Death Of A Dream Maker (7 page)

For someone concerned about the family name, Rebecca
Rosenbloom was not exactly brimming with the milk of human kindness
for her relatives.

“What about the woman who was feeding Jacob tissues?”
T.S. asked. “Where does she come in?”

“That’s his wife. Some cheap Italian who was lucky to
get him, sorry as he is. Hah! Did you catch her wig? Pure plastic.
There's no love lost between her and that gold digger who Max
married. Remind themselves of each other, I expect.”

T.S. briefly considered that maybe Max Rosenbloom had
blown himself up to escape from his sister.

“You going to do it or not?” Rebecca Rosenbloom
demanded. “If not, give me my keys back.”

She leaned over the seat and reached for the brass
ring, but Auntie Lil held a white-gloved hand over them to stop
her. “Perhaps we will see what we can turn up over the next few
days,” she murmured smoothly. “If it looks promising, we will
continue.”

Rebecca snickered. “Knew you wouldn't miss being
handed a blank check to snoop around. Call me with anything good.
Number's on the list.” She nodded toward the information she had
supplied, then slipped from the car without another word. She
scurried across the road with the haste of a hermit crab on its way
back to its lair.

“Good God. Has she always been like that?” T.S.
stared after her with distaste.

“No. She's mellowed with age.” Auntie Lil picked up
the keys and examined them, then studied the address list. “She
might have marked which keys belonged to who.”

T.S. stared at her incredulously. “You've got to be
kidding me. We just had a gold mine dumped in our laps and you're
complaining?”

“Not complaining,” Auntie Lil said, her eyes
narrowing as she watched Rebecca slip back inside Max's house.
“Just kvetching. And wondering what she really wants.”

It was nearly six o'clock by the time T.S. convinced
Auntie Lil that further surveillance was useless. They headed back
to her apartment in Queens. They were traveling west and escaped
the traffic jam that clogged the highways leading from Manhattan to
Long Island. T.S. took great satisfaction in zipping past the irate
eastbound commuters. The older he got, the more he craved the
thrill of going against the crowd.

“I’m so hungry I could eat your cooking,” T.S.
declared when they finally reached her apartment. He flopped down
on her small white sofa, grateful that the results of his cleaning
frenzy of a few days before had not yet been obliterated by a host
of new projects. He was too exhausted to move his own body, much
less more bolts of cloth or easels holding half-finished
paintings.

“I suppose you expect me to take that as a
compliment?” Auntie Lil sank down beside him and took off her
sensible shoes, massaging her feet with technical precision. “That
really is the most despicable family I have ever encountered.”

“No wonder you didn't marry Max,” T.S. observed,
hoping to wangle a few details out of her. The attempt failed.

“That wasn't why I didn't marry him, but it would
have been a good enough reason,” she said. Her eyes lingered on the
telephone and she brightened. “Let's invite Herbert over and make
him cook!”

It was a tempting idea. T.S. and Auntie Lil had
reached a truce about Herbert Wong after a brief period of
territorial wrangling over just whose friend he was. First hired by
T.S. many years ago as a messenger at Sterling and Sterling,
Herbert had figured prominently in their adventures ever since
T.S.'s retirement. In the process, the elderly Asian man had
developed an abiding affection for Auntie Lil and the attraction
was mutual.

Initially, their amiable companionship had irked T.S.
Auntie Lil always seemed to spirit his most interesting friends
away. Time had healed this minor wound, however, especially when
T.S. realized that the two old people were, in their own way,
conducting a restrained romance. Herbert was full of bows and
smiles and extreme flattery. Auntie Lil returned his affection by
exempting Herbert from her typically brusque assessments of human
behavior and by frequently affixing her astonishingly intense
attention on him. When she wanted, Auntie Lil could make her target
seem as if he were the only person alive on earth. With Herbert, it
was what she wanted.

T.S. had no idea what they did on the two or three
evenings they spent together each week. For all he knew, they were
out taking tango classes. In fact, given what he did know about
them, they probably were out learning how to tango. Lately, Herbert
had taken up cooking with a vengeance, and T.S. had to admit he was
very good. His cooking reflected his personality. His dishes were
usually perfectly balanced and hinting of some surprising and
indefinable ingredient.

“We can't order him over like a houseboy,” T.S.
protested.

“Of course we can,” Auntie Lil insisted, and turned
out to be quite right. Herbert was delighted to come over and
cook.

He arrived in less than an hour, bearing a bag
bursting with fresh ingredients for a particular stir-fry dish he
remembered from his youth. He entered the living room briskly, his
posture typically erect. He was a small but perfectly proportioned
man. His sturdy shoulders tapered down to a trim waist that showed
but a hint of thickening around the middle. He wore a shiny black
suit over a purple T-shirt, an outfit that would have looked
ridiculous on a man one-third his age but somehow made Herbert seem
exquisitely in fashion. His hair was thinning above a round,
bemused face and his slightly mottled scalp and forehead gleamed
with a burnished glow reminiscent of ripe pears. Herbert's face was
finely lined and always deeply tanned. T.S. had never thought to
ask why. Perhaps he spent his mornings on a pier that jutted out
into Long Island Sound, merging with the elements and achieving
harmony with the world. That would be Herbert Wong.

Herbert was a perfect match for Auntie Lil: strong,
determined, and at ease with who he was and what he’d achieved in
life. His calm presence was also a blessing after the tumultuous
events of the day. T.S. was able to sip a Dewar's and soda while
the two friends clattered pans and chatted in the kitchen.

Halfway through dinner T.S. realized that he should
have been eavesdropping all along. Auntie Lil had lured Herbert
over for reasons that had nothing to do with his culinary
talent.

“So we begin tonight?” Herbert asked politely as he
offered T.S. more homemade spring rolls. T.S. took a third one
guiltily.

“Yes. I've got a strategy all worked out.” Auntie Lil
ignored T.S.'s surprise at this announcement. “We'll start with the
widow, and if she's home, we can nip over to Abe's house
instead.”

“Aunt Lil,” T.S. warned. “You've got to be kidding.
I'm exhausted. I can't go ransacking people's houses tonight. And
may I point out that we could be arrested?”

“You needn't come, Theodore. Herbert and I can manage
quite well.”

“Herbert doesn't drive,” T.S. protested.

“I do.” She stuffed a spring roll in her mouth and
chewed with gusto. Auntie Lil approached eating the exact same way
she approached life: dive in, plow through, and bring on the second
course.

“You are not driving at night,” T.S. replied firmly.
“You are dangerous enough in the daylight when the rest of us can
spot you coming.”

“Then you will simply have to come along as
wheelman.” She smiled and pushed a dish of duck sauce his way.

After so many years of being subject to her tricks,
T.S. could not understand how she continued to outflank him at
every turn. She would have made an incredible general or, better
still, a dictator. “Wheelman, huh?” He shook his head. “I hope you
don't expect me to burn rubber.”

Auntie Lil loved to milk maximum drama out of an
event and she was squeezing every drop out of this one. She was
dressed entirely in black, from her sweatsuit to her tennis shoes
and socks. An ebony beret perched on her head at a jaunty angle,
making her look like a very elderly French cat burglar.

“What a subtle disguise,” T.S. said. “You really
blend in. And that hat will look great in a lineup.”

“You're just mad because you couldn't change clothes,
too.”

It was true. He'd been too tired to drive into
Manhattan and was still trapped in the suit he had worn to the
funeral. There had been a time in T.S.'s life when suits fit him
like second skins and he had felt naked without a coat and tie. But
each passing month since retirement had taken him farther from such
a mind-set. He had come to loathe the confinement of formal clothes
and longed for a sweater and his comfortable Hush Puppies.

It was just before midnight and traffic was light.
They reached Max Rosenbloom's house without incident and cruised
slowly past. The street was bare in front of the dark and silent
home. The mourning was over, the freeloaders having cleared out for
greener pastures. Herbert volunteered to check the garage and was
back in a flash, reporting that no cars were inside. Perhaps the
young widow was out being consoled by friends. Probably a very
special friend, T.S. silently concluded, one quite skilled at
helping her forget her sorrows.

Auntie Lil wanted to be the one to go inside. She was
not about to hand the most exciting portion of their assignment
over to someone else. Herbert volunteered to accompany her, so T.S.
dropped them off at the corner with bemused irritation. Let them
sneak around in the bushes until they tired of this gumshoe
nonsense. He'd take a nap someplace quiet. He parked a block away
under a large tree on the edge of a park, as agreed, and settled
back for a nap.

Auntie Lil held the flashlight while Herbert tried
each of the keys on the ring in succession, coming up with the
right ones halfway through. “Double-locked,” he muttered. “Better
keep a lookout for a burglar alarm.”

But there was no security system. At least, not that
they could discern. No flashing lights, piercing sirens, or
snarling Dobermans waited to welcome them inside. There was,
however, a small cream-colored creature shaped like an elongated
mop that may have been a dog. It made small yipping noises as it
raced in a frenzied circle around them. Auntie Lil could not tell
which end was the front. That mystery was cleared up when it wet
the rug in excitement, leaving a small puddled stain that shone in
the gleam of Herbert's flashlight.

“Max would never have had a dog like that,” Auntie
Lil whispered. “If indeed that thing is a dog.”

“I will search the upstairs,” Herbert told her. “Can
you handle down here?”

“Certainly.”

Herbert crept up the heavily carpeted steps, followed
by the friendly dog. It left little droplets on each step in its
ecstasy.

It was a strange feeling rummaging through someone
else's life, especially when that someone was Max and he had
married such an unlikely woman. Auntie Lil examined the photographs
displayed throughout the house. She sighed. His face was large and
squared off, topped by abundant white hair swept back in a mane. He
had a habit of staring into the camera with the same unapologetic
intensity she had remembered from their time together. In contrast,
the photos of his wife showed an overly made-up but pretty woman,
whose expressions ranged in vacuousness from attempted coquetry to
vapid boredom. Why had he married her? What had made him compromise
so late in life?

Auntie Lil was not doing a very good job of searching
the downstairs. She found one interesting item: an empty,
velvet-lined pouch that might have held a gun at one time. It was
hidden in the back of a foyer-table drawer. But other than that,
she couldn't seem to get past the photos of Max. In fact, she was
still standing in the hallway with her flashlight examining a
professional portrait when she heard the crunch of a car pulling
into the driveway. Someone was home.

She whirled in alarm and raced to the front door,
peering out of the stained-glass side inserts. Max's widow,
Sabrina, hopped from the front seat of a low-slung red Porsche. She
wore a thick fur coat and was holding a small remote-control device
toward the garage door, angrily clicking buttons while she moved it
about in the air, hoping to trigger the radio sensor. The little
dog came yipping down the inside steps to greet its mistress at the
door. Herbert was hot on its heels.

“We've got to get out of here,” he said firmly,
grasping Auntie Lil by the elbow and leading her through the
darkness toward the rear French doors. Their exit was blocked when
a figure stepped out of the kitchen into their path.

“No,” a voice said quietly. “The neighbors are
sitting in their back room overlooking the French doors. You can't
go out that way. Follow me. We can get out through the
basement.”

Too frightened to be surprised, they followed the
mysterious figure down a steep set of stairs into a damp basement
area. Their feet pattered across the concrete floor. Auntie Lil
pointed her flashlight at their leader, briefly illuminating very
blond hair with very black roots. At the rear of the basement they
spotted a large window that opened up at ground level above a
washer and dryer. Herbert helped Auntie Lil climb up on top of the
dryer. She unlocked the window and pushed it open with a screeching
sound that made her heart stop. She and her partners climbed out
the window, scurried through holly bushes, and dashed across the
yard. The lights flicked on in the living room behind them as they
fled down the block and cut over toward the small park, searching
for T.S. and the car. Herbert led the way while the young woman
hustled Auntie Lil with a firm grip on her elbow. No one bothered
to stop and introduce themselves.

T.S. was startled awake by the frantic tapping of
Herbert's flashlight on his car window. He quickly unlocked the car
doors. It seemed as if the entire rear seat filled with people
within seconds. He groggily flipped on the overhead light.