A Cast of Killers (17 page)

Books were pulled from a small bookshelf
against one wall and piled in careless heaps on the floor, pages
mashed together or ripped. Even the refrigerator door hung open.
The meager contents—a carton of milk, a dish of mold-covered
pudding, three eggs and an opened can of now rotting pineapple
chunks—no longer smelled fresh.

"It's been searched," T.S. whispered. "At
least a couple of days ago. I wonder what they were looking
for."

"Shut the front door," Auntie Lil whispered
back.

"What?"

"Shut the door. I don't want anyone walking
by and seeing us in here."

He obediently shut the door and fumbled for
the light switch of a lamp mounted on the wall. Illumination only
made the mess that much more depressing.

"The Eagle," T.S. said. "The man sitting
beside her. He must have stolen her pocketbook and gotten her keys.
The place has been robbed. He knew where she lived."

"It hasn't really been robbed," Auntie Lil
said. She picked up a photo frame. "This is sterling silver. Why
didn't he take it?" She searched among the piles of possessions
strewn across the floor. "No jewelry left. Of course, she might not
have had any. But here are some settings of real silver. And the
television's still here. Look, here's some sort of handheld video
game, still in the box." She held up a crumpled sheet of colorful
paper and some ribbon. "It was a present and it's been unwrapped,
but the burglar didn't take it. If it was a robber, he wasn't very
thorough."

T.S. noticed a small bureau in the miniscule
hallway leading to a tiny bathroom. Clothes had been pulled from
the drawers and dangled down in multicolored strips. Old lady
clothes. Out of style. Smelling musty.

"Here's the closet," Auntie Lil announced in
a loud whisper. She poked her head inside and set to work taking
inventory. "This is where she lived, all right," she hissed back
over her shoulder. "This wardrobe is right out of Central Casting
for a proud, retired actress. Besides, I recognize this green suit.
Lord & Taylor. Circa 1964. And look at this."

Several stacks of Playbills at the back of
the closet had been toppled into disarray. A box of ticket stubs
had been opened and dumped on top of the mess. T.S. poked through
the small magazines, looking at the titles.

"She's been to just about everything that's
hit the stage here in the last few years," he said in admiration.
"Talk about supporting the theater."

"Now we know where all her money went,"
Auntie Lil replied. She picked up a handful of ticket stubs and let
them flutter through her fingers. "And why she came back to live in
New York. Remember how Eva said she'd left to get married?" She
stared at the now empty closet shelves. "Check the hallway bureau.
See if there's anything left of a personal nature."

But T.S. did not find any personal
possessions in the bureau drawer. And none in the bathroom. And
nothing at all in the corner kitchenette. "She didn't eat much," he
muttered when he saw the bare cupboards.

"She didn't have much," Auntie Lil replied.
"You know what's missing?" she asked her nephew suddenly, as if
quizzing a favorite pupil.

"Yes." This was one test he could easily
pass. "There's nothing left in the apartment that could identify
her. No photos. No personal papers, and here, look at this, even
the front page has been torn out of her Bible." He held up a small,
leather-bound Bible. The front cover had been bent back and the
first page sloppily ripped away. "In fact, it looks like they took
out the front page of every book that might have had her name in
it." He pushed the piles of books around with his feet. Her clothes
were out-of-date, but her books were not. She had the latest
volumes of celebrity biographies and several expensive picture
books on the Broadway theater.

"What's that red thing dangling down?" Auntie
Lil demanded. She pointed to the Bible. A thick red ribbon marker
several inches wide had been slipped between two pages. "It's a
bookmark," he told Auntie Lil. He thumbed through to see what Emily
had been reading before she died. "And it looks like she was big
into the meek inheriting the earth." He quickly paged through the
rest of the Bible. "She's marked a lot of spots about how blessed
the children are and stuff like that."

"Give it to me," Auntie Lil asked excitedly.
She grabbed the Bible and turned the red marker over, rubbing it
between her fingertips. "This bookmark is funny. It's too wide and
too thick. There's something between the two layers of ribbon." She
pried apart the bottom end of the double ribbon and wiggled two
fingers inside. "It's just been tacked shut with rubber cement or
something. Look at this." She slid a strip of four dime store
photos out and they huddled under the one lamp left standing to
examine it more closely.

Two young boys—one black and one white—stared
uneasily into the camera. The white child had jet black hair that
hung in greasy strands over his face. The black child had
close-cropped hair trimmed flat on top and shaved close to the
skull on the sides. Both boys had pinched and suspicious eyes. And
both of them looked tired. They had curious expressions on their
faces, almost grimaces. Their lips were pulled back unnaturally
over dirty teeth and their chins were thrust forward.

"They're trying to smile," Auntie Lil
declared. She pressed a hand to her heart. "Bless them. They're
trying to smile and I don't think they know how."

T.S. examined it more closely. She was right.
The boys were trying to smile, despite the dirt and grime and
hopelessness revealed by the harsh glare of the cheap photo booth's
light. It illuminated them unmercifully, highlighting every bruise
and imperfection on their faces. And they each had plenty.

"Those are very old faces for boys so young,"
T.S. pointed out.

"Yes, they are, aren't they?" Auntie Lil
brought the photo up just a few inches from her eyes, then turned
the strip over and examined the back. "'To our Grandma,'" she read
out loud. "And they've underlined 'Grandma'." That's it. It doesn't
say anything else. No names. Nothing."

"Let me see." T.S. snatched the strip of
photos back, turned it over, stared, and flipped it back around to
look at their faces again. "How old do you think they are?"

"Not more than eleven or twelve, I'd say. But
how can a woman have one completely black and one completely white
grandchild?" Auntie Lil asked.

T.S. did not answer. He was too busy staring
at their faces. "I know this black kid," he finally said slowly.
"At least, I think I do."

"You do?" Auntie Lil stared at him
skeptically.

"I think so. But I can't remember where I saw
him."

Their whispering was interrupted by a strange
sound. The heavy music blaring from next door was not loud enough
to mask a newer, more disturbing beat. Something was banging
against the wall separating the two apartments with an urgent,
pounding rhythm. T.S. could hear heavy breathing, occasional deep
laughter, and what sounded like small, muffled sobs.

Auntie Lil, who would not admit to slight
deafness, apparently could not hear everything. "What's that
banging?" she demanded in puzzled irritation. "Do you hear a
banging?"

"Never mind, Aunt Lil," T.S. assured her. If
her hearing spared her the salacious details, he wasn't going to
fill her in. "Put those photos in your pocketbook and let's get out
of here."

"Wait." She pulled her arm away and gestured
toward the apartment's single window. "Look. The window's been left
open." They approached it cautiously. It overlooked a small patch
of deserted lot squeezed in between the apartment building and the
one behind it located on the next block. The window had been left
cracked a few inches. They opened it slowly and peeked their heads
out. The apartment shared a fire escape with the one next door.
T.S.—who was closer to the neighboring apartment—caught a quick
glimpse of what the commotion was all about: he saw a bald head
gleaming and a stout body bent over someone or something much
smaller. T.S. blinked and drew quickly back inside.

"Let's go," he said tersely, not wanting to
think about what he had just seen.

"Not so fast," Auntie Lil complained, bending
back out onto the fire escape. "Don't rush me. I might miss a clue.
Like this." She picked up a curl of dark paper and smelled it. "It
stinks. What is it?"

"It's the back of a Polaroid photograph,"
T.S. told her. He scanned the fire escape. "Here's one more."

"Someone was taking photos out on the fire
escape. What on earth for?"

T.S. chose to remain silent. "Let's go," he
said grimly, grabbing her elbow again. "Someone has already cleaned
the place out. We'll tell the police and leave it at that."

"The police?" Auntie Lil asked indignantly.
"They don't know her name any better than we do. What good is that
going to do?"

"The owner of the building can tell them her
name," he explained patiently. They stepped out into the hall and
shut the door carefully behind them. "And I think it might be best
if you didn't mention our little escapade inside. Let's just say we
found out where she lives and leave it at that, shall we?" He
jabbed the button of the elevator five times in quick succession,
anxious to put distance between himself and what he thought he had
seen in the other apartment. They waited a moment without success
and he impatiently pushed the button several more times, then
stopped abruptly. The loud background music had suddenly ceased.
The door to the second apartment opened and a middle-aged man and a
young boy stepped out into the hall. The older man had a large bald
head that gleamed in the hallway light. A fine sheen of
perspiration clung in droplets to the side of his skull. He was red
in the face and hurriedly rebuttoning his jacket, taking no notice
of the boy behind him.

The boy had light blond, very nearly white,
hair that was cut badly in wisps about his face. A small ponytail
no bigger than a watercolor brush scraggled down his neck. He wore
a black tee shirt emblazoned with jagged strips of silver lightning
and the logo of a heavy metal band. His black jeans were so tight
T.S. wondered how he could move, but he could—albeit sullenly and
without any interest in either the bald man or T.S. or Auntie
Lil.

The bald man stopped abruptly when he noticed
he had company, stared at the two of them, said nothing, then
veered suddenly toward the fire stairs. Without a word, he pushed
through the door and disappeared. Auntie Lil took a few steps
forward and stared intently after him, puzzled.

The young boy looked up and noticed them for
the first time. His eyes were reddened and rimmed with purple
shadows underneath. They flickered over T.S. with dulled suspicion,
passing by with disinterest until they spotted Auntie Lil. And then
the boy literally jumped. Both feet—expensively clad in high-priced
athletic shoes— actually left the carpet. His eyes grew wide and he
turned even paler than he had been before. Then he slumped against
the wall and stared harder at an oblivious Auntie Lil. When she
finally turned around and noticed him, the young boy's face cleared
and settled back into a dull mask of apathy.

"Son?" T.S. said, sorry to be a middle-aged
man at that moment. Even that close a kinship to the thing that had
just left them was too close for T.S.

The boy stared again at Auntie Lil. He
stopped short of shaking his head, gave T.S. a sharp look and took
off running. He pushed past them and fled through the fire door,
following the bald man down the steps without a single word.

"What in the world?" Auntie Lil sniffed. The
elevator finally arrived and she stepped inside it indignantly.
"How very rude."

T.S. didn't think that "rude" even began to
describe the boy's behavior. Never mind the sweating man's.
But—having seen what the loud music had tried to hide—he did not
intend to explain it to Auntie Lil, not even with all her knowledge
of people and years of self-professed experience.

There were just some things he'd have to keep
to himself.

Auntie Lil would not leave the building until
they tried to speak to the superintendent about Emily's
identity.

"I think we should leave this to the police,"
T.S. suggested for the third time. "We may be in over our heads."
He did not want to say anymore.

"Nonsense. If you don't spoon-feed the police
everything, they're no help at all." She pressed the
superintendent's bell firmly and did not let up. T.S. was sure that
no one was home, but after a good twenty seconds of nonstop
buzzing, the door flew open and an irritated round face peeked
out.

"What the hell you think you're doing leaning
on my buzzer like that?" a small Hispanic woman demanded of Auntie
Lil. She was missing a front tooth.

Auntie Lil responded to her rudeness by
pushing the door open and peering inside the apartment. Despite the
sunny day outside, the drapes were tightly shut and no lights were
on. An old air conditioner in one corner of the room hummed loudly,
chilling the apartment to near-refrigerator conditions. A tattered
red sofa dominated much of the only room that was visible and a
short, fat man dressed in a sleeveless undershirt and a dirty pair
of pants lay across it. He was ignoring the intrusion and slurping
at a beer while he stared at the only light in the room: a
television set turned loudly to a game show. Auntie Lil decided to
shout above it.

"Where's the super? I want to know the name
of the old woman who lives on the sixth floor," she demanded,
without any attempt at politeness or a cover story. Auntie Lil had
decided that she did not like the events now unfolding.

"I'm the super," the woman who had answered
the door replied indignantly. "And you take your crabby old hands
off my door."