"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."