Death Of A Dream Maker (15 page)

“Someone tried to run me down,” Auntie Lil explained
breathlessly. She made a beeline for the one chair that was not
cracked. “Right outside your front door.”

“Convenient for us,” the lieutenant said. “In case we
have to investigate, I mean.”

“I'm serious.” Auntie Lil adjusted her hat and glared
at the detective. “Someone just tried to rub me out.”

“I can understand the impulse,” Lieutenant Abromowitz
admitted.  He smoothed his hair over his growing bald spot. It
was clear that he did not believe a word she said.

“This is not a joking matter,” Herbert broke in
indignantly.

“Who are you?” Lieutenant Abromowitz fixed him with a
bloodshot eye. “Why do you look so familiar?”

He never got his answer. In order to distract the
lieutenant, Auntie Lil made a huge fuss over the arrival of her new
lawyer. “Sadie!” She rushed to the plump woman's side and escorted
her to a chair. “Someone tried to run me down out front.”

“What?” Sadie Schwartz automatically pulled a yellow
legal pad and pen from her briefcase. As an experienced criminal
defense lawyer, she took notes about anything that happened or was
said in front of the police. Auntie Lil repeated her information,
describing the incident and the truck as best she could. Her lawyer
diligently copied it all down.

“Well?” Sadie asked Lieutenant Abromowitz when Auntie
Lil was through detailing her harrowing escape from death.

“Well, what?” The detective glanced pointedly at the
clock. “Do you mind if we get started? After all, you are down here
because I have a couple of questions.”

“My client was just attacked,” Sadie Schwartz
declared indignantly.

Lieutenant Abromowitz sighed. “Listen, I've known
this sweet little old lady here for a couple of years now, while
you've only known her a few hours. So I'm going to cut you a break
and humor you and tell you that you are free to file a report after
we are done with questioning today. But I think you should know
right now that this particular little old lady sees murder, mayhem,
mystery, and conspiracies in everything. Trouble follows her around
like a cloud.”

Sadie looked at Auntie Lil for confirmation.

“I follow trouble,” Auntie Lil corrected him with as
much dignity as she could muster. “It does not follow me.”

Sadie capped her pen and sighed, then began to pull
various stacks of paper from her briefcase. “I just want to remind
you of a few things before we begin,” she informed Lieutenant
Abromowitz. What followed was a lengthy reading of statutes and
court decisions concerning the expanded rights of suspects under
questioning versus the rights of witnesses being interviewed. She
was astutely attempting to force a decision from the lieutenant:
was Auntie Lil considered a witness with information valuable to
the investigation of Max Rosenbloom's death, or was she actually
under suspicion of murder herself? It was a clever move on her part
and a devil's bargain for Lieutenant Abromowitz. He'd have to show
his cards or there would be legal hell to pay.

Auntie Lil grasped this within seconds and beamed at
her lawyer. Sadie Schwartz was not a tall woman, but she carried a
lot of weight nimbly on a slight frame. It did not slow her down.
She was a human cannonball. Her head was small and rounded, and her
hair was a neat cap of sleek black. Her features were small and
sharp, particularly her penetrating eyes. She wore a pair of small
gold-rim glasses on a cord around her neck but never seemed to use
them. They dangled over her ample bosom and expensive dress in lieu
of jewelry. As a defense lawyer, there were few better choices than
Sadie Schwartz: she was tough enough to handle the most truculent
defendant, but capable of looking like everyone's mom when the need
arose.

“Okay, okay.” Lieutenant Abromowitz finally held up
his hands in defeat, stemming the flow of court decisions. “Miss
Hubbert is not actually a suspect at this time. She is a material
witness that we believe could be concealing information crucial to
the motive behind Max Rosenbloom's death.”

Satisfied, Sadie nodded for the detective to
continue. “Don't say a word until I give the okay,” she instructed
Auntie Lil.

Auntie Lil nodded obediently and waited obediently
for the onslaught to begin.

“Why did Max Rosenbloom call you the morning of his
death?”

“I don't know,” Auntie Lil admitted. “He didn't say.”
She paused. “It was very personal. He said he needed to talk to me.
He never arrived, of course.”

“You haven't seen him in twenty years, and he just
calls up and says he's coming over?” Lieutenant Abromowitz asked
skeptically.

“That is correct,” Auntie Lil said softly. “That was
Max.”

“But if you had not seen him in so long, why are your
fingerprints all over his house? Not to mention his brother's
house?” The detective smiled thinly.

Herbert Wong shifted ever so slightly in his chair, a
small wave of discomfort rippling the surface of his usual
calm.

“You're not going to believe this, but...” Auntie Lil
began, falling back on the most pitiful of cliches. She went on to
describe her encounter with Rebecca Rosenbloom and the offering of
the keys.

“I have them right here,” she announced dramatically
in response to the detective's lack of enthusiasm for her tale. She
hauled her enormous pocketbook onto the table and began to search
it for the keys. Unfortunately, they had fallen into the
considerable depths of her purse and she was forced to stack a
variety of objects in front of her as Lieutenant Abromowitz
watched: a box of colored pencils, numerous memo pads, a trio of
fountain pens, a true-crime paperback she'd been meaning to read, a
clear plastic box containing a molar pulled during her last
dentist's visit, an extra pair of sweat socks in case her feet got
wet, four half-eaten rolls of chocolate candies (each with a
different flavor center), long-forgotten reminder notes hastily
scribbled on scraps of scratch paper, a pair of reading glasses, an
electronic Rolodex that she did not know how to use, an electronic
video game that she did know how to use, a napkin she had
inadvertently stolen several weeks before while dining out at a
restaurant, her black beret, two packs of tissues, five sets of
unidentified keys, a bottle of aspirin, a small photograph of Max
she had taken to carrying over the last three days, an unused
portable cosmetic kit given to her by a niece last Christmas, a
checkbook plus three books of checks with starting numbers hundreds
of digits apart, six credit cards, a tattered driver's license,
and—at long last—the set of keys belonging to Rebecca
Rosenbloom.

Lieutenant Abromowitz waited calmly while the pile
mounted. He had viewed the internal madness of her pocketbook on
prior occasions. But Sadie Schwartz could not hide her astonishment
or resist the temptation to peek inside her own comparatively
barren briefcase during the ceremony.

Lieutenant Abromowitz took the keys and examined them
carefully. “We'll have to check the story out.”

“She's going to deny it,” Auntie Lil protested. “She
hates me. Max left me all of his money.”

“I know,” the detective said. “Which brings me to the
next question. Why?”

Thus began a series of probing questions about Auntie
Lil's life and Max Rosenbloom. Some of the questions were extremely
personal in nature, but Auntie Lil answered them all. The detective
made it easier for her. Either Lieutenant Abromowitz had been
attending sensitivity seminars or Sadie Schwartz was having an
impact. He remained respectful, did not push, and confined his
facial expressions to an occasional raising of an eyebrow. All went
well until about an hour into the inquest.

“How long have you been associated with V.J.
Productions?” he said.

“What?” Auntie Lil asked. The sudden change of
subject confused her.

“V.J. Productions, Inc.,” Abromowitz repeated
impatiently. “We know that you're an officer of the company. How
long have you been one?”

“An officer?”

Sadie gently nudged her with a foot, but this did not
slow Auntie Lil down. “I have absolutely no idea what you are
talking about,” she said. “I am not the officer of any corporation,
and I am not involved in production anymore. I retired twenty years
ago, young man.”

“Oh?” He pulled several photostats of tax forms from
a pile.

“I work during the busy seasons now and then,” she
conceded. “But not for a company called V.J. Productions.”

The lieutenant raised an eyebrow and stared, his
upper lip quivering with the scent of his prey. “We have the
evidence, Miss Hubbert,” he said evenly. “We've traced an entire
series of holding companies backward. Your name is all over the
corporate resolutions.”

Auntie Lil locked eyes with her lawyer. “I have never
heard of this company in my life,” she insisted, although a nagging
voice inside her head said otherwise.

“You've made a mistake,” Sadie told Abromowitz.

“I don't think so.” He shuffled his sheaf of papers
and extracted several computer printouts. “Our investigation shows
that Max Rose Fashions made regular payments to a vendor named V.J.
Productions, Inc., over the past year for a total sum in excess of
one point one million dollars. But we can't seem to find any
evidence of a service or product provided in payment for that
money, nor has the company filed corporate taxes during that time.
Since Miss Hubbert here is company president, I thought perhaps she
could explain.”

“President? I most certainly am not. I have no idea
what you are talking about.”

Lieutenant Abromowitz banged his fist on the table in
sudden fury and raised his voice to an angry growl. “I'm talking
about blackmail, Miss Hubbert. Systematic extortion of money from
the man that you claim to have loved.”

“I am not a black—”

“You said my client was a potential witness, not a
suspect,” Sadie interrupted.

“She is. She's a potential witness in the murder of
Max Rosenbloom. And she is also our number-one suspect in the
extortion of him prior to his death.”

“She's neither,” a confident voice interrupted from
the doorway. A small man stood framed by the steel door; his thick
brown hair and abundant beard gave off red highlights under the
glow of the overhead bulb. He looked to be in his midthirties. His
hair was lightly touched with gray and combed back from an oval
face softened by a trace of laugh wrinkles around a pair of watery
blue eyes. He was dressed neatly in a gray suit and wore a
regulation blue necktie.

The fact that all eyes were upon him did nothing to
ruffle his innate composure. He stepped briskly into the room and
handed Lieutenant Abromowitz a business card. A gold-stamped
embossing of an official seal in one corner glinted under the
overhead lights. Lieutenant Abromowitz stared at the card and said
nothing.

“I've been explaining the situation to your
commander,” the newcomer told Abromowitz in an apologetic tone.

When the detective still did not speak, the man
nodded politely to Auntie Lil's entourage and produced another card
for Sadie Schwartz's benefit.

“Special Agent Frank O' Conner,” he explained. He
bowed his head slightly toward Auntie Lil. “Miss Hubbert, I am an
assistant U.S. attorney with the Federal Task Force on Organized
Crime. We'll be taking over control of the investigation into the
death of Mr. Rosenbloom as it overlaps with an ongoing
investigation currently being conducted by my office. I'd like to
apologize for your treatment here today. I'd also like to ask you a
few questions myself. You are under no suspicion whatsoever in the
death of Max Rosenbloom.”

“Certainly,” Auntie Lil replied, relief flooding
through her. Here was order, here was calm. Better yet—here was the
power of the entire federal government bowing to her.

“You say that an attempt was made on your life an
hour ago? In front of this precinct?”

Auntie Lil hesitated. So someone had been watching
her from behind the one-way mirrored wall after all. “That is
correct,” she finally said.

“Can you tell me what the truck and driver looked
like?” O'Conner asked.

Lieutenant Abromowitz marched from the room.

T.S. was disgruntled and disappointed. He was
disgruntled because he had been forced to skip Auntie Lil's
interrogation session due to a prior appointment. He had spent the
last three hours with a mealymouthed lawyer being advised of his
options, given Max Rosenbloom's surprising will. He was tired of
lawyers and longed to converse with a human being who did not end
every statement with multiple-clause qualifiers. And so he had
called Lilah at her vacation home in Maine.

Only now he was disappointed because, after weeks of
his waiting for Lilah to return to New York, she was not coming.
And it was all his fault. His mention of organized crime was
keeping her firmly in the North Woods.

“Theodore,” Her husky voice hesitated. “This time
Auntie Lil has gone too far.”

“We're not really involved. The police have it under
control.”

“Organized crime? I don't think so.” There was a
silence. “Do you think they know who you are?” she asked.

“I don't know. I don't even know if organized crime
has anything to do with Max's death. It's just a rumor.”

“Oh, Theodore. Don't be naive. Of course organized
crime is involved. If you think they're involved, they are
involved. It's the first law of New York City. I know. I own six
service businesses myself. It's a constant battle to keep their
influence at bay. I'm very worried. About you. About your
safety.”

It was gratifying to hear her worry about him, but
less gratifying that she was staying in Maine for another few
weeks. “Come up here,” she urged him. “We could spend a few weeks
alone. Let this whole thing blow over.”