A Cast of Killers (28 page)

"That is the most clever thing," Herbert said
in admiration. "She was right there by the stoop. Not three feet
away. They passed right by her and up the stairs."

"That could be dangerous," T.S. said firmly.
"I told you to warn them."

"No, not dangerous at all." Herbert broke out
in a wide smile. "She was dressed most convincingly as a bag lady.
I did not even recognize her myself. In fact"—he began to laugh,
caught his breath and went on—"she is so convincing that the man in
the cashmere coat gives her a dollar bill!"

"Okay, okay," T.S. conceded. "Eva makes a
great bag lady and she sees the tail end of an eagle tattoo on this
man's arm. What next?"

"The man never leaves the building," Herbert
explains. "He is still in there."

"Which man?" T.S. asked again.

"The Eagle. The cashmere coat does leave,
only this time he is not with a blonde and not with the tall black
man. He is with a cheap prostitute. On this point, everyone agrees.
She is tall and dresses not very nice."

"Let me fill in the rest," T.S. said. He put
his hands against his head and shut his eyes as if he were
struggling to foresee the future. "She was wearing a wig, hair
piled high. Probably spike heels. She's black and wears
mini-dresses that set off the color of her skin. The dresses don't
cover very much. She favors torn stockings and long gloves. And
she's definitely getting ready to go to work along Tenth
Avenue."

"That's right!" Herbert confirmed with keen
admiration. "Very good. You have met the lady before?"

"That is no lady. That is Miss Leteisha
Swann."

Auntie Lil was staring at him strangely. "How
do you know the name of that… woman of the night, Theodore?"

He held up a hand and winked. "I can do my
own detecting, thank you. How I know is immaterial. That I do know
is my little secret."

Auntie Lil looked two parts scandalized and
one part annoyed. T.S. loved it.

Herbert coughed discreetly and murmured, "If
I may continue… Mr. Cashmere Coat leaves with Miss Leteisha Swann
in his silver car and all is relatively quiet." He paused to
consult his notes. "People come and go, but we have ascertained
that they live there. Four of the residents have roles in nearby
Broadway shows. They arrived in stage makeup at appropriate times
on foot. Tonight, we will follow them and confirm."

"More working actors than I thought," T.S.
admitted. "When did Cashmere Coat return?"

"Not until three o'clock in the morning. By
himself. He enters for a few minutes and when he comes out, he has
something like a book in his hand. Franklin has taken over the
surveillance and was across the street, so he could not see for
sure. Then Franklin breaks the rules."

"Fortunately," Auntie Lil interrupted.

"Yes. Most fortuitous," Herbert agreed. "When
Cashmere Coat does not get into the Cadillac and instead starts to
walk towards Times Square on foot, Franklin follows him. He knows
the man has been in and out all night and sees this as suspicious.
The silver car trails the man by half a block and Franklin follows
behind the car. Cashmere Coat is walking and looking around,
obviously seeking out someone. He stops and has a few words with
the cashier of a not-very-nice movie theater at the corner of
Forty-Fifth Street and Eighth Avenue, then continues on foot. He
looks in doorways and down side streets. Finally, he cuts across
Shubert Alley and enters a building at 1515 Broadway. He is inside
for twenty minutes and when he comes out, he does not have the
book-like object with him. He gets in the silver car and it drives
away. Franklin returns to his post."

"1515 Broadway?" T.S. said. "That's the same
address as the man who owns the building. He has a company there
called Broadway Backers."

"Good," Auntie Lil declared firmly. "The game
is afoot. You go to 1515 Broadway and I will go find Detective
Santos and tell him that The Eagle is in Emily's building."

T.S. looked at her skeptically. "Santos will
not be in the mood to hear it."

Auntie Lil shrugged. "What else can we do? We
can't let The Eagle get away."

"He won't believe you," T.S. insisted. "He
had the apartment checked. Someone else is living there now."

"I'll beg," Auntie Lil conceded.

Herbert cleared his throat gently. "I
hesitate to ask, but is it possible you may have made a
mistake?"

Auntie Lil straightened her posture
indignantly. "Certainly not."

"Just the same, it might be prudent to
somehow verify that Emily did live in the building and that a fraud
is now being perpetrated."

"How are we going to do that?" T.S. asked.
"It was hard enough getting information the first time around. All
we had to go on was this guy here, who called her The Pineapple
Lady, for God's sake, and some man who liked weird-looking Jamaican
stew who thought she lived in the building. It's a miracle we found
her in the first place. It's not exactly like people are stepping
forward by the dozen to verify her residency."

Herbert's burnished face wrinkled in intense
concentration. They waited silently and were rewarded when he
finally looked up, eyes calm once again. "Then we will work with
what we have," he announced.

"Such as?" T.S. wanted to know.

"She liked pineapple," Herbert said
simply.

T.S. stared at him, mystified.

"When I resume my shift, I will ask the owner
of the Korean fruit stand on the corner if he knows her," Herbert
explained.

"He won't tell you a thing," T.S. warned. "I
doubt he even speaks English."

"No need to." Herbert modestly brushed dust
from his jacket shoulder. "I speak Korean. That is why he will tell
me everything. Approach a man in his own language and you are
displaying the ultimate respect. It is an irresistible request for
help."

"You speak Korean?" T.S. asked, impressed.
Herbert was always surprising him.

"Yes. I learned it during the Korean War.
Leave it all to me."

"Everything all right here?" Billy
interrupted. The deli owner had been standing behind them. All
three of the assembled friends wondered for how long.

"We' re fine," T.S. assured him. "Just fine."
The man moved back behind the counter and began slicing cuts of
cheese. "We're meeting somewhere else later," T.S. decided. "I
don't trust this guy. Herbert, you're checking with the fruit stand
then you're back watching the building, right?"

"Correct. Everyone else will be eating at St.
Barnabas for the next few hours, so I must take up the post
myself."

"Okay. Auntie Lil—meet me at Mike's American
Bar and Grill when you're done at the precinct. It's at Tenth and
Forty-Fifth."

"Why not Robert's?" she asked. "You keep
talking about it. I want to see it."

T.S. was not anxious to become reacquainted
with the waiter there. "Let's go to Mike's where we're completely
unknown."

They agreed and dispersed towards their
tasks.

T.S. could not resist the opportunity to
observe Herbert in action. He stood a discreet distance away from
the fruit stand watching as Herbert approached a small man in a
white apron. He was cutting chunks of fruit from a pile of slightly
bruised cantaloupes and pineapples, and was assembling small fruit
salads for sale at exorbitant prices to business people too busy to
eat any other way but on the run.

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.