to ask, but is it possible you may have made a mistake?"
Auntie Lil straightened her posture indignantly. "Certainly not."
"Just the same, it might be prudent to somehow verify that Emily did live in the building and that a fraud is now being perpetrated."
"How are we going to do that?" T.S. asked. "It was hard enough getting information the first time around. All we had to go on was this guy here, who called her The Pineapple Lady, for God's sake, and some man who liked weird-looking Jamaican stew who thought she lived in the building. It's a miracle we found her in the first place. It's not exactly like people are stepping forward by the dozen to verify her residency."
Herbert's burnished face wrinkled in intense concentration. They waited silently and were rewarded when he finally looked up, eyes calm once again. "Then we will work with what we have," he announced.
"Such as?" T.S. wanted to know.
"She liked pineapple," Herbert said simply.
T.S. stared at him, mystified.
"When I resume my shift, I will ask the owner of the Korean fruit stand on the corner if he knows her," Herbert explained.
"He won't tell you a thing," T.S. warned. "I doubt he even speaks English."
"No need to." Herbert modestly brushed dust from his jacket shoulder. "I speak Korean. That is why he will tell me everything. Approach a man in his own language and you are displaying the ultimate respect. It is an irresistible request for help."
"You speak Korean?" T.S. asked, impressed. Herbert was always surprising him.
"Yes. I learned it during the Korean War. Leave it all to me."
"Everything all right here?" Billy interrupted. The deli owner had been standing behind them. All three of the assembled friends wondered for how long.
"We' re fine," T.S. assured him. "Just fine." The man moved back behind the counter and began slicing cuts of cheese. "We're meeting somewhere else later," T.S. decided. "I don't trust this guy. Herbert, you're checking with the fruit stand then you're back watching the building, right?"
"Correct. Everyone else will be eating at St. Barnabas for the next few hours, so I must take up the post myself."
"Okay. Auntie Lil—meet me at Mike's American Bar and Grill when you're done at the precinct. It's at Tenth and Forty-Fifth."
"Why not Robert's?" she asked. "You keep talking about it. I want to see it."
T.S. was not anxious to become reacquainted with the waiter there. "Let's go to Mike's where we're completely unknown."
They agreed and dispersed towards their tasks.
T.S. could not resist the opportunity to observe Herbert in action. He stood a discreet distance away from the fruit stand watching as Herbert approached a small man in a white apron. He was cutting chunks of fruit from a pile of slightly bruised cantaloupes and pineapples, and was assembling small fruit salads for sale at exorbitant prices to business people too busy to eat any other way but on the run.
Herbert bowed to him from a respectful distance and the man bobbed his head in a terse greeting back. His face was a carefully blank New York mask until Herbert spoke a few words in Korean. Suddenly, the fruit stand owner's face lit up. What followed was a furious conversation involving many smiles, much handshaking and a whole lot more bobbing of heads. After a moment of what seemed to T.S. to be pandemonium but was clearly communication at its finest, the fruit stand owner nodded his head vigorously and took a few steps up Forty-Sixth Street. He pointed out Emily's building and nodded again. Herbert beamed and grasped the man's hand in thanks. Bowing, they departed company.
"Well, that certainly worked," T.S. admitted.
"No sweat," Herbert said modestly. "Though if it hadn't worked, I'm quite sure a twenty-dollar bill would have convinced him to talk."
T.S. left the retired messenger to his surveillance and started out for Times Square, where his own task awaited him. That Herbert Wong. He was a most intriguing mixture of old and new.
The huge chrome and brick building that was 1515 Broadway stretched many stories skyward. The immense lobby was empty except for a token desk man who sat reading the sports section of a tabloid and did not bother to look up when T.S. passed by.
T.S. quickly found Broadway Backers listed on the seventh floor and took one of the elevators up. The door opened onto a long hall lined with many offices. Broadway Backers was either a sham or not successful enough to merit the entire floor.