A Cast of Killers (16 page)

"I'll eat it if you don't want it," Auntie
Lil finally offered. She placed his pie beside her second one and
munched happily on her first. "This is heaven. I've never had
better meat pies. Not in Kingston. Or even in Spanish Town."

"You been to Spanish Town?" the woman asked.
"My mama came from there."

"I spent several months there one year,"
Auntie Lil admitted. "We were experimenting with a new kind of
batik."

The woman absorbed this information
respectfully, but had no curiosity to ask for details. She watched
impassively as Auntie Lil polished off her two meat pies and
started in on the third. With one hand holding the pie, Auntie Lil
pulled the photos from her pocketbook with the other.

"Do you know this lady?" she asked, her mouth
full of food as she slid the images of the dead woman across the
counter top.

The woman peered down at it. Her face grew
very calm and T.S. could almost feel the cooling in the room.
Finally, she looked up and shrugged. "All old ladies look alike to
me. One granny just like another." Her voice had changed
dramatically, its former warmth replaced by suspicion and, perhaps,
fear. She crossed her arms and backed away from them, settling on
the small table behind the counter again. She stared back out the
picture windows, as if they weren't even there.

T.S. knew she was lying. He'd worked with
people too long not to know.

"You've never even seen her walking by on the
block?" Auntie Lil insisted. She finished off the pie and scrubbed
her fingers clean with the edge of her napkin. Small crumbs still
clung to her mouth, but she'd soon talk those off.

The woman shook her head firmly, the braids
clacking together in terse rhythm. "No, granny. I have not even
seen her walking by." Her mouth shut firmly. She was saying no
more.

Auntie Lil sighed just as the little black
man finished his meal. When he rose to depart, his chair scraped
against the tile floor with an angry screech. He stretched
leisurely and patted his stomach in approval. "You are a good cook,
Nellie," he told the black woman. "You are not such a good liar."
He pulled the photos toward him and looked at Auntie Lil from under
his bushy eyebrows. His face was small and pinched, and his black
eyes glittered deeply from a crevasse of wrinkles like two tiny
currants inside a bigger raisin.

His hatred of raisins aside, T.S. decided he
was going to like the fellow.

The old man looked T.S. over silently,
inspected Auntie Lil once again, then stared down at the photos for
a closer look. "You are family?" he asked them.

"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 Panishness. 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 Panishness. "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 off 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?"