A Cast of Killers

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



It was light outside by the time Santos reappeared. Even T.S. had been asleep for several hours. They raised their groggy heads in response to his disgustingly cheerful greeting and tried without success to conceal yawns. Auntie Lil's curls were flattened on one side of her head but sprang out in clumps of wild disarray on the other side, making her look a bit deranged. Rather than alert her to this fact, T.S. surreptitiously ran his fingers through his own hair, forcing his thick locks back into place. Herbert and Lilah looked remarkably intact, though sleepy.

The first thing they all noticed was that Detective Santos held a thick sheath of notes in one hand. The second thing—at the moment, more important—was that Billy was right behind him bearing a box full of goodies from the Delicious Deli. He smiled and laid out fresh coffee, cappuccino and pastries on the table. Without a word, he nodded good morning and left to return to his work.

"Born and bred in Hell's Kitchen," Santos reminded them proudly. "People like him are the neighborhood, understand? Not these jerks." He threw his papers on the table and took his time selecting a large pineapple pastry. Then he pried the top off a cup of steaming black coffee and sighed. "We don't know everything," he admitted. "But we know most of it. If I tell you, do you promise to go home and leave me alone?"

Auntie Lil ignored the question. "What don't you know?" she asked instead.

"We still don't know Emily's real name," the detective admitted sadly. "But I think we have enough to go on now. Trust us. It's just a matter of time."

Still no name for Emily? Auntie Lil was disappointed and her face showed it.

"Maybe the column will help," T.S. consoled her.

"Column?" Santos stared pointedly at Auntie Lil.

"Well, tell us what you do know," she demanded, ignoring his question and flapping a hand at him impatiently.

Santos took his time chewing his pastry and surveyed her carefully. "You mean you want to know the whole story?" he asked idly, teasing her. At last, he held the upper hand. And he was going to make her pay.

Auntie Lil glared and Detective Santos pushed a cup of cappuccino across the table to her with a laugh. "Sit back and relax, Miss Hubbert," he told her. "This may take a while." Shuffling his notes, he cleared his throat with exaggerated care and began:

"For starters, 'The Eagle,' as you call him, is singing like a canary. But Lance Worthington is not. We can't even get Emily's real name out of him. If he knows it. However, like I say, that's just a matter of time. And we have been able to fill in some details, thanks to his girlfriend, Sally St. Claire. Who, surprisingly enough, really is named Sally St. Claire and appears to be a not very bright girl from Des Moines who came to the Big Apple and went bad. I would not want her for my girlfriend. Loyalty is not her strongest suit. Neither are hearts.

"Who is this man we call The Eagle, also known as the lovely Leteisha Swann?" Santos was enjoying his moment in the spotlight and milking it for everything he could get. "Apparently, he is Rodney Combs, a not very productive member of society who comes to New York via Los Angeles where, by the way, he left behind two dead friends, five outstanding felony warrants and a record as long as your nose, Miss Hubbert. Which is saying a lot. He is not a nice man and, apparently, an even nastier woman. He works for himself, so to speak, to pick up pocket change. He also does some very odd jobs for his landlord and part-time employer, Mr. Lance Worthington.

"Now, who is Lance Worthington?" The detective sipped at his coffee while he stared at some notes. "This is a more difficult question. He has no record and appears to be a legitimate, if marginally successful, producer of plays. He made a bit of money fifteen years ago on some Oh, Calcutta! rip-off that had actors disrobing all over the stage. He's spent the last decade or so trying to emulate his one success. From what we can piece together, he has lately turned to some very creative methods of financing."

"Blackmail," Herbert Wong interjected quietly.

Detective Santos confirmed this with a nod. "Very effective blackmail, it appears. And, by the way, he is, indeed, 'the big man.' His methods were very simple. Once he identified a potential investor, he did his damndest to land the poor sucker in a compromising position. With some of his targets, particularly the married ones, his cooperative girlfriend and her highly acrobatic friends were enough. I will leave out the details of some of the adventures described to me by Miss St. Claire, as you would find them difficult to believe, anyway. Other marks were not so easy, but quite a few usually succumbed to the lure of the unknown and exotic. Specifically, a transvestite here and there. Or a young boy."

Lilah sputtered on her coffee and T.S. patted her gallantly on the back. "I wonder what he had in mind for me?" she asked.

"No telling," Santos answered drily. "But I can guarantee you that you'll never get the chance to find out." He shuffled his notes and continued. "People being as stupid as they are, his victims would apparently oblige him in his schemes by drinking so much that they could hardly see and were begging to be compromised. With their judgment drowned in booze and party drugs, it was an easy matter to gain evidence of some sort of sexual misconduct against them. Photographs were taken or, in the case of the apartment on West Forty-Sixth, videotapes. Which he has probably turned around and copied for sale to voyeurs, if he's the kind of guy I think he is." The detective looked up. "He had the remarkable ability to sniff out investors with a penchant for these kinds of things. You, Mr. Hubbert, eluded his radar. According to Miss St. Claire, he couldn't quite figure out what you wanted."

"Thank God for that," T.S. interjected. The other stared at him curiously. Well, that didn't quite come out right, he thought.

"Once he had blackmail material," Santos explained, "he tightened the screws. Potential investors were told to put up a certain amount or risk exposure. The amount was carefully chosen to hurt, but not hurt too much. It was the perfect scam. Anxious to protect their reputations, investors would hand over tens of thousands of dollars. In return, Worthington kept quiet and, in some cases, kept feeding their nasty habits. Plus, the schmucks could always hold out the hope, however rare, that they might actually make some profits or, at least, get a few tax deductions. It wasn't a far-fetched scheme at all. In fact, Miss St. Claire maintains that he's financed three flops so far in this manner."

"Three?" T.S. asked incredulously.

"Yes." Santos consulted his notes. "A musical version of the McCarthy hearings, a drama based on Fatty Arbuckle's life and something entitled Mr. Bojangles Goes to Washington. Would you like to hear the details?"

"No!" they all chorused.

"At any rate, all three efforts bombed. But the financing was always there to try something new."

"Albert," Lilah said suddenly. She looked at T.S. and he shrugged. He didn't even want to speculate on what Lance Worthington might have on the illustrious Albert. As the victor, he could afford to be gracious.

"Can't help you there," Santos told her. "Though Mr. Hubbert here told me the story about Albert and it sounds like he is a victim. But I doubt your Albert or any of the other blackmail victims will be very forthcoming. To continue—Worthington does own the building on Forty-Sixth Street. He bought it about three years ago. Some of his tenants were uninvolved in his activities, but about a year ago he started driving out as many of them as he could and replacing them with struggling actresses and actors who, in exchange for free or low-cost rent, performed small favors for him." He raised his eyebrows. "Details anyone?" They shook their heads vigorously. "Good. You don't want to know. One of the tenants, who calls himself Gregory Rogers, was involved in your kidnapping last night, Miss Hubbert. He has no prior record and your story matches his. He appears to be no more successful as a villain than he was as an actor."

"Please go easy on him. He didn't want to harm me," Auntie Lil pointed out again.

"He didn't particularly want to help you, either," the detective countered.

"What about Emily? Where does she come into it?" T.S. asked.

Santos sighed. "Here it gets sketchy, because Worthington isn't talking, but it seems that she first became involved simply through the misfortune of having rented an apartment in a building that was soon after bought by Worthington. First, she refused to move out when he embarked on his campaign to rid the building of anyone but his cronies. Then, when she noticed the activities taking place next door, she turned out to be a whole hell of a lot sharper than he had bargained for. She became particularly disturbed when she saw that children were involved. Being a decent woman, unlike so many others in this story, she still considered the two boys as children. She made friends with them, according to Little Pete, and tried to get them off the streets. When that failed, she caused Worthington trouble in some way and he ordered Rodney Combs to kill her in as anonymous a fashion as possible. We believe this was to deflect attention away from his building and to make it difficult for us to track her movements. Worthington was, in fact, hoping her death would be ascribed to a heart attack or stroke. And he felt sure that, without an identity, no family would ever step forward to ask for an autopsy or investigation. It was very important that Emily's identity be concealed, Miss St. Claire tells me. But she is vague as to why this is so. Rodney tells a similar story. Neither one of them seemed to care why Worthington wanted Emily dead. They just went along."

"Why do you think she had to die anonymously?" Herbert asked Detective Santos.

He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "I think maybe your friend, Emily, started calling city agencies and complaining about the use of the young boys. She probably got ignored because our agencies are so overworked and the kids aren't in a home situation and enforcement is pretty much impossible. So maybe she went too far, tried to get photos or some other kind of evidence on Worthington. Or, she may have threatened him with an old law still on the books from the early 1900s that authorizes New York City to seize a building used for 'bawdy' purposes. I don't know for sure. But I suspect that she probably made the mistake of directly confronting Worthington or, even more foolishly, informing him that she had tried to turn him in to every department and official she could think of. She may even have said that she was going to start warning potential backers away."

"Or said she would go public," Auntie Lil chimed in. "We found clippings of Margo McGregor's columns in her pocketbook."

Santos stared at her. "In that case, I'll have to have a word with Miss McGregor." He did not sound entirely displeased at the prospect. "At any rate, any one of these reasons could have triggered the order for her death. Worthington had a lucrative gig going and he didn't want it threatened."

"She had to die without a name in case her name rang a bell with people in those city agencies. As may have happened if her name had been widely reported with her death," Auntie Lil realized. "That would have raised the possibility of a connection to him and the chance that her death was not entirely natural. That's why he had The Eagle remove all traces of her identity from her apartment— just in case they traced her back to there. And then, of course, he moved one of Sally's friends into her apartment as a cover. So far as they were concerned, Emily never existed."

"Probably," Santos agreed. "In fact, I don't think they had even counted on anyone knowing Emily's stage name, either. I don't think he realized that she had friends. She kept to herself so much, except for the soup kitchen. He underestimated her life. And her friends." He complimented them with a small nod of his head.

"I hope you're calling around the agencies, now," Auntie Lil pointed out. "She may have used her real name to report his activities."

"We' re on it," Santos confirmed patiently. "Believe me, we're already on it."

"But how does Bob Fleming tie into Worthington?" T.S. asked.

"Well, frankly, that appears to be Miss Hubbert's fault." Santos looked at her sternly from over the top of his notes. "Worthington was already pretty pissed at Fleming because he sometimes took kids off the street that Worthington needed for his own purposes. But he was willing to live and let live, as I understand he loves to say, until he heard that Fleming was trying to make contact with Timmy and wanted to ask him some questions about Emily. That led him to believe that Fleming knew more than he did. He had to take him out of the picture so, instead of murdering him, he ruined his reputation."

"Pretty effectively, I'd say," T.S. added.

Santos nodded. "Worthington was smart about it, too. He had the kid go to a local priest about Fleming, and told Timmy to pretend to be confused and unsure of what to do. It would help establish his credibility, Worthington explained to the kid, if anyone questioned his story. Timmy did as he was told. And the priest, of course, did as he was taught to do and urged the boy to go to the police, never knowing the story was false."

"So Father Stebbins is only guilty of being gullible?" Auntie Lil said incredulously.

"So far as I can tell," Santos conceded.

"Father Stebbins told you about Timmy?" T.S. asked. "Whatever happened to the sanctity of the confessional?"

"He didn't tell me. He spoke in all sorts of cryptic mumbo jumbo clichés. But his, um, companion, filled us in on the details."

"Fran?" Herbert asked.

"I knew there was something going on between those two," Auntie Lil declared.

"Now, I didn't say that," Detective Santos protested. "In fact, I consider that definitely out of my jurisdiction. But I did get the feeling that she sticks pretty close to the padre. When she saw the boy, Timmy, approach him a couple of times, she made it a point to be around in case he came back. Without admitting it in so many words, I got this picture of her lurking behind the pews and by the confessional pretending to dust, if you know what I mean. But she was doing it for a good reason. She didn't trust the kid and thought he was a liar. She thought maybe he was setting Father Stebbins up for something. She came right out and told the priest so, but he didn't believe her. They had a falling out. And she still looks like she wants to wring his neck."

"But after Timmy went to Father Stebbins and lied about Bob Fleming, Annie O'Day found him and convinced him to change his mind?" Auntie Lil asked.

Santos nodded. "Timmy is a street kid. He'll blow with the wind. I think that when Annie reached him and made him feel bad about lying, he truly got confused and went back to see the same priest to sort it out. He doesn't sound like a bad kid at heart, just mixed up and frightened at Emily's death. He told the priest the truth and admitted that Worthington had put him up to lying about Fleming. Father Stebbins was pretty broken up about it—after all, he had counseled the kid to destroy a man's life—so he did his best to convince the kid that he had to retract his statements as soon as possible. He even had the kid halfway talked into ditching New York and going back to Texas. Timmy wouldn't agree to go home but he did agree to retract his accusations. That's when he went to Homefront."

"And said he would only talk to me," Auntie Lil added.

Santos shrugged. "Well, there's no accounting for taste, Miss Hubbert." His eyes twinkled and he located another piece of paper, checked his notes and finished his summary. "The kid was being followed, of course, by Rodney—who had been parading around exclusively as Leteisha ever since he'd poisoned Emily. Rodney puts two and two together when he sees Timmy heading for Homefront, calls Worthington, and gets his orders. As Leteisha, he tells Little Pete that the man has a way for them to make some really big money that night, but that he and Timmy will have to do a job together. Little Pete is sent to get Timmy at Homefront before he can retract the allegations against Fleming. They were told to meet Leteisha at the piano warehouse for instructions and part payment. But, of course, by the time the kids got there, Leteisha was back to being Rodney again and beat the crap out of Timmy to teach him a lesson. And, if you ask me, to kill him as well. But he lived and Rodney will probably eventually be sorry for that. Rodney didn't hurt Little Pete because they needed him that night for one of Worthington's investing scams." He eyed T.S. "The rest of the story, I think you know." He looked up at them expectantly.

"So even in the middle of all this, Worthington was still trying to get something on me?" T.S. asked. "That's why he doped me and tried to set me up with Little Pete?"

"You got it. Like I say, he found you hard to please."

"I should think so." T.S. sat back with great dignity. "How utterly sordid."

"Murder usually is," the detective reminded him.

"And Eva?" Herbert asked almost fearfully. "She was killed because of mistaken identity?"

Here, Santos softened. "Not really," he admitted with a kindly nod toward Auntie Lil. "Don't forget, as Leteisha, Rodney was a real working girl and had coworkers who were always happy to contribute information in exchange for a buck here and there. People, if you want to go so far as to call them that, had been telling The Eagle about you, Miss Hubbert, for a number of days. You'd been seen having dinner with Little Pete. And you apparently met the super of Worthington's building? Funny how that little detail slipped your mind when you gave your statement. Anyway, the descriptions of you weren't very exact. For one thing, they left out your big mouth—" He smiled again, loving every minute of his revenge. "All The Eagle knew was that an old lady was snooping around, and he might have mistaken Eva for you. But I think that Eva was probably killed because she'd put two and two together and had figured out that The Eagle was also Leteisha Swann. She'd been hanging around the stoop as a bag lady or something." He stared at the assembled group. "A curious fact that I'm sure you'll eventually enlighten me on. And she made the mistake of letting The Eagle know he'd been found. I think it was just a matter of hours for her after that."

"She should have told us right away," Auntie Lil protested. "Oh, those women. Always trying to upstage each other."

"Or you," Santos pointed out and she fell silent. "At any rate, after Eva was killed, Worthington figured out that there was more than one little old lady snooping around."

"Many more than one!" Herbert interjected, the memory of being trapped in a street opera still fresh in his mind.

"He was waiting with Sally St. Claire in his car outside Homefront today when Little Pete came for Timmy. He didn't want any more screw-ups and was personally supervising Timmy's removal. He saw you arrive and he saw Bob Fleming rush in after you. Sally says that they went back to the super and asked for a better description of the old lady who'd been asking about Emily. That's when he realized you were the one who'd come around asking questions. And that you were still alive. When they saw you again at the hospital, it was easy to pick you up after that. Since you weren't paying attention like I had warned you to."

The constant undercurrent of jousting between Detective Santos and Auntie Lil was tactfully ignored by the others.

"And the ladies from the soup kitchen?" Herbert asked. "Were they involved in any way? I'm speaking of Miss Adelle and the others."

"The ladies from the soup kitchen are a royal pain in the ass and they turned this place into a zoo last night. But other than that, they are uninvolved. So far as we can tell."

Auntie Lil looked a bit disappointed. "What about Nellie?" she asked. “The woman who runs the Jamaican restaurant?”

T.S. rolled his eyes. Auntie Lil loved conspiracy stories. Even when she had to make them up.

"Certainly she's involved," Santos said. "But only so far as the kid, Little Pete, is concerned. Seems she's had her eye on him for a while. Seen him around the streets. Wants to get him off them. Looks to me like she's going to do it by force, if necessary. She marched him in here and, by God, he told us just about everything. You would have, too, if you had seen the look on that woman's face."

"She's going to try and get custody of him?" Lilah asked.

Santos shook his head. "So far as I'm concerned, it's out of official channels. I have a feeling we should just let things take their course on their own."

"Well, what do you think? Is there enough to get Worthington?" T.S. knew the system and was not convinced. He'd seen worse people get off for more.

Santos nodded slowly. "Yeah, we'll get him. At least on blackmail and ordering Eva's death and endangering the welfare of minors and a handful of other charges."

"But what about Emily's death?" Auntie Lil said indignantly. "That's what started this whole thing."

Santos shrugged. "It's hard. There's not much to tie The Eagle into that murder, much less Worthington. And Rodney Combs knows the system. He hasn't come right out and said he did it. He probably never will. He knows we don't have much on him. I don't think we'll get him on Emily and we certainly won't get him to roll over on Worthington for Emily's murder. Not without a witness to hold over his head."

"Hey, Santos." The beefy desk sergeant stuck his head in the door and bellowed: "Some big black dude is here to see you. Says he's got someone with him you should meet." The sergeant rolled his eyes and twirled a finger by his head.

"It's Franklin." Auntie Lil knew at once.

"Send him in," Santos ordered. A few seconds later, Franklin entered the room, his enormous bulk dwarfing the slight figure of his companion—a funny old man with half a shaved head, uneven beard stubble and rummy eyes.

"I found him," Franklin declared with satisfaction. "Living under the Manhattan Bridge. He saw The Eagle put the poison in Miss Emily's chili. And he's all yours, Mr. Santos. Right?"

Franklin's companion fixed his unnaturally bright eyes on the detective and wheezed his way into speaking like a car getting started on a cold morning. "Yeah. Yeah. Yup. Yup. I seen it all right. And I don't mind saying so if you keep his evil eye away from me. You just point me to where I should stand."

Santos looked at T.S. skeptically.

"It's better than nothing," T.S. said with a shrug.

The detective looked at T.S. "You could be right," he finally admitted. "You have been right before." He gestured for the man to sit at the table and took out his pencil with a sigh. What was one more statement after an entire night of taking notes?


Margo McGregor kept her part of her bargain. Two days later, the following column appeared as the first in what would become a series of columns clearing Bob Fleming and detailing Emily's death. It ran across from the editorial pages of the Sunday edition of New York Newsday, landing in nearly three million homes throughout the metropolitan area:

IT IS TIME TO TURN TO EACH OTHER


New York City is a city with invisible walls as insurmountable as any barrier the world has to offer. These walls separate the rich from the poor, pit black against white and, too often, turn the young against the old. Yet, sometimes we find ourselves breaching these walls in unexpected ways. Those are the times when I am proudest to be a New Yorker. A New Yorker like Emily Toujours.


Two weeks ago Emily died in a Manhattan soup kitchen. She was an old woman, maybe homeless and definitely hungry. In short, her death wasn't big news. Until you take a closer look at her life: after an absence of decades, Emily had returned to the city three years ago, hoping to live out her final years near the stage. She had enough money for a small apartment and, always, orchestra tickets. She did not always have enough money for food. It is probable that Emily found a Broadway much different from the Broadway she remembered. At least until the curtain went up. But even with the grime and the danger that had invaded its streets, her friends say that Emily never stopped loving New York—or the people who live here.


But it turned out that Emily had died as she had lived much of her life—under a stage name. And even then, no one was really quite sure that it was anything but "Emily." She had nothing on her to say who she really was or even to indicate where she lived. And her friends discovered that, among them, no one knew her real name. It appeared that her "Emily" identity would die with her. Despite the dismay of her friends, Emily was assigned a number and left to wait a week in a chilled city locker. Perhaps someone would step up to claim her. If not, there was Potter's Field.


Unexpectedly, someone did step up. Many someones, in fact. All of them New Yorkers like Emily. People who refused to forget. Her friends at the soup kitchen—more than two dozen in all—would not let Emily die unknown. "She has a family somewhere," they told each other. "She deserves to be mourned."


They mounted a campaign to find out her true identity. And if anyone among them doubted Emily's love for drama, they've stopped doubting now: though her real name remained a mystery, her friends discovered that Emily had been poisoned. Who would bother to murder an unknown, nearly penniless, old woman? It was a puzzle that our overburdened police force could not afford to solve. But her friends would not let it go. Young and old, black and white and, yes, even rich and poor, they banded together to unravel why Emily had died.


They found that she died giving of herself to others. Emily Toujours, an old woman who only weighed 84 pounds at her autopsy, died because she tried to help two young runaway boys leave our streets. One boy was black and the other was white. Both of them called her "Grandma." There's nothing really special about either of these boys. They're the kind of kids the rest of us pass by every day. They smirk and make us uncomfortable. We, in turn, make them invisible.


But they weren't invisible to Emily. She turned to every agency, every hotline, every task force and every department in this city for help. Logs show she made more than 85 phone calls in all. What she wanted was someone, anyone, to show her a way to save two young boys from our streets. What she found instead was disinterest, apathy, discouragement and just plain exhaustion. And, like so many other New Yorkers, I am among the guilty ones.


Left to her own, Emily did what she could to encourage the boys to leave New York. She opened her home and what little money she had to two young men she hardly knew. For no apparent reason other than a belief that, even here in New York City, children should be allowed to be children.


Unfortunately for Emily, her plans threatened someone with money and power. That someone apparently paid to have her killed. But he made a classic mistake. He underestimated the determination of Emily's fellow New Yorkers. Thanks to their continued efforts and the help of a NYPD detective who can still find it in his heart to believe in justice, Emily's killers are now behind bars. In death, she beat the odds in New York City: her murder will be marked "solved."


In many ways, Emily triumphed. One of the boys is now off the streets. He has a home and someone to care for him. The other lies in a hospital bed, his future uncertain. But at least the hold of the streets has been broken, albeit along with his bones.


In other ways, Emily continues to fight. She still lies in a city locker on the East Side of Manhattan. And her friends still refuse to give up the search for her real name.


Whether "Emily Toujours" is a real name or not, Emily was definitely a real New Yorker. And her story is a real New York tale, with a moral that holds meaning for all of us: today, in what used to be the greatest city in the world, we often have no one to turn to but ourselves. If we're going to make it at all, we're going to make it by helping each other. So, for God's sake, tear those walls down.


Rest in peace, Emily. Whoever you are. And many thanks for the lesson.


New Yorkers are not a sentimental lot, especially about themselves. Response to the column was just a notch below the reaction that Margo McGregor had received for revealing that the fix was in at the last Madison Square Garden cat show. But, two days later, the column was picked up on the AP wire and landed in fifty million more homes all across America. Including a small clapboard farmhouse a few miles outside of Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Margo McGregor had just returned from a lunch date with Detective Santos when the telephone on her desk rang. Casting caution to the wind, she decided to answer. She was in a good mood—she could handle any kook in the world that day.

"Margo McGregor," she said crisply and was answered by an oddly important silence. The quiet gave way to what seemed at first to be static. Then the columnist realized that it was the sound of someone crying very far away.

"You found my mother," a muffled voice told her.

Margo McGregor broke unexpectedly into tears.


Exactly two weeks to the day after Emily's death, they held the funeral at St. Barnabas. Eva had been buried by the Franciscan sisters several days before. Now, it was time to tell Emily goodbye.

It was a true Indian-summer day. White clouds scuttled across the blue sky above the Hudson and private planes buzzed down the river corridor in enthusiastic confusion. The mournful toot of a liner pulling away from the dock signaled the hour before noon. The assembled mourners shifted on the front steps of St. Barnabas, unwilling to leave the bright day behind.

Among them were T.S. and Auntie Lil. They scanned the arrivals, looking for friends. As they waited, a small man dressed in tan with a huge bulbous nose hurried up the steps toward them. He tipped his hat to Auntie Lil and hurried by.

"Wait," she called after him. "I owe you a thank-you."

He shook his head, bowed deeply and disappeared inside.

"Who's that?" Auntie Lil asked, pointing to Eighth Avenue.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think it was Little Pete."

Nellie was hustling the small boy down the sidewalk, lecturing into his ear. She wore a voluminous flowered dress that flapped in the wind and she was desperately trying to keep her hat on with one hand while subduing her skirt with the other. Suddenly, a gust of wind sent her dress flying up to her waist and her hat tumbling down the sidewalk. Little Pete dashed forward and rescued the hat inches from the gutter. He ran back with his prize and they laughed together, heads thrown back, before slapping their palms in a gleeful high five.

"It's going to work," T.S. predicted.

"Thank God," Auntie Lil agreed.

Nellie and Little Pete stopped to shake hands with them before entering the church.

"You look exceptionally beautiful today," T.S. told her. "And Pete, my man, I have to say that you're absolutely stunning."

Little Pete eyed him carefully, trying to decide if he was being teased or not.

"He ought to look stunning," Nellie interrupted. "I figure this suit took me 843 meat pies worth of profit. Of course, Granny here ate about half of them." She looped an arm over Little Pete's shoulders and smiled at Auntie Lil. "You come in next week for my goat curry, okay?"

Auntie Lil agreed enthusiastically.

T.S. and Auntie Lil watched them enter the church together. "It's gonna work," T.S. predicted again. "Hey," T.S. elbowed Auntie Lil, but when she saw why, she didn't mind a bit. Detective Santos was trying to sneak in the far door of the church and it looked like he had Margo McGregor with him. "Is that a romantic first date or what?" T.S. asked. "He's taking her to a funeral."

"I don't think it's their first date, Theodore, dear. And let's just be grateful he didn't take her to the Westsider."

"That's funny. He looks like he's avoiding us."

"What's funny about that?" Auntie Lil admitted. "I find it quite sensible."

"I knew I'd see you here!" Billy Finnegan was the next to arrive and he had his entire family in tow. Megan looked like a miniature version of her mother, but clearly hated the full skirt of her dress. Billy's son, Michael, looked like a miniature version of his father, down to the hair still wet from a water combing.

"Don't you look like quite the little man," Auntie Lil ventured in a burst of goodwill toward the child.

Michael scowled and grabbed at his collar with a chubby fist. "Aarghh," he gargled as if he were choking.

His mother slapped his hand away from his collar with the speed of a rattlesnake striking. "Michael," she warned slowly. The single word was enough. The small boy stole a peek at Auntie Lil and stuck out his tongue.

"I'm going to be a detective when I grow up," Megan announced to Auntie Lil, unexpectedly slipping her tiny hand into hers. Auntie Lil found herself deeply touched. It was such a small and warm and trusting hand. My goodness, children were innocent.

"A detective?" Auntie Lil echoed.

Megan nodded. "Yes. I'm going to grow up and be just like you." She beamed up at Auntie Lil. Auntie Lil beamed back.

"Let's go, Megan," her mother ordered, and the small girl dutifully followed her family inside.

T.S. was staring at Auntie Lil strangely. "You were nice to that child," he said incredulously.

"She's an unusual child with unusually good taste for someone so young," Auntie Lil defended herself. "She wants to grow up to be me."

"Here comes Franklin." T.S. pointed out a huge figure headed up Eighth Avenue. "And it looks like he has someone with him."

Auntie Lil burst out laughing. "It has to be his brother."

Indeed it was. They were twin giants, as alike in size and coloring as two bears.

"Mr. Hubbert, Miss Hubbert," Franklin said when he reached their step. "I'd like you to meet my brother, Samuel. We'll be heading home to South Carolina tomorrow. I wanted the chance to tell Miss Emily and all of you goodbye."

"Franklin. Samuel—how nice to meet you." Auntie Lil grasped each of their hands in turn and T.S. could have sworn that she gulped. He even thought that he saw tears glistening on her eyelashes.

His thoughts were interrupted by the well-timed arrival of Adelle and her followers. The group swept past in a flurry of black silk and rustling, not unmindful of the handful of photographers who had arrived to capture the requisite heartwarming shot in case no sensational murders popped up that day.

"Black net is making a comeback," T.S. observed.

"With that crowd, it never left." Auntie Lil waved enthusiastically as a scurrying Herbert hurried up the steps to their side.

"I am not late?" he asked anxiously, straightening his tie and smoothing down his thinning hair with one palm.

"Not at all. And don't you look marvelous. Isn't that a wonderful suit, Theodore? Theodore? Theodore.?''

T.S. did not hear her. A long black limousine had pulled up to the curb and an elegant figure was unfolding from the back. Lilah wore a simple black knit dress and a strand of real pearls. Her hair shone in the sunlight.

"What on earth are you looking so green for, Theodore?" Auntie Lil demanded.

The answers to her question emerged from the car behind their mother. Two young ladies in their late teens, each dressed in navy, stood on the sidewalk clutching their purses and shyly eyeing T.S. He was acutely aware that Lilah must have described him to her daughters. He wondered what she had said.

Herbert tactfully hustled Auntie Lil inside the church, providing T.S. with privacy.

"Theodore." Lilah kissed him on each cheek and the familiar smell of her gardenia perfume gave him strength. "This is Alicia. And this is Isabel."

T.S. nodded and managed a smile. Alicia and Isabel ducked their heads together, giggling, and looked up at him from under long eyelashes.

Any nervousness he felt was erased a few seconds later when he distinctly heard one of the daughters whisper: "He looks kind of like an older version of that actor, Richard Gere."

"Yeah," said the other. "Except really, really old."

Well, he would take his compliments where he could get them. He straightened his tie and escorted Lilah inside.

Vase after vase of lilies and gladiolus lined the walls on either side of the church. The smell of flowers wafted through the pews and sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, sending tongues of red and purple and blue tumbling exuberantly across the marble floor. The front doors were propped open and fresh air and sunshine poured down the aisle, filling the church with the promise of the living. It seemed more of a beginning than a goodbye. It was appropriate for Emily.

"Look at all these flowers," T.S. said. "Who in the world paid for them?"

Lilah patted his hand discreetly. "Let's just say that a grateful friend of mine who no longer has to back a certain show about Davy Crockett decided that he'd like to make a small gesture of his appreciation."

T.S. stared at the rows of people filling the church. Many were neighborhood residents, some were nothing more than curiosity seekers. A few were strangers, but even more were his new friends. He recognized many of them from the soup kitchen and it was hard to tell the volunteers from the homeless. Everyone was well scrubbed, subdued and seemingly at peace. Bob Fleming sat stiffly in a shirt and tie in a front pew, next to a radiantly healthy Annie O'Day, who looked equally uncomfortable in her dress. T.S. smiled. They were perfect for one another. Bob would need someone like Annie to help him rebuild.

Emily's coffin gleamed in the filtered sunlight, its rich brown mahogany finish glowing with the reflected glory of the stained glass.

"Good Lord," T.S. whispered. "You really went all out on that thing. It's big enough to hold Orson Welles."

"It's my money, Theodore," Lilah reminded him sweetly. "I have scads of it and I intend to spend it however I like."

"Well, then why don't you throw a few handfuls at poor Bob Fleming?" T.S. whispered. "Homefront really needs it right now."

"I know. And I will." Lilah patted his hand and shot him a private smile.

They found their seats next to Auntie Lil and Herbert. T.S. was well content to sit between the two women he loved most.

Father Stebbins conducted the ceremony with a majestic and tasteful demeanor that surprised both T.S. and Auntie Lil. In his skillful hands, the sometimes ghoulish ceremony of wafting incense around the coffin was transformed into an ancient and vital farewell to the dead. His eulogy, of course, was peppered with cliché after cliché. After all, a leopard doesn't change his spots. But, somehow, it all seemed entirely appropriate. More to the point, he kept it short.

In fact, when he sat down after only a few minutes of speaking, T.S. stared at Auntie Lil in some puzzlement. This was not the Father Stebbins that they knew. But his reason for brevity soon presented itself.

A small woman had been sitting quietly in the front row. She was the kind of woman that was easy to overlook. She wore a simple blue dress and sensible shoes. Her face was plain and unadorned; her hair a dull brown cut in a functional bob.

No one, in fact, would have been likely to notice her had she not risen and walked to the podium when Father Stebbins was done.

"My name is Julia Hansen," the woman began. Her voice was hushed but it had great strength in it. "You don't know who I am, but I will be forever grateful to all of you for what you did for my mother. You were the most loyal and loving friends that she could ever have had and I see now that she was right about New York City.

"You have shown a great deal of love toward a woman you hardly knew. So I'd like to tell you a little about her. My mother was not alone in this world. She was, in fact, loved very much—by her husband and by me. She lived most of her life on a farm in North Dakota. And I think that she was very happy. But after my father died, there was nothing that my husband and I could do to stop her from moving back here to New York. I don't even think that I tried very hard to stop her. I remembered too well how, when I was a child, she would read about all the new plays on Broadway and how excited she would get when, sometimes, she even recognized the name of a friend. She would take me to every touring production that ever came through town. I knew that my mother had never, ever stopped loving the theater.

"And, I guess, she never stopped missing New York. One day, she told us that she was leaving and that was that. I guess she was afraid that we would try to stop her. Or that we would come and get her against her will. She would never even let me know where she lived. Her Social Security check went right into the bank. There were times when I couldn't understand her secrecy, but I think that I understand it now. She had a life here. She was Emily Toujours. She could come back and start over again. And, most of all, she could be near the theater she loved. I think of her sitting in the dark of the audience, dreaming of what might have been. She still loved us, I know. Every month, she would call me and tell me that she was okay. She always described the shows she had seen and her memory was so vivid—it was almost like being there with her."

She stopped for a moment to regain her composure. In the soft light of the church, there were many people who saw Emily in her daughter's determined face.

"My mother will be very much missed," she continued. "Not just by you, but by me and my family. When she didn't call last week, I knew that something was wrong. But I didn't know where to begin. You can't imagine the hurt that a person can go through in just a few hours of not knowing. I was lucky. A few days later, I found my answer in the newspaper.

"But if not for you, the police tell me, I might never have known what happened to her. It would have been too late, they say. She'd have been buried as a number. Instead, I've come to New York to bury my mother. And she will be buried here, because I know it's where she'd want to stay.

"But I've also come to New York to thank you for giving me my mother back. To thank you for giving my family the opportunity to grieve her. And, most of all, to thank you for caring what happened to my mother, both before and after she died."

The woman stopped and looked out over the church very slowly, as if seeking to memorize all of their faces. She sighed and the sound was caught by the microphone. It moved through the church like a shadow.

T.S. reached for Auntie Lil's hand. He knew now that their latest journey was nearing its end.

"My mother's real name was Eleanor Perkins," Emily's daughter concluded. "And she was once a most extraordinary woman."

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