A Cast of Killers

CHAPTER TWO



Two ambulance teams from different hospitals arrived at the same time, providing the assembled diners with diversionary entertainment. As a pair of burly paramedics argued at the entrance to the narrow basement door over who would get the job—bumping their big bellies to prevent the other from entering—a tiny female emergency technician wiggled between them and raced over to the dead woman. She knelt beside her and swiftly checked her vital signs, then shook her head and looked back over her shoulder. "Forget it, Bobby!" she hollered at one of the arguing paramedics. "This one's gone, anyway."

"No, I'm not going to forget it," Bobby yelled back. "I'm tired of this guy dogging my ass. It's starting to get personal, know what I mean?" He poked a hammy finger in the chest of the other ambulance attendant, who knocked it away contemptuously and made a sound deep in his throat that effectively combined the growl of a bear with the hiss of an angry snake. Just the kind of guys you'd want to entrust with the lives of your loved ones.

A low murmur rose in the room and Auntie Lil looked up nervously at T.S., but all he could do was shrug. What was he supposed to do about it? Neither paramedic seemed to feel it inappropriate that they were arguing over a dead body in front of four dozen witnesses and it seemed singularly foolish to get on their bad sides. Who would administer to him in case he got beat up breaking them up? It was not that T.S. was a coward. He was simply, physically, very... prudent.

"I am not forgetting this one," burly Bobby repeated slowly, emphasizing each distinctly uttered word with a poke in the other paramedic's chest.

"Yes, you are going to forget it. Now break it up and beat it." This command was issued by an unseen voice thick with streetwise New York authority. The two men arguing at the door instantly shut their mouths and stepped back silently to let a pair of uniformed NYPD officers enter. The first cop, a petite brunette in a tight uniform, sniffed the odor of Auntie Lil's chili with distaste. The second one zeroed in on the dead body immediately. He was older and his gray hair was cropped in a defiantly out-of-date crew cut. He looked and swaggered like a bad-tempered Marine on the lookout for a fight. His nametag read "King" and he looked like he took it literally.

"Who's in charge here?" he demanded of the room, thumping a large black stick against his palm in a manner that managed to be both bored and threatening at the same time. The assembled group looked up at one another but no one spoke.

"Who's in charge?" Officer King demanded again, pushing the bill of his hat up with a sausage-like finger as he surveyed the room.

This time the crowd turned as one to stare at Father Stebbins. The priest jumped as if someone had goosed him.

"Dear me, I suppose that I am." He stayed well away from the body. "It's a terrible tragedy. Really, very terrible. God has called her home and she has answered."

"Speaking of answers, what happened?" Officer King demanded. His interest in calls was strictly limited to those legally mandated to suspects.

Father Stebbins' hands were shaking and he clutched at his rosary in confusion. "She was eating and, er, she just keeled over. Terrible thing, of course. Though she did depart here in God's house."

The patrolman eyed the priest. "Could you be more specific?" he demanded.

Auntie Lil and the female paramedic decided to butt in at the exact same time.

"She's dead," said the paramedic. "Probably a stroke."

"She's had a heart attack," Auntie Lil declared.

The cop turned his stare to Auntie Lil. Her multicolored head scarf had come partially unwound in the confusion and now trailed behind her like the wimple veil of a princess in a fairy tale. A chili smudge formed a perfect half oval on one of her large apple cheeks. None of this escaped him.

"You a doctor?" he asked Auntie Lil in what was supposed to be a pleasant voice, but instead caused several people to cough in nervous anticipation.

"No, but I—"

"Then get over there with the other old ladies." The cop cocked his head toward Adelle's table and pointed the way with his baton.

Uh, oh. There could be big trouble now. T.S. gripped Auntie Lil's elbow firmly and spirited her to a far corner before she started a riot. "Don't say another word," he warned and she abruptly shut her mouth. But the look she shot Officer King was venomous enough to inspire T.S. to step out of its path.

The first cop was on her radio and the static crackled in the silence of the dining room. Officer King knelt by the dead body and talked quietly to the female paramedic. He nodded his head, then rose and addressed the crowd. "What's her name?" he asked.

No one answered.

"Nobody knows the deceased?" he asked again, loudly. "What's her name?"

Still no one replied, but several pairs of eyes slid over to Adelle's silent table. Officer King, sensing this movement, turned and directly addressed the group of old actresses. "Did any of you ladies happen to know the deceased?" he asked with exaggerated politeness.

"Her name was Emily," one tiny woman finally answered in a tentative voice, her napkin twisted tightly in her hands.

"Emily." The cop nodded thoughtfully. "Well, that clears it all up. Was she related, perhaps, to Cher? Or how about Madonna?" His unexpected sarcasm welled in the room like a bad smell.

"Her stage name was Emily something or other. We don't know her real name," Adelle finally answered. Her stage voice richened with indignant anger. "And you needn't be so bloody rude," she added. A British accent crept in on "bloody" but fled before the end of the sentence. Adelle was trying on attitudes like clothes, enjoying her brief moment in the spotlight.

Officer King sighed and shook his head, making it clear that few jobs were as annoying as being a patrolman on the streets of the Big Apple. "Okay. Show's over," he said abruptly, wagging his baton toward the door. "Beat it. There's nothing anyone can do. The wagon's on the way."

The wagon? Mental images of gravediggers collecting dead plague victims and stacking them like firewood on tops of carts flashed unwillingly through T.S.'s mind. Auntie Lil stiffened with the tightly coiled anticipation of a hyper bird dog and T.S. was forced to grip her elbow even more firmly. Now was not the time for a voicing of opinion.

"Some of us must remain to wash up," Father Stebbins protested, his hand absently patting one shoulder of Fran's—who remained apparently surgically attached to his side. Her sobbings had stopped magically with the entrance of the police, but she had not, T.S. noticed, stepped away from Father Stebbins.

"Then five of you can stay," Officer King announced arbitrarily. "The rest of you clear out, pronto. This is not a circus."

Auntie Lil glared eloquently, then majestically wrapped her scarf burma-style around her neck as if she were Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Most of the other diners fell in obediently behind, shuffling out like an exhausted conga line suddenly weary of the song.

Surprised by Aunt Lil's sudden surrender, T.S. stood staring after the line of slowly departing diners. He had expected her to kick up a fuss, to demand that she be allowed to examine the body. Simply leaving was not in her character at all. Had the lure of a dramatic exit been that much temptation? Somehow he just didn't think so.

"Perhaps you had better go after your aunt," Father Stebbins suggested, plucking at T.S.'s shirt sleeve. "We have enough people to clean up." Fran was marching back into the kitchen, gesturing for the younger volunteers to join her. Having sensed an opportunity to regain supremacy, if only over sinks of dirty pots, she was happy to seize her chance.

More police were arriving and one pair toted a depressingly green canvas stretcher with what looked like a rubber tarp piled on top. T.S. suddenly wanted very much to leave the scene of the death. "Thank you. I'll just make sure Aunt Lil is okay," he told Father Stebbins, his feet skimming across the linoleum in his haste to escape.

The minute he hit the sidewalk he saw the women clustered in a whispering, tightly drawn group a few feet down from the church. Auntie Lil stood at the center, surrounded by Adelle and her followers, and her arms rose and fell dramatically as she addressed the group. Some of the others looked shell-shocked and one or two dabbed at their eyes with hankies. Most stared at Auntie Lil.

T.S.'s stomach tightened a notch. He'd known that something was up when Auntie Lil conceded the battle so quickly. He must have missed a secret signal between the women. You had to watch that Auntie Lil every moment. She was as sneaky as a smart three-year-old. Well, he might as well go ahead and pull her out of trouble one more time.

Unobserved, he sidled over to eavesdrop. It was worse than he'd expected. Auntie Lil was reenacting Emily's death.

"She clutched her throat like this," Auntie Lil insisted, grabbing at her bright scarf. "Her face was blue and her tongue was sticking out like this." She groaned and fell back in exaggerated agony before being caught by a pair of alert old actresses.

"No, no,” Adelle insisted with majestic conviction. "Her tongue was not out, and she did not simply fall back. Nor did she clutch her throat. She did this." Adelle swept an area clear with her arm, held her hands out in supplication, tightened both her face and throat, and began to shudder. The effect was grotesque and startling, but T.S. had to give Adelle credit. The old actress was pretty good. She'd even managed to steal the scene from Auntie Lil.

A few passers-by slowed to eye the scene with concern as Adelle revved up her gyrations. Perhaps it was time to step in.

"Excellent. That was a marvelous reenactment," T.S. told the group grimly, wading in and gripping Auntie Lil's elbow. He would nip this nonsense in the bud. "But what exactly is the point of these macabre charades?"

Auntie Lil shook off his touch like a terrier dropping a snake, and drew herself erect. "We're just verifying that it was a heart attack and not something more sinister." She did not like to be babied in any way, shape or form. Especially in front of other old ladies.

A depressing parade suddenly emerged through the basement entrance. Two bored-looking men in khaki jumpsuits led the way, toting a large heavy plastic bag on the stretcher between them. They were followed by the glowering Officer King, his petite partner and three other uniformed cops. The procession marched glumly over to a blue station wagon and the body was loaded into the back. All five policemen stood near the hood of the car, passing sour expressions between them as if they were searching for the solution to a particularly distasteful dilemma. Just then, Officer King spotted Auntie Lil and the other old ladies. He stared at them for a moment, a curtain of angry wrinkles descending on his furrowed brow. He reached out one hand and very, very slowly crooked his finger, beckoning them forward with unmistakable authority.

"What's he want?" someone muttered. "The bully."

"I guess he needs our help after all," Auntie Lil murmured sweetly. She was going to enjoy this as much as she could. Genteel revenge was her specialty.

"Let's make him beg," Adelle suggested, prompting T.S. to grab Auntie Lil by the elbow once again and drag her toward the police.

"This is no time to let our pride get in the way," T.S. suggested pleasantly, though he felt like spanking more than a few of them. The old ladies followed in a tentative bunch, inching forward as suspiciously as a flock of wild ducks confronted with a bread-toting stranger. They approached the small crowd of policemen and the two groups stared silently at one another. T.S. was reminded of the dreary school dances he'd endured as a young lad in Catholic prep school.

"Well?" Officer King demanded after a moment of antagonistic silence had passed.

"Well, what?" T.S. asked back innocently. If he could seize control before Auntie Lil jumped into the fray, there was a chance they could get somewhere.

"No one knew the dead lady?" the cop asked skeptically. "Not one of you? It looks to me like she was part of your club."

"We told you," Adelle said indignantly. "We called her Emily."

Officer King fell silent and his partner stepped forward. "Ma'am," she explained patiently, "one name is not going to get us very far in New York City. Out of all of you, not one of you knew her last name?"

"She liked being called Emily Toujours," a small voice piped up from the center of the pack. "Because she'd been an understudy to Martha Scott in the original Our Town. Back in 1938."

"She said she'd been an understudy," another voice objected. "I never saw her in it."

"Oh, shut up, Eva," someone else suggested. "You're the one who lied about being in Sailor Beware! for about thirty years and went around calling herself Eva La Louche until we checked the playbill and found out you'd only been an assistant stage manager." An excited murmur ran through the crowd of old ladies in response to the obvious insult.

"You mean Emily Toujours wasn't even her real name?" Auntie Lil interrupted, ignoring the incipient pandemonium brewing behind her.

"It was real to her," Adelle insisted.

"Perhaps Actors' Equity would have her real name on record," T.S. suggested.

This produced a round of titters from the old women, who giggled at his layman's ignorance until Adelle explained. "She wasn't in Equity, love. She hadn't worked in over forty years and none of us can afford the dues."

"It's her own fault for running off and getting married," Eva's persistently dissident voice interjected. "Imagine. Abandoning Broadway in 1945. What a fool she was."

"You haven't worked in that long either," someone pointed out. "And you didn't even get married, Eva."

Another young cop stepped forward into the fray and the old actresses were momentarily distracted as they examined this handsome young personage and admired his uniform. He stood, totally surrounded by them, scratching an ear and trying to decide the best way to deal with a pack of demented old ladies. "It's just that she had no identification on her," he finally explained kindly. "So we have no way of knowing where she lives, or who in her family to contact."

"Hah!" Adelle sputtered. "That's easy enough. She has no family;"

"Well, where did she live?" Officer King interrupted brusquely, elbowing the young pup of an upstart patrolman aside. This time, both the assembled old ladies and the other officers glared. Clearly, he was not scoring points on anyone's popularity meter.

"In a shelter, we think," one of the actresses admitted reluctantly. "We're not really sure, because she was rather a private person."

"Definitely a shelter," one old woman confirmed, pushing her way to the front. She was obviously Eva of the discontent voice. She was plumper than the rest and wore her hair in a badly chosen pixie haircut that was dyed jet black and made even wispier by the fact that she was going bald and her pink scalp peeked through. T.S. decided she was stuck in the Audrey Hepburn era, which was unfortunate, since she lacked about three feet of the required height.

"She'd have put on airs, if she had her own apartment," Eva added, crossing her arms defiantly when no one responded.

"Now, Eva, that's just not true," Adelle chided gently. "You really must get over your feud. For heaven's sake, she's dead now. Let it go."

"I should have been the one asked to 20th Century," Eva said sourly, folding her arms even more tightly across her ample chest. "I'm the one that Mr. Zanuck noticed first."

"But nothing came of it," someone in the middle of the pack protested, voice dripping with exasperation. "It's not like she became a star and you didn't."

"She accused me of being a dime-a-dance girl!" Eva insisted. "When she met her own husband by standing in dark alleys near the USO like some kind of pro—"

"That's enough," Adelle commanded firmly. "Perhaps you should just shut up."

"She was the one who got kicked out of the USO, not me," Eva added sullenly. "And you didn't like her any more than…" Her voice trailed off suddenly as she realized the extent of her friend's disapproval.

Officer King was staring at Eva curiously and Adelle hastened to explain. "She's talking about things that happened forty years ago," she told him. "Don't pay any attention to her. She's old and grouchy."

"And you're not?" Eva glared at Adelle angrily.

"Ladies, ladies," T.S. soothed them. "Let's see if we can't put our personal differences behind us. After all, the police need our help."

Officer King grunted, not liking the idea that he needed anyone's help. He started in again: "You're telling me that no one knows her real name? No one knows where she lives? And no one knows if she has family?" The cop stared at them incredulously.

"Why don't you use what little brains you have?" someone in the middle of the pack finally thought to ask. "She had a pocketbook on her. Why didn't you look in there?"

The cops were starting to stare at each other, exchanging distinct but unspoken messages. They were getting bored and had better things to do—like battling packs of drug addicts, a far more rewarding and productive task than battling this gang of old ladies.

"There was no pocketbook on her, ma'am," the young cop explained patiently.

"Certainly there was," Adelle answered stiffly. "She always carried a pocketbook to match her dress. It was a regular fetish with her."

"We searched the room thoroughly," the policewoman replied. "No pocketbook."

"Well, it's no wonder, the way you stood by and let someone steal it," Auntie Lil pointed out, specifically addressing Officer King. "The way you ordered us out of there, you practically handed it to the thief and held the door open for his getaway."

The cop stared back at Auntie Lil for a long moment of silence, then turned his back abruptly and headed for the blue station wagon holding Emily's body. "Okay, let's pack it in," he ordered the other officers. "That's that. We have here Miss Jane Doe, the latest in a continuing series of unidentified Miss Jane Does, laid low by lost dreams and the cruel anonymous indignities of the ever-gracious City of New York."

His blunt and meanly poetic announcement, combined with their rapid departure, had a stunning effect on those left behind. Was that it? Was there nothing else they were going to do to help poor Emily? The old ladies exchanged shocked and hurt expressions as the officers and police cars wandered away. One or two started to cry as they watched the blue station wagon peel off from the curb and head down the street.

"What's this?" T.S. asked anxiously, putting an arm awkwardly around one old lady. "Delayed reaction?" His sympathy did not have the desired effect.

"No," the woman sniffed, bursting into full-blown tears. She lay her head on T.S.'s shoulder and sobbed with verve. "But that awful policeman is right. It's anonymous and cruel. We should have known her real name. I feel terrible. They'll just throw her into the river or something." This inaccurate and alarming remark sparked new sets of tears.

"Oh, stop it, Anna, that's really being too dramatic." Adelle spoke with unenthusiastic authority and dabbed at her eyes with a hankie. She, too, was dismayed by the sudden end to events. "Surely, they'll bury her somewhere."

"Yes," someone declared through rising sobs. "In some mass grave in Potter's Field with homeless drug addicts and abandoned babies and dead convicts that no one wants."

This last statement, topping all others in dramatic impact, opened the emotional floodgates of the assembled old actresses and tears spread contagiously until nearly everyone was sobbing. Even the feuding Eva, her tears fueled by guilt, wept uncontrollably. T.S. and Auntie Lil stared at one another in dismay.

"And I thought you were overly dramatic," he whispered to her.

Auntie Lil did not smile. "I would not like to die unknown, Theodore," she pointed out curtly.

"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.

"Yes, back home in my country I was very, very good at tracking down people," the driver answered cryptically. "No one ever got away from me," he added, leaving T.S. to imagine himself at the mercy of some sort of escaped death-squad leader.

"Where do they take the bodies?" Auntie Lil asked. She did not really want an answer from the driver. She was merely, as usual, thinking out loud. "The medical examiner's office, that's where. Am I right?"

"Yes, ma'am," the driver assured her. "I saw it on a 'Kojak' rerun."

"How could we get in there?" Her voice trailed off and she stared back over the spires of the Upper East Side with intense concentration. They were passing over the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge and Manhattan lay behind them, its newer buildings shining with bright metallic splendor beneath the sparkling skies of the sunny autumn day. What a shame to die on a day like this, T.S. thought. Even the New York air smelled clean, for a change.

Auntie Lil was silent, searching for a solution. Since T.S. and Auntie Lil had been soul mates for all of his life, he knew what she was thinking at exactly the same time the idea came to her.

"No," he said firmly. "I won't ask her."

"Oh, Theodore." She turned to him and clutched his sleeve, beseeching him for help. He rather enjoyed seeing her beg.

"Lilah knows everyone," Auntie Lil cooed. "And you know how fond of you she is. She's probably been dying for you to telephone her."

"How do you know I haven't been taking her dancing every single night of the week?" he asked grumpily, annoyed at her accurate inference.

Auntie Lil did not bother to answer. They both knew where the truth lay.

T.S. stared out his window and watched a subway train cross the Manhattan Bridge in the distance. Lilah. She moved in a different world, a world of money and meaningless titles and men who owned businesses and women who always looked at least twenty years younger than their age.

He had always been a confident, prepared man in control. But around Lilah, T.S. often felt inexplicably inferior and clumsy. As much as his dreams secretly centered on Lilah, she made his present reality strange and unsettling. He did not like being out of control of his heart, his head or his tongue. So, no, of course he had not been taking Lilah out dancing every night of the week. In fact, he had not seen her at all in months. And Auntie Lil knew it.

Auntie Lil always said that he needed to learn how to live, but just saying so wasn't enough for T.S. Sometimes, he longed for someone to show him how to live. And sometimes he longed for the courage to be different from the stiff and inflexible but capable man that he had been for so many years.

"I could call her," Auntie Lil offered with as much humbleness as she could muster. Even she knew that she was treading on some very thin ice. She liked Lilah almost as much as T.S. liked Lilah, but she had no desire to hurt her beloved nephew.

"No, I'm a big boy. I can certainly call her." There. He'd said it. Now he'd just have to follow through.

"Tonight?" she demanded. Boy, she never knew when to stop pushing her luck. That was probably why she was so damn lucky.

"Okay. Okay. Tonight." He shifted his legs uncomfortably and sighed. Already his palms were starting to sweat.