Drumsticks by Charlotte Carter Page B

chicken.”
    â€œReally? Great … great.” Lost in a reverie, he was. Fixated on my chest. There is something about short guys and tits.
    â€œSo you think I’ve got a shot at being hired, Mark?” I asked.
    â€œGreat … great …”
    I think he might have been content to stand there staring at them all afternoon, that private movie going on in his head.
    â€œOkay, children. Enough foreplay,” Justin announced. “Let’s do it.”
    J and I left first. We quickly located Ida’s building, a good-looking white stone affair with a pillared entrance, and went into the lobby.
    No Johnny Cash drag for me that day. I wore a brown wool mini and a crocheted top under a sweater coat, a cashmere beret, a nice pair of heels, and carefully applied makeup. Method acting. Who was I? Assistant to an ad agency honcho. Partner in a successful independent film distribution company. Girlfriend of a prominent European art dealer. Any of those would fly if I found myself face-to-face with a building super or a curious neighbor. I’d explain that I was so desperate to find an apartment that I was going house to house.
    I checked out the buzzer setup. My friend from Union Square had given me righteous information. No Ida Williams in the building, but in apartment 6C, Alice Rose.
    Our little breast man bustled into the lobby a few minutes later. I saw him reach into his back pocket and withdraw a shiny, thin instrument. He had us through the inner door in no time.
    J and I took the elevator to the sixth floor and scoped out 6C. Lefty came up the stairs then, noiseless as a shadow, and Justin signaled him from down the hall.
    I was dispatched to play lookout near the elevator. And it was not until I heard the thing whirring inside its cage, lowering itself to the lobby, that it occurred to me to be petrified.
    Some of the old folks in my family used to call me the Bulldog. That was because once I got an idea in my head, I was unstoppable: demonstrating to my parents why I had to have an expensive fountain pen, convincing them to let me go to Europe—whatever. So it was with digging deeper into Ida’s murder. I was helping two men break into an apartment. Of course we weren’t going to rob the place, but we were breaking and entering. A crime any way you sliced it.
    I began to sweat profusely, imagining that the super had watched us enter on a security monitor of some sort and was at that moment on his way up with the police.
    I heard a dull pop from the area where Lefty was working and my heart popped along with it. The elevator was on the way back up now. Where would it stop? Where it stops, nobody knows. What was that from—spin the bottle? Or Wheel of Fortune?
    It stopped at the fifth floor. Just below me. I heard voices down there—a man and a woman talking amiably about their respective Thanksgiving Day plans—and then they trailed off.
    A hand suddenly around my waist, and a gruffly whispered “Okay, Thelma.”
    I almost jumped out of my $98 Ecco pumps.
    â€œJust let me know if they give you any trouble at Caesar’s,” Lefty said. “Maybe you and me’ll have a drink next time I’m by there.”
    He didn’t wait for my answer. By the time I recovered my voice, he was halfway down the stairs.
    Ida’s apartment was something of a surprise. I guess I had expected a small place with secondhand furniture, littered with remnants of the cheap fabrics she used to make the dolls. A few shelves groaning with dusty knickknacks and a family Bible—or possibly a witches’ handbook. Some humble canned goods in the kitchen. Maybe a mangy half-starved cat.
    Not at all. The large living room was airy, clean, and uncluttered. An armoire in one corner of the room held twenty or thirty of her dolls. There was a nice-sized kitchen, spotless, with all the amenities, including a postmodern refrigerator of gleaming stainless steel.
    The walk-in