Q: Ma’am, the paramedics are on their way, I need a yes or no answer, is she breathing?
A: No!
Q: Can you feel again for a pulse?
A: He just did, there’s nothing.
Q: Who did?
A: Anthony, he’s the landlord. He came in when he heard me.
Mr. Fuchs, NYPD Dispatcher
Q: Are you the only people in the room?
A: No, more people are by the door now. Wait, I hear sirens, are they here? Is that the ambulance?
Mr. Gonzalez, NYFD Dispatcher
Q: Sarah, the police are there. I need you to go to the front door and let them in and lead them upstairs. Can you do that? Stay on the line.
A: OK. OK.
Q: Make sure someone clears a path so they can get through. OK?
A: (Inaudible.)
Q: Sarah, they’re going to need to be able to get inside in a hurry, make sure people get out of the way.
A: OK. OK. Over here! Please hurry, she’s up here! Get out of the way!
Unknown Officer
Q: OK. (Inaudible.)
A: Where’s the ambulance?
Q: The ambulance is on its way.
A: (Unintelligible.)
END OF CALL.
I sat back, my heart pounding. Then I reached out and closed the file; I felt dirty, like I’d just done something unseemly.
Anthony. At the peak of the night’s party, drawn by the sound of screams, Anthony had appeared. Calhoun’s sketchy landlord, the creepy and cryptic Anthony Stiles. The memory of him mushroomed in front of me, so vivid I felt it like a force: Anthony Stiles, who half behaved like a slumlord and fucked a number of tenants and always had a thing for Edie. Jesus Christ. Anthony Stiles.
What had he been doing, skulking around Calhoun within earshot of SAKE? Why hadn’t Sarah mentioned him? I picked back through the detectives’ notes until I found him: He’d told them he’d been alone at home, in his fancy apartment just steps from Calhoun, when a tenant had called to alert him of the commotion. The notes didn’t specify which tenant, because the NYPD wasn’t big on competency that night, apparently.
I Googled his name and a headline came up, an old news article on a snarky city website: BUSHWICK LANDLORD FOUND DEAD IN HOUSE FIRE. I clicked through to the article and the photo on top made me squirm—eight years later, he was fatter but still smirking, still far too confident for his lot in life.
Anthony Stiles, the 51-year-old owner of Bushwick’s Calhoun Lofts, was found dead after firefighters brought a massive blaze in a Bushwick apartment under control Tuesday morning, officials said. The victim was pulled from 250 Boerum Street, near Bushwick Avenue, after flames erupted around 2:35 a.m., NYPD and FDNY officials said. Stiles, who lived in the building, was found on the first floor and pronounced dead on the scene. Three firefighters were treated for minor injuries at the scene, an FDNY spokesman said. Investigators believe there were no other tenants in the two-story building. About 140 firefighters helped bring the blaze under control at 5:47 a.m., according to an FDNY spokesman. The unit’s fire alarm failed to deploy and firefighters only responded after neighbors called in to report the blaze, officials said. Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the fire.
What the fuck? I returned to my search results for further updates but found none. In my job, this was the kind of detail I hated, the one that pushed the other, neater facts out of place, forking off into too many possible explanations. It could have simply been a fire, that kind of thing happens. It could’ve been arson but unrelated to Edie, of course. There were so many tenants in that building, all those possible enemies, and so many sleazeball slumlords winding up dead around the city for reasons that never became clear. Hasidic landlords with buildings in Williamsburg and tens of thousands of dollars of debt turning up broken and bloodied in car compactors, that kind of thing.
Or it could have something to do with Edie. He knew something, maybe, or someone knew something about his guilt and made sure he paid for it. God, dying in a fire. If you’re already asleep, do you die of smoke inhalation, or are you awake and screaming, burned at the stake?
The fire had been eighteen months ago; we’d all moved on and missed the headline. But we’d sort of tacitly worshipped Anthony back in the day, this strong-jawed Peter Pan with a thick beard and