Death Of A Dream Maker (14 page)

T.S. was trying to calm him down when the telephone
rang. Herbert glanced at his watch. “She is a very punctual woman,”
he announced.

“Who is?” T.S. asked.

“Miss Jones. I asked her to contact me here every
hour on the hour until we connected.”

T.S. groaned. He could tell that his home was going
to become Crime Central Station. His perfect order, his harmonious
efforts, would be disturbed by frantic doings and chaotic
plans.

“I have an idea,” Casey told him before T.S. could
even say hello. “Can you get to my office within half an hour?”

T.S. looked at his guest. “Herbert and I can get a
cab.”

“Good. Meet me here.” She gave an address in the West
Village and hung up before T.S. could protest.

Twenty minutes later T.S. was peering at dingy
storefronts in a part of Greenwich Village barely a block from the
busy West Side Highway. “This is it,” he finally announced, causing
the cabdriver to screech to a halt in front of a low brick
building.

The Acme Detective Agency had a corner location. Any
discretion achieved by the Venetian blinds masking the front
windows was negated by twelve-foot-high red letters proclaiming
Acme Investigations, Inc.
followed by
Licensed &
Affordable
in six-foot blue cursive. A giant gold badge of
undetermined origin completed the gaudy display.

They were buzzed in the front door by the fattest man
that T.S. and Herbert had ever seen. He was perched on a listing
wooden office chair, busily jamming a submarine sandwich into his
mouth. “She's in the back,” he muttered through a thick mouthful of
meat and cheese.

They stepped around a trashcan filled with ice and
cans of beer and explored a small hallway until they found Casey's
office cubicle. She was on the telephone and nodded for them to
sit.

“Look,” she was yelling into the receiver, “I just
take the pictures. If you want to take it out on someone, take it
out on your wife.” She slammed the phone down and tossed an
enlarged color photograph across the desk.

T.S. and Herbert examined it carefully. It showed the
extended Rosenbloom family assembled in front of a stone fireplace.
Max Rosenbloom sat in a chair in the center of the front row. His
various relatives were gathered around him. Sabrina Rosenbloom was
perched on one arm of her husband's chair, but the emotional
distance between them was apparent even in the carefully staged
photograph.

“What's this?” T.S. asked.

“That's stolen,” Casey replied. She grabbed a
backpack from a hook on the back of her door. “I knew it would come
in handy. Let's go. We'll take my car. My money's on the wife and I
intend to nail her.”

“Where are we going?” Herbert asked politely as they
raced after a rushing Casey. They passed the enormously fat man in
the front office. He did not look up from his dessert of a small
mountain of cheesecake.

“We're going to the
Hide-Away Tide-Away Motel
located in Long Beach,” Casey explained. “I followed Sabrina
Rosenbloom there a couple of times, once with the dead nephew,
Davy. If she was having an affair with Davy, I need more proof.
Maybe we'll find a witness we can use to weasel information out of
her. I need T.S. for my cover and you can come along for the
ride.”

Herbert waited in the car, while, reluctantly, T.S.
agreed to act as if he and Casey were seeking a room for the
afternoon.

“I feel so guilty,” he admitted. They stepped into a
dingy lobby decorated with the pale aqua and anemic orange seen
throughout south Florida. The tired nautical theme was represented
by a couple of sagging life preservers and a torn net draped over
the walls. The entire effect seem grossly out of place, given they
were only as far south as Long Island.

“Feeling guilty is part of the appeal,” Casey
explained. “Try to look really aroused while you're at it.” She
grinned at him, her cheerfulness dispelling his embarrassment.

“Got a room?” she asked the desk clerk in a
businesslike tone. The clerk was a cadaverous youth with pale red
hair and very bad skin. His ghostly complexion did little to
bolster the seafaring theme.

“Maybe,” the kid said in a bored tone. “Got thirty
bucks?”

“Thirty bucks?” Casey looked incredulous.

“We're famous,” the clerk explained. He gave an
unctuous smile.

Suddenly T.S. remembered where he had heard of the
Hide-Away Tide-Away Motel
before. It had figured prominently
in a recent tabloid case involving a sixteen-year-old girl, a
thirty-six-year-old mechanic, and his unsuspecting wife. The wife
had been shot in the face by the teenager and now mumbled out of
the side of her mouth like a gangster in a bad forties movie. The
sixteen-year-old had been installed in an upstate jail, where she
endured endless abuse from other inmates jealous of her media
appeal. The mechanic, meanwhile, was tooling around town,
proclaiming his innocence long after anyone ceased to care. The
Hide-Away Tide-Away
had been named by the teenager as the
site of their alleged amorous encounters.

“Of course, Room Nine goes for a little bit more on
account of its historic value,” the clerk added.

“I am not paying thirty bucks for a night in this
dump,” Casey told him. “I don't care who's been playing
hootchie-kootchie between your sheets.”

“That's thirty bucks for an
hour
in this
dump,” the clerk corrected her importantly. He smiled thinly,
revealing teeth that were the color of cardboard.

“An hour?” Casey repeated slowly. She pulled a gold
badge from her pocket and flashed it at the suddenly nervous clerk,
stashing it out of sight as quickly as she had produced it. “I can
tell this is an upscale joint. You charge extra for clean
sheets?”

“I don't want any trouble,” the youth said
immediately, his posture correcting to a respectful stance. He held
up his hands in the universal gesture for “It's not my job.”

“Good. Then tell me if you've seen any of these
people before.” Casey tossed the color photograph on the counter.
“Take your time.”

The clerk sucked on his teeth and stared at the
photograph thoughtfully, lingering first over one face and then
another. He began to nod his head halfway through the process, as
if he had just discovered a great truth about life.

“What?” Casey demanded. “Why are you nodding?”

He touched Sabrina Rosenbloom's face with a
tobacco-stained finger. “She's a regular. Comes here a lot. Nice
lady.”

“Unless you're married to her,” Casey pointed out.
“Who does she come here with?”

“The good-looking guy on the end there.” The clerk
placed his finger on Davy Rosenbloom's face. “Kinda young for her,
not that she's not a babe for an old dame. Of course, you know what
they say about men reaching their sexual peak in their twenties.
Personally, I—”

“Thanks,” Casey interrupted before he could get
started. “How often did she come here with him?”

The clerk looked perplexed. “Can't say. I only know
of one time for sure.”

“Are you positive about that?” Casey asked. “Just
once?”

“I'm not a video camera,” he said defensively.

“Did you ever see her here with anyone else?”

“Well, sure. I said she was a regular.”

“What did they look like?” Casey stared at the kid
expectantly.

He looked slightly panicked. “I don't know. They
looked like guys. Lots of guys. Tall, short, fat, thin.”

“Any shifty-looking guys?” T.S. asked, ignoring
Casey's rolled eyes.

“They were all shifty looking,” the clerk explained.
“Nervous, like you.”

Casey laughed and gave T.S. a meaningful glance that
he failed to interpret properly. “Give him forty bucks,” she
instructed T.S. when he did not move fast enough.

“What?” T.S. asked, placing a hand protectively over
his wallet pocket.

“Give him forty bucks,” Casey repeated. She slipped
the clerk her card as T.S. reluctantly handed over two twenties.
“The first twenty is for helping us out today. The second is to
keep your mouth shut about this if anyone else comes around
asking.”

The clerk whisked the money away and examined Casey's
card. “I thought you were a cop,” he whined.

“Maybe I am,” Casey said with a shrug. She flashed
him a smile and pulled T.S. from the lobby. “We won't be needing a
room after all,” she called back. “We kind of lost the mood, know
what I mean?” She playfully slipped her arm around T.S.'s waist as
they walked back to the car. It was all T.S. could do to keep from
blushing.

Herbert was eager for details and T.S. filled him in.
T.S. thought they had pulled it off rather nicely, but Casey was
dissatisfied. She sulked in the backseat, muttering, as T.S. drove
toward Manhattan.

“What's the matter?” T.S. asked. “It confirmed what
you thought about the widow and Davy.”

“Big deal. I already knew they met there once. I need
more.” She glanced out the window. “I really hate women like that.
I'm going to make her pay.”

T.S. was silent. He was not a professional like
Casey, but even he knew better than to let his personal feelings
interfere with his objectivity.

The next morning, Auntie Lil could not dissuade
Herbert Wong from accompanying her to the police station. “I don't
want to involve you,” she said.

“You should not be alone,” he insisted. “And as T.S.
is unable to accompany you, I am going with you.”

“I'll be fine. My lawyer is meeting me there.” Auntie
Lil selected a hat with an enormous cabbage rose on it and fastened
it on her head.

“But you should not be alone on the journey there,”
Herbert explained. “And I am not afraid of the police. They cannot
seize me. This is America.”

Auntie Lil chose not to enlighten him. It was her
opinion that the last flames of U.S. patriotism were fueled solely
by immigrants. She would not be the one to douse the fire.

They were not so insane as to drive into midtown
Manhattan on a weekday. Instead, they hailed a cab. As the meter
ticked away mercilessly, Auntie Lil reminded herself firmly that
she could afford it.

Streets with police precincts were the only places in
New York where head-in parking was allowed. Patrolmen and
detectives could take advantage of this special perk so long as
they displayed the proper sticker on their windshields. This made
the remaining thoroughfare extremely narrow. A single car could
block traffic, especially on a workday, when trucks from the nearby
garment district clogged the street as well. It was no wonder that
a line of cars and trucks began to honk the second that Auntie Lil
and Herbert attempted to disembark from their cab in front of the
entrance to Midtown South on West Thirty-fifth Street. Several
motorists revved their engines in vague warning. A large truck made
matters—and tempers—worse by cutting into the line behind them.

“Hold your horses,” Auntie Lil yelled at the traffic,
triggering a fresh round of beeps.

Herbert waited as Auntie Lil paid the driver. The
cabbie was afraid she had made a mistake with her generous tip and
sped away the instant she told him to keep the change. A gust of
wind blew by and Auntie Lil hesitated in the middle of the street,
clamping her hat firmly onto her head. Without warning, the truck
behind her leaped toward her, bearing down with gear-grinding
speed. She froze, transfixed by its size.

“Lillian!” Herbert screamed, springing forward with
the quickness of a man a third his age. He knocked her across the
lane of traffic and pinned her to the hood of a parked car seconds
before the truck roared by. Herbert locked eyes with the driver and
then the truck was past. Its sliding back door had jostled open and
the bottom half of a rack of swinging clothing could be seen amid a
cloud of black exhaust as the vehicle roared down the street and
turned a corner.

“Ouch!” Auntie Lil pushed Herbert off and rubbed at
her spine. Her hat drooped over one side of her face, hiding her
frightened expression.

“That was deliberate,” she said. “Someone tried to
kill me.”

Herbert looked skeptical. “We must not be too hasty
in reaching a conclusion, Lillian. The driver looked frightened.
Perhaps his gas pedal jammed?”

“It was absolutely deliberate and that driver looked
determined, not frightened,” Auntie Lil said firmly. “He was a
Pakistani, I think. About five-foot-seven, mid-twenties, weighed
one hundred and fifty pounds, slight mustache, thinning hairline
with a long dark ponytail. Dressed in a plaid shirt. Big ears.
Couldn't see his pants. Wish I'd gotten a better look.”

“What color were his eyes?” Herbert asked in a rare
burst of teasing. He was relieved that the incident had not
squelched Auntie Lil's spirit.

“I couldn't tell. Probably brown.” She stared hard at
Herbert. “You don't believe me, do you?”

Herbert bowed slightly. “I am sure you felt it was
deliberate,” he said enthusiastically, hoping his tone would make
up for his lack of conviction. It didn't and he tried again. “I
noted the appearance of the truck, should the police require it. It
had unusual graffiti—there was a blue moon painted near the cab
with the words
Kid Blue
and
Poppy
near it.”

Auntie Lil was not mollified. “If you don't believe
me, who will?” she asked, leading the way into the police
station.

“About time.” Lieutenant Abromowitz was waiting for
them at the front desk and led them upstairs into a large
interrogation room. One side of the wall was covered with a dusky
mirror. Anyone who had ever seen a cop show on television knew that
the wall was actually a one-way viewing panel. In fact, the biggest
problem most detectives had was convincing suspects to knock off
the grimaces and winks—no one was watching them from the other
side. The NYPD had neither the manpower nor the desire to do
so.