A Cast of Killers
Page 13
"Let's go," he said tersely, not wanting to think about what he had just seen.
"Not so fast," Auntie Lil complained, bending back out onto the fire escape. "Don't rush me. I might miss a clue. Like this." She picked up a curl of dark paper and smelled it. "It stinks. What is it?"
"It's the back of a Polaroid photograph," T.S. told her. He scanned the fire escape. "Here's one more."
"Someone was taking photos out on the fire escape. What on earth for?"
T.S. chose to remain silent. "Let's go," he said grimly, grabbing her elbow again. "Someone has already cleaned the place out. We'll tell the police and leave it at that."
"The police?" Auntie Lil asked indignantly. "They don't know her name any better than we do. What good is that going to do?"
"The owner of the building can tell them her name," he explained patiently. They stepped out into the hall and shut the door carefully behind them. "And I think it might be best if you didn't mention our little escapade inside. Let's just say we found out where she lives and leave it at that, shall we?" He jabbed the button of the elevator five times in quick succession, anxious to put distance between himself and what he thought he had seen in the other apartment. They waited a moment without success and he impatiently pushed the button several more times, then stopped abruptly. The loud background music had suddenly ceased. The door to the second apartment opened and a middle-aged man and a young boy stepped out into the hall. The older man had a large bald head that gleamed in the hallway light. A fine sheen of perspiration clung in droplets to the side of his skull. He was red in the face and hurriedly rebuttoning his jacket, taking no notice of the boy behind him.
The boy had light blond, very nearly white, hair that was cut badly in wisps about his face. A small ponytail no bigger than a watercolor brush straggled down his neck. He wore a black tee shirt emblazoned with jagged strips of silver lightning and the logo of a heavy metal band. His black jeans were so tight T.S. wondered how he could move, but he could—albeit sullenly and without any interest in either the bald man or T.S. or Auntie Lil.
The bald man stopped abruptly when he noticed he had company, stared at the two of them, said nothing, then veered suddenly toward the fire stairs. Without a word, he pushed through the door and disappeared. Auntie Lil took a few steps forward and stared intently after him, puzzled.
The young boy looked up and noticed them for the first time. His eyes were reddened and rimmed with purple shadows underneath. They flickered over T.S. with dulled suspicion, passing by with disinterest until they spotted Auntie Lil. And then the boy literally jumped. Both feet—expensively clad in high-priced athletic shoes—actually left the carpet. His eyes grew wide and he turned even paler than he had been before. Then he slumped against the wall and stared harder at an oblivious Auntie Lil. When she finally turned around and noticed him, the young boy's face cleared and settled back into a dull mask of apathy.
"Son?" T.S. said, sorry to be a middle-aged man at that moment. Even that close a kinship to the thing that had just left them was too close for T.S.
The boy stared again at Auntie Lil. He stopped short of shaking his head, gave T.S. a sharp look and took off running. He pushed past them and fled through the fire door, following the bald man down the steps without a single word.
"What in the world?" Auntie Lil sniffed. The elevator finally arrived and she stepped inside it indignantly. "How very rude."
T.S. didn't think that "rude" even began to describe the boy's behavior. Never mind the sweating man's. But—having seen what the loud music had tried to hide—he did not intend to explain it to Auntie Lil, not even with all her knowledge of people and years of self-professed experience.
There were just some things he'd have to keep to himself.
Auntie Lil would not leave the building until they tried to speak to the superintendent about Emily's identity.
"I think we should leave this to the police," T.S. suggested for the third time. "We may be in over our heads." He did not want to say anymore.
"Nonsense. If you don't spoon-feed the police everything, they're no help at all." She pressed the superintendent's bell firmly and did not let up. T.S. was sure that no one was home, but after a good twenty seconds of nonstop buzzing, the door flew open and an irritated round face peeked out.
"What the hell you think you're doing leaning on my buzzer like that?" a small Hispanic woman demanded of Auntie Lil. She was missing a front tooth.
Auntie Lil responded to her rudeness by pushing the door open and peering inside the apartment. Despite the sunny day outside, the drapes were tightly shut and no lights were on. An old air conditioner in one corner of the room hummed loudly, chilling the apartment to near-refrigerator conditions. A tattered red sofa dominated much of the only room that was visible and a short, fat man dressed in a sleeveless undershirt and a dirty pair of pants lay across it. He was ignoring the intrusion and slurping at a beer while he stared at the only light in the room: a television set turned loudly to a game show. Auntie Lil decided to shout above it.
"Where's the super? I want to know the name of the old woman who lives on the sixth floor," she demanded, without any attempt at politeness or a cover story. Auntie Lil had decided that she did not like the events now unfolding.
"I'm the super," the woman who had answered the door replied indignantly. "And you take your crabby old hands off my door."
Auntie Lil stepped back and glared at the woman. T.S. moved beside her for support. Together, they stared down the superintendent. She was as short and round as the man on the couch, and her hair had been dyed an unlikely orange. She wore a shapeless shift that was torn under one arm and she, too, held a beer in one hand.
"What is the name of the old woman who lives on the sixth floor?" T.S. asked more politely, though the effort was painful to make.
"There's no old woman living on the sixth floor," the super replied nastily. "No one lives on the sixth floor at all. Go away before I call the police."
T.S. opened his mouth to argue, but before he could get a single word out, the door slammed firmly shut in his face.
"Well, I never," Auntie Lil said. "We are going to the police. I don't like the looks of this, at all."
"We're doing more than that," T.S. suddenly decided. He had seen enough to make him very angry. And when he was angry, T.S. could be every bit as determined as his aunt. "I'd like to keep a very close eye on this building. Something is wrong and I don't like it at all."
They hurried out of the claustrophobic hallway and paused on the outside steps.
"Why in the world would that woman lie like that?" Auntie Lil wondered.
T.S. thought of what had been going on in the occupied sixth-floor apartment, and of the disarray in Emily's rooms. "I don't know. But it isn't good."
"Perhaps she got killed for her rent-controlled apartment?" Auntie Lil suggested. "I read about this case in the July True Detect… well, this periodical I have a subscription to, that told about a woman who was killed for that very reason."
"Killed for an apartment?" T.S. interrupted. "That's a bit extreme, even for New York City."
"People get killed for twenty-five cents in this town," Auntie Lil protested.
T.S. thought about it. "You're right. I'll find out who owns the building and we'll go from there."
"We should also start watching the building," Auntie Lil added. "And we need to talk to people at the soup kitchen ourselves."
"Then we need some more help," T.S. said firmly. "That's all there is to it. Whether the police believe us or not, we need someone else to watch this building while we poke around the neighborhood."
Just then, an Asian man passed by. He was wheeling a dolly cart loaded with boxes of fresh produce as he headed toward a corner fruit and vegetable stand. T.S. and Auntie Lil watched his progress down the block, then turned to one another in mutual inspiration.
"Herbert Wong," T.S. said, smiling because—for once—he'd beaten Auntie Lil to the punch.
6
They had gotten no farther than a few feet down the block when a tall black woman sauntered past them. She was dressed in an orange mini-dress that barely covered her butt in back and was stretched to within a millimeter of popping at the sides. It hugged her ample chest tightly and had long sleeves pulled so far down her shoulders that they resembled matching gloves. Unfortunately, the effect was spoiled by a large rip under one of her arms that exposed a strip of coffee-colored skin and a ragged black-lace bra. The woman wore one dangling fake diamond earring and swung a small black purse in idle circles. Her makeup-smudged eyes were wide and vacant and she took no notice of either Auntie Lil or T.S. Passing them slowly, she promptly bumped into a trash can and careened right off without missing a beat. Her eyes closed a bit as she focused on a nearby building and she began to mutter beneath her breath while swatting at imaginary flies with the pocketbook.
Auntie Lil stared after her. "My goodness. I guess she dresses in the dark."
"She dresses for the dark," T.S. corrected her. He stared after the woman's lanky form. "She looks familiar. I think I've seen her before, too.
Auntie Lil surveyed her with distaste. "I can't imagine where," she finally said. "And if you remember, I don't think I even want to know."
T.S. was trying to figure out how someone could move as slowly without simply freezing into one position. "I think she's on drugs," he told Auntie Lil.
"I should hope so. There must be some excuse for that outfit."
As they watched her curiously, the woman peered up at the numbers of several buildings, then abruptly turned and picked up speed. Eyes fixed on the front door, she wobbled up the front stairs of Emily's apartment building, her body teetering dangerously close to the edge of the top step as she attempted to unlock the front door while balanced on high spike heels. She dropped her keys, bent over to pick them up and managed the task only after hiking her skintight dress nearly to her waist.
"She's wearing a girdle," T.S. observed. "Another inch and I'll tell you the brand."
"That despicable overgrown Peter Pan man said there was no one over thirty in the entire building," Auntie Lil said indignantly. "That woman is forty if she's a day."
"And she certainly gives new meaning to his contention that the whole building was in the business," T.S. added. "You wait here."
He crept up behind the woman and caught a whiff of stale liquor mixed with Giorgio perfume. He considered either scent vile in its own right, but the combination was as deadly as mustard gas. He took a step back, which was, unfortunately, downwind, and waited. No wonder she was wobbling, mixing her drink and drugs in the middle of the afternoon like that. She finally succeeded in unlocking the door and lurched inside. T.S. scampered up the stairs and peeked through the front door window in an effort to see which floor she called home.
She chose the nearest floor—which just happened to be the entrance hallway—and slumped against a small storage door set into the wall. She closed her eyes as the door slowly opened and the upper half of her body tumbled into the closet, where she promptly fell asleep. Her thighs and legs, encased in torn black stockings and cheap heels, protruded anonymously into the hallway like an updated version of the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz. T.S. heard a faint buzz begin. At least she was not dying of an overdose before his eyes, and was still capable of lusty snoring.
He contemplated waiting to see what would happen when the bad-tempered superintendent discovered her tenant sprawled across the carpet. But then T.S. decided he'd had his fill of surly strangers for one day and hurried back to his aunt.
"Which floor?" she asked.
"The front hallway floor. She had just enough steam to get inside and now she's snoring away inside the janitor's closet, near the superintendent's door."
"They're good friends, no doubt." Auntie Lil shook her head and glanced at her watch. "It's nearly four. I have just enough time to check out the soup kitchen before it closes."
"The soup kitchen? You got tossed out on your ear, remember?"
"I was told I couldn't work there anymore," she reminded him. "No one said I couldn't go there for a meal."
T.S. stared at her without comment.
"The sign says that all who are hungry are welcome," she insisted petulantly. "Besides, I have to question Adelle and the ladies again."
T.S. sighed. "All right. Give it a whirl. But you're on your own. I'm heading down to Centre Street to see who owns this building and if Abromowitz throws you behind bars, you'll just have to find someone else to bail you out."
"Harvey's at eight?" she asked. "I'll call Herbert and invite him."
"Harvey's at eight." T.S. headed for the subway, thinking longingly of the bar at Harvey's. It would be hushed and dark right now, nearly deserted and at its most inviting. What he really wanted was a good stiff drink and no one to bother him while he drank it. He needed time to explore his memory. Where had he seen that dreadfully attired woman before?
Auntie Lil arrived at St. Barnabas just as the last of the hungry in line were entering the basement. She squeezed in behind them and looked around. Fran and Father Stebbins were both busy behind the counter. There were two obviously bored detectives sitting at far tables interviewing people, but Auntie Lil did not recognize any of them. She sniffed the air suspiciously. Yes, just as she had feared. Fran had overspiced the spaghetti sauce and ruined its flavor. Oh, well. After a giant hero sandwich, cheesecake and three meat pies, not even she was hungry again yet.
Just to be safe, she pulled her felt hat down over her face and sidled up to Adelle's table. She knew Fran would not hesitate to take the advantage Lieutenant Abromowitz had handed her and run with it.
"What in the world?" Adelle demanded in a cultured voice. She had decided to be British for the day and her accent was impeccable.
"It's me," Auntie Lil hissed back.
"For heaven's sake, Lillian," Adelle sniffed. "Why the big disguise?"
"I've been thrown out of here," Auntie Lil told the assembled old actresses indignantly. "By the awful lieutenant in charge of investigating Emily's death."
"Can you believe it?" one old lady asked breathlessly. "Poisoned. One of us poisoned. But by who? And why?"
"Her secrets caught up with her," Eva declared. "That's what she gets for being so superior."
Adelle sighed. "Sit down Lillian. Take off that hat and just turn your back to the crowd. They can't tell one old lady from another, believe me."
Auntie Lil did as she suggested. "How was the sauce?" she demanded.
"Overspiced," Adelle answered promptly. "Honestly. That Fran woman doesn't know the meaning of subtle. She's the Marion Davies of the cooking set." Heads bobbed in agreement.
"So you've heard that Emily was poisoned," Auntie Lil said. "It was most astonishing. I helped discover it, you know." The crowd tittered in appreciation, but no one asked for details. They at least pretended to be a well-bred bunch.
"We've been exchanging theories," Adelle confessed. "And we can't come up with a thing."
"Not quite," one old lady ventured. "There is that Arnold Rothstein thing."
Eva sniffed. "It was me, not Emily, that he stood up that night."
"Is that so?" someone asked nastily. "Then you've been lying about your age all these years. Unless you were dating him when you were twelve years old."
"You have a lot of nerve," Eva countered. "You were in theaters before ladies' smoking rooms were." A murmur of approval ran through the crowd. It had been a most worthy insult.
"Oh, come, come," Adelle ordered them. "Her death is not connected to some gangland murder committed sixty years ago." She looked at Auntie Lil and rolled her well-painted eyes. "Eva here has fantasized for over six decades now that she was supposed to go out on a date with Arnold Rothstein the night he was gunned down."
"I was," Eva insisted. "He stood me up."
"You and a dozen others, sweetie," someone said. "He was not the faithful type."
"We thought, briefly, that maybe Emily had set him up somehow," Adelle told Auntie Lil. "And his gang had taken their time on the revenge. But I don't see how she could have. She didn't even come to New York until 1937 as near as we can tell."
"She was too plain for him anyway," Eva insisted, patting her absurdly black hair primly into place over her growing bald spot. "I ought to know."
Auntie Lil sighed deeply and drummed the table impatiently with her sturdy fingers. "We need to go about this in an organized fashion," she told the table. "You'll just have to trust me on this. After all, I am a professional, practically, and I'm sure you ladies can appreciate the difference between an amateur and a professional."
"Certainly," Adelle allowed graciously. "The show must go on."
"Exactly. So what I'd like to do is ask you some questions about Emily. I know you don't think you remember much, but you never know when a highly astute question from me can reveal the hidden truth."
No one seemed miffed at Auntie Lil's lack of modesty and they all nodded in agreement.
"If you have anything to add, please speak up," Auntie Lil instructed them. "Otherwise, it might be best to try and remain silent. Opinion is not what we are looking for here, just the facts." It was as diplomatic as Auntie Lil ever got and the old ladies nodded in solemn agreement again.
"My first question is, when did you originally meet Emily?"
"I met her in 1939," Adelle answered promptly. "We were chorus girls in Hellzapoppin together. I had a front-row spot and helped her along. She really wasn't a very good dancer, just well endowed."
"I met her right after she came to New York," Eva sniffed, "I think it was late 1938. We shared rooms in the same boarding house on Thirty-Sixth Street. She was already putting on airs about Our Town and going around calling herself Emily Toujours."