A Cast of Killers (12 page)

Lilah peeked in the window. "This is
wonderful, Theodore. How quaint." Her genteel enthusiasm made T.S.
smile.

"Don't bother waiting for us, Grady," she
told the chauffeur. "Just come get us in an hour." She cast a shy
glance at T.S. "Better make it two," she decided.

Well. Two hours indeed. T.S. straightened his
collar and carefully held the door open for Lilah. He smoothly
guided her coat from her shoulders with the élan of a forties movie
hero, then stashed it on the hook farthest from the door with the
prudence of a nineties NYC resident.

Lilah was like a jewel, he decided. One that
got more precious and beautiful with age. One that deserved
treatment more royal than royalty.

Unfortunately, the establishment was not
cooperating. No maitre d' appeared nor was there any sign of a
waiter. Lilah finally dragged him over to a corner table. "Here,"
she decided for them. "It's not too close to the piano. So we can
talk."

He gulped. Now came the real test. What would
they talk about?

That part turned out to be easy. Once a tubby
waiter appeared and their drink orders had been taken, Lilah was
sufficiently composed to want to talk about murder.

"Auntie Lil will not rest until an answer is
found," she warned T.S. "You and I have both seen her this way
before." Lilah had a habit of lacing her long, elegant fingers
together and resting them on the table while she talked. It made
her look a bit like an obedient child. T.S. thought it was a very
charming gesture. Of course, Lilah could have whipped off her bra
and whirled it above her head while she danced on the bar, and T.S.
would have thought that was a charming gesture, too.

"No, she won't give up," T.S. agreed. "I'm
not even going to try to stop her."

"Will you help her?" Lilah asked huskily,
leaning forward and searching his face in the candlelight. T.S.
half expected the piano player to break into "As Time Goes By."

"Someone has to keep her out of trouble," he
agreed gallantly, any thought of deserting Auntie Lil now fleeing
at the sight of Lilah's expectant face. Their drinks arrived and
the woman at the piano began a new tune, filling the bar with
another melancholy melody. T.S. took a sip. The Scotch burned a
tidy path down his throat and he sighed. Someone dimmed the lights
in the bar and he became more aware of the candle flickering
between them and the way Lilah's face grew even more radiant in the
flattering light. The room's atmosphere thickened with unspoken
sentiments as the music wove an air of unexpected intimacy about
them. Even the dark oak of the restaurant's wainscoting seemed to
deepen with the mood. Other diners around them also grew quiet,
drawing their heads together to whisper.

Was this what it was like, T.S. wondered. Was
this what he had been missing all those years that he'd buried
himself in his books and in his career?

Lilah suddenly stared over his shoulder
toward the bar, breaking the mood. "The bartender just made the
funniest face."

T.S. turned in time to see the front door
bang open with an intrusive thud. An extremely tall woman, lanky
and awkward with drink or drugs, tottered in on high spike heels.
She was squeezed into a long-sleeved spandex tube dress sprinkled
with cheap silver spangles that sparkled against her cocoa-colored
skin. A wide run in her silver hose snaked down the length of her
long legs like a jagged scar. Dark hair was swirled in a tall pile
atop her head in a style reminiscent of Motown in the mid-1960s.
Garish earrings dangled from extremely prominent ears. She had a
tiny round head that topped a long, skinny neck and her pinched
face was covered with a heavy coating of cheap makeup. When she
blinked her eyes sleepily, her small head arched forward like a
turtle's. Her lipstick was a garish silvery pink that glittered in
the reflected candlelight. But her fingernails were long and
elegantly manicured into blood-red tapers.

The bartender's scowl deepened when the woman
approached the bar, waving a dollar bill at him. "Change, sweetie?"
she asked the bartender in a throaty whisper.

"Beat it, Leteisha. I told you. You've been
eighty-sixed from here. Get lost." A man of few but pointed words,
the bartender crossed his beefy arms and nodded grimly toward the
door. The woman's expression did not change as she smoothly turned
on her high heels and slunk as sulkily out the door as she'd
entered.

"Just in case you'd forgotten where we were,"
T.S. noted.

"Now, now, Theodore. Don't be a snob."
Lilah's rebuke was real. She was so thoroughly insulated from the
crasser elements of society that she did not even understand the
concept of being a snob and hated people that were, especially when
they fawned all over her trying to sniff out the source of her
money.

"I know." T.S. shook his head guiltily. "I've
been awful about everything. About coming back to this
neighborhood. About helping Aunt Lil in the soup kitchen. I've only
been there two days, you know. I'm not the cheerful giver you think
I am. And I didn't want to find out who the dead woman was at
first. The truth is, I am being a snob. I don't want to be back
here, traipsing all over these streets. My family lived here, you
know. Before my grandparents moved upstate. I'm just two
generations removed from Hell's Kitchen myself." There. He had said
it. Now she would know he was just another common fortune
seeker.

Lilah patted his hand reassuringly. "That
only proves you have honest blood. Just because you feel like a
snob doesn't mean you have to act like one. We all have our demons
to face, remember?" Her own demons, compared to those of many, were
quite mild. But they pricked at her conscience nonetheless. "I'm
sure you'll be a big help to Auntie Lil. And I hope that you'll let
me help you, too. I don't think anyone should be allowed to die
that way, Theodore. Murdered and unknown. No matter how poor or old
they might be."

She was right, of course. He would help
Auntie Lil find the killer. He'd do whatever it took to unlock the
secrets behind Emily's death.

Lilah asked him about his family, and the
talk of murder passed. Their hours together went by quickly and
dinner was forgotten. He would later be unable to really remember
what they'd talked about. He would only recall, instead, the soft
sound of the piano and the air heavy with cigarette smoke and
secrets. He'd remember Lilah's laugh cutting through the
surrounding noise, as if it were meant for his ears only, and the
quavering high notes of a drunken old lady at the bar who stood up
to sing an Irish ballad to herself. He and Lilah joined the rest of
the crowd in applause and—if only for a few moments of alcohol and
music-inspired togetherness in a lonely city—they were all part of
the same family. He would remember the ache that the old woman's
voice produced in his heart, and the recurring vision it conjured
of sailing ships entering New York Harbor, crowded with people
filled with meager hopes and facing a new land. Their dreams did
not seem so ridiculous to him anymore.

It was as if he had disembarked in a strange
land, where time stood still and strangers welcomed him with open
arms. Best of all, he spoke their new language magically, while
slipping effortlessly and without fear from one adventure to
another. He did not want the feeling to end and was so lost in
belonging and warmth for the people around him that he was shocked
when Lilah waved at Grady through the window. How had two hours
passed so quickly from his grasp? Yet, checking his watch, he
discovered that three hours had gone by, with Grady waiting
tactfully outside for Lilah's discreet signal. It was nearly
midnight by the time they were ensconced again in the back seat of
the limousine. They pulled away onto the streets of Hell's Kitchen
at dark and New York's human night crawlers emerged from doorways
to watch them glide past. The cozy comfort of Robert's was quickly
left behind.

"Where do all these people come from?" he
wondered out loud as they cut across Forty-Second Street to the
photo store. The streets were clogged with hustlers of all colors
and ages, eyeing one another for territorial transgressions and
scrutinizing each unwary tourist for potential profit. Brightly
attired in tee shirts and long shorts that reached to their knees
(despite the cool night air), New York's night citizens clustered
in ominous groups across from the chaotic entrance to the
Forty-Second Street Port Authority bus station entrance, laughing
and shouting insults as frightened visitors dashed to their cabs.
Some hustlers tried to tug at their luggage or hail cabs for them,
in hopes of extracting a bribe or two. But most simply watched with
smug expressions of streetwise superiority, clutching small brown
paper bags containing cans of beer as they waited for something
bigger and better to come along.

The limousine crossed Eighth Avenue and made
its way toward Broadway through the jangle and noise of the seedy
Forty-Second Street strip. Boarded-up theaters awaited renovation
that would never come, providing dark pools of shadows between the
brightly lit storefronts of cheap electronic stores and fried
chicken joints. The sidewalks churned with people jostling and
seeking a fast score. Hardly anyone noticed or cared that a
limousine was passing by—they all had their own sly business to
conduct.

"Is it my imagination or does this place look
completely different than it did three hours ago?" T.S. asked out
loud.

"Is it my imagination or do many of these
people look like they ought to be in junior high school, not here?"
Lilah answered.

She was right. The night had brought out New
York's young runaways. They huddled in empty doorways, wan and
unfed, their dark, bright eyes hungrily scrutinizing passers-by
with a cynical knowledge far beyond their young years.

Lilah sighed and shook her head. "Thank God
my daughters are at college."

The twenty-four-hour photo store was,
apparently, a bustling center of cheap nightly entertainment. T.S.
had to push through a crowd of twenty or more chattering teenagers
to reach the front door. They stood clustered in front of the
store's picture window watching a small, dark brown man tinker
among the automatic photo-developing conveyor belts. The man
straightened up wearily and stuck a screwdriver back into his rear
pocket.

"Yo, man. It's fixed," someone in the crowd
announced with satisfaction. "We gonna get us another peek
now."

This crowd must really be bored, T.S. thought
as he squeezed in the front door. Surely there were better things
to do than watch bad photos of other people's birthday celebrations
and vacations crawl by.

The optimistic voice in the crowd had been
right. The machinery was fixed. The conveyor belt groaned slowly
forward just as T.S. approached the front counter. The bored
cashier was gone, replaced by a small Pakistani man who emerged
from the elaborate developing contraption holding a wrench in one
hand like a weapon.

"I pay much money for this franchise and
equipment," he told T.S. "Damn thing breaks down every night. Holy
shit."

"What a shame for the neighborhood," T.S.
remarked drily as he handed over his receipt. "Looks like this is a
real hotspot for cheap entertainment."

The proprietor shrugged philosophically. "Not
always. But tonight, some pervert drop off whole roll of pictures
of a poor dead woman. As old as my beloved mother. What someone
want with such photos, I do not know. This is sick city. Sick city,
indeed." He nodded toward the picture window. "The machine jammed
in the middle of the order and the crowd that you see gathered.
They love death, this bunch. Look at them. They salivate like
animals at the kill."

T.S. froze. Outside, the crowd began pushing
forward to get a better view. The strip of pictures affixed to the
conveyor belt rounded a turn and approached the picture window once
again. Eyes grew wide and the jokes began, boys nudging their
girlfriends and grabbing the backs of their necks in hopes of
eliciting squeals.

"Oh dear," T.S. murmured lightly, running a
finger under his collar. It did no good. The flush began at the
base of his neck and quickly spread across his face. He was
humiliated. He was the pervert.

The proprietor had already discovered that
fact. He stared at the number on T.S.'s receipt and raised his
eyebrows in slow recognition. He surveyed T.S. from head to toe,
then peered over his shoulder at the waiting limousine without
comment. Then he inched away from T.S., making it plain that he
preferred to stand by his conveyor belts rather than be in close
proximity to such a clearly debauched human being. Crossing his
arms primly, the proprietor took turns staring back and forth
between T.S. and the crowd outside while he waited for the morbid
photos to make their tortuous way through the labyrinth of belts.
Some in the crowd got the proprietor's hint and began to eye T.S.
with great interest.

T.S. carefully brushed dirt from his shoe,
straightened his shirt collar and tried hard to imagine himself
somewhere else. When that failed, he thought of the ways he might
seek revenge against Auntie Lil for sending him on this mission.
After a two-minute wait that seemed more like a two-year prison
sentence, his pictures reached the end of their mechanical journey.
As the strip of photos neared the automatic cutter, T.S. saw that
his exposure settings and framing had, alas for his immediate
reputation, been outstanding. The images of a dead Emily were crisp
and relentless. At least fifty eyes stared at him intently as the
proprietor made a great show of holding up each finished photo
before ceremoniously placing it into the order bag.

Once the last damning photo had finally been
plucked from the stares of the enraptured crowd, the proprietor
marched across the room with the bag pinched between two fingers as
if it smelled very bad indeed. He held it out toward T.S. "Twenty
dollars," he said primly, holding out an open palm. "You surprise
me, sir. Really. I feel compelled to inform you. You really do
surprise me."