A Cast of Killers (48 page)

The finality and calm confidence of the
prostitute filled Auntie Lil with complete despair. The woman was a
professional, unfazed by abducting her in public and under the
noses of hundred of other New Yorkers. She knew just what to do,
and, most probably, meant exactly what she said. She'd know right
where to stab her, too. There was nothing to do but go along.
Perhaps they did only want to talk to her. Perhaps Eva had been
stubborn again and that was why she died.

They passed the Jamaican restaurant at the
corner of Ninth. Nellie, the owner, sat perched on her customary
table. Auntie Lil turned her head slightly and their eyes locked.
Auntie Lil's were wide with terror, but Nellie's remained as dark
and impassive as ever. In fact, Nellie's braids barely clicked she
turned her head so smoothly to watch the unusual trio crossing the
avenue. They were heading straight west toward Tenth Avenue. Nellie
hesitated, then her eyes clouded over. She looked as if she had
reached a decision, but just then the front bell tinkled and a rare
pair of customers entered the shop. Relieved at the momentary
distraction, Nellie hopped from the table and set to work filling
their order. But her eyes still stared out into the darkness that
yawned on the other side of Ninth Avenue.

Forty-Sixth Street between Tenth and Eleventh
Avenues was deserted. They were too far from the theater to attract
restaurant-goers so the block was completely residential. Now it
would do her no good to scream. A trickle of warmth ran down her
right side and dripped onto her shoe. Just as she'd thought, the
cruel woman on the right had drawn blood with her earlier jab. As
sturdily built as she was, Auntie Lil was eighty-four years old and
had not eaten dinner. She did not know how long she could last
without fainting.

"This is a quiet block," she suggested
helplessly. "We could talk here."

They ignored her and continued to pull her
forward. Up ahead a ragged figure rummaged in a pile of garbage
sacks. They drew closer and Auntie Lil could spot a decrepit old
woman with frazzled hair and filthy clothes hanging from a gaunt
frame.

Adelle, she thought triumphantly. Or one of
the other retired actresses.

The old woman reached into a bag of garbage
and pulled out a discarded container of Chinese food. She stuck two
grimy fingers inside and scooped out the gummy contents, sniffed it
then nodded and took a tentative bite. Auntie Lil's hopes fell. The
poor woman would be of no help to her.

Soon, they reached Tenth Avenue and there to
the left, Auntie Lil could see the neon lights in the windows of
Mike's American Bar and Grill winking in the near darkness. It
seemed like years ago, instead of days, that she had met Theodore
there for lunch. What she wouldn't give for the chance to sit at
the bar there again, sipping a Bloody Mary.

A crowd of men joking and drinking beer on
the corner stepped aside to let them pass.

"Help," Auntie Lil cried out weakly, but a
shrill laugh from the woman on her left masked the sound.

"Hola!" the prostitute sang out to the men.
"Don't go anywhere. I'll be back!"

"Hola!" one of the men called after them.
"You girls working with your granny these days?" The crowd laughed
but their merriment quickly faded behind them as the two women
stepped up their speed, nearly dragging Auntie Lil between them.
Only a deserted street littered with the shadows of huge trucks and
empty garages stood between them and the piers of the Hudson.

"Just a block more to go," Leteisha Swann
announced calmly. "Then we shall see what we shall see."

 
"Don't you know
Rodney's last name?" 
T
.S. asked Little Pete once
again.

The kid shrugged. "He's weird. Comes and
goes. Disappears all the time. No one knows where he lives, man. I
don't like him. Never did. Since way before he beat up Timmy, I
knew he was bad news. He's real mean, you know. Real mean and real
calm. Won't say nothing and then, bam, you're down on the sidewalk.
Cold. He's a cold man. Real cold. Makes me shiver just thinking
about him. I'm going to bust him good."

"No, you're not. You're going to tell this to
the police and let them bust him," T.S. said firmly. He switched
off the tape and slipped the cassette into his jacket pocket.

"The police?" The boy's voice trembled. He
was still unconvinced, though T.S. had spent the better part of a
half hour pleading with him to at least tell the cops about Rodney.
And the rest helping him trash the apartment in what T.S. knew to
be a futile attempt to make it look as if it had been robbed.

"It's all right, son. I'll stay beside you
every minute. They won't ever have you alone." Both T.S. and Little
Pete took reassurance in his repeated use of the word "son." And
both needed reassurance at that moment.

"We won't mention the man at all," T.S.
promised. "Just Rodney. Don't you want to see him punished for what
he did to Timmy?" Little Pete nodded glumly and they left the
apartment. T.S. didn't think they'd get very far before he
bolted.

"What are you going to do with that?" the
small boy asked as they waited for the elevator. He stared at the
videocassette.

T.S. patted it. "Let Detective Santos take a
look." Especially if you take off running down the street like I
think you're going to do, he thought to himself.

"The cops." Little Pete's back stiffened and
he repeated the word several times, as if not quite believing that
he was going to take a stand on the same side as his old enemies.
"What if Rodney finds out it was me who told on him? He'll get out
and kill me."

"No, he won't," T.S. said calmly. "They'll
put him away somewhere where he won't be able to get to anyone ever
again."

"For beating up a kid?" The little boy gave
an ugly, adult-sounding laugh. "That's a joke. You don't know
nothing, man."

"He killed Emily," T.S. said simply. "He
killed Timmy's grandmother and we're going to get him." There.
Maybe that would keep the kid in tow.

Little Pete's eyes grew wide and his mouth
shut abruptly. He stood only inches from T.S. in the elevator car,
craving the comfort of his solid presence like a chick seeks the
shelter of his mother's wings. They rode down in silence, T.S.
sometimes absently patting the boy's head.

The street was crowded with theatergoers and
they had to push through a batch of plump and bejeweled ladies to
reach the street. Sure enough, as T.S. had suspected, Little Pete
began to drag his feet.

"You go without me, man," the boy started to
say, but an indignant buzz cut him off. Shouts rang out on the
other side of the street.

"What's up?" Little Pete asked, standing on
his tiptoes. T.S. unashamedly followed suit. Someone was pushing
through the throng of restaurant-goers. A whole line of pushing
people, in fact. They burst into a patch of deserted sidewalk and,
in that instant, fifty-five years of constant connection to another
human being culminated in a certainty that, somehow, Auntie Lil was
in danger. He knew it the second he recognized the figure plowing
through the crowd at the head of the pack.

Annie O'Day was barreling down the sidewalk
and Billy of the Delicious Deli was a few feet behind.
Inexplicably, they were being followed by a funny old man with a
huge bulbous nose and an impressive ability to run like a younger
man.

"What is it?!" T.S. cried out as they passed
by.

"Your aunt!" the deli owner yelled back when
he recognized T.S.

Heart thumping, T.S. joined the procession,
bringing up the rear. They pushed through the disgruntled crowd
without apology, enduring thrown elbows and sharp shoves. His heart
pounded so loudly that, for a moment, T.S. was afraid he would not
be able to keep up. But once he got going, he hit his rhythm. Plus
fear and pride gave him energy. By God, but that funny old man was
fast. But wait—here came someone even faster. Little Pete passed
him on the left as they neared Ninth Avenue.

"What are we doing?" the boy shouted at T.S.
as he fled past. He was ready to be in on the action.

"Follow them!" T.S. shouted back. "Or better
yet, call the cops." The small boy screeched to a halt on the far
side of the avenue and dashed to the nearest pay phone. T.S. kept
running. Annie's light-colored sweat shirt bobbed in front of him
like a beacon in the darkness. It was followed by a patch of white
from the deli owner's apron. T.S. prayed fervently that whatever
was wrong, those two were on the side of the angels.

The lead runners crossed Ninth Avenue and
hesitated, unsure of where to go next. T.S. slowed with them and
scanned the sidewalk. There was no sign of Auntie Lil. Should they
go west or head up or downtown?

Suddenly, someone crashed into his left side.
T.S. was momentarily thrown off his stride but recovered in time to
continue the chase. A large black woman dashed ahead of him, eating
up the distance between T.S. and the old man with the funny
nose.

"Straight ahead!" she was shouting. "And
hurry! Hurry!" Her beaded braids bobbed wildly as she raced along.
Mesmerized, T.S. increased his speed.

The Westside Highway teemed with intermittent
life, then fell back into loneliness. They were in an area of
seldom used side streets, but as stoplights several blocks away on
either side disgorged waiting cars, long lines of autos would
periodically zoom past. No one slowed as they passed. People picked
the highway because they were in a hurry and it would take more
than a little old lady flanked by prostitutes to merit a second
glance.

Only a few streetlights still worked on the
deserted stretch of sidewalk where they waited in a pool of
darkness for a chance to cross the road. A few blocks farther
downtown, Auntie Lil could see the enormous bulk of the Intrepid',
a huge aircraft carrier that had been converted into a floating
museum. Now closed for the season, its shadow dominated several
blocks of the river. Across from it, the lights of The Westsider
bar blinked steadily.

She wondered if Detective Santos was slumped
at his table, empty glasses of gin scattered before him. Would he
ever guess that she had been brought just a few blocks from him
before her death?

Auntie Lil could not stop the unhappy
thought. Because she was certain now that they meant to kill her.
Otherwise, they would have stopped in the last block where there
wasn't a human being to be found. There was little she could have
told them, but she would have tried. Now, with the deserted pier
just a few lanes of traffic away, she saw that she had been more
than foolish. It would have been better to have risked a stabbing
in a crowd than certain death in the oily waters of the Hudson.

Ahead of them stretched a length of sidewalk
along the river that was topped with the abandoned girding of an
old highway. Unused now, its only purpose was to house the
makeshift cardboard shacks of the homeless. Its structure cast deep
shadows on the nearby piers, creating an area of virtual darkness
next to the water. There was a lull in traffic and the two women
quickly dragged her across the highway. They obviously had a
destination in mind, no doubt because they had been there
before.

They pulled her to a corner of the pier near
the sidewalk, completely shaded by the darkness. Helplessly, Auntie
Lil watched as lines of cars zipped past. No one could see them
where they were.

"She's bleeding," the woman on the left
complained. "Why'd you have to go and cut her? She would have
talked to you."

"Talk to me?" Leteisha Swann gave an ugly
laugh. "Don't be stupid. I don't care what this old lady has to
say. She can tell it to the fishes. If you can find any in
there."

"Hey, you said you weren't going to hurt
her," the blonde protested. "People saw us back there. If this gets
in the papers as a killing, they'll remember. Maybe they didn't say
anything at the time, but they saw us."

"Doesn't matter to me," Leteisha Swann said
calmly. "After this, babe, I'm going to disappear." She snapped her
fingers. "I disappear like that. It's much simpler than you
think."

The other prostitute stared at them in the
darkness, her doubt obvious in her uncertain, husky voice. "I don't
know, Leteisha. We don't have to hurt this old lady. I know I'm not
getting enough money for that. You probably aren't, either. Let's
just see what she knows and let her go."

Leteisha Swann. Auntie Lil remembered. That
was the woman's name. T.S. had been right all along—she was part of
what was going on.

"I'm not doing it for the money," Leteisha
explained to her friend. "I'm doing it for the fun." She smiled.
Her teeth gleamed against the darkness of her face.

The blonde prostitute stepped back,
horrified. "That's rank, Letty. You and me both got mothers, you
know."

"Is this how you people live?" Auntie Lil
demanded. "Discarding people like they were garbage, dumping them
to the bottom of the river like trash?"

"People are garbage, grandma," Leteisha said
calmly. "And taking out the trash happens to be my specialty."

Auntie Lil had heard enough. She kicked
Leteisha in the shins and elicited a reaction. It was not what she
had hoped. The woman cursed and pulled Auntie Lil closer to her
chest, her elbow hooked around Auntie Lil's throat. Her arm was
like a vise, cutting off any chance of escape or even any hope of
being able to make noise. Auntie Lil knew she'd never be able to
wiggle her way out.

"I'll hold her and you cut her throat,"
Leteisha ordered her companion.

The other woman stared back in disgust. "No
way, Letty. I'm not cutting her throat. You needed help getting her
here, I helped," the blonde insisted. "I've done my part. Now I'm
out of here. I'm not cutting anyone's throat." The woman turned to
go but a hiss from Leteisha stopped her.