Halloween?

He parked on the street and walked the distance to his building. The gray-faced landlady of uncertain age was standing out front smoking a cigarette and periodically hacking her lungs out.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Shooting.” She said it as though it were the most common thing in the world.

“Who got shot?”

“B4.” Meaning the tenant in that apartment. And she started hacking again.

He watched while an ambulance arrived. EMTs appeared and wheeled a man’s body on a stretcher out of the building. The man’s face was veiled with an oxygen mask, but the men moved with the indolence of those who know their job has ended before it had a chance to begin. The man was surely dead or nearly so.

They loaded the body in the ambulance and took off. The fire engine and the police cars went their way. The landlady went back into her apartment. He heard her television switch on. A televangelist exhorted his flock to send money.

Lester remained where he was.

Who was B4? He tried to remember but nothing much came. A dark haired man, taller than he, and very slim. He always seemed a little . . . well, out of it. He suspected B4 of doing drugs, and very likely dealing them as well. That was probably how he got shot.

So …

Creepy, though. His own apartment was A4, just below the murdered man’s. Oh! That was a scary thought.

He went to the bank of mailboxes at the end of the wall and opened his own. A number of envelops fell out. He glanced at them hurriedly. Bills. An advertisement or two. And…his heart stopped...a note from the University.

He opened it trembling. It was brief and unsigned. It said simply that he was to defend his proposal (again) two weeks from “the above date.” He calculated. That would be . . .October 31.

Halloween?