News
by chance, did you Mr… . what was the name again, some sort of fruit?”
    “Walnut. Burt Walnut. No sir, I didn’t touch your newspaper.”
    “Walnut? That is an unfortunate name. I don’t touch the things myself, break out in hives. Anyway, that fat man-child probably took it—or the dope fiend upstairs. No disrespect to Albert, but he did rent to some real losers. Can you imagine? Moving to Switzerland. That boy has probably never been out of Buffalo!”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” said Burt Walnut, his face obscured by a mist of blue smoke. “I got a feeling he’s at least been as far south as Lackawanna.”

CHAPTER
14

    T HE DOCTOR IN the mental