him. Now he turned back to the waiting officers. "Take him in," he ordered tersely, pointing at Leteisha. "I'll meet you there in half an hour."
"Just him?" the policeman protested. He looked at Auntie Lil pointedly, then back at the detective.
"That's what I said," Santos explained tersely. "And no one talks to him until I get there. Understand? No one, not even the Lieutenant."
"What about her?" the male officer asked again. He pointed his baton at Auntie Lil.
"Miss Hubbert and I will be there shortly," the detective answered smoothly. "After we get this little nick here checked out." He took Auntie Lil's arm tenderly and patted her hand as if she were a rare jewel. "I owe you an apology, Miss Hubbert. That and a return favor. We'll stop by the hospital first." He broke into a big smile. "You'll get good service, I guarantee it. I plan to escort you there myself."
Auntie Lil tried to smile back but found herself bursting into fervent tears. T.S. took her firmly by the shoulders and made her sit on the curb. There—surrounded by her new friends—she cried until she could cry no more. Detective Santos and the ambulance crew waited patiently for her to finish.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Detective Santos kept his word. Auntie Lil and T.S. were quickly ushered in past the hospital waiting room crowd. No questions asked and no questions answered. Within half an hour, the hospital was behind them and an unmarked car was waiting at the curb. Auntie Lil climbed in front with the driver without a word, leaving the back seat to Santos and T.S. The men exchanged glances and both understood that she was still shaken up by her ordeal. Santos had spent much of the time in the hospital questioning them about their actions in the previous days. Reviewing the events had made it all too clear to Auntie Lil that she had no one but herself to blame for her near-miss with death.
"Billy tried to warn me," she said suddenly as they pulled away from the hospital and headed for the precinct. "Every time I went into his deli, he tried to warn me."
"Billy's a good guy," Santos agreed. "I told him to keep an eye out for you two. He called me twice tonight to say you were still snooping around. Unfortunately, I've just picked up the evening shift and was out on my dinner break."
It was Auntie Lil's turn to be tactfully silent. Anyone who would take their dinner break at the Westsider was not exactly nutritionally minded.
The driver gunned the motor and they were thrown back in their seats as he maneuvered skillfully past a line of taxis jockeying for lane supremacy. It shook Auntie Lil out of her momentary reverie. She shivered slightly and turned to Santos and T.S. "Leteisha must have been following me the whole time," she told the two men. "I had dinner with Little Pete right in the middle of that picture window. It was stupid of me. Very stupid." Auntie Lil's sigh lingered in the quiet of the car and Detective Santos changed the subject to one nearer his own heart.
"So you think the big man is this Worthington guy?" he asked T.S. for what must have been the third or fourth time. “And he’s a low rent Broadway producer?”
"Has to be him. It's either Worthington or someone he knows. He's the one who sent me to that apartment." T.S. shook his head, still unsure. He had already explained his attendance at Worthington's party and his subsequent memory loss to Santos at the hospital while Auntie Lil was being bandaged. Neither spoke of the event in her presence. No sense giving Auntie Lil ammunition with which to shoot down T.S.'s new sense of equality.
"Think the kid will confirm who the big man is?" Santos asked hopefully.
"I doubt it." T.S. shook his head. "Little Pete won't stand up and say so, at least not in court. He's mad enough at Rodney to turn on him, but he's still too afraid of the man."
"That's okay. We probably won't need him anyway," Santos decided. "I've got enough to bluff it out. Rodney will roll over before the night is up. All it's going to take is Worthington's name and a reference to two counts of murder one. His lawyer will tell him to make a deal. He'll turn in the big man, whoever he is, before the sun is up. They always do. That's what those guys never figure out.