Herbert bowed to him from a respectful distance and the man bobbed his head in a terse greeting back. His face was a carefully blank New York mask until Herbert spoke a few words in Korean. Suddenly, the fruit stand owner's face lit up. What followed was a furious conversation involving many smiles, much handshaking and a whole lot more bobbing of heads. After a moment of what seemed to T.S. to be pandemonium but was clearly communication at its finest, the fruit stand owner nodded his head vigorously and took a few steps up Forty-Sixth Street. He pointed out Emily's building and nodded again. Herbert beamed and grasped the man's hand in thanks. Bowing, they departed company.
"Well, that certainly worked," T.S. admitted.
"No sweat," Herbert said modestly. "Though if it hadn't worked, I'm quite sure a twenty-dollar bill would have convinced him to talk."
T.S. left the retired messenger to his surveillance and started out for Times Square, where his own task awaited him. That Herbert Wong. He was a most intriguing mixture of old and new.
The huge chrome and brick building that was 1515 Broadway stretched many stories skyward. The immense lobby was empty except for a token desk man who sat reading the sports section of a tabloid and did not bother to look up when T.S. passed by.
T.S. quickly found Broadway Backers listed on the seventh floor and took one of the elevators up. The door opened onto a long hall lined with many offices. Broadway Backers was either a sham or not successful enough to merit the entire floor.
He found the right door at the far end of the hall. It had a small plaque and, in a burst of unoriginality, the ubiquitous comic and tragic faces found on green rooms and theater doors all across America. There was no bell, so he simply pushed open the door and entered. A plump redhead—who was unarguably overripe but probably not really a redhead—was talking on the phone, her expression indicating it was a friend (a very close friend) instead of a professional call.
Behind her, in a glassed-in office, a short man dressed in a good suit was waving his arms in front of a well-groomed couple. The couple was as sleek and plump as a pair of otters in the zoo. The short man's mouth opened and shut rapidly while his arms wind-milled. None of this seemed to be convincing the couple. They crossed their arms and rolled their eyes, almost in unison, and then the female half of the couple lit a cigarette and began to speak. The short man never bothered to slow down, so the two of them yammered at each other behind the glass in a furious pantomime of noncommunication. T.S. was glad the soundproofing spared him the details. He hated it when two people talked at once.
"Here's a big, juicy kiss," the receptionist cooed. T.S. looked up in astonished dread, but she was only bidding a fond farewell to her telephone mate.
"Can I help you?" she asked T.S. in what was her version of the perfect receptionist's voice, gleaned from years of watching television. Her accent was unfortunate. She hailed from the outer boroughs and it showed. If she was working here in hopes of breaking into show business, the accent would have to disappear—or she would.
"I'm looking for Mr. Lance Worthington," T.S. told her. That part was easy. What he intended to do with Lance Worthington after he found him was another matter. T.S. had no idea what he would say. He kept telling himself that all he wanted was a chance to evaluate the man. See if he was on the up and up. After three decades as a personnel manager, T.S. was pretty good at picking out the genuine articles from the phonies.
"Well, Mr. Worthington is in, but he's not available right now." She already had the phone off the receiver and was ready to move on to the next entry in her personal address book.
"That's him?" T.S. nodded toward the glassed-in office.
"That is he" she informed him importantly. "And he absolutely positively cannot be disturbed because he is in the middle of having creative differences with the writers."
"Creative differences?" T.S. asked. No one in the office looked particularly creative and the differences looked more like fatal divisions.
"That's what producers do," the receptionist told him crossly. "If you were in the business you would know. They have creative differences with the writers."
"Those two are the writers?" It was none of his business, but he couldn't help the question. The couple looked more like they should be wrangling for a better table at Sardi's than writing Broadway shows. The woman was decked out in a fur wrap, for God sake. If they were writing a show, it had to be the sequel to How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.
"It's a musical about Davy Crockett," the receptionist explained patiently while making it plain that she was being patient. "He writes the book. She writes the music."
Davy Crockett? If those two knew anything about pioneers, T.S. was Ponce de Leon. "I'll come back later," he quickly told the receptionist as he scrutinized Lance Worthington, trying to determine if this was the man who'd been seen at Emily's building three times the night before. He was certainly smarmy enough to fit the description, which had been rather vague. But that was hardly enough for a positive identification. Wait—the man reached up and rubbed his ears, an action T.S. didn't begrudge as the stout woman was still stalking around the office, bellowing. But the short man's ears were very interesting. They were tiny and shaped like cookies. In fact, they looked just like a chimpanzee's ears. Either the man had a habit of pulling at them or he was undergoing aural torture. What was it that Herbert had said? Oh, yes: Mr. Cashmere Coat had very small ears.
The man's next movement confirmed his identity. He shook his head vigorously and looked at his watch, turned his back on the couple and headed for a hook on the back of his office door. Donning a tan cashmere coat, he spoke abruptly to the couple and reached for the doorknob.
"I'll be back," T.S. promised the receptionist, turning abruptly and heading for the hall before he came face to face with Lance Worthington. He wanted to meet him, but not like this. He now had a better plan, a much better plan, in mind.
Turning his back, T.S. paused at the doorway of another office and fumbled in his pockets as if searching for keys. Lance Worthington exited Broadway Backers and passed directly behind him, not more than a foot away. He was humming something T.S. could not recognize. Perhaps the music to his new show.
The producer reached the elevator and jabbed the button impatiently. T.S. stared at him out of the corner of one eye. Lance Worthington was a small man, not more than five-eight, with short arms and stubby legs and a rounded head. There was not much of note about him: he moved impatiently with jerky motions, wore expensive shoes, had thinning hair and only a pair of small dark eyes stood out in an otherwise nondescript face. Until he drew attention to those ears. The producer tugged at one, then jabbed the elevator button a few more times for good measure and looked at his watch. If the elevator didn't hurry, T.S. would be left standing in the hall holding a whole lot more than his keys in his hand.
Fortunately, a car arrived and Lance Worthington boarded. T.S. caught a final glimpse of his thinning scalp and small round head just as the elevator door shut.
Boy, did T.S. hate those ears.
Auntie Lil was steamed. The desk sergeant at Midtown North would not let her past the entrance area.
"I demand to see Detective Santos," she told him for the third time.
"Demand away. The man's not here." The sergeant leaned forward and parked a fist against his chin so he could get a better look at Auntie Lil. He was a budding novelist and was collecting colorful characters for his first book. This old dame was a doozy.
Auntie Lil glared at him. "You certainly take a casual view of your job."
Out of habit, the sergeant checked the position of her pocketbook. It looked big enough to hurt if swung with sufficient force. "Lady, I cannot make a man appear when he is not here. I am an officer of the law, not a magician. Would you like to see anyone else in connection with your problem?"
"No. When do you expect him in?"
"We expected him in this morning," the sergeant replied. "When he actually arrives is anyone's guess. Geo
rge is that kind of guy."
She did not bother to thank him—what for?—and marched from the precinct angrily, shouldering past a handcuffed suspect and throwing him against a folding chair. The suspect tripped over it and landed on the floor. The arresting officer looked after Auntie Lil in admiration, but she was moving too fast to accept the compliment.
She reached Mike's American Bar and Grill before T.S. It was deserted, except for a woman behind the bar and a handful of Mexican cooks sitting at a table enjoying cigarettes before the lunch rush. For some inexplicable reason, huge clusters of plastic grapes hung from the ceiling in endless waves and fake Grecian columns were parked willy-nilly throughout the interior. Oversized wine glasses served as flowerpots for silk grapevines that cascaded across the center of every table. The bartender, a willowy young woman with straight brown hair and enough black eyeliner to last Cleopatra a lifetime, wore a sheet wrapped over a leotard in an approximation of a toga. She watched Auntie Lil enter with professionally distant interest. In Mike's neighborhood, you never knew what was going to walk in the door. It was always best to reserve judgment until right before you yelled for the bouncer.
"Give me a double Bloody Mary," Auntie Lil ordered. Her fruitless visit to the precinct called for strong measures. She slapped her pocketbook on the bar and scraped a stool up closer to it. "Extra, extra spicy. I'd ask for ouzo, but I hate the stuff."
"Greek is just our theme this week," the bartender assured her. "Next week, we're going Oktoberfest." If she thought it was unusual for a little old lady to be slamming back a double Bloody Mary in midday, she wasn't going to point that out. "Having a bad day?" she asked.
"Having a bad week," Auntie Lil decided as she sipped at her Bloody Mary.
Since Theodore was certainly taking his sweet time, she decided she might as well get some work done while she waited. There was a pay phone directly behind her, against one wall, and a chair was arranged in front of it. Unfortunately, so was a cook. One look from Auntie Lil, however, and he quickly murmured something in Spanish, rang off and hustled back to the safety of the kitchen. He, too, had been working in the neighborhood long enough to know that you never judged a book by its cover, no matter how creased it might be.
Bob Fleming answered the phone on the first ring. "Homefront," he said.
"If you don't sleep there, you might as well," she told him. "This is Lillian Hubbert."
"Of course." He sounded more cheerful than the day before. "I got a good night's sleep in my own bed, actually. Some of my volunteers showed up and we got two kids to call home last night. And one is thinking about entering a resident drug rehab. It looks like it could be a pretty good week after all."
"People still looking at you funny?" she asked.
"Not today. No one's seen me yet. What can I do for you?"
"Did you find Little Pete? Will he talk to me?"
"I think so," he told her. "Stop by later and I'll let you know for sure. I ran into him this morning. He's thinking about it. But he's scared."
"Why is he scared?" Auntie Lil asked.
"He was on the streets a couple of nights ago, three I think, and saw some rich guy in a limo flashing around photos of the old woman, dead. Scared the hell out of him. He said the guy had a mean-looking face, looked like a serial killer or something. Of course, he's a kid and he's got an imagination, so ... I don't know the connection, but that old lady meant something to Little Pete and he's definitely afraid of the man in the limousine."
"A silver limo?" Auntie Lil asked.
"No. He said it was a black car."
She couldn't figure out how a rich man in a black limo could fit into what they knew. "What about Timmy?" she asked Bob Fleming. "Did you get to talk to him?"
"No. He's still avoiding me. Little Pete doesn't know why. But I found out a bit more about the man who's keeping Timmy. According to Little Pete, Timmy's got a regular job with the guy. It's not a sugar daddy thing. Strictly business. I don't know exactly what that means, but I can guarantee you that it doesn't involve Social Security. Maybe you can find out more."
"I will," Auntie Lil decided firmly. "Thank you. I'll see you this afternoon."
She hung up and nursed another third of her Bloody Mary down the hatch. Things were looking up. Little Pete could tell her something about Emily, she was sure of it. She checked the clock. Where was Theodore? On an impulse, she dialed Midtown North and, to her surprise, was connected to Det. George Santos almost immediately.
"Talk fast," the detective said without waiting to hear who it was. "I've got a stack of messages waist high that I have to return."
"We have located The Eagle for you."
"The man who was sitting next to Emily," Santos repeated, obviously recognizing her voice. He wanted to humor her before she started to fill him in with endless details. He sighed again. "Okay, Miss Hubbert, what's the beef?"
"He entered Emily's apartment building at 1:30 a.m. last night and has not left yet."
"The apartment building where you think she lives," Santos corrected her.
"Regardless of whether Emily lived there or not," Auntie Lil conceded, but only because it suited her current purposes, "reliable sources saw The Eagle enter. And he has not yet come back out."
"Look, Miss Hubbert," the detective said. "I know you're trying to help and I know that you care about the woman who died. But I can't keep running off on wild goose chases. I just don't have the time."
"Please, detective," Auntie Lil pleaded with uncharacteristic mellowness, fueled by the hefty Bloody Mary. "I won't ask you to do anything else. Please just have someone check all the apartments there. I know The Eagle is in there. He's a tall black man with an eagle tattoo on one of his upper arms. If you can find him, I can find the witness who saw him leaning over Emily the day she died. I have people looking for him now."
"You what?"
She backpedaled quickly. "I mean, I heard through a friend that they've put the word out at St. Barnabas that the police need to speak to whoever sat near Emily that day."
There was a skeptical silence. "I'll see who's available to recheck the building," he finally promised. "But only because there weren't any new murders waiting on my desk this morning."
"This afternoon," Auntie Lil corrected.
He rang off before she tortured him any more.
Returning from 1515 Broadway, T.S. detoured past St. Barnabas in an attempt to find the funny old man who had first spotted The Eagle. Franklin had not yet been able to find him, but was sure he'd turn up sooner or later. There was a long line waiting for the soup kitchen to open, but no demented old characters with half of their hair shaved away. While he was there searching for familiar faces, Fran walked past him and hurried down the basement steps without giving him even a second glance. She was seriously preoccupied with some problem. And T.S. wanted to know what it was.
He followed her partway down the steps. She unlocked the gate and stepped through, forgetting to lock it again. Before she could unlock the basement door, Father Stebbins opened it for her, greeting her with a wide smile. To T.S.'s complete amazement, Fran brushed past the priest without comment. Father Stebbins stared at her with a worried look on his face, but she marched past him into the kitchen area without so much as a hello.
Now that was something, T.S. thought. But what?
Father Stebbins noticed T.S. standing at the gate. "The kitchen doesn't open until three o'clock," he told him kindly.
Not only had Father Stebbins not recognized him, he'd thought he was a soup kitchen client. So much for T.S.'s theory about the impact of the right attire. On the other hand, he decided, he should be grateful for the anonymity. He slipped back up the stairs while Father Stebbins relocked the gate. The old actresses were not in line yet. They were probably roaming the streets, gathering useless information on innocent people. Well, so long as they were happy doing their jobs, no one was getting hurt.
He cut across Forty-Sixth Street to get another look at Emily's building
. If Herbert's team was on the job, he didn't see them. But he saw something even more interesting. T.S. spotted a silver limousine approaching the front of the building from the west and hurried to get a better look. He stepped into the doorway across the street and watched as it glided to a stop in front of Emily's building. A tall blonde with lots of hard angles but not much meat on her hopped out of the back seat and ran a few doors down to the corner store, leaving the car door open. A small, round head covered with thin strands of black hair and decorated with two tiny ears emerged from the back seat. It was attached to the tan of an expensive cashmere coat. Lance Worthington marched up the front steps of Emily's building and leaned firmly on a buzzer. T.S. could not see which one. The producer leaned on the buzzer again and turned away impatiently. Halfway down the steps, the front door opened and Leteisha Swann stuck her gawky neck and heavily painted face out the door as she called after Lance Worthington. The look of irritation that crossed his face was clearly apparent, even from T.S.'s viewpoint across the street. The producer shook his head gruffly and climbed into the limo. Undaunted, Leteisha Swann followed him to the car. The door was shut firmly in her face. She glared through the back windows, tossed her hair behind her head—a move that nearly dislodged her cheap wig—then turned on her spike heels and sauntered down the block toward Ninth Avenue.
So, Lance Worthington had not been waiting for Leteisha Swann. Who else in the building could it be?
"Got a quarter?" T.S.'s concentration was interrupted by a bedraggled old woman, who stood before him grinning a gap-toothed smile and extending a dirty palm. She looked like someone right out of Oliver!
T.S. fumbled in his pocket for a dollar bill and tossed it her way, returning to his scrutiny of the silver car.
A Cast of Killers Page 21
