flipped it back around to look at their faces again. "How old do you think they are?"
"Not more than eleven or twelve, I'd say. But how can a woman have one completely black and one completely white grandchild?" Auntie Lil asked.
T.S. did not answer. He was too busy staring at their faces. "I know this black kid," he finally said slowly. "At least, I think I do."
"You do?" Auntie Lil stared at him skeptically.
"I think so. But I can't remember where I saw him."
Their whispering was interrupted by a strange sound. The heavy music blaring from next door was not loud enough to mask a newer, more disturbing beat. Something was banging against the wall separating the two apartments with an urgent, pounding rhythm. T.S. could hear heavy breathing, occasional deep laughter, and what sounded like small, muffled sobs.
Auntie Lil, who would not admit to slight deafness, apparently could not hear everything. "What's that banging?" she demanded in puzzled irritation. "Do you hear a banging?"
"Never mind, Aunt Lil," T.S. assured her. If her hearing spared her the salacious details, he wasn't going to fill her in. "Put those photos in your pocketbook and let's get out of here."
"Wait." She pulled her arm away and gestured toward the apartment's single window. "Look. The window's been left open." They approached it cautiously. It overlooked a small patch of deserted lot squeezed in between the apartment building and the one behind it located on the next block. The window had been left cracked a few inches. They opened it slowly and peeked their heads out. The apartment shared a fire escape with the one next door. T.S.—who was closer to the neighboring apartment—caught a quick glimpse of what the commotion was all about: he saw a bald head gleaming and a stout body bent over someone or something much smaller. T.S. blinked and drew quickly back inside.
"Let's go," he said tersely, not wanting to think about what he had just seen.
"Not so fast," Auntie Lil complained, bending back out onto the fire escape. "Don't rush me. I might miss a clue. Like this." She picked up a curl of dark paper and smelled it. "It stinks. What is it?"
"It's the back of a Polaroid photograph," T.S. told her. He scanned the fire escape. "Here's one more."
"Someone was taking photos out on the fire escape. What on earth for?"
T.S. chose to remain silent. "Let's go," he said grimly, grabbing her elbow again. "Someone has already cleaned the place out. We'll tell the police and leave it at that."
"The police?" Auntie Lil asked indignantly. "They don't know her name any better than we do. What good is that going to do?"
"The owner of the building can tell them her name," he explained patiently. They stepped out into the hall and shut the door carefully behind them. "And I think it might be best if you didn't mention our little escapade inside. Let's just say we found out where she lives and leave it at that, shall we?" He jabbed the button of the elevator five times in quick succession, anxious to put distance between himself and what he thought he had seen in the other apartment. They waited a moment without success and he impatiently pushed the button several more times, then stopped abruptly. The loud background music had suddenly ceased. The door to the second apartment opened and a middle-aged man and a young boy stepped out into the hall. The older man had a large bald head that gleamed in the hallway light. A fine sheen of perspiration clung in droplets to the side of his skull. He was red in the face and hurriedly rebuttoning his jacket, taking no notice of the boy behind him.
The boy had light blond, very nearly white, hair that was cut badly in wisps about his face. A small ponytail no bigger than a watercolor brush scraggled down his neck. He wore a black tee shirt emblazoned with jagged strips of silver lightning and the logo of a heavy metal band. His black jeans were so tight T.S. wondered how he could move, but he could—albeit sullenly and without any interest in either the bald man or T.S. or Auntie Lil.
The bald man stopped abruptly when he noticed he had company, stared at the two of them, said nothing, then veered suddenly toward the fire stairs. Without a word, he pushed through the door and disappeared. Auntie Lil took a few steps forward and stared intently after