A Cast of Killers (6 page)

"It could have been any one of us," Adelle
declared then, triggering fresh tears.

Nearly a dozen old ladies were sobbing by now
and, naturally, people passing by were slowing to get a better
look. Clearly, more than a few felt the group had somehow been
defrauded by some sort of street con artist. Soon, one well-dressed
elderly gentleman stopped and stood fidgeting in anxious sympathy,
finally reaching for his wallet. "What's the trouble here?" he
asked kindly. "Have you been robbed? Do you need cab fare? Is there
some way I could be of help?"

"Help?" an old actress croaked, touching the
man's arm with impressive sorrow. "Only if you can stop death, sir,
can you be of help to us. We're doomed, I tell you. Doomed."

That must have been beyond his powers, for
the elderly gentleman scurried away with sudden haste, looking back
only once as he patted his pockets to make sure they had not been
picked by what was surely a group of overgrown Fagin-like
cohorts.

"Here, here," T.S. began to murmur, patting
every little old lady that he could reach lightly on the back
without any discernible effect. "It's not so bad as that. Perhaps
they'll release the body to us."

"We can't bury her without her real name,"
Adelle declared, nearly howling in her grief and regret. Caught up
in steamrolling emotions unleashed by this unexpected chance at the
limelight, she had cast decorum to the wind and was now intent on
whipping the other old actresses into a frenzy of regret and shamed
honor. T.S. and Auntie Lil both knew they had to come up with an
idea fast before their sorrow and thwarted theatrical instincts
escalated into hysteria.

"I have an idea," Auntie Lil announced
suddenly. The women stopped sniffling abruptly and stared at
her.

"No, you don't have an idea," T.S. announced
just as quickly.

He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew just
what she was about to offer and an even sneakier one that his
services were somehow involved. "There is nothing we can do to
help," he answered firmly as Auntie Lil's eyes slid away from his
gaze. They both knew that he knew just what she'd been
thinking.

It didn't stop Auntie Lil, of course. "We'll
find out who she was for you," she offered magnanimously.

"But that's a wonderful idea!" Adelle
exclaimed, switching emotions with lightning speed. "You could
investigate her identity for us!"

"That's right," another actress agreed. "If
you solved all those murders before, you could certainly solve this
little mystery."

T.S. stared at his aunt in the expectant
silence that followed. She refused to blush and merely gazed
straight ahead, sticking her chin out an inch or two farther.

"What exactly has my aunt told you?" he asked
the group evenly. Auntie Lil inched away from him indignantly,
still refusing to meet his eye.

"That she singlehandedly solved three murders
that had the police utterly baffled," an old lady announced
matter-of-factly. "Saving two people's lives in the bargain."

"That's right," her companion agreed. "And
got that medal of honor from the chief of detectives. And a letter
of commendation from the mayor."

"But they had to keep it hush-hush and out of
the papers," another actress reported confidently. "On account of
making the NYPD look bad."

"If you could do that," Adelle declared, "you
could certainly do this one thing for us."

If Auntie Lil blushed at any of the
incredibly exaggerated feats they were repeating, T.S. missed it.
He was sure she had not, however, as she was physically, mentally
and morally incapable of embarrassment.

"Theodore and I will think about it," Auntie
Lil promised graciously, hustling him down the sidewalk before he
demanded any details about the medal of honor. "We'll let you know
tomorrow if there's anything we can do to help."

"What's the rush?" T.S. protested, looking
back at the group that was now staring at them in benign confusion.
"I want to hear more about these daring adventures of yours. About
how you single-handedly solved those three murders. About this
medal of honor."

"Oh, shut up, Theodore," she hissed. She had
succeeded in dragging him to Broadway and was waving her enormous
handbag, trying to signal a cab. Instead, she narrowly missed
bashing in several commuter faces by inches. No wonder they all
stepped back and let her take the first taxi that screeched to a
halt.

T.S. decided to let her suffer in silence,
hoping to shame a confession out of her. They rode three blocks
without uttering a sound. T.S. pretended he was listening to the
cab driver's music, but as he was playing a cassette of some sort
of foreign atonal religious chanting, it was difficult to keep up
the pretense.

"Oh, all right," Auntie Lil finally admitted.
She removed a white handkerchief from her handbag and daintily
dabbed at her brow. "Perhaps I did exaggerate our deeds a bit."

"A bit?" T.S. asked. "Sounds to me like
you've been holding campfires and telling tales all night. Sounds
to me like they knew every last detail involved and a good many
more that weren't involved."

"They are very dramatic women," Auntie Lil
explained stiffly. "They like a good story and they're so
appreciative. I simply got a little carried away." She dabbed at
her brow again and he saw that she was truly upset. He felt
ashamed.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "Did you know the
dead woman well?"

"Emily?" She stared out the window. "Not
really. She'd had some long-standing tiff with one of the other
ladies and had not been speaking to any of them for several months.
But they're right, you know, Theodore. No one—and I mean no
one—deserves to die without a name."

Her lower lip quivered and T.S. stared at her
in despair. He hoped she would not start to cry. He didn't think
he'd ever seen her break down and wasn't sure he could handle it
now.

"Now, now, Aunt Lil." He patted her hand
sympathetically and her white cotton gloves felt hot to his touch.
"Someone will step forward to claim her."

"Oh, isn't that the way of the world?" she
asked bitterly. "Always expecting someone else to step forward. No
one else will step forward. If we don't do it, we'll never know who
she really was." Her lower lip quivered again and it was a little
frightening to see her supreme self-control fail.

"This has you really upset," T.S. said
quietly. "I hadn't realized quite how much."

"Well, maybe when you get to be my age you'll
be able to watch other people drop dead without blinking an eye,
but I don't mind telling you that I'm finding it hard."

T.S. blinked. When he hit eighty-four years
of age, he was sure he would not even begin to approach Auntie
Lil's normal, everyday courage. "You didn't seem so upset
before."

"That stupid Officer King had me so angry,
that I couldn't be upset. But now I just can't stop thinking of
that poor woman lying somewhere dead and no one to even claim her
body. Why can't we help them find out who she is? It isn't as if
we're sticking our noses into another homicide. This is child's
play, really, considering our true capabilities." She turned to him
with pleading eyes and he shifted uncomfortably in the seat.

"I just don't see how we could help," he
protested faintly.

"We can find out who she is, so her relatives
can be notified and she can have a decent burial. And at least be
interred under her real name, for God's sake."

"Why us?" T.S. complained. "Let her other
friends do it. They ought to know her real name, anyway, if they
were the good friends they claim to be. They wept enough tears back
there to flood Salt Lake City."

Auntie Lil stared at him without comment for
an icy moment, then tapped sharply on the glass divider.
"Driver—could you take us to the pier at Forty-Fifth and Twelfth
Avenue before we go to Queens?"

"You're paying, lady," he answered back,
taking a sudden right onto Forty-second Street.

"What now?" T.S. asked. When she didn't
answer, he glared out the window. She was punishing him with the
silent treatment and he'd be damned if he'd let it get to him.

"Right there is fine," Auntie Lil told the
driver as they approached the Hudson. The river sparkled dully in
the autumn sunlight, its waves alternating between flat gray and a
murky brown. Auntie Lil pointed toward a deserted landfill pier
that hosted a small amusement park during the summer months. It was
now empty and desolate, no more than a barren stretch of land
dotted with an odd patch of dry grass here and there.

"Keep the meter running," she ordered the
driver. "You come with me," she ordered T.S.

"You're paying for the cab," T.S. warned her
and immediately felt worse. He was behaving like a sullen child. On
the other hand, why not? She was treating him like one, wasn't she?
And all because he could not go along with her latest cockeyed
scheme.

They walked in silence to the end of the
landfill, then followed a concrete pier out into the waves. They
reached the end and she stopped him beside a set of large pilings
and pointed down the river toward the southern tip of Manhattan.
"See that shadow there?"

"What shadow? All I see is smog."

"That's the trouble with you, Theodore," she
told him. "You're so busy being competent that you're blind. That's
the Statue of Liberty." She pointed again.

"I know it's there," he conceded patiently.
"You can pretend to see it, if you want to."

She pursed her lips in irritation and stared
out over the water. "Your great-grandfather worked these shores,"
she began. "He came right off a boat, without a dime to his name,
and a wife and three children to support." Her gentle tone of voice
produced an immediate flush of shame in T.S. She was not the type
of woman to talk about the past. In fact, he did not know if he'd
ever heard her speak about their ancestors before.

"He worked sixteen, sometimes twenty hours a
day," she continued. "And so did your grandfather after him. They
endured years of low wages, losing their jobs to the Irish, finding
new ones, losing those jobs because they were honest, and getting
up at dawn the next day to find new jobs. They worked from sunup to
sundown and into the night. Never complaining. Never asking for
more."

"That's very admirable," T.S. admitted,
trying hard not to let his impatience creep into his voice. He
failed.

"This is not a feel-good lecture, Theodore,"
Auntie Lil told him sharply. "I have a serious point to make."

"Then make it," he suggested. "If you ask me,
you're just trying to shame me into doing what you want."

"Not shame you, Theodore. I'm trying to
explain why we should be the ones to help out this poor, dead
woman."

"Then explain," T.S. said stubbornly, folding
his arms and avoiding her eyes.

"As poor as your family was—and we were very,
very poor until a generation ago—a Hubbert has never turned away
someone else in need. Never. If someone needed help, they got it.
It didn't matter if they were Irish or black or even a drunk. Your
great-grandmother and her daughters after her never turned away
anyone in need. Your mother and I helped your grandmother feed half
of upstate New York during the Depression. And it wasn't because we
were trying to win our way into heaven, either. We did it because
Hubberts have always done it. Because we are blessed. No one has
ever lost a baby in childbirth. Damn few of us have died before our
time. We have the constitutions of oxen and the good sense to avoid
excess in alcohol and religion. And I'm not going to jinx that good
fortune now by turning my back on someone in need. So you can help
me or you can choose to not help me. But I will be very surprised
if you really mean 'no', my dear Theodore. Because if ever there
was a Hubbert who has made me proud, it's you. I refuse to believe
that you could, in good conscience, walk away from this simple
task."

Her lecture finished, she turned abruptly and
marched back to the cab. It was the best way to ensure that he
would not talk back. But in truth, he had been left speechless.
T.S. waited a moment, letting the cool breeze clear his head. He
peeked south just as the sun broke out from behind a cloud and did
spot a reflected glare in the distance. He sighed. Perhaps Auntie
Lil really could see the Statue of Liberty from here. Perhaps he
was far too cynical a man.

He shrugged his shoulders in surrender and
walked slowly back to the cab, out of habit noting that their small
session of family bonding had added a good five dollars to the
tab.

"You win," he said simply, shutting the door
a second before the impatient driver took off with a roar and cut
back east through mid-town. "What do you want me to do?"

Auntie Lil's mood change was instantaneous.
She immediately stowed her disappointment away in favor of her
favorite activity— fulI-speed-ahead-damn-the-torpedoes-action.
Within seconds, her handkerchief was tucked back in her handbag and
she had pulled out her small notebook. She held a pen poised above
its surface and stared dreamily out the window. There was nothing
she loved better than a puzzle.

"We just need a good photograph of her," she
finally announced. "Then we can show it around the neighborhood.
Someone must know her. How can we get one?"

"Beats me. She's dead. No one knows her real
name. We don't even know where she lives."

"Why don't you take a picture of her dead?"
their cab driver suddenly suggested from the front seat.

Amazing, T.S. thought, he'd been listening to
every word they said and had not displayed the slightest emotion.
Obviously, he and Auntie Lil did not even begin to approach in
strangeness the weirdos this guy was used to transporting.

"Why, that's brilliant!" Auntie Lil
exclaimed, leaning forward to tap the seat divider with approval.
"You're wasted driving a cab," she declared.