“Eeeeeek!” he shrieked, looking shocked and horrified-as if he’d just seen a ghost. (I guess my makeup had worn off.) “What are you doing? Get away from me! Shoo!”

“Sorry, Willy,” I said, backing off in a flash. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was just trying to get your attention.”

“You sure succeeded!” he cried, voice still shrill and trembling. “Mercy me! I almost fainted dead away.” His Southern accent was more noticeable now than it had been yesterday.

“You were lost in another world,” I explained, “and you didn’t respond when I spoke to you. I got a little nervous.”

“Yes, but

I’m the nervous one now!” he squealed, throwing his hands up in the air. His piece of toast flew out of his fingers and thwacked against the wall behind him.

“I can see that,” I said, smiling.

Willy leaned over, picked the toast up from the floor, and daintily dropped it on his empty plate. “Well, I’ve got a lot on my mind, you know! The police think

I killed Gray! You should have seen how they treated me yesterday. They gave me a really hard time after you left.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, checking his face and arms for scratches and bruises. He was clean as a whistle. “They didn’t hit you, did they?”

“No, this time they just pummeled me with questions and accusations. For hours and hours and hours. I was so scared and exhausted when they left, I curled up in a ball on the carpet and cried myself into a coma.” He gave me a shamefaced smile, then dabbed the perspiration off his upper lip with his napkin. “And I stayed there all night long, honey. I didn’t get up off the floor until six thirty this morning, when Flannagan phoned and started pounding me with questions again.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Humpf! You name it, he asked it. First yesterday, and then again this morning. How long had I known Gray? Did we spend much time together? Am I a homo? Was Gray a homo? Had we been screwing each other? Was I jealous of his other boyfriends? Did we hang out at the same bars? Did we eat at the same restaurants? Was I obsessed with him? Was he getting sick of me? Who were his friends? Who were his enemies? What did I want from him? Did I want him dead? Did I kill him for revenge or just for fun? Did I enjoy gashing his throat, and stabbing him in the gut, and watching his blood spill out on the floor?”

I hated to admit it, but these were the same questions I wanted to ask Willy-except I would have phrased them in a gentler way, and omitted the last three altogether. (Which compels me to make yet another admission: As much as I’ve always prided myself on not jumping to hasty conclusions, I had already made up my mind that this whimsical little potbellied man was no murderer.)

“Sounds pretty rough, Willy,” I said, reaching across the table to touch his stubby, freckled hand. I felt very sorry for him-both for the way he’d been treated by the police and for the way he would always be treated by society. “But you can’t really blame Flannagan for asking so many questions,” I added. “It’s his job, after all. He’s the one who has to track down the killer.”

“Yes, but he’s convinced

I’m the killer, so how much tracking do you think he’s going to do? I’ll tell you how much! None! He’s just going to hammer me with relentless gibes and interrogations until I cave in and confess to a crime I didn’t-and never, ever, ever would-commit.” He paused for a few seconds while he gnawed one pinkie nail to the nub. “You want to know what he was grilling me about at six thirty this morning, honey? My blood type, of all things! Can you believe it?! What does that have to do with anything? He even demanded the name of my doctor so he could get positive proof.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked. “Do you even know what your blood type is?”

“I sure do, honey,” he proudly pronounced. “I donated to the big Red Cross blood drive last month, and they gave me the best grade of all-an A.”

I SAT AND TALKED TO WILLY FOR ANOTHER half-hour or so, trying to steady his frazzled nerves and dig up some new leads at the the same time. I failed at both endeavors. Willy remained as jumpy as a jackrabbit, and I was left as clueless as a Keystone Cop. Aside from his incriminating blood type (which, in the interest of preserving Willy’s shaky sanity, I chose not to explain the importance of just then), he didn’t give me any new information at all. (I’m talking zilch. Zero. Or, as Abby would say,

bupkes.)

I asked Willy if he’d ever met any of Gray’s friends or relatives-specifically his girlfriend, Cupcake, or his Actors Studio cohort, Binky, or a persistent fellow named Randy, or somebody calling herself Aunt Doobie-but Willy swore he’d never even heard those names, let alone met the people they belonged to. He also insisted that-in spite of his own enormous crush on “the gorgeous golden-skinned god next door”-he had no firsthand (or any

other-hand) knowledge of Gray’s true sexual proclivities.

After all was said and done, I concluded from our brief but intimate interview that Willy hadn’t known Gray very well at all.

Hoping the newspaper would offer a new clue or two, I opened the copy of the

Daily Mirror I’d bought that morning, and scanned the pages for news of Gray’s murder. The story appeared on page seven, under the headline BROADWAY ACTOR SLAIN, and I read it quickly. The article was, like its headline, short and to the point, revealing nothing that I didn’t already know. The two women who discovered the body were mentioned but not, thank God, by name. I passed the paper over to Willy and he read the story, too, much more slowly than I had, chewing on his nails the whole time. We didn’t have much to say after that.

Willy and I left the cafeteria together, but parted company outside, on the abandoned chicken-run sidewalk, after exchanging phone numbers and promising to keep each other posted on any new developments in the case. Willy went home to “wash out a few underthings” and to make himself a “monster mint julep,” while I scooted over to Sheridan Square to catch a subway train uptown.

It was time to pay a call on Aunt Doobie.

THE MAYFLOWER HOTEL WAS ON CENTRAL Park West at 61st Street. I walked the block and a half from the Columbus Circle subway stop to the entrance of the hotel with my nerves tied up in knots. Was Aunt Doobie still a registered guest? Would she be in her room? How could I get her to talk about Gray? If she was really his aunt, she would probably be mourning his death. Should I give her my real name and tell her why I came? What would I do if she had already checked out? How would I ever find her again?

I ventured into the rather drab and narrow lobby, hurried past the news and candy counter, then made a beeline for the elevators on the right. Both cars were open and attended by uniformed operators. I stepped into the first one and asked to be taken to the ninth floor-where, I assumed, room 96 would be located.

“Sí, señorita,” said the skinny young Puerto Rican operator. He pulled the elevator door closed and then yanked and latched the metal gate across the door. Slowly cranking the brass control lever to the right, he turned and gave me a sly wink as the elevator began its jerky ascent. Then, turning back around to face the door, he mumbled something that sounded like “cute chicky” under his breath, and released a series of soft, nearly inaudible clucking sounds.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! The cocky little fellow was coming on to me! Had flirting with strangers become a national epidemic, or had he just caught the bug from Abby?

The elevator boy lurched his lever farther to the right, sending us into a much swifter ascent, and then, when we reached the ninth floor, he brought the car to a stop so suddenly my stomach did a somersault and sank like lead to my toes. He was showing off, I realized. He had been driving fast just to impress me. And when he gave me another wink and opened the gate and the door to let me out, I saw that he’d overshot the landing by a good eight inches. I had to step down to exit the elevator. (I’ve met some smooth operators in my day, but this character wasn’t one of them.)