A Cast of Killers (9 page)

By the time T.S. and Auntie Lil had helped
the other volunteers scrub down the counters and wash the dishes,
it was nearly six o'clock. Lilah was due to arrive any moment and
T.S. scurried to the bathroom to do what he could, with what he had
left, in the way of physical attributes.

Actually, he didn't look too bad for a man
who'd just turned fifty-five. Perhaps the dim bathroom lighting
helped, but there were far fewer wrinkles on his strong German face
than was the case with many of his friends. In fact, he suspected
that a couple of wrinkles had disappeared since he'd retired from
his stress-filled job as personnel manager of a Wall Street private
bank. He smoothed the skin over his broad cheeks and carefully
scrubbed the oil and dirt until he glowed with pink-fleshed health.
He did not like to admit it, but he bore a remarkable resemblance
to Auntie Lil. In fact, a friend had once correctly commented that
Auntie Lil looked exactly like T.S. might look if he were in drag.
T.S. had not appreciated the remark.

He'd had the foresight to bring along a clean
shirt. Immaculate personal grooming, T.S. believed, was the
essential mark of a civilized man. He changed quickly, taking the
opportunity to suck in his small gut and compare it in the mirror
to what he'd seen a few weeks before. Yes, he was almost certain
he'd managed to lose a pound or two. If he held his breath and
threw his shoulders back, he looked no worse than he had a decade
ago. Of course, he couldn't walk or breathe posed like that, plus
his hair had turned an indisputable gray… but at least there was
plenty of it. He'd taken to wearing it a bit longer now that he no
longer had to march in uniformed lockstep with the rest of the Wall
Street crowd. Secretly, he believed he looked a bit like an older
version of that movie star, Richard Gere, but had yet to summon the
courage to ask any friends whether they agreed.

There was a vigorous pounding at the door.
"What are you doing in there?" Auntie Lil demanded. "Lilah is
waiting for us outside."

"Coming," he called out, quickly tucking in
his clean shirt. He didn't look perfect, but it would have to do.
Auntie Lil was waiting impatiently. Yet, after making him hurry,
she deliberately tarried at the doorway until Fran emerged from a
back room. Only then would she leave. Ignoring Auntie Lil, who
blocked her nearly every step of the way, Fran followed them out
the door and walked briskly to the nearby corner and waited for the
traffic light to change. She turned their way only twice—both times
to look up at a small window toward the back of the church, no
doubt the quarters of Father Stebbins.

In a rare act of imperiousness, Auntie Lil
refused to enter the waiting limousine under her own steam. She
stood stubbornly at the curb, swatting away help from T.S., until
Lilah's driver took the hint. The uniformed man finally looked up
from his newspaper, quickly hopped out onto the street and scurried
around to open the rear door for them. Auntie Lil gave him a
courteous but contained nod, slipped inside the long, dark car and
conspicuously bestowed a queen-like departing wave at the far more
pedestrian Fran.

Her grand gesture was cut short when
T.S.—annoyed at her uncharacteristic pettiness—deliberately hopped
in right after her. Besides, it served her right for hogging the
seat next to Lilah.

Unlike himself, Lilah did look perfect. At
least in T.S.'s opinion. She was a tall and athletic woman whose
elegant posture was right at home in the back seat of the
limousine. Lilah wore a purple crepe dress that highlighted her
short white hair and her lovely, outdoor complexion. She shunned
hair dye and most other forms of artifice, as if seeking to atone
for her great wealth by being scrupulously honest about what money
could and could not buy. T.S. admired her healthy beauty and
reflected that, had Auntie Lil not been planted firmly between
them, he might have gracefully pulled off a suave kiss to Lilah's
hand. As it was, he contented himself by craning his neck around
Auntie Lil's enormous hat and nodding.

"Hello, there, Theodore," Lilah said with a
smile. The combined effect of her voice and face so close to his
warmed the temperature of the limousine at least a few degrees.

"Lovely to see you, Lilah," he admitted,
grinning like the village idiot and unable to control his facial
features long enough to stop. A long green feather swept down from
the back of Auntie Lil's hat Three Musketeers-style, then swooped
back up just enough to tickle the end of his nose. He sneezed
violently and tugged on the end of the feather. "Madam, would you
kindly remove your hat?" he asked with a straight face.

Auntie Lil unpinned the contraption and gave
it a rumble seat of its own.

"That's a lovely hat, Lillian," Lilah lied
smoothly. "Wherever did you get it?"

"My friend, Herbert Wong, brought it back
from Pago Pago," she answered.

"Your friend Herbert Wong?" T.S. said. "He
was my friend first." She was always absconding with his friends.
She didn't mean to, she was just so enthusiastic about new
companions that, before T.S. knew what was happening, his former
buddies would be out getting drunk with Auntie Lil while he stayed
home alone and watched television.

"He was your employee," Auntie Lil pointed
out. "He's my friend."

Lilah winked at T.S. in secret sympathy and
he decided that he didn't give a hoot about Herbert Wong one way or
the other. "Where is this place?" he asked cheerfully.

"On First Avenue. Grady knows the address."
Lilah waved a hand toward the driver. He was a handsome, burly man
with the map of Ireland printed all over his broad face. His
reddish brown hair topped a massive head and, as they soon
discovered, he retained a thick Irish brogue.

"Bit of traffic ahead, ma'am," he called back
to Lilah, rather unnecessarily as they had moved ahead little more
than three inches in the last half minute. But instead of being
annoyed, a curious sensation flowed through T.S. They were stalled
near Times Square and all around them, neon lights blinked, it
seemed, in time to the music. People flowed around the car, parting
and coming back together, trying without luck to peer inside to see
if anyone famous rode within. Groups of kids laughed and grabbed at
one another, caught up in the joy and sheer energy of New York,
while well-dressed adults huddled together in groups, suppressing
their childlike merriment at the suspense of waiting for the
nightlife to begin. It was an ideal position for someone like
T.S.—to be so surrounded by life, yet made invisible and, thus,
all-powerful by the anonymous security of the limousine's tinted
windows. T.S. suddenly felt like an integral part of this
excitement, as if he stood at the center of a large wheel and these
lovely people, this wonderful multitude of different faces—all
colors and sizes and shapes and expressions included—all belonged
to him, every last one of them, and were all a part of him, flowing
outward from the center of his benign goodwill like revelers
circling a beribboned Maypole.

"Why, Theodore," he heard Lilah say through a
cacophony of honking horns, the shouts of religious fanatics and
the chatter of at least six different languages. "What an
interesting smile just crossed your face. I don't think I've ever
actually seen you smile that way before. What in the world were you
thinking of just now?"

Glad that Auntie Lil and Grady were occupied
in a discussion about whether disco was coming back, T.S. shook his
head happily. "I don't really know," he confessed. "I just had the
strangest feeling. I really felt alive."

Lilah reached over and patted his hand. Her
touch was warm and far too fleeting. "Retirement must agree with
you. I've never seen you look so handsome."

Handsome? He preened very casually in the
mirrored bar surface. Things were looking up, indeed.

Frustrated by the slow going, Auntie Lil grew
increasingly more excited and was bouncing up and down impatiently
in her seat by the time they reached the medical examiner's
office.

"Have you got the film?" she asked T.S.,
eyeing his camera dubiously.

"Of course. I'm not an idiot." He checked the
back of the camera just in case, though he'd double-checked it
twice before leaving the house. He climbed quickly out of the car
in response to Auntie Lil's impatient push from behind. "Are you
sure you don't want to accompany us?" he asked Lilah politely
through her open window, when she made no move to leave the
limousine.

"Thank you, I believe I'll just stay here
with Grady and come back in for the dinner portion of the evening.
Ask for Rodriquez at the door. He knows what to do." Lilah gave a
fluttering half-wave just as the tinted window rolled back up,
obscuring her face.

Auntie Lil tugged on his arm, admonishing him
to hurry. The entrance doors were locked and they rang a bell as
instructed. Upon hearing a sharp buzz, they pushed through the
front doors and found themselves in a dark and empty reception
room, the employees having fled hours before. Auntie Lil looked
around for an inner door or second buzzer and was just peeking
under the front desk when a small, darkish man with thinning hair
and suspicious eyes burst through a rear door. He gripped a
clipboard against his chest like a shield, stared at Auntie Lil
crouched beneath the receptionist's desk, then scrutinized T.S.
with almost comical mistrust.

"What do you two want?" he asked, delving
right to the heart of the matter.

"You must be Rodriquez," T.S. deflected
politely, extending his hand for his heartiest handshake.

Rodriquez ignored the gesture and wrapped his
lab coat a little more tightly around his protruding middle. "What
if I am?" he demanded truculently.

Auntie Lil rose to her not very impressive
height and looked him straight in the eye. "Lilah Cheswick said to
ask for you," she explained evenly, a hint of steel underlying her
words. "She said it had all been arranged," she added with
mysterious inflection, managing to make it sound as if they were
there to rob, not photograph, bodies.

Rodriquez looked at them with even greater
distaste. "Oh, yeah. You two are the kooks who want to take a
picture of a corpse or something." His expression changed to one of
mild interest, as if he'd run up against all kinds of weirdos
before and they represented a new, slightly intriguing species.

Good grief, T.S. realized. The creep thought
they were on some sort of perverse pleasure trip. Time to nip that
notion in the bud. "We're here to photograph a specific woman who
died yesterday," T.S. explained with stiff dignity. "We are
attempting to secure her true identification from someone in the
vicinity of her neighborhood."

"Sure." Rodriquez nodded slowly, unconvinced.
But he checked his clipboard and motioned them to follow. "Suit
yourself," he said. "It takes all kinds."

Ignoring his jibe, they walked down a long
hallway, turned the corner and pushed past a set of swinging doors
that led them into a narrow, white hospital-like corridor. Double
sets of small square doors about the size and shape of bus terminal
lockers lined the walls on each side for as far as they could see.
Everything was white. It looked like the storage area of a
futuristic stopping point for intergalactic travelers.

"Are all of these full?" Auntie Lil asked
spryly. She eyed the doors in great curiosity. "How many of them
would you say were victims of violent crime?" she inquired, without
waiting for an answer to her first question. "I bet many of them
have been shot. Were any of them stabbed?"

"Let's just confine ourselves to the one
body, shall we?" T.S. suggested, dragging her away from the wall
before she started pulling open drawers and examining the bodies
for signs of foul play.

"Here she is," Rodriquez announced with a bit
of flair. "Number 433."

They gathered around the small door and T.S.
could have sworn that Rodriquez deliberately took his time undoing
the latch just to heighten the suspense. "Now, don't faint on us,
ma'am," he warned Auntie Lil in an experienced voice.

She flapped a gloved hand impatiently and
Rodriquez opened the door, smoothly sliding out a gurney on a steel
track. It rolled into view and stretched across the breadth of the
hallway, gleaming with stainless steel emptiness beneath the glare
of the fluorescent lights above.

"There's no one here!" Auntie Lil cried.
"What have you done with the poor woman?"

"Done with her? We've done nothing with her
at all." Though confused, Rodriquez was still quite capable of
automatically heading off blame before it could be assigned to him.
He frantically scanned his clipboard list. "You say she died
yesterday? West Side. Right?"

"Right," Auntie Lil echoed. "How many old
ladies with no known name or address kicked off yesterday
afternoon, anyway?"

Rodriquez paused to glare at her briefly,
then shook his head and scratched at a small insect bite that had
swelled on one of his cheeks. "Hmmm. You wait here."

He turned abruptly and left them staring at
the empty locker. But not for long. For different reasons, neither
Auntie Lil nor T.S. had any inclination to wait in the hall of the
dead while he poked around in search of the missing body. The
moment Rodriquez disappeared through another set of swinging doors,
both of them went scurrying after him. They were just in time to
see him stick his head through a small door set off another,
shorter corridor.

With the unerring instincts of a middle
linebacker who smells a quarterback sack, Auntie Lil went barreling
down the short hall and chose the most efficient route to success.
She pushed Rodriquez through the door into the room and crowded in
behind him, with T.S. hot on her heels.