A Cast of Killers (27 page)

"Perhaps you should," Auntie Lil pointed
out.

He sighed and banged his glass back on the
table, sloshing out a small wave of alcohol that emanated an
unmistakable odor. Ye gads. The man was drinking straight gin. No
wonder he looked and acted like hell. "Your friend was killed two
days ago," he began slowly, as if warming up to relate a fairy
tale. "And since that time, two more murders have landed on my
desk. Murders of people with names and families and addresses. And
clues. Which is no small consideration."

"In other words, Emily's death has been put
on the back burner," T.S. said.

"I didn't say that." Santos held up a hand as
if to stop any protests on their part. "We've sent her fingerprints
to Quantico, but nothing will come of it. Not unless she has a
record, which is unlikely. I've called every shelter in New York
and distributed a Wirephoto of her over police wires. No luck yet,
but that's all I can do. Plus, I personally investigated an
anonymous tip today. Someone called claiming to have her
address."

"That was no anonymous tipster," Auntie Lil
said indignantly. "That was me."

"You?" He stared at her closely. "You wasted
two hours of my time."

"You went to the wrong address," Auntie Lil
stated flatly.

The detective fumbled in his pocket and
produced his notebook. "326 West Forty-Sixth Street," he read.
"Apartment 6-B."

"That's right," T.S. confirmed.

"I went there," he said calmly, sounding more
sober than before. "A young girl answered, late twenties. An
actress. Said she'd been living there for over three years. There
was no little old lady. The apartment looked completely normal. You
people are mistaken."

"The place was totally ransacked!" Auntie Lil
insisted. "Didn't you see?"

Detective Santos stared at her for a long
moment. "How do you know?" he asked evenly.

"Know what?" Auntie Lil demanded.

"That it was ransacked?"

T.S. intervened. "We just heard, that's all.
Never mind." He kicked Auntie Lil under the table, not anxious to
be booked for breaking and entering by a drunken detective. "Are
you sure that the young woman lived there?"

"Look. I talked to the resident. I talked to
the super. There's no old lady living there at all. Just some babe
with dyed blonde hair and an aerobically fit actress body."

Auntie Lil was angry; T.S. was mystified.

"What about The Eagle?" Auntie Lil demanded.
"Have you found him?"

"The Eagle?" Santos shook his head like he
thought she was crazy and looked to T.S. for confirmation.

"Don't you look at him like I'm insane,"
Auntie Lil ordered. "A man swears he saw The Eagle behind Emily
that day. He's probably the one who poisoned her."

The detective sighed. "We don't know anything
about an eagle. No one we interviewed mentioned an eagle." He was
quiet, staring into his drink. "My guess is that you people were
given the wrong apartment number. Sounds to me like you went there.
I wouldn't want to know if you did." He shrugged. "Maybe it was
burglarized, maybe it wasn't. If it was, the woman who lives there
doesn't want me to know."

"Why wouldn't she?" T.S. asked.

"You must be joking." The detective took a
healthy swig of gin. "It was probably drug-related. What's she
going to do? Report ten grams of coke missing?" He laughed as if
he'd said something funny, but neither T.S. nor Auntie Lil was
amused. He fell silent, staring into the bottom of his drink.

"Can't you tell us anything?" Auntie Lil
demanded after a moment of fruitless silence.

Santos jumped, as if he'd forgotten they were
there. "I can tell you that if this case had ever mattered in the
least, they would not have given it to me." He raised his large
brown eyes to them and blinked sadly. "I am not at the bottom of
the barrel, you understand. I still manage to stay sober during my
shift. But I'm pretty damn close. Everyone knows that I'm a drunk,
no one gives me any real work and the only reason I'm probably
still on the force is that the lieutenant is too stupid to figure
out yet what a loser I am." He shrugged. "And that's nothing but
the facts, ma'am."

There was nothing more to say. They left the
detective behind and snagged cabs that could take them home and
away from the Westsider as quickly as possible.

T.S. was thoroughly depressed by the time he
reached his apartment. Brenda and Eddie met him at the door and he
was so distracted that he opened two cans of wet cat food and they
snagged a bonus feast. But he was immediately cheered by two minor
developments. Lenny Melk had called and tracked down the building's
real owner. He'd divulge the information the following morning, as
soon as T.S. met him with payment in cash. So much for trust. But
at least he had the information.

The second message was even more uplifting.
Lilah had called to say that her day had been productive but
boring, and that she'd missed the chance to detect by his side. It
wasn't the same as saying that she'd missed him, technically
speaking, but it was enough to inspire him to sing the theme song
from The Impossible Dream in the shower before he hit the sack.

Lenny Melk's office turned out to be a coffee
shop at the corner of Centre and Duane Streets. He was waiting for
T.S. out front. "You're the guy, right?" he said, eyeing T.S.'s
charcoal gray sweater.

"It's nice to be so unforgettable," T.S.
answered drily. "I knew you in a minute."

"I'm kind of a distinctive guy," Lenny
admitted, automatically brushing the dandruff flakes off of his
shoulders. He wore the same suit he'd worn two days before. It had
not been dry-cleaned in the interim.

"Let me buy you a bagel," he offered T.S.
"They got great lox here."

Lenny actually did spring for the bagel, but
first T.S. had to hand over his cash payment. "I don't like to
carry a lot of cash around with me," the entrepreneur confided to
T.S. as they waited for their order. "Too dangerous."

"I agree. It's much safer to let your bookie
hold it for you."

Lenny stared at T.S. closely and couldn't
decide if he'd been joking. So he compromised and ignored the
remark. "I've got that information for you," he said, after they
had found a spot outside on a nearby low brick wall. "Let's sit
here. We can watch all the secretaries going in to work. Take a
look at that one, would you?"

T.S. did not indulge in petty ogling of
unknown women. He took a look at his bagel instead and then took a
bite. Lenny was right. It was excellent. They chewed in silence for
a few minutes. Or, at least, T.S. chewed. Lenny Melk went right to
the swallow.

"They got a whole string of dummy companies
set up," Lenny finally confided, as he licked extra cream cheese
from the paper wrapping. "But it's easy to find your way through if
you know what you're doing. Like me."

"What's the bottom line?" T.S. mumbled
through a mouthful of bagel.

"Everything seems to come back to some guy
name of Lance Worthington. He runs an outfit called Broadway
Backers. Last listed address is 1515 Broadway. Ring a bell?"

T.S. shook his head. "Never heard of the
guy."

"Me, either. Must not be any kind of mover or
shaker." Lenny bit off a chunk of bagel with gusto. "Speaking of
movers and shakers," he sputtered, nodding his head toward a young
woman late for work, who had abandoned decorum in favor of
speed.

"You find out anything else?" T.S. was
nearing the end of his bagel and was ready to move on to more
dignified tasks.

"Well, the guy owns a couple of buildings in
the neighborhood. One of them is two doors down. The other's on
Tenth Avenue." He gave T.S. a crumpled wad of paper. Several
addresses were scrawled across the center of the page and the
margins were filled with notes like, "19-1/Stormy Spirit: 2nd at
Aqueduct."

"Thanks," T.S. told Lenny. "Perhaps we shall
meet again one day." He shook the man's hand firmly and ignored the
small smear of cream cheese that squeezed between their fingers
like putty. It was vastly preferable to watching Lenny Melk wipe
his hands on the pants legs of the already well-abused suit.

"A pleasure doing business with you," Lenny
declared. By the time T.S. reached the corner and turned toward the
subway, the self-proclaimed real estate consultant was already
heading for a nearby telephone, optimistically patting the wad of
cash in his pocket.

Auntie Lil and Herbert were waiting for T.S.
at the Delicious Deli. It was obvious from their faces that
something big had happened. After introducing him to the deli
owner, Auntie Lil pulled T.S. so close that he was practically in
her lap, then whispered in his ear. "Be discreet. I'm not sure we
can trust him entirely." She nodded toward Billy, who had returned
to slicing slabs of roast beef at a rotary cutter located at the
far end of the counter. The whirr would have made it impossible for
him to eavesdrop.

"Then why are we here?" T.S. asked sensibly.
"There are ten coffee shops to every block in this
neighborhood.”

"Because he knows things," Auntie Lil
whispered back. "I can tell. And I want to find out what they
are."

T.S. resisted the temptation to roll his
eyes. Auntie Lil thrived on adding drama to any situation, even an
already dramatic one.

"Listen to what Herbert's got," Auntie Lil
told him, forgetting to whisper in her excitement.

Herbert carefully opened a leather-bound
notebook. "This is the log," he explained solemnly. "Franklin is an
excellent observer. He gave an impeccable report on last night's
comings and goings. There is much activity there in the dead of the
night. Adelle and her friends added more, but they tend to get
caught up in speculative detail. I do not find it necessary to
fantasize on the private lives of residents, but they seem to
believe the information is important." Translation: he had left
them arguing about whether one of the residents was actually an
actress or a call girl. "Already, we have spotted several
suspicious instances. I will give you the most important ones."

T.S. leaned forward, caught up in the
excitement, and tried to see what Herbert had written in the
notebook. Herbert picked it up and pressed it closer to his chest.
"No sense peeking. I have a special shorthand. I will summarize for
you."

The most important events were indeed
suspicious. The same man had visited Emily's building three times
the previous night. Once at ten o'clock; again at half past one in
the morning; and for a final time just after three o'clock. "He was
the same man, just kept going in and out with different
people."

"How do you know he's the same man?" T.S.
asked.

"Descriptions of him match exactly," Herbert
said, "once you separate the facts from the fictions perpetuated by
the excitable actresses. He is not very tall, short black hair
thinning in front, very small ears and he wears a very expensive
tan cashmere coat. No hat. Plus, he is chauffeured around in a
silver Cadillac, so that makes it easy, too."

"But it's who he was with that's suspicious,"
Auntie Lil butted in, pressing T.S.'s arm in her excitement. "Tell
him."

"The first time, he entered with a cheap
blonde—that is Miss Adelle's description—very much younger than
himself. But when he leaves, he leaves with a young boy who matches
the description of the white boy in the small photos found in
Emily's apartment. Except that his hair is blond, not black."

"Remember, Bob Fleming told me that the boy
had recently dyed his hair," Auntie Lil reminded them. "So, I'm
almost sure it's Timmy."

"Shortly after that, a middle-aged man leaves
the building in a very big hurry. He had entered it approximately
an hour before, but we were not able to ascertain his exact
destination there. It is still early when he leaves, so Adelle
herself follows him. He stops at Show World—this is a pornographic
palace located near the Port Authority—and does not leave there for
thirty more minutes. At which point, Adelle loses him in the Port
Authority." Herbert bobbed his head in apology. "We cannot all be
as skilled as myself in surveillance."

"No, of course not," T.S. murmured. "Go
on."

"The second time that the man in the cashmere
coat drives up, he is with a tall black man. Very
rough-looking."

"Tell him! Tell him!" Auntie Lil commanded,
practically bouncing up and down in her seat.

Herbert looked skeptical. "Maybe this is
true. Maybe it is not. Eva, she is one of Adelle's loudest
followers—"

"I know who Eva is," T.S. interrupted. "The
actress with the bad haircut who had been feuding with Emily."

"That is her," Herbert confirmed. "She says
that she saw something funny on the man's arm."

"Which man's arm?" T.S. asked.

"The black man's arm. He was not wearing a
coat, despite the slight chill. He was wearing only a short black
T-shirt. And beneath one of the sleeves, Eva sees feet."

"Feet?" T.S. was mystified.

"A tattoo of feet," Herbert explained. "Not
feet, but more like talons." He curled his hands into claws and
illustrated for them. "The feet of an animal with talons, clutching
sprigs of branches in them."

"The Eagle!" Auntie Lil explained. Don't you
see? He has a huge tattoo of an eagle on his arm. That's why the
old man at the soup kitchen kept talking about The Eagle. This is
the man who poisoned Emily. Almost certainly."

T.S. was doubtful. For one thing, the
information came from Eva. For another, they were guessing at the
hidden meaning of words babbled by a probable lunatic. Finally, it
had been the middle of the night.

"How could Eva possibly have spotted such a
detail?" he demanded to know.