RANSVESTIA

Pride of place on the chest of drawers was taken by photographs of two young boys at different stages of their lives. With a shock, Ellis. suddenly realized that the young boy, with slicked down D.A., in leather jacket and jeans, was the beautiful, murdered girl in the Lower Manton apartment. Fascinated, Ellis looked through the photographs displayed so carelessly. A young boy, mugging generally, carefree and happy, was caught in almost every snap. His younger brother, more serious by far, watched his older brother in his general cavorting. Only in one photograph, a recent one by its hair length, showed a pensive youth, the shaping of eyebrows giving the first suggestion of a soften- ing into femininity.

"It was that Skinner woman," Ellis was brought back from his reverie by the spiteful, angry tone of Mrs. Mezlivsky. "Danny always was a popular boy. His dressing up was a lark, really." She glanced shiftily from Ellis to Hamilton and back. "But that Alice Skinner, she calls herself an artist, once she had her claws into him, he really didn't know what he was doing." Her eyes were becoming less angry all the time. "He was a lovely child, Danny, and loving too. He'd come back and see us, even when his dad was so mean to him. Loving he was, ever so loving." She frowned. "I didn't like him coming here, all dressed up like that. The kids used to run after him, you know, and I could never call him by that name he liked. But it was all her fault, that Alice Skinner. You talk to her and you'll know who murdered my poor, little bov." With tears erupting again, the detectives excused themselves. and left.

"I think you've a lot to tell me," said Ellis curtly as they went down the stairs.

"True." said the sergeant. "But I guess you've worked out quite a bit from upstairs." They had stopped on the tenement steps looking down at the kids clambering over Ellis' car.

"Our victim was one Danny Mezlivsky," Ellis stared grimly at the children who paid no attention to his chilling look. "You must have made contact with the Lucases.'

"

"Correct." Hamilton's voice was confident, even happy. "The name Mrs. Mezlivsky wouldn't use was probably Yvonne Douglas. Apparently, he used that name for the last three years, at least while the Lucases knew him."

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