A Cast of Killers

by Gallagher Gray

  "Not really. But friends," T.S. said firmly before Auntie Lil could lie.

  "She lived next door," the old man said calmly. "I think on the sixth floor." He pushed the photos back toward them. "And now I bid you goodbye."

  Nellie shook her head in disapproval, braids bobbing and beads clacking angrily. "You are a good man, Ernest. But not too smart. Some things go on here, better not to get involved. Too many ways to get hurt."

  Ernest shrugged and headed for the door. "That may be true, my lovely Nellie, but old Ernest here, he just can't say no. Look again at those photos. That old woman, she did not die in peace. I think it is my choice, not yours, if I get involved." He bowed and waved a brief goodbye before disappearing through the door and turning toward Ninth Avenue.

  Nellie shrugged. "You heard the man. He say she lived next door, she lived next door."

  T.S. stared at Auntie Lil. They moved as one toward the exit. The woman called after them just as they reached the sidewalk, "But remember, old Nellie here, she didn't know a thing."

  Next door was a small six-story brownstone, in cheaply renovated condition with a new brick facade that was already beginning to crack and crumble. The front door to the foyer was locked and they peered inside at a row of twelve mailboxes. Six stories, two small apartments to a floor. Which one belonged to Emily? The man in Nellie's had said he thought it was the sixth floor, but hadn't been sure. T.S. could not see a name on either of the sixth-floor mailboxes. Both occupant labels were blank.

  "Someone's coming," T.S. pointed out. He could see a small elevator through the door window, the indicator shining bright green in the dim hall light. "This place is a real Taj Mahal," he added. "An elevator and everything."

  "Which explains how an old lady could live on the sixth floor. Who is it?" Auntie Lil asked anxiously, pushing against him and tramping the backs of his heels in an effort to peer through the window with him.

  A young man emerged from the elevator. He was of average height and very thin, with sharp features and willowy limbs. His long blond hair was cut in a single length and hung down the sides of his pointed face in long waves. He looked like an Afghan hound but moved like a hyperactive Chihuahua. He bent his limbs with unnatural grace and each step was more a miniature jete than a stride.

  "A dancer," T.S. predicted. "He'll probably break into a song from Oklahoma."

  Auntie Lil did not appreciate his wit. She was too busy thinking up a good lie.

  "Young man," she cried enthusiastically, grasping the fellow's arm before he could scurry down the steps.

  The young man—who, up close, looked more like a forty-five-year-old who was aging badly and trying to hide it—jumped in alarm, then patted the sides of his now obviously dyed blond hair before asking in a high, precisely articulated voice, "Yes? Can I help you with something? There's no need to get pushy, you know."

  "I think my sister lives in this building, but I've forgotten the apartment number. I'm from out of town and this street is quite frightening to me. Can you let us in to find her? Her name is Emily."

  The man stared at her through suspicious, almond-shaped eyes. "Everyone who lives in this building is in the business," he informed her primly. "There's not a soul over thirty, sweetie." He shrugged and whirled gracefully, traipsing lightly down the steps, too quickly to catch Auntie Lil's mumbled retort about him dreaming on if he really thought she believed he was a day under forty.

  But T.S. was not ready to give up. "That's a coincidence," T.S. called after him. "I'm a producer myself."

  The man stopped in mid-hop and twirled back around, hands on his hips. He surveyed T.S. with a bright smile. "Really? Not the Chorus Line road show by any teensy weensy chance… I'm just on my way to…"

  "No, no," T.S. lied smoothly, inspiration flowing through him with genetic enthusiasm. "That's ancient history. I pulled out of that old war-horse years ago. Right now I'm in the process of locating some fresh new talent. We're mounting an Equity showcase of Peter Pan Grows Up. It's fascinating really. We've created a whole new chapter in Peter's life."

  "You don't say?" the man exclaimed, mouth wide with delight. "Peter Pan is one of my very favorite favorites!"

  "Another coincidence," T.S. declared brightly. "See, in my new show, he grows up, marries Wendy and moves back to London. They have children of their own and my show is all about his struggle to mature while still maintaining his childlike wonder. And, of course, Tinkerbell is terribly jealous—she represents the younger woman figure—and all of this threatens his very… Peter Panness. In the end, he comes to realize that his childhood will always live on in the form of his children and grandchildren. So he gives Tinkerbell the boot and he and Wendy retire to Florida and open an alligator farm, a touch of irony you see, and live happily ever after. It's all very, very nineties. A guaranteed smash."

  Auntie Lil stared at him in open-mouthed admiration.

  The man's eyes had grown wider and wider. "Have you cast the lead yet?" he asked artfully, as if slightly bored, but willing to humor T.S.

  T.S. inspected a minute flaw in his sweater. "No. We need a fresh face, a new name, an unknown with tremendous star quality. But with the maturity to handle sudden fame, of course. It's going to Broadway, you see. After nine months, if the reviews are even lukewarm or better. I consider it a waste of my time to mount anything without a strong future. Of course, the backing is relatively modest."

  The man's face fell.

  "But I think eleven million will be enough to get us through at least the next year."

  The mention of cold cash inspired a playful leap in the man. He cast any pretense of ennui to the wind in favor of appropriately youthful… Peter Panness. "Listen, when you start auditioning, will you give me a call?" he asked gaily, chirping like a member of the Vienna Choir Boys. "If it's a fresh face you need—God knows, I'm fresh!" He twirled violently in a complete circle, dipped down low and extended an arm, his eyes rolling up in the top of his head as he gave T.S. a large wink. He was holding a small white card.

  T.S. took it gingerly and examined it. He had created a monster. gregory rogers, it read, dance master extraordinaire, equity & aftra. T.S. smiled broadly, "Of course. I see that you have your Equity standing already. Convenient." He placed the card in his wallet, then looked back at the apartment building with a worried frown. "Now, if I could only find my great-aunt. Auntie Lil here is only in town for a few days and anxious to see her sister. I've been so busy with my accountant and all, I haven't really kept up with Aunt Emily…"

  "Try the sixth floor," the young man offered promptly. "I know everyone on one through five, so if she's here, it's got to be the sixth. Here." He ran lightly up the stairs, bouncing as if he had small springs imbedded in each instep. He unlocked both front doors with a flourish, and scurried back to help Auntie Lil up the outdoor stairs, not noticing her determinedly granite expression. He then bounded to the elevator and pressed the button for them.

  "I think we can take it from here," T.S. assured him. Good God. Enough was enough. Any more encouragement and he'd want to carry Auntie Lil over the threshold.

  "Call me?" he asked T.S. in a naughty-boy tone, wagging a finger in playful admonishment. He then gave a little half-wave and disappeared down the steps with a stride so determinedly peppy that he kept popping into view above the door glass as if he were on a trampoline.

  "Good God," Auntie Lil declared once they were safely in the elevator. "If we had any respect at all for Mary Martin's memory, we'd put that young man out of his misery."

  T.S. sighed. "It was kind of a dirty trick to play on him, but I didn't like his attitude."

  "And I always thought I was a good liar." She looked at T.S. in keen admiration. "Of course, you inherited your talent from me."

  "Probably did." It was one point he would not argue.

  They reached the sixth floor and stepped out into a small hallway with cheap blue carpeting. The elevator occupied a corner of the building front. Both apartments' doors opened o
ff the back wall and were situated side by side on the south side of the building. Loud music blared from behind one of the doors, making it impossible to tell whether the second apartment was occupied or not.

  "What do we do now?" T.S. whispered, although talking softly was a moot point.

  "What do you think we do?" Auntie Lil stepped up to the door of the silent apartment and firmly pressed the bell. No one answered. She pressed it again with equally unsuccessful results.

  "No one's home. Time to go," T.S. declared with some relief.

  "Don't be daft." Auntie Lil stared at him incredulously. "Of course no one's home. The occupant's dead."

  "We don't know for a fact that she really lived here," T.S. reminded her.

  "We will in a minute." Auntie Lil surveyed the door carefully. "Good God, it looks like Fort Knox." There were four supplemental locks on the door in addition to the regular deadbolt. Unfazed, Auntie Lil began to rummage through her gigantic pocketbook.

  "You must be joking," T.S. said. "You can't pick any of those locks."

  She produced a credit card from the depths of her bag. "I can try."

  "It's not the right kind of lock," T.S. began, but Auntie Lil would hear none of it. She tried to slip the thin wafer of plastic between the doorjamb and the door, but a heavy metal strip prevented insertion.

  "Damn!" Auntie Lil banged a fist against the door and froze. It had yielded an inch. "Theodore!" She pushed it again and it opened further. "It's not even locked. Four locks and not one of them is locked."

  "I don't like this," T.S. said. "Isn't there usually a dead body on the other side when this happens in the movies?" He pushed up behind her and they opened the door cautiously, peering around the edge and making their way slowly inside.

  There was no dead body inside. Only a dark and deserted studio apartment, devoid of any signs of life at all. The fold-out sofa bed's cushions had been pulled off and left heaped on the floor. Several tables had been swept bare, the contents scattered onto the floor in a jumble of magazines, cracked vases, upturned lamps and three-day-old newspapers.

  Several picture frames had been toppled from a window sill and lay face down on the carpet. Auntie Lil picked them up—the glass was shattered and any photos that had been inside were gone. "Someone had to break these deliberately," she said, pretending to demonstrate. "They'd have had to crack the frames sharply against this edge of the window sill." A small pile of glass lay in a mound, proving her theory. "Why?"

  Books were pulled from a small bookshelf against one wall and piled in careless heaps on the floor, pages mashed together or ripped. Even the refrigerator door hung open. The meager contents—a carton of milk, a dish of mold-covered pudding, three eggs and an opened can of now rotting pineapple chunks—no longer smelled fresh.

  "It's been searched," T.S. whispered. "At least a couple of days ago. I wonder what they were looking for."

  "Shut the front door," Auntie Lil whispered back.

  "What?"

  "Shut the door. I don't want anyone walking by and seeing us in here."

  He obediently shut the door and fumbled for the light switch of a lamp mounted on the wall. Illumination only made the mess that much more depressing.

  "The Eagle," T.S. said. "The man sitting beside her. He must have stolen her pocketbook and gotten her keys. The place has been robbed. He knew where she lived."

  "It hasn't really been robbed," Auntie Lil said. She picked up a photo frame. "This is sterling silver. Why didn't he take it?" She searched among the piles of possessions strewn across the floor. "No jewelry left. Of course, she might not have had any. But here are some settings of real silver. And the television's still here. Look, here's some sort of handheld video game, still in the box." She held up a crumpled sheet of colorful paper and some ribbon. "It was a present and it's been unwrapped, but the burglar didn't take it. If it was a robber, he wasn't very thorough."

  T.S. noticed a small bureau in the miniscule hallway leading to a tiny bathroom. Clothes had been pulled from the drawers and dangled down in multicolored strips. Old lady clothes. Out of style. Smelling musty.

  "Here's the closet," Auntie Lil announced in a loud whisper. She poked her head inside and set to work taking inventory. "This is where she lived, all right," she hissed back over her shoulder. "This wardrobe is right out of Central Casting for a proud, retired actress. Besides, I recognize this green suit. Lord & Taylor. Circa 1964. And look at this."

  Several stacks of Playbills at the back of the closet had been toppled into disarray. A box of ticket stubs had been opened and dumped on top of the mess. T.S. poked through the small magazines, looking at the titles.

  "She's been to just about everything that's hit the stage here in the last few years," he said in admiration. "Talk about supporting the theater."

  "Now we know where all her money went," Auntie Lil replied. She picked up a handful of ticket stubs and let them flutter through her fingers. "And why she came back to live in New York. Remember how Eva said she'd left to get married?" She stared at the now empty closet shelves. "Check the hallway bureau. See if there's anything left of a personal nature."

  But T.S. did not find any personal possessions in the bureau drawer. And none in the bathroom. And nothing at all in the corner kitchenette. "She didn't eat much," he muttered when he saw the bare cupboards.

  "She didn't have much," Auntie Lil replied. "You know what's missing?" she asked her nephew suddenly, as if quizzing a favorite pupil.

  "Yes." This was one test he could easily pass. "There's nothing left in the apartment that could identify her. No photos. No personal papers, and here, look at this, even the front page has been torn out of her Bible." He held up a small, leather-bound Bible. The front cover had been bent back and the first page sloppily ripped away. "In fact, it looks like they took out the front page of every book that might have had her name in it." He pushed the piles of books around with his feet. Her clothes were out-of-date, but her books were not. She had the latest volumes of celebrity biographies and several expensive picture books on the Broadway theater.

  "What's that red thing dangling down?" Auntie Lil demanded. She pointed to the Bible. A thick red ribbon marker several inches wide had been slipped between two pages. "It's a bookmark," he told Auntie Lil. He thumbed through to see what Emily had been reading before she died. "And it looks like she was big into the meek inheriting the earth." He quickly paged through the rest of the Bible. "She's marked a lot of spots about how blessed the children are and stuff like that."

  "Give it to me," Auntie Lil asked excitedly. She grabbed the Bible and turned the red marker over, rubbing it between her fingertips. "This bookmark is funny. It's too wide and too thick. There's something between the two layers of ribbon." She pried apart the bottom end of the double ribbon and wiggled two fingers inside. "It's just been tacked shut with rubber cement or something. Look at this." She slid a strip of four dime store photos out and they huddled under the one lamp left standing to examine it more closely.

  Two young boys—one black and one white—stared uneasily into the camera. The white child had jet black hair that hung in greasy strands over his face. The black child had close-cropped hair trimmed flat on top and shaved close to the skull on the sides. Both boys had pinched and suspicious eyes. And both of them looked tired. They had curious expressions on their faces, almost grimaces. Their lips were pulled back unnaturally over dirty teeth and their chins were thrust forward.

  "They're trying to smile," Auntie Lil declared. She pressed a hand to her heart. "Bless them. They're trying to smile and I don't think they know how."

  T.S. examined it more closely. She was right. The boys were trying to smile, despite the dirt and grime and hopelessness revealed by the harsh glare of the cheap photo booth's light. It illuminated them unmercifully, highlighting every bruise and imperfection on their faces. And they each had plenty.

  "Those are very old faces for boys so young," T.S. pointed out.

  "Yes, they are, ar
en't they?" Auntie Lil brought the photo up just a few inches from her eyes, then turned the strip over and examined the back. "'To our Grandma,'" she read out loud. "And they've underlined 'Grandma'." That's it. It doesn't say anything else. No names. Nothing."

  "Let me see." T.S. snatched the strip of photos back, turned it over, stared, and flipped it back around to look at their faces again. "How old do you think they are?"

  "Not more than eleven or twelve, I'd say. But how can a woman have one completely black and one completely white grandchild?" Auntie Lil asked.

  T.S. did not answer. He was too busy staring at their faces. "I know this black kid," he finally said slowly. "At least, I think I do."

  "You do?" Auntie Lil stared at him skeptically.

  "I think so. But I can't remember where I saw him."

  Their whispering was interrupted by a strange sound. The heavy music blaring from next door was not loud enough to mask a newer, more disturbing beat. Something was banging against the wall separating the two apartments with an urgent, pounding rhythm. T.S. could hear heavy breathing, occasional deep laughter, and what sounded like small, muffled sobs.

  Auntie Lil, who would not admit to slight deafness, apparently could not hear everything. "What's that banging?" she demanded in puzzled irritation. "Do you hear a banging?"

  "Never mind, Aunt Lil," T.S. assured her. If her hearing spared her the salacious details, he wasn't going to fill her in. "Put those photos in your pocketbook and let's get out of here."

  "Wait." She pulled her arm away and gestured toward the apartment's single window. "Look. The window's been left open." They approached it cautiously. It overlooked a small patch of deserted lot squeezed in between the apartment building and the one behind it located on the next block. The window had been left cracked a few inches. They opened it slowly and peeked their heads out. The apartment shared a fire escape with the one next door. T.S.—who was closer to the neighboring apartment—caught a quick glimpse of what the commotion was all about: he saw a bald head gleaming and a stout body bent over someone or something much smaller. T.S. blinked and drew quickly back inside.