A Cast of Killers (53 page)

He thought, unexpectedly, of Emily's tiny
body, laid out on the autopsy table.

Discretion, he realized, was not always the
better part of valor.

Having decided, T.S. walked firmly to the
door and stuck his head out. His eyes met Worthington's and locked.
He stared at the producer with contempt.

"You?" Worthington said incredulously,
perplexed and dazed at his misfortune.

"Whatever happened to 'live and let live'?"
T.S. asked him, turning away.

It was light outside by the time Santos
reappeared. Even T.S. had been asleep for several hours. They
raised their groggy heads in response to his disgustingly cheerful
greeting and tried without success to conceal yawns. Auntie Lil's
curls were flattened on one side of her head but sprang out in
clumps of wild disarray on the other side, making her look a bit
deranged. Rather than alert her to this fact, T.S. surreptitiously
ran his fingers through his own hair, forcing his thick locks back
into place. Herbert and Lilah looked remarkably intact, though
sleepy.

The first thing they all noticed was that
Detective Santos held a thick sheath of notes in one hand. The
second thing—at the moment, more important—was that Billy was right
behind him bearing a box full of goodies from the Delicious Deli.
He smiled and laid out fresh coffee, cappuccino and pastries on the
table. Without a word, he nodded good morning and left to return to
his work.

"Born and bred in Hell's Kitchen," Santos
reminded them proudly. "People like him are the neighborhood,
understand? Not these jerks." He threw his papers on the table and
took his time selecting a large pineapple pastry. Then he pried the
top off a cup of steaming black coffee and sighed. "We don't know
everything," he admitted. "But we know most of it. If I tell you,
do you promise to go home and leave me alone?"

Auntie Lil ignored the question. "What don't
you know?" she asked instead.

"We still don't know Emily's real name," the
detective admitted sadly. "But I think we have enough to go on now.
Trust us. It's just a matter of time."

Still no name for Emily? Auntie Lil was
disappointed and her face showed it.

"Maybe the column will help," T.S. consoled
her.

"Column?" Santos stared pointedly at Auntie
Lil.

"Well, tell us what you do know," she
demanded, ignoring his question and flapping a hand at him
impatiently.

Santos took his time chewing his pastry and
surveyed her carefully. "You mean you want to know the whole
story?" he asked idly, teasing her. At last, he held the upper
hand. And he was going to make her pay.

Auntie Lil glared and Detective Santos pushed
a cup of cappuccino across the table to her with a laugh. "Sit back
and relax, Miss Hubbert," he told her. "This may take a while."
Shuffling his notes, he cleared his throat with exaggerated care
and began:

"For starters, 'The Eagle,' as you call him,
is singing like a canary. But Lance Worthington is not. We can't
even get Emily's real name out of him. If he knows it. However,
like I say, that's just a matter of time. And we have been able to
fill in some details, thanks to his girlfriend, Sally St. Claire.
Who, surprisingly enough, really is named Sally St. Claire and
appears to be a not very bright girl from Des Moines who came to
the Big Apple and went bad. I would not want her for my girlfriend.
Loyalty is not her strongest suit. Neither are hearts.

"Who is this man we call The Eagle, also
known as the lovely Leteisha Swann?" Santos was enjoying his moment
in the spotlight and milking it for everything he could get.
"Apparently, he is Rodney Combs, a not very productive member of
society who comes to New York via Los Angeles where, by the way, he
left behind two dead friends, five outstanding felony warrants and
a record as long as your nose, Miss Hubbert. Which is saying a lot.
He is not a nice man and, apparently, an even nastier woman. He
works for himself, so to speak, to pick up pocket change. He also
does some very odd jobs for his landlord and part-time employer,
Mr. Lance Worthington.

"Now, who is Lance
Worthington?" The detective sipped at his coffee while he stared at
some notes. "This is a more difficult question. He has no record
and appears to be a legitimate, if marginally successful, producer
of plays. He made a bit of money fifteen years ago on some
Oh, Calcutta!
rip-off
that had actors disrobing all over the stage. He's spent the last
decade or so trying to emulate his one success. From what we can
piece together, he has lately turned to some very creative methods
of financing."

"Blackmail," Herbert Wong interjected
quietly.

Detective Santos confirmed this with a nod.
"Very effective blackmail, it appears. And, by the way, he is,
indeed, 'the big man.' His methods were very simple. Once he
identified a potential investor, he did his damndest to land the
poor sucker in a compromising position. With some of his targets,
particularly the married ones, his cooperative girlfriend and her
highly acrobatic friends were enough. I will leave out the details
of some of the adventures described to me by Miss St. Claire, as
you would find them difficult to believe, anyway. Other marks were
not so easy, but quite a few usually succumbed to the lure of the
unknown and exotic. Specifically, a transvestite here and there. Or
a young boy."

Lilah sputtered on her coffee and T.S. patted
her gallantly on the back. "I wonder what he had in mind for me?"
she asked.

"No telling," Santos answered drily. "But I
can guarantee you that you'll never get the chance to find out." He
shuffled his notes and continued. "People being as stupid as they
are, his victims would apparently oblige him in his schemes by
drinking so much that they could hardly see and were begging to be
compromised. With their judgment drowned in booze and party drugs,
it was an easy matter to gain evidence of some sort of sexual
misconduct against them. Photographs were taken or, in the case of
the apartment on West Forty-Sixth, videotapes. Which he has
probably turned around and copied for sale to voyeurs, if he's the
kind of guy I think he is." The detective looked up. "He had the
remarkable ability to sniff out investors with a penchant for these
kinds of things. You, Mr. Hubbert, eluded his radar. According to
Miss St. Claire, he couldn't quite figure out what you wanted."

"Thank God for that," T.S.
interjected. The other stared at him curiously.
Well, that didn't quite come out right,
he thought.

"Once he had blackmail material," Santos
explained, "he tightened the screws. Potential investors were told
to put up a certain amount or risk exposure. The amount was
carefully chosen to hurt, but not hurt too much. It was the perfect
scam. Anxious to protect their reputations, investors would hand
over tens of thousands of dollars. In return, Worthington kept
quiet and, in some cases, kept feeding their nasty habits. Plus,
the schmucks could always hold out the hope, however rare, that
they might actually make some profits or, at least, get a few tax
deductions. It wasn't a far-fetched scheme at all. In fact, Miss
St. Claire maintains that he's financed three flops so far in this
manner."

"Three?" T.S. asked incredulously.

"Yes." Santos consulted his
notes. "A musical version of the McCarthy hearings, a drama based
on Fatty Arbuckle's life and something entitled
Mr. Bojangles Goes to Washington.
Would you like to hear the details?"

"No!" they all chorused.

"At any rate, all three efforts bombed. But
the financing was always there to try something new."

"Albert," Lilah said suddenly. She looked at
T.S. and he shrugged. He didn't even want to speculate on what
Lance Worthington might have on the illustrious Albert. As the
victor, he could afford to be gracious.

"Can't help you there," Santos told her.
"Though Mr. Hubbert here told me the story about Albert and it
sounds like he is a victim. But I doubt your Albert or any of the
other blackmail victims will be very forthcoming. To
continue—Worthington does own the building on Forty-Sixth Street.
He bought it about three years ago. Some of his tenants were
uninvolved in his activities, but about a year ago he started
driving out as many of them as he could and replacing them with
struggling actresses and actors who, in exchange for free or
low-cost rent, performed small favors for him." He raised his
eyebrows. "Details anyone?" They shook their heads vigorously.
"Good. You don't want to know. One of the tenants, who calls
himself Gregory Rogers, was involved in your kidnapping last night,
Miss Hubbert. He has no prior record and your story matches his. He
appears to be no more successful as a villain than he was as an
actor."

"Please go easy on him. He didn't want to
harm me," Auntie Lil pointed out again.

"He didn't particularly want to help you,
either," the detective countered.

"What about Emily? Where does she come into
it?" T.S. asked.

Santos sighed. "Here it gets sketchy, because
Worthington isn't talking, but it seems that she first became
involved simply through the misfortune of having rented an
apartment in a building that was soon after bought by Worthington.
First, she refused to move out when he embarked on his campaign to
rid the building of anyone but his cronies. Then, when she noticed
the activities taking place next door, she turned out to be a whole
hell of a lot sharper than he had bargained for. She became
particularly disturbed when she saw that children were involved.
Being a decent woman, unlike so many others in this story, she
still considered the two boys as children. She made friends with
them, according to Little Pete, and tried to get them off the
streets. When that failed, she caused Worthington trouble in some
way and he ordered Rodney Combs to kill her in as anonymous a
fashion as possible. We believe this was to deflect attention away
from his building and to make it difficult for us to track her
movements. Worthington was, in fact, hoping her death would be
ascribed to a heart attack or stroke. And he felt sure that,
without an identity, no family would ever step forward to ask for
an autopsy or investigation. It was very important that Emily's
identity be concealed, Miss St. Claire tells me. But she is vague
as to why this is so. Rodney tells a similar story. Neither one of
them seemed to care why Worthington wanted Emily dead. They just
went along."

"Why do you think she had to die
anonymously?" Herbert asked Detective Santos.

He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "I
think maybe your friend, Emily, started calling city agencies and
complaining about the use of the young boys. She probably got
ignored because our agencies are so overworked and the kids aren't
in a home situation and enforcement is pretty much impossible. So
maybe she went too far, tried to get photos or some other kind of
evidence on Worthington. Or, she may have threatened him with an
old law still on the books from the early 1900s that authorizes New
York City to seize a building used for 'bawdy' purposes. I don't
know for sure. But I suspect that she probably made the mistake of
directly confronting Worthington or, even more foolishly, informing
him that she had tried to turn him in to every department and
official she could think of. She may even have said that she was
going to start warning potential backers away."

"Or said she would go public," Auntie Lil
chimed in. "We found clippings of Margo McGregor's columns in her
pocketbook."

Santos stared at her. "In that case, I'll
have to have a word with Miss McGregor." He did not sound entirely
displeased at the prospect. "At any rate, any one of these reasons
could have triggered the order for her death. Worthington had a
lucrative gig going and he didn't want it threatened."

"She had to die without a name in case her
name rang a bell with people in those city agencies. As may have
happened if her name had been widely reported with her death,"
Auntie Lil realized. "That would have raised the possibility of a
connection to him and the chance that her death was not entirely
natural. That's why he had The Eagle remove all traces of her
identity from her apartment— just in case they traced her back to
there. And then, of course, he moved one of Sally's friends into
her apartment as a cover. So far as they were concerned, Emily
never existed."

"Probably," Santos agreed. "In fact, I don't
think they had even counted on anyone knowing Emily's stage name,
either. I don't think he realized that she had friends. She kept to
herself so much, except for the soup kitchen. He underestimated her
life. And her friends." He complimented them with a small nod of
his head.

"I hope you're calling around the agencies,
now," Auntie Lil pointed out. "She may have used her real name to
report his activities."

"We' re on it," Santos confirmed patiently.
"Believe me, we're already on it."

"But how does Bob Fleming tie into
Worthington?" T.S. asked.

"Well, frankly, that appears to be Miss
Hubbert's fault." Santos looked at her sternly from over the top of
his notes. "Worthington was already pretty pissed at Fleming
because he sometimes took kids off the street that Worthington
needed for his own purposes. But he was willing to live and let
live, as I understand he loves to say, until he heard that Fleming
was trying to make contact with Timmy and wanted to ask him some
questions about Emily. That led him to believe that Fleming knew
more than he did. He had to take him out of the picture so, instead
of murdering him, he ruined his reputation."

"Pretty effectively, I'd say," T.S.
added.