Apartment 12

By Geoffrey A. Feller

Natalie Dvorak #19:

Word of a drug trafficking scheme sends Detective-Sergeant Natalie Dvorak of the Vermont State Police on an undercover assignment. She poses as the newest tenant in a low-income apartment building to find out which resident is supposed to accept and move a package of valuable hashish. All the police know is where and when the handoff is to take place; Natalie’s question is who among the eleven tenants has been recruited. With help from the apartment building’s night manager, an ex-prizefighter, Natalie assesses the various prospective drug couriers. Disguised as a frumpy older woman, Natalie meets a variety of people who either had money and lost it or never had money to begin with. Could one of the casual drug users or small time dealers be looking to move up to something more profitable and dangerous? And with emotions running high at Maple Leaf Estates what could compromise Natalie’s investigation or even blow her cover?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoffrey A. Feller
• Release date: Jun 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005922740

Geoffrey A. Feller

I was born fifty-seven years ago in the Bible belt but grew up in a Massachusetts college town. I am married and my wife and I have moved frequently since we met. We've lived in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New Mexico, as well as a brief residency in Berlin, Germany. I have worked peripherally in health care, banking, and insurance. In addition to writing, I have done a bit of amateur acting and comedy performances. I am afraid of heights but public speaking doesn't scare me. My wife and I live in Albuquerque with our chihuahua.

Book preview

APARTMENT

12

by Geoffrey A. Feller

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2022 by Geoffrey A. Feller

CHAPTER ONE:

NEW NEIGHBOR

Detective-Sergeant Natalie Dvorak of the Vermont State Police was petite at 5’1" tall and weighing between 115 and 120 pounds. She had dark hair, deep blue eyes, a prominent nose, and high cheekbones. She seldom wore dresses or high heeled shoes and almost never put makeup on her face. Natalie had a black belt in tae kwon do and lifted heavy weights, mainly to serve her needs as a police officer.

Yet she dyed her hair. Natalie was forty-six and had been covering over the first infestation of gray hairs for more than five years. Her face was showing signs of middle age in some ever-deepening laugh lines and wrinkles starting to show around her eyes. Nothing much could be done about that and Natalie figured such weathering would have been worse had she lived in a sunnier part of the world. But keeping her thick hair in its original dark brown shade had been an indulgence.

Until now. On Ground Hog Day, 1989, Natalie’s hairdresser, a woman named Jill Kesser, was working to remove the brown dye and expose the natural silvery strands underneath. Jill was using a mixture of white vinegar and hot water to remove her own work.

I suppose the best way would be to shave my head and let the hair grow back in its natural state, Natalie said as the mixture soaked in under a hair cap. But I don’t have the time.

You could wear a wig, Jill suggested.

A wig always looks like a wig.

This is for going undercover?

Yes. Can’t tell you where or why, of course. I just need to disguise myself a little. Look older and more vulnerable.

You, vulnerable? Jill smirked. What are you going to do with these?

She clutched Natalie’s deltoids from behind the chair. Jill had big hands as a tall woman but she was thin and had often expressed admiration for Natalie’s muscles.

I’ll just wear baggy sweaters and sweat clothes like a slob. It’s going to be cold enough this coming week that it’ll seem reasonable. Then I’ll have a pair of specs that look worse than my own reading glasses. Frames taped together.

My God, are you going undercover in a homeless shelter?

Nothing that bad. Just someplace where the people aren’t what you’d call affluent.

Be careful.

I don’t do a lot of undercover anymore. I’ve been seen on TV too often.

Looking your best for the cameras.

I wouldn’t say that but close enough. My partner likes undercover work but she’s cute and pretty. The lieutenant thinks someone older should work this assignment. Sharon’s only twenty-five. She tried to argue her way into it. I told Sharon she could arm-wrestle me for the assignment.

Oh, I’m sure! Jill giggled.

She’s been getting stronger, though. It takes me almost fifteen seconds to pin her wrist lately. It used to take me five or ten seconds.

Really?

Natalie grinned.

Actually, I could still pin Sharon in no time. I just pretend to struggle a little more so she keeps up with her weight-lifting.

The Maple Leaf Estates was an apartment building that had been converted from a motel into low-cost, small rental units. They were all studio apartments with one tenant apiece, furnished, with small bathrooms that had come with the original motel accommodations. The company that had bought the derelict motel in the mid-’70s built extensions at the back to provide galley kitchens with two-burner stoves and small refrigerators.

Natalie had been familiar with the property over the years from various criminal activities that had gone on, the most spectacular being the incident in which a desperate woman held her at gunpoint. Natalie managed to subdue and arrest the woman, a prostitute who later jumped bail and turned up far away in the Southwest.

Apartment 12? Natalie asked Arnie Wendler, the onsite manager, when she met him in the office late Friday night.

What can I say, Sergeant? Arnie smiled, handing her the keys. It was the one vacancy we had. It’s right above us. Don’t you want me handy?

Natalie nodded.

Arnie was a very tall, powerfully built ex-prizefighter, formidable despite his age; he was almost sixty. He had a craggy face and a gravelly voice to go with it.

Thanks again for your cooperation, Natalie said. Yours and the management company’s.

We don’t want drugs coming through here, Arnie said. Can’t help people smoking a few joints if they want to. But this ain’t gonna be a trafficking link if I can help it.

Damn right.

Arnie chuckled and shook his head.

What? Natalie asked.

That’s some disguise, Sergeant!

Natalie’s hair was streaked with gray and she was wearing phony eyeglasses with frames held together with electrical tape. The lenses were clear plastic and had no corrective properties. Natalie was wearing an oversized sweater and faded blue jeans along with canvas sneakers.

Wouldn’t have recognized me?

I know you, so I recognize you. Those beautiful eyes! But none of the tenants would’ve seen you before. I don’t think you’ve been on the premises for a few years.

Good.

No one’s been here longer than Adam Fordham in 7. And he moved in after you had the problem upstairs.

All right, I’ll move my gear in now. One thing, Arnie.

What’s that?

Any more prostitution going on here?

No, not in the building. We got one hooker, Tricia Gaffney in 8, but she does out calls only. I made that agreement with her.

No more bouncer work for the resident call girl?

Arnie waved his tremendous hands.

No way! I learned my lesson! Nine months in the clink for busting up that one loser. Never again! I can be your bodyguard, Sergeant, but no one else’s.

Gotta drop that ‘Sergeant’ talk, Arnie. Call me Nancy.

Arnie had given Natalie a floor plan with the names of each tenant written down. After going inside the familiar apartment and dropping her suitcase beside the chest of drawers across from the foot of the queen size bed, she looked the floor plan over.

Nancy Dawson was Natalie’s alias as a tenant. None of the others had any major criminal record in the State of Vermont. Natalie had no idea of which tenant or tenants might be set to recieve the shipment. All the State Police could get from their informant was that the package was supposed to arrive at Maple Leaf Estates and then be moved elsewhere by one of the eleven people in the apartment house.

The only other thing known about the shipment of approximately 15 kilograms of hashish was that it was supposed to pass through sometime on the weekend of the 4th and the 5th, which gave Natalie only a day or two to figure out who the link was.

Peter Volker was awake when Natalie arrived. He had watched the new person get out of her car, a Chevy Citation, from outside his apartment. There was an exterior walkway with metal railing in front of the second-floor units. Peter leaned on the railing to observe the small, middle aged woman as she walked to the manager’s office and then back out again to get a suitcase from the trunk of the car.

He was forty-one years old, a trifle slow-witted with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. It was a condition that had worsened after his mother died the previous year, leading to hospitalization and loss of Peter’s home up in Burlington. He was short and rotund and had prematurely gray hair. Peter was intensely curious about the goings-on in the apartment building. And so, after hearing Natalie come up the steps to take occupancy of Apartment 12, Peter walked down the length of the deck and paused at the new arrival’s door.

Deciding not to knock, Peter instead listened for sounds inside the unit. Hearing nothing interesting, he turned and went down the staircase and made his way over towards the office.

The walls were thin between the apartments and Natalie could hear music coming from the next-door unit. To her surprise, the vocals were in French, maybe Edith Piaf. After all, the tenant in there was named Dianne Perrault.

Natalie decided to enjoy the change of musical pace and stretched out on the bed after placing her service revolver under the pillow and pulling off her tennis shoes.

Can’t you sleep? Arnie asked Peter after telling him it was okay to come in.

No, can I hang here with you?

I guess.

Peter took his seat in a plastic chair across the big desk from Arnie.

Who moved into 12?

A lady named Nancy.

Is she old?

Younger than me.

Oh. What’s she do?

Retired.

Like Stella?

Maybe.

Is she nice? Nancy?

Seemed okay. But she was tired.

Yeah, it’s late.

Maybe you should be in bed.

I can’t sleep.

You got sleeping pills?

Yeah.

Take some.

I will. I wanted to know about the new lady.

So now you know as much as me.

Adam’s been doing it with Kathy again.

Oh, yeah?

Could hear them through my wall.

Oh.

They do it in her room and Stella gets mad.

Really?

Adam told me Stella punched the wall, Peter said with a big grin on his face. So they go to his room now.

And it doesn’t bother you?

No.

You aren’t jealous? Didn’t Kathy do it with you once?

Yeah, my first week here. I met her in the laundry room and she said ‘you wanna get together with me?’ So I said yeah.

Your room or hers?

My room.

So Stella wouldn’t be disturbed.

Peter nodded, still grinning.

Yeah, you told me that story before, Arnie nodded. I just didn’t know whose room you two used.

Kathy’s got schizophrenia.

I know.

Shane wouldn’t share his weed with me.

Too bad.

He did it with Dianne, did you know that? Shane did.

Yeah, you told me before.

I tell you everything. Used to be a police informer up in Burlington.

You told me that before, too.

Called me PRV, by my initials. Everyone did. The narc detective used to pay me for information. You can have it free.

Thank you.

Sheila wanted me to find out if Scott’s dating anyone. She likes him. Did you know Shane did it with her, Sheila?

You already told me that.

He’s too old for Sheila, Shane is.

Yup. He’s old enough to be her daddy. She’s only twenty.

Scott’s twenty-nine. You think that’s too old for Sheila?

Yeah.

You do?

Sheila ought to be going with boys her own age.