“Old guy lives here. According to Rex, he’s got a sweet apartment on the top floor, but he don’t stay there. He stays in the basement. So, no way that guy owns this whole building.”
“Can you take us to see him?” Austin asked. “Right now? Can you take us to see Mr. Heinz?”
“I don’t know…” Carlos picked up his toast and dunked it in the mug of coffee. “He’s a pretty private old guy. Never seen anybody coming or going from his place. Don’t think he’d appreciate some strangers showing up at his door.”
“We’re not strangers. We’re his friends,” Austin said indignantly.
“We’re worried he might be really sick,” Kerry explained. “Up until this past week, he came around our Christmas tree stand every day. And the last time we saw him he had a terrible cough and didn’t seem himself.”
“I don’t know…” Carlos looked over at Claudia. “I could get in big trouble with Rex … It’s kind of an invasion of privacy, isn’t it?”
“You leave Rex to me,” Claudia said briskly. “And you can look for something extra in your Christmas envelope this year. Now let’s go.”
chapter 45
Carlos led the group—Kerry, Austin, and Patrick—down to the building’s basement.
When the freight elevator doors opened and they stepped out, Austin was wide-eyed, taking in the dimly lit basement’s cinderblock walls and cracked concrete flooring, low ceilings crisscrossed with innumerable exposed plumbing pipes and electrical wires, and the huge boiler hunkered in a far corner of the space.
“How come Mr. Heinz lives in a dungeon?” he whispered, clutching both Patrick and Kerry’s hands.
“Don’t know, buddy,” Patrick said. “But you know, it might not even be him.”
“It’s gotta be him,” Austin insisted as they picked their way past the clutter of paint cans, building supplies, and discarded plumbing fixtures.
“Over here,” Carlos said, pointing to a door on the other side of a caged tenant storage area.
“I could lose my job if this gets back to my boss,” Carlos fretted. “If anybody asks, you came down here on your own. I had nothing to do with it, right?”
“Absolutely,” Kerry said. “And thanks.”
She glanced uneasily over at Patrick and took a deep breath. “What now?”
But Austin had no such hesitation. He ineffectively pounded the heavy steel door with his fists. “Mr. Heinz? Are you at home, Mr. Heinz? It’s me, Austin. And Kerry and my dad are here too. Can we come in and see you, Mr. Heinz?”
The boiler in the corner hissed and groaned, but the basement was otherwise silent.
“Maybe we should come back later,” Kerry said.
“Nooooo,” Austin howled.
“Let me try.” Patrick looked around and found a short length of iron pipe. When he banged on the door the clanging echoed through the basement. “Heinz?” he called. “Are you there, Heinz? It’s Patrick and Kerry. Are you all right?”
Kerry pressed her ear to the door. She heard a faint, almost inaudible wheezing sound.
“Heinz?” she shouted.
She put her ear to the door.
“Go away.” The old man’s voice was so weak she could barely make out the words. “I’m sick, and I don’t want you to get sick.”
Alarmed, she tried the knob. It turned easily. “We’re coming in,” she called, opening the door a fraction of an inch. “Just a welfare check.”
“No, don’t. Just leave me be.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t do that,” Kerry replied, opening the door wider.
* * *
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but gradually the room came into focus. It was small and chilly, sparsely furnished, and smelled of damp and sickness.
Heinz was sitting in a chair near a tiny window that had been painted over. He seemed to have shrunk just since the last time she’d seen him. He was dressed in a tattered flannel bathrobe, his eyes sunken into his face, pale except for his cheeks, which were a bright scarlet. He held a crumpled handkerchief to his lips.
Austin approached his friend without trepidation. “Mr. Heinz, you don’t look so good,” the child said.
“Go … away,” Heinz said feebly, waving his hands. “Shoo.”
Kerry found herself moving forward. She touched the old man’s forehead even as he recoiled at her touch.
“You’ve got a raging fever,” she said. “Have you had any medicine? Eaten or had anything to drink?”
He gestured toward the other side of the room, which held a narrow iron bed and a small nightstand on which stood an empty cardboard ramen cup and a bottle of water.
“I’m fine,” he rasped, before seizing up with a fit of hacking coughs that left him doubled over and gasping for breath.
Kerry looked over her shoulder at Patrick. “He needs a doctor.”
“No, no,” Heinz protested. “A little cold is all.”
“Our neighbor, Abby Oliver, is a pediatrician,” Patrick said. “She’s Austin’s doctor. I saw her this morning. Maybe she could…”
“Call her and ask her to come over, please,” Kerry said. She noticed Austin, who was edging closer to his father, wanting to help, but clearly terrified at Heinz’s state of distress.
“Better yet, why don’t you and Austin go fetch her. I’ll stay here with Heinz.”
“No doctor,” Heinz said. “I refuse.”
“It’s either that or I call nine-one-one and have you taken to the emergency room,” Kerry said. “Have you ever been in an emergency room over the holidays? I have.”
“Just leave me be,” Heinz said wearily, closing his eyes and slumping back against the chair.
“I think he should be in bed. Don’t you think he should be in bed?” Patrick asked. Without waiting for Kerry’s reply, he reached down and gently helped the old man to his feet, and basically carried him over to the bed. He plumped up the single wafer-thin pillow, and pulled the sheet and blanket up, tucking them under Heinz’s chin.
“He really feels hot,” Patrick whispered as he passed Kerry. He held out his hand to his son. “C’mon, buddy. Let’s go get Dr. Abby.”
* * *
Kerry looked around the apartment. It was neat, with clothes hung on pegs, shoes tucked under the chair Heinz had just vacated, but otherwise totally devoid of personal effects. Her closet at home was bigger. There was a kitchenette, with a tiny two-burner electric stove, an under-counter refrigerator, a sink, and a cupboard. She found a canister of tea, and a mug, and set a kettle to boil on the stove.
In the bathroom, she found a bottle of aspirin. She dampened a towel with cold water and placed it on Heinz’s head and bullied him into swallowing the aspirin with some water. When the water was ready, she made tea in the single mug she found in the cupboard, stirring it with one of two spoons.
“Sip this, please,” she told him. He sighed and turned his head away, but Kerry was undeterred. She reached for his wrist and examined his hand. The skin was pale and unusually shriveled. Her father’s skin had looked the same, last winter, after a bout of flu, when she and Birdie had carted him off to his doctor, much to his displeasure.