1963 – it was in the beginning of October when we discovered Diana was once again with child. Thankfully I was still working at the Hotel Miramar and this, so close to home.
One day our landlord informed us of our (one and only) neighbor making complaints to him, about us. To be exact the man next door said there was too much noise coming out of our apartment. Really?
He said our neighbor stated, “The children are always screaming, the baby’s crying and I can’t get any sleep, they keep me up all night!” What?
I looked at Diana, she at me, we then looked at him and both said in surprise, “The baby’s not even here yet!” The owner assured us he knew what the man complained wasn’t entirely true.
“I can see that your baby is still baking,” gesturing with his hand towards Diana’s belly, he spoke with a smile of confirmation. He also told us he knew the man enjoyed the drink rather a bit much.
Diana spoke up as any defending mother would, “I promise you our kids are very well-mannered. They play quietly for the most part, more so than most anyway.”
Once more in agreement the landlord said, “We have not heard your kids screaming at any time. Of course children will make noises and occasional squeaks. We all know this. My wife and I have the impression this man isn’t completely stable. It’s rather sad. We were hoping he’d always just live quietly in his own space and mind his own business.”
And that’s probably exactly what this man was trying to do but the little squeaks and occasional louder squawks were possibly not doing him any favors. We’ll never know.
More curious than ever and fueled by the knowledge that our neighbor was not pleased with us, we’d look out in his direction more often.
I’m sure you can understand why. After what my family and I recently experienced at the Pico apartment, there was a slight hovering factor of uncertainty.
This man lived alone and never really seemed to come out of his apartment. He was an older German man, tall and of medium build. Diana being home more than I told me that whenever she saw him which was rarely, he always wore his large military coat, even in the heat of summer.
Diana said she wondered how he ever got food into his apartment as she never saw him bringing up any groceries, nor was it noticed that anyone visited.
Well, now that you know what I know of the back story we’ll get to the interesting part.
It wasn’t long after the landlord spoke to us when one day this man came to my front door and started pounding severely on it. It didn’t even start off as a friendly little knock.
You know the kind, pounding which suggests, “Hey it’s getting a bit loud over here. Would you mind keeping the little brats quiet?” or something to that effect.
No gradual escalation, just straight up violent. Of course Diana didn’t open the door … he’d go away. Then about 2 weeks later, wherein he had done this same thing a couple more times, we’d had enough and placed our own complaint with our landlord; this was becoming a very uncomfortable situation.
It was the wee early hours of the morning when I was startled awake by what sounded very much like a gunshot. No one came busting in through our door or windows so I wasn’t too concerned and fell back asleep.
It was about 9:30 in the morning, we were up of course, when we heard a serious pounding on the neighbor’s front door and apparently after no answer, the sound of something being busted.
I’m saying it was the front door being kicked in. Shortly after that there was a serious knock on our door. It was the Santa Monica police asking us if we heard or saw anything during the night. I told them I thought I heard something like a gunshot.
Not much later, two detectives came to us and asked a few questions. It turns out this neighbor of ours wrote a final note, took his Luger pistol and ended his own life. What?
A terribly sad thing about all of this -aside from the tragedy itself- is that his note stated he couldn’t take the noise of the crying baby any longer. Our son and daughter were 3 and 2 years of age at this time.
Diana and I both witnessed the sheeted body being brought out of the apartment, not giving us a good feeling at all. And then it happened.
The man’s body must’ve not been securely strapped on to the gurney because as the coroner’s staff started down the steps, to our and everyone else’s horror, the body slipped right out of their control and completely off the gurney.
It was surreal almost, seeing the corpse in a bit of a rigid state, as it tumbled down the stairs. Just try to picture the scramble which took place right afterwards and so I’ll leave it to your imagination.
Suddenly Diana burst out into a hysterical and seemingly uncontrollable laughter. It must’ve been a whammy, what else?
While there weren’t any immediate neighbors, the ones in close proximity were chatting away after the fact. Diana spoke for a few moments with them.
Naturally the police had asked them too if there was anything noticeable about the man, providing any clues to his state of mind. One person said they were aware that he seemed to always be upset.
He briefly spoke to that person at some point saying, he was upset by his neighbor’s crying baby. He said he couldn’t sleep at night. This person said they told the man to look at Diana’s belly and he’d see for himself that the baby hasn’t been born yet.
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