fingers as if it smelled very bad indeed. He held it out toward T.S. "Twenty dollars," he said primly, holding out an open palm. "You surprise me, sir. Really. I feel compelled to inform you. You really do surprise me."
Humiliated, T.S. paid the hefty tab, suspecting it was at least five dollars over the regular charge. He did not have time to think much about it, however, as his eye had been caught by a small face whose expression was quite different from those surrounding him. A skinny black boy, not more than eleven or twelve years old, stood in the doorway staring at T.S. His eyes were wide and suspicious, his features hardened into a permanent accusatory stare. Yet, T.S. was sure that his unblinking eyes were filling with tears and that the young boy's mouth was trembling. The child stepped back in fright as T.S. opened the door, and he watched T.S. hurry to the limo with undisguised confusion before moving forward as if he had something to say. T.S. stopped with his hand on the door handle and stared at the child. Why had the photos upset him so much? Everyone else in the crowd loved the macabre real-life postscript to the slasher movies they'd probably just seen.
"Son?" he said to the young boy, who responded by darting forward. T.S. thought he was being attacked but the child veered at the last moment and took off down the block, running as fast as he could. T.S. was so astonished he made no move to get into the limousine until Lilah rolled down the window and called out his name.
"Theodore. We're attracting quite a crowd. Perhaps we should be on our way."
T.S. looked over at the picture window and the crowd of teenagers stared back at him in mystified curiosity and misdirected envy.
"Yo, pops. That's kinky!" someone called out. A few people laughed and that was more than enough for T.S. He quickly hopped into the back seat next to Lilah and thrust the bag of photos into her hands.
"Remind me to kill Auntie Lil in the morning," he told her. "And, Grady, for God's sake, get us out of here."
He was awakened early the next morning from a troubled dream in which he lay in a glass coffin, surrounded by leering women in cheap outfits and garish makeup. They leaned over him, grinning suggestively, their pink tongues licking at the glass and their features distorted as they pressed against the sides of the coffin. He woke suddenly, convinced that the tremendous pounding he heard was really his heartbeat, until he finally realized that someone was trying to break down his apartment door. He stumbled to it, still half-asleep, and found an impatient Auntie Lil waiting on the other side. She surveyed his pajamas with energetic disapproval.
"Mahmoud let me in," she explained cheerfully. "I've been up for hours. Here, I've brought you bagels. It's time to get to work."
T.S. made a mental note to cut the doorman's Christmas tip in half. He stared at the clock on the wall. It was barely eight o'clock in the morning.
"You're certainly serious about this thing," he told Auntie Lil grumpily, stepping aside to let her through before he was mowed down. Auntie Lil hated to get out of bed before 10:00 a.m. She claimed the human body had not been made to function before noon and customarily spent her mornings reading tabloids and detective magazines while she drank quarts of black coffee.
"We've got to find out who she was before we can find out who killed her," Auntie Lil announced loudly as she plopped her bag of goodies onto the immaculate surface of his dining room table. T.S. winced. It was the single heirloom he'd taken from his parents' house upstate and in the twenty-five years of his ownership, it had hardly sustained a scratch, despite what he considered flagrant abuse by Auntie Lil.
Brenda and Eddie wandered in belatedly, hating to give up their warm spot at the foot of T.S.'s bed. Letting them sleep there was his sole concession to affection when it came to his pets. They eyed him with suspicious hope. Would they get fed early? Would he come across with the chicken and cheese dinner?
"Feed them so they leave me alone," Auntie Lil ordered. She liked cats about as much as she liked the NYPD.
"I thought you weren't a morning person." The whirr of the can opener whipped Brenda and Eddie into their obese version of a