The banker wished he had an office with a door he could close. The unpartitioned interior of the bank had all the privacy and the proportions of two stacked ballrooms. The expansive balcony, where his desk was situated, was entirely too public today. People were staring at the oddly dressed young woman seated opposite him. She had a disconcerting smirk on her face, and on one cheek was the crescent moon of a fading scar. Her clothes were dirty, and she was nodding off in her chair and catching herself awake.
"Miss Siddon," said the bank officer, "I have to wait on the executor's instructions before releasing any funds. There's no way around that. And as to the advance, you haven't been able to answer a single personal question about your cousin. If you can't even give me her middle name – "
"We didn't talk much."
"Perhaps if you spoke with her law firm."
"They keep saying they'll get back to me. But no one ever calls."
"Have your own attorney look into it."
"I don't have one, and you know it. Look, I need money, and I need it today. What good does a million dollars do me if I starve to death, huh? Can you answer me that?"
It had to be a scam, he knew, and not very original. He'd heard similar requests. This… person must be an avid reader of obituaries. But how embarrassing if she did turn out to be the heir to the Siddon trust. One couldn't be too careful. "Do you have some form of identification? A driver's license?"
"I don't drive."
"What sort of identification do you use when you write checks to merchants?"
"I don't write checks. I don't have a damn checking account."
Now, that had to be a lie. He knew for a fact that everyone on the planet had a checking account. "I can hardly give you money if you can't properly identify yourself. You can see that."
And yes, she could see that apparently, for she was rising out of the chair, dragging her body up to a stand. The long dress hung on her bones. The floppy brocade vest could not hide the thinness of her arms and face. Did she never eat? he wondered.
She was moving slowly towards the grand staircase leading down to the main floor. It had crossed his mind to give the creature some change from his own pocket, but he had thought better of it. Such a gesture might have led to a scene.
While he watched Margot Siddon's slow progress down the wide steps, he had a few spare minutes to remember he had once played lead guitar in a Sixties rock band. In his wife of twenty-five years, he could find traces of the hippy girl who had sung with the band and starved with the band. But who was this unmusical man who had just given the bum's rush to a woman who was certainly hungry?
He toyed with a paper clip as Margot Siddon turned at the base of the marble steps and moved across the wide expanse of gilded, wasted space, heading for the door. When she slipped and fell to the marble floor, he dropped his paper clip and dropped his eyes.
Riker kept a good distance from the glass wall of the office. He checked the exits for a fast retreat should Commissioner Beale look his way and call him in to be shot alongside Coffey. The gray little man was waving a newspaper in Coffey's face. Riker knew the headline by heart: Invisible Man Eludes NYPD.
When the case was eight weeks' old, when Markowitz was only dead forty-eight hours, it was Chief of Detectives Blakely who had told Beale the case might break at any moment. Six weeks had gone by and now Blakely rested his flabby haunch on the desk, smoked his cigar and left Coffey to fend for himself.
Coffey was standing and looking down on Beale. Riker could have told him that Blakely's was the best position. Sitting on his ass, Blakely didn't tower over the commissioner. Coffey was entirely too tall to be a good political animal in Beale's regime. And no one had taught Coffey the ingratiating smile, the prelude to bending over and begging to be kicked. The man just stood there, rock-solid, and in that moment, Riker came near to liking him.
Two uniformed officers joined Riker by the water-cooler, feigning thirst and watching the show.
Maybe it was time to show support for Coffey, to take his side against the commissioner. Yeah, it was time. Riker pulled out his wallet and said to the uniformed officers, "I got five dollars says Coffey's still standing when the commissioner leaves."
Margot Siddon plucked a paper cup from a trash can and held it up to a man with a tear in his sweatshirt who clinked in a dime and a quarter. Twenty minutes later, she was pushing change through a slot and asking a clerk for a subway token. She fell asleep on the train and missed her stop.
After a fifteen-block walk from the subway to her apartment, she stood outside her door with the sick realization that she had no keys. They must have rolled out of her pocket when she slid to the floor of the bank's lobby. She banged on the door of the empty apartment, crying against the wood, sinking to the hallway tiles. Her birth certificate was in there, somewhere in that pile of rubbish, and she could not get at it. She kicked the door with all the strength she had left.
Wait. The mailbox.
Her mail would identify her by name and address. But her box key was on the same lost ring with her apartment key. She pulled a switchblade knife from her pocket and danced down the steps to the mailboxes. She prized the box open, and pulled out one piece of junk mail and a utility bill.
Mallory squinted. Strong morning light poured through the long bank of tall windows, illuminating each cigarette burn on the red velvet couch. At each end of the couch sat unacquainted women who were well past a certain age, yet both sported rouge and lipstick to do a fire engine proud. An old man stood at the receptionist's desk slowly counting out dollar bills pulled from a plastic money clip which bore a dry cleaner's logo. The receptionist nodded, rippling four chins each time a dollar was plumped down on the desk in front of her.
The courtly Mr Estaban was bending low to insert a videotape into the VCR. Mallory stared at a gray quarter-inch on each side of the part in his hair, all that was not dulled with black dye.
"We tape all the students," he was saying, "every two weeks, so they can see their improvement. Usually, we erase them, but not this one. No, this one is a keeper. He was a wonderful dancer, a natural." Hunched over the machine and with his nose an inch from the screen, Mr Estaban watched the test numbers flash by on the monitor in advance of the film. "One moment and you will see."
And she did see. There was gray-haired, overweight Markowitz and a slender young dancing partner some distance from the camera. The young woman in the red dress and dancing slippers was her own age or younger, familiar and not. As the oddly matched couple danced closer to the camera, Mallory sucked in her breath.
It was Helen Markowitz.
Helen was no longer pudgy and homy, no matron in this incarnation. She was three decades younger, an impossible teenage Helen with spiked hair and a ring in her nose.
Well, why not, thought Mallory, sinking down to a tattered red velvet chair. This had been a week for ghosts.
Rabbi Kaplan had told the truth. Markowitz was a wonderful dancer, lifting his partner high in the air to the music of Chuck Berry, spinning her out and twirling her back to his side. He was rocking and rolling. Illusion created of grace and fluid motion stole the years away until it was a young Louis dancing with the teenage Helen.
"What's the girl's name?"
"Brenda Mancusi."
"Where is she?"
"She doesn't work here anymore. She never came back after we heard the news about our Mr Markowitz."
"I need her phone number, her address and a copy of that tape."
He hadn't expected to see her again, yet here she was, holding two envelopes in her grimy fist, thrusting them into his face, screaming, "Look, look!"
He took the envelopes gingerly in two fingers, wondering if lice might be transferred in this manner, and loathing himself for wondering. He nodded as he read the name appearing on the utility bill.
"This only tells me that you and Samantha Siddon have the same last name."
"I want my – ".
"I did try to contact her attorney after you left the bank. He's in Europe. There's no number where he can be reached. His partner has agreed to look into the matter and get back to me."
"Sure. That bastard probably left town with all my money."
"I can assure you the money is safe in Mrs Siddon's accounts. But those accounts will remain frozen until the bank receives instructions from the executor. And then, we'll need a picture ID. A passport or a – "
"I need money, you son of a bitch. You know what I got in my pockets? This!"
She pulled her deep vest pockets inside out. Lint-coated pennies and nickels spilled over his desk, followed by a slow-rolling moist wad of tissue, and last, the knife came tumbling out and landed in the center of his blotter. It was a switchblade.
She hadn't threatened him. He did realize it had only fallen out with the other contents of her pockets, the tissue and the coins. But a knife. Perhaps it had simply jarred him to see a knife in a bank, a weapon of any kind. Perhaps that was why he had pressed the silent alarm. He wasn't certain.
Now they both stared down at the knife as two overweight gray-haired security guards were charging up the stairs from the lobby, their faces going red with the unaccustomed exertion.
His eyes and hers locked together in mutual disbelief. She grabbed up the knife in one hand and ran down the stairs, passing between the old men who reached out simultaneously and grasped the air she had passed through. They turned to follow after her as she ran the length of the lobby. The guards were so slow, she had time to stumble, to collide with a patron, to burst into angry tears and beat them to the door.
"No," said Mallory. "She's only expecting me. It would've queered the deal if Redwing ran a background check on you. I'm passing you off as a friend of the family."
"Not a good idea," said Edith Candle. "It's truth, bits and pieces of truth, that makes any scam work. An outright lie will work against you. If this woman's any good at all, she'll know."
"We're doing it my way."
The door was opened by a woman in a black dress and a crisp white apron. Mallory gave her name and they were ushered into the foyer. Floating on a rich sea of mingled perfumes, were the sounds of teacups clinking in saucers and a gentle Chopin etude. The maid turned and hurried into the large room which opened off this small holding pen for suspicious callers. From the foyer, Mallory could hear voices: melodious laughter and high twittering speech. The far wall was a bank of sun-bright windows. Riding below the perfume was the unaired smell of an invalid's room.
The maid was raising a sash to the noises of the street. And by that cacophony of noise, Mallory knew this could not be a park-side window. A driver was leaning on his car horn, something which was not done in the square by tacit agreement of every living and rolling thing which passed through. And on a nearby street, a siren careered down the block. It must have been stopped in traffic, because now its siren switched to the bleating mode, whining to get this show on the road. And inside the apartment, the old women gathered like birds on a fence, tensely perched on the furniture while the table was being set up and chairs were brought in. Woman with hennaed hair chatted with blue-haired women, and all about the room was the air of the things to come.
A matron in her early seventies was walking toward the foyer, smiling, her neck choked in pearls. Her head was disproportionately small, a white-haired marble atop a thick-waisted hourglass.
"Miss Mallory? I'm Fabia Penworth, Marion's mother, I'm so glad you could come, my dear. Oh, but who is this?" She stared down at Edith Candle, and then back to Mallory. "This won't do. You were supposed to come alone, dear. Redwing never sees anyone without advance notice." She leaned closer and said in a stage whisper, "I've told her all about your father and his unfortunate death. She says the easiest spirit to reach is one who dies by violence. They want to contact us, they want truth to out." She suddenly remembered the annoying detail of Edith. "But this won't do."
Mallory said, "This is an old friend – "
"How do you do," said Edith, stepping forward, "I'm Edith Candle. Perhaps Miss Whitman or Mrs Gaynor mentioned me to you. I believe you all used the same broker at one time or another."
"Why, of course. Oh, how do you do." The woman was showing all of her expensive bridgework to Edith. "Well, I'm honored, really honored. I never expected this. I don't see any problem at all, really. I'm sure Redwing will be delighted to meet you, someone of your stature in the spiritual community."
After being led into the main room and introduced to the medium, Mallory couldn't tell if Redwing was delighted or not. The medium's large, padded armchair had taken on the aspect of a throne. Imperial Redwing was dressed in Day-Glo colors, her head wound with a scarf of Indian pattern. The jewelry must weigh ten pounds, by Mallory's rapid estimate, all bangle bracelets and golden chains. Her feet were encased in tiny gold lame sandals with delicate straps. Her eyes squinted into slits as one plump hand rose in the air to the level of Edith Candle's lips as though she expected it to be kissed. Redwing did not rise for the older woman.
Edith took Redwing's proffered hand in her own arthritic one. Mallory detected a wince of pain. Perhaps any pressure on Edith's inflamed joints might cause that, perhaps not. And now Redwing's eyes were open wide, too sharp, too bright.
The boy standing behind the armchair must belong to Redwing. Mallory assessed the genes of all races, rejum-bled in this new combination: the child's eyes were yellow, the skin was golden brown and the hair somewhat kinky. The facial features were Caucasian. Though the eyes slanted up, the Asian folds were missing in this new translation of chromosomes. The boy's expression was dulled. Had he been drugged?
When the introductions were done and Redwing turned away, ending the audience, Mallory pulled Edith Candle to the only unpopulated corner of the room.
"You never told me you knew Estelle Gaynor."
"You never asked. At my age it's not unusual to know several dead people."
"Several murdered people?"
And what about Samantha Siddon? Had the fourth victim also been on nodding acquaintance with dead people before joining their company?
The doorbell chimed with light musical notes. Jonathan Gaynor was admitted. After a brief handshake with the enthroned Redwing, he allowed his introduction to be made to Mallory as though they had never met. He winked at her as his hostess led him off to another part of the room. Another white-haired woman with a survivor's eye for dangerous moving objects stepped out of his way as the sharp angles of his jutting elbows came perilously close to her.
As long as he was sitting down, and not colliding with anyone, not tripping on anything, Mallory thought he fitted in well with the old women who fawned over him and fed him nourishing sugar cookies. He touched the wrinkled dry hand of an octogenarian to make some point with tactile emphasis, and the woman came all undone. Mallory re-evaluated her opinion on the death of sex after forty.
Her attention turned to a tall, thin woman who had joined them on the couch. The lean body was created for designer dresses. The expensive razor cut of her short white hair framed a fine bone structure beneath the webs of wrinkles. The woman was saying to Edith, "Oh yes, we knew Samantha Siddon quite well. She never missed a seance after the second murder. She said it was life on the edge, and she hadn't been to the edge for more than fifty years, and then it was only for a moment."
Mallory accepted a delicate teacup from the maid and turned back to the woman with the mannequin frame. "Ma'am?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Aren't you afraid? Three murders so close to home. Those women – "
"Oh no, dear, not at all. Now, take Pearl Whitman, she wasn't killed in the square. Oh, but it was the same lunatic, wasn't it? Of course it was. You know, what frightened Pearl most wasn't death. It was the prospect of invalidism, lying in a hospital bed for years, waiting to die or waiting for someone to visit, always being disappointed, always waiting."
"Miss Whitman attended the seances, too?"
"She was a charter member. She thought murder made the whole thing more exciting."
"And Estelle Gaynor?"
"She hosted the very first one."
"No, dear," said a voice behind Mallory's chair. "Anne hosted the first one."
Mallory looked up into the bright eyes of a blue-haired woman with a perfectly round face.
"Anne?"
"Anne Cathery, the woman who died in the park," said the moon-faced woman.
"You're both aware of the connection?"
"The murders and the seances? Of course, we're aware. All of us." The wave of her hand included the entire room. "What's left of us. How could you fail to notice a thing like that? I swear, you young people must think we were all born with liver spots and Alzheimer's."
The mannequin leaned towards Mallory and said, more kindly, "It's all right, dear. You're supposed to take old women for doddering fools. You're young, that's your job. I certainly don't mind. I find it gives me an edge in all my dealings with your generation."
The round-faced woman winked at the mannequin 'Like that young financier you took for a ride last year?"
"Netted me a million in profit, April dear." She looked back to Mallory. "The young man assumed my position on the board of directors was some honorary title for the widow of the majority stockholder. But you seem more interested in murder than money. That speaks well of you."
"So you're not afraid."
"Of dying? I'd have to think on that, dear. Most days I'd have to say yes. But then, there are those days, you know? No, of course you don't. You're a child. You don't know the joys of incontinence and flatulence. I don't think Samantha Siddon much cared if she lived another year. She had lived too long, she thought, surviving her own children. Now there's a crime of crimes."
"Didn't she have a cousin?"
"Margot. Strange child. I don't think she cared for Margot very much. She used to brag on the child's visits every week, but I don't know that she enjoyed them. No, Samantha probably didn't mind dying."
"But a death like that…"
"There's an excitement to a quick ending," said the mannequin. "It's a momentous thing, death. But you wouldn't know that." She rested one paper-light hand on Mallory's. "You think you're immortal, don't you, dear? Of course you do."
The moon-faced woman sat down and well back in the couch cushions. Her plump feet did not quite touch the floor. "Well, anyway, the seances certainly made Samantha's last days more exciting. It was almost like a lottery. Or perhaps you'd prefer the more cliched analogy of a Bingo game. Ah, the Bingo parlor, God's little waiting room for the blue-hair set." The woman sighed. "And now it's another month to wait for the next one."
"The next seance?" asked Mallory.
"No, dear," said the mannequin. "The seance is once a week. She's talking murder. They're usually four weeks apart."
"Did anyone mention the seance connection to the police?"
"Oh, worst possible idea. Redwing wouldn't like it. It might cause a rupture in her karma. Artists are so fragile. You're not going to rat us out, are you, dear?"
Markowitz had taught her to scout the terrain. And now she was immersed in the land of canes and cataracts, blue hair and support hose, conspiracy and murder.
A bell tinkled in the hand of the maid.
The illusion of bird women stayed with Mallory as, from different points about the room, they rose in a flock and settled back to earth around the table with its white cloth, with whispers in the shush of material, creaks and shuffles of chairs, settling down and settling in. Mallory sat between Jonathan Gaynor and a woman with a bobbing head. Edith sat between this woman and their hostess. Redwing grasped the hands on either side of her, and the rest of the assembly followed suit in joining hands.
A dish with a black unlit candle sat at the center of the table beside a brightly painted statuette of a madonna and child. Piled in front of Redwing was a collection of objects. Markowitz's pocket watch was there, gleaming among other items, the rings with bright gems, a key, a ribbon-tied lock of gold hair so fine it must have belonged to a small child.
Heavy drapes were being drawn across the sunlit windows by the maid. As the room grew dark, the candle at the center of the table came to life, of its own accord, to provide all the light there was. And with that light came the sweet odor of incense which thickened and overpowered the perfumes of the women. A trick of the wavering candle flame made the tiny madonna statuette move in a flickering dance.
Redwing closed her eyes, and her head rolled against the back of the wing chair. "Our Father Which art in heaven," she said, and the gathering closed their eyes, all save Mallory, and repeated the words after her, all save Mallory.
Our Father, Which art in heaven,
Mallory only moved her mouth in the little heresy of the handicapped make-believer with severe limitations which stopped short of buying heaven.
Hallowed be thy name.
And it was only hour by hour that she kept at bay the realization that Markowitz was in that hole in the ground and feeding the worms.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.
In earth as it is in heaven.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, dead was dead, and a stiff was a stiff. All alone in the cold ground. Markowitz.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass a0ainst us.
Never.
The boy stole up behind Redwing's chair and stood there with less life to him than the wavering statuette. Mallory was planning his incarceration in Juvenile Hall as quickly as she confirmed all the signs of a drugged child. It had always made her a little crazy to see someone strike a child, and this was worse. It called up some gray area of earliest memory which just as quickly slid away from her like a dream lost and beyond recalling. Not that she tried, for every good instinct said let it go.
The gramophone began to play. The music was classical, melding into Twenties tunes, and then to old Fifties-style rock'n'roll. Mallory lifted her chin only slightly in recognition of an album from Markowitz's basement collection.
Redwing plunged her hand into the pile of objects at the center of the table and pulled out Markowitz's watch. The music stopped.
Redwing held the pocket watch by its chain, and her eyes closed as the watch dropped lower and lower, finally lying flat on the table. The gold chain drifted from her splayed fingers. Redwing's eyes were rolling back in their sockets. Her hands pressed flat on the tablecloth. She began to rock slowly, gently at first, and then faster and faster, jerking violently now and shuddering into a spasm. She jolted the table, and her chair rocked on its four legs beating out a staccato rhythm. Suddenly, the rocking stopped, her body became rigid, leaning far back in the chair. She pressed her head into the upholstery and lowered her face until it made three chins below her open mouth.
Her face lifted and her eyes fixed on Mallory. She gathered up the flesh of her face into Markowitz's smile. The eyes all but disappeared in the merry slits melding into laugh lines at the outer edges.
Everyone else at the table was smiling. Markowitz had that effect on people. Only Mallory did not smile.
"Hey, kid, how're you doing?" said the voice of Markowitz, in his low octaves and Brooklyn accent.
Mallory and Markowitz stared at one another across the table.
"Don't call me kid," she said.
Markowitz laughed, and would not stop laughing. The table began to move, shuddering under Mallory's hands. She felt lightly drunk with the sound of his laughter.
The boy behind the armchair stepped out to the side in plain view. She watched the child going into a trance of his own. The table rocked, though Redwing's hands were splayed flat and the boy was not touching the table. The music had started again. Buddy Holly was singing about love and the roller coaster. The music couldn't be coming from the gramophone. The turntable wasn't moving, yet it came from that direction.
Markowitz stopped laughing. His smile was wide and easy now, his eyes locked with hers. "Was there something you wanted to tell me, Kathy?… No?… Well, maybe there was something you wanted to ask?"
"Who knows what evil lurks…" she began in a small version of her own voice which trailed off to no voice at all.
"The Shadow knows," said Markowitz.
Beside the chair, the boy's mouth moved in silent concert with the words. His thin body rocked back and forth. Markowitz began to laugh again, and the boy laughed in silent tandem, eyes closed, swaying to the music, laughing, paunching out his belly.
Everyone at the table had their hands flat on the cloth. The table continued to rock. It skittered inches left and then right. Mallory could feel the energy coming up through her palms. Her body tensed. Markowitz laughed on as her heart beat on the wall of her chest, and the table rocked with a violence, all but upending itself, energy building like the makings of a ticking bomb, blood icing, mind racing. The laughter was louder now.
The boy was no longer miming the mirth, his eyes were full of sheer terror. He was holding up his arms, fending off unseen blows, screaming in silence as the laughter rolled on. He clutched his gut in the place where Markowitz had been stabbed. The statuette rocked back and forth until it tumbled over. The small plaster head broke off from the body and rolled across the tablecloth to Mallory's hand.
She wasn't conscious of rising from the table. Consciousness surfaced as she was crossing the thick carpet of the front room, waking from a dream, heading for the door and away. Behind her, Markowitz was screaming, screaming.
The women were a chorus of twitterings and whispers. Almost at the door now. And back there, furniture was sliding across the floor away from the table. She passed through the door and into the hallway as Markowitz's wailing diminished into groans, She walked quickly down the hall, only seeing the iron grille of the elevator door before her, thinking of nothing but being away and gone.
The footsteps behind her belonged to Edith Candle who was running to catch up with her. Silently, they both passed into the elevator. The ornate iron box carried them down and down, falling, caged behind the ironwork. For three floors of deep shadow and bright light, in and out of the dark they fell, and finally, to earth.
Henry Cathery stood by the wide window of his bedroom and watched her leave the building with the old woman. She was so pretty. He had stood at the window for a long time, waiting for her to come out again, not moving from this spot, though he ached to use the toilet.
She hadn't kept him company today, either. He had to take his opportunities where he could find them. Now he was ready for her. He lined her up in the telescopic sight and shot her over and over, framing her in the camera lens, her pretty face in an unsettling pain. Another shot clicked off as she walked out of the square to the place where she had parked the little tan car which smelled of her. She and the old woman disappeared into the car and it rolled out of sight. He remained at the window, staring down on the park, the ultimate game board.
The police error had been the oversight of ungifted chess-players. The idiots would continue to plod on in their routine way, unimaginative players drawing only on past experience, incapable of the leap of logic, the only move that would get them to endgame.
In the coffee shop off Gramercy Square, Edith signaled the waitress for another cup of tea, and Mallory watched the door over the rim of her coffee mug. Forty minutes had passed before Jonathan Gaynor walked in and joined them at the table. He put the pocket watch down by her plate, which held an untouched croissant. She stared at the watch and wondered where her mind had gone without her. How could she have left it behind?
"Are you okay?" His voice was all concern as he eased his lanky frame into the booth beside Edith.
Mallory forgot to cut him dead, to wither him, to explain to him, with only her eyes, that he was a fool if he thought they were going to share a warm moment. She was off her stride, and rattled enough to let the kindness slide. She felt like a fool, getting suckered by Redwing. It must be showing, because Gaynor was really pushing his luck, all sympathy and commiseration in his eyes, smiling at her with an easy grin that belonged to a shy boy in a Kansas wheat-field.
She smiled back and startled herself. Her smile was almost natural, nearly spontaneous.
"You shouldn't have given her something real to work with," he said.
"Well, she had to," said Edith. "Redwing would have spotted a ringer. She is talented, you know."
"The hell with talent," said Mallory. "Redwing runs her marks through an information network. The story had to check out in the computer system, so I gave her Markowitz."
"That was risky," he said. "So she also knows you're a policewoman."
Mallory nodded.
"It was really Markowitz you saw in Redwing, wasn't it?" Edith asked.
"A first-rate imitation, I'll give her that."
"It would be a grave mistake to underestimate her gift," said Edith.
Gaynor smiled at Edith. "Apparently you were more impressed with the show."
"Very stylish," said Edith, "Nothing tacky or flamboyant." For the third time, she signaled to the waitress with her raised teacup and hopeful eyes. The young woman in the food-spotted white uniform hurried by, eyes seeing nothing but the clock on the wall. Edith's cup settled back to the table. Hope died.
Mallory caught the waitress's eye and arrested it. Her expression gave only the suggestion of violence. A moment later, the waitress could not get more tea into Edith's cup in a big enough hurry. The young woman left the pot on the table in her haste to be anywhere that Mallory was not.
"You two missed the best part," said Gaynor. "That card table rose straight up off the floor, maybe two feet in the air." His gesturing hand swept the sugar container off the table. "It scared the life out of me." He leaned down to retrieve the container. When he set it back on the table, the pepper-shaker was sent to Edith's lap. "Sorry. I wish I knew how she did it. The little boy was in plain sight a good three feet away, and Redwing's hands were flat on the table."
"That one's easy," said Mallory. "When she put her hands on the table, I saw the rings digging into her fingers. Then I saw the two ripples in the tablecloth where her rings had hooked the pins under the material. All she had to do was lift."
"Oh," he said and there was some disappointment in this syllable, as though he had only lately made the discovery of Peter Pan's wires. "But there was more. Tell me, were any of the murdered women stabbed in the breast?"
"Why do you ask?"
"When she contacted my dead aunt, the boy put his hand to the right breast. He cupped his hand, like this. No doubt there was a breast there, and then it was all bloody, stabbed or slashed open."
Mallory lifted her shoulders to say "Who knows" and then looked around for their waitress in time to see the white flash of the uniform disappearing through the ladies-room door which banged against the frame to say, fat chance she's coming out again any time soon.
On the sidewalk outside the cafe, Edith and Mallory parted company with Gaynor. After Mallory had driven Edith Candle home and seen her to the door of 3B, she stopped the elevator at the second floor. She had two hours to kill before her last appointment of the evening.
The door was unlocked. Was Charles picking up bad habits from Edith? In the reaction time of a good New Yorker, her gun cleared the holster with speed enough to fool the eye into thinking it had simply appeared in her right hand. Gun raised, she pushed open the door. All the light came from one of the back rooms. Silently, she made her way down the hall to the back office. A cat would have made more noise with its footfalls.
Charles was sitting in a warm pool of light which spread outward from the stained-glass lamp on his desk. He was completely absorbed in the journal on his blotter, with no idea that she was in the office or in the world. She envied him his perfect concentration. It was only a little unsettling to watch him reading at the speed of light.
Her gun returned to the shoulder holster as she stole back to the front room, not wanting to disturb him. There was just a little comfort in knowing he was there. Markowitz had said, go to Charles if she needed help, not if she wanted to use him and his connections. The old man would never have wanted her to drag him into this. She sat down on the couch. It was not the typically uncomfortable antique, but well padded and more like the furniture in the Brooklyn house. It was friendly in its response to her, plumping up around the slender outline of her body. She would have liked to stop here, to not move again. This night would not be over for a long time yet, and she was already flagging, eyes closing.
However she turned the thing over, she could not see what Markowitz had seen. Logic told her Coffey was right, and Markowitz had been caught out without a clue in hell as to who the perp was. But she continued to believe in Markowitz in the same way he had taught her to believe in the Shadow. Never mind logic. It only worked half the time, anyway. Her eyes closed.
She snapped awake when the couch rearranged its stuffing to accommodate another sitter. Charles was smiling at her. He had such a wonderfully loony smile. But now, his face was slowly changing to worry lines. What was he reading in her own face, she wondered? What had she given away to tell him something was wrong? Was there really any point in holding out on him? Could she? No, probably not.
"I gather the seance wasn't much of a success."
So, Edith had told him they were going to Gramercy.
And what else did he know? He could extrapolate volumes from near nothing.
"No, it wasn't. But I did have a nice chat with Markowitz."
Oh, she could see he didn't like that, not at all. There was more than worry in his eyes, but she could not account for it. Was he angry with her? Why?
"How did the medium know about you and Markowitz?" he asked.
His voice was very gentle. So she was not the one who angered him. Who then? Edith?
"I told her."
"That may have been a bad mistake. Did you tell Edith you were going to use Louis?"
"Yeah. I didn't have any choice. Gaynor thought it was a mistake, too." If Charles was her barometer, then Markowitz the dancing fool must be rocking and rolling in his grave. She was getting too messy, too noisy, telegraphing every damn move.
"Tell me what happened."
His hand was covering hers with the human warmth that Markowitz's last letter had promised. It had been so long since she'd been touched this way, she nearly didn't recognize the sensation. Go to him if you need help, said the Markowitz who lived inside her head with Helen, abiding in a detailed replica of the house in Brooklyn in the days when it gleamed with polish, and smelled of canned pine-trees.
She described the seance in every detail, the compulsive detail of habit. She only left out the part where she had been suckered into believing that it was Markowitz, simply because Redwing had looked and talked and acted like him, because Mallory had been one beat away from taking the chance to settle old business and say goodbye, and she had blown it. And hadn't that been the worst of it? Her eyes were open now. She had lost all the threads to make-believing and never would she get them back. She had seen the wires behind the works.
"Charles, how could she do him so well? She knew about the wounds. Nothing that specific was in the papers."
"That computer of yours has you blind-sided. With more field experience, you might have realized that quite a bit of data can be had through human networks. How many police officers were at the crime site, how many civilians, how many have wives, brother-in-laws, sisters, mothers, and who do those people talk to? If it all hangs on Markowitz's wounds, you have nothing. As to the impersonation, we've all seen Markowitz on television. He was on for days during the senate hearings. He signed two autographs one night when we were having dinner in Chinatown."
"And the boy imitating the slashed breast?"
"The boy was imitating a woman. He made a breast. Gaynor could hardly have seen it slashed. But that's not his fault. The more people you gather into one room, the more energy there is, and mass psychosis is more possible. You can be convinced you saw all sorts of things that never happened."
"All those old women knew about the link to the seance, and not one of them thought to call the cops. How do you figure that?"
"Well, as the woman said, it's miles more exciting than waiting to die in your sleep. You don't take anything at face value, do you?"
No, she did not. "Maybe something else frightened them more than the killer did."
"Fear of the police, for instance? You think these women are a gang of geriatric criminals?"
Well, Charles had one geriatric criminal in the family, didn't he? Edith did say you could get away with a lot when you were old. But that subject was forbidden.
"Maybe Redwing has some hold on them. She's good, Charles. You should have been there. And the Markowitz imitation was just too damn good. It took Markowitz an hour to die. Maybe Redwing had time to get to know him then."
"An incomplete portrait would have sufficed. Your memories of Louis rilled in whatever she missed. You did most of the work for her. Mediums depend on that. I've watched the best of them work. They put out half a general sentence, and the client fills in the blanks. Then the medium builds on the volunteered data. It's an art form. They're also guided by subtle nuances of facial expressions. Don't underestimate the power of an observant empathic to rip your mind inside out."
"I know she's mixed up in this."
"Perhaps, but I don't think she makes a good suspect. All the victims being tied to the seances doesn't make for a very smart set of murders. I believe Louis did say the killer was smart."
"Maybe she's so smart she'd figure it that way – like a double blind."
"No, too convoluted. She may be gifted, but there's no correlation between a gift and IQ points. Redwing intuits everything."
"What about Edith? How did she know her husband was going to die that particular night? Coincidence?"
Charles sat up straighter. His eyes wandered off to the side where he was looking at something in a memory. He turned back to her. "Edith predicted the date? Is that what she told you?" His hand withdrew its covering warmth. "Well then, you probably know more about the particulars than I do."
"She didn't make it up, Charles. I researched it in the periodicals section of the library. She knew the night he was going to die. She knew it days in advance. The neighbors confirmed it."
"It could easily be a coincidence that she guessed the night. It was a very dangerous trick. Death was always possible. He didn't drop down through a trap door in the stage, you know. He went into a tank of water, chained with iron and tied with rope. On the first night, the trick worked as it was supposed to. I went with my parents that night. I saw him struggling with the locks underwater, then working his way out of the ropes in full view of the audience. There was a large alarm clock on stage, set to go off at the limit of human endurance. The clock went off with an ear-splitting ring. And Max wasn't free yet. He hadn't managed to undo the last coil of rope in time, and for a while, he hung there in the water like a drowned man, and all the while the clock's alarm was screaming and the audience was screaming. Then suddenly, he burst out of the ropes and pushed off against the bottom of the tank and erupted into the air. It was an amazing stunt. It took all his concentration to slow his heart and his respiratory system while he worked the locks of the chains. One slip of the mind and there you go."
"Were you scared when you thought he'd drowned?"
"Oh, no. I'd seen Max die a hundred times. Part of the fascination with dangerous stunts is that the audience believes the performer might die. Max gave them their money's worth. He died every time. I didn't see him die the last time. My parents went without me that night."
"And that night, the night he really died, that was the last time Edith ever left the house?"
"What?"
"She was there. You didn't know?"
"No, I didn't. She told you that?"
"No, she never mentioned it. I found her picture in the old newspaper archives."
She noticed a disturbing distraction in his eyes, but only for a moment.
"You think it's time to let me help you now?" He smiled at her. "I do understand why you have to do this. I don't like it. I worry about you. But I do understand. You don't have to do this alone anymore."
"You think I'm making a mess of this, don't you? Maybe I'm not as smart as Markowitz – "
"I'm an expert in that area. Your intelligence isn't in question. However, you might want to give some thought to the way you use it. Your strong point is gathering and analyzing data. True you're a great shot, but that's called marksmanship. It doesn't put you in the same club with a street cop who shoots on the run. Do what you do best. Work the data, and leave the surveillance and the undercover work to the department."
"The department? Coffey thinks Markowitz botched it. He thinks the old man was sucker-punched. I can't let go of the idea that Markowitz worked the whole thing out. He had to be following the suspect."
"Louis is dead. If you try to do this his way, you'll die, too. You can see the logic in that. Follow his steps and you fall in the same hole. You don't know who he was following that day. You found a link to the suspects. Maybe he found another one. Who knows?"
"The Shadow knows."
"Pardon? We're not talking about the Shadow? The old radio – "
"It was Markowitz's all-time favorite."
"My parents loved that program."
"All right, I'm going back to collecting data. Will you do me a favor?"
"You hardly needed to ask."
"I need you to cozy up to Henry Cathery. He plays chess in the park seven days a week. Get him into a game."
"If you like, but why?"
"Because you play chess and I don't."
"No, I meant why me? I'm hardly cut out for undercover work."
"And that's why you're so perfect. Who would suspect you? Cathery's smart. He'd see through me in a minute. You're smarter."
"How did he make it to the top of your list so suddenly? I thought he was ruled out. The papers said he had an alibi."
"Never believe what you read in the papers. He's not at the top of the list, but he's pretty damn close. He's in the park every day for hours at a time. People are so used to seeing him there, they just don't see him anymore. He's a fixture, like one of the shrubs or the benches. He was probably in the park while his grandmother was being murdered."
"Well, I'm sure my key to the park wouldn't work anymore. You want me to rattle the gates and ask if he'll invite me in? You don't think he might suspect I've come to interview him?"
"Whoa. Back up. What key?"
"I have one of the original keys. It's an antique. I'll show you."
He left the office, and a moment later, she could hear him working his key in the door across the hall. He returned to her with a velvet jeweler's box in one hand. He opened it to display a gleaming golden key nested in black satin.
"The first keys, from the last century, were all made of gold. My cousin Max gave me this one for a birthday present when I was a child."
"How did old cousin Max happen to have a key to Gramercy Park?"
"Oh, there was always at least one Butler in Gramercy Park for a hundred years or so. Max changed his name from Butler to Candle when he left home, or rather when his parents threw him out. After Max became a semi-respectable headliner, he was reinstated in my uncle's will and inherited the house."
"He lived in Gramercy Park?"
"He and Edith only lived there for five years or so. They got a wonderful price for the house, enough to buy this building and make a few investments. It's been thirty years since she lived in Gramercy, but I'm surprised she never mentioned it."
"She's always surprising me," said Mallory. But this neatly explained Edith's ties to two old women in Gramercy Park.
"Well, I'm sure the lock's been changed many times since this key was in use. Sorry."
"Here, you can use my key." She pulled a key from the pocket of her jacket.
"Would I want to know where you got that?" 'Charles, you get more like Markowitz every day. I picked it up in Gaynor's apartment. He'll never miss it. He never goes to the park."
"Did Gaynor notice you picking it up?"
"'Charles, who's the best thief you know?"
"You're the only thief I know."
When Edith Candle leaned back in her chair, alone in the dim window light of a fading day, she could see the whole universe spinning out from her room, stars revolving outward in galactic swirls and spinning in again. She saw how each thing set each other thing in motion. And what was once random, now flowed with the predictability of notes in a string of familiar music. She saw the perfect order.
She took stock of Redwing. "What do you make of her?" Kathy had asked. Edith had responded with a string of words: fearless, arrogant, charming, deceptive, cool under pressure, and wholly alien. But Kathy should have known Redwing best.
She's a lot like you, Kathy.
The old woman closed her eyes and gave herself over to Morpheus, god of dreams, and to the little death that was sleep.
Hours later, she was walking unsteadily down the hall to bed. She was suddenly very tired, passing by the open door to the kitchen and the crude letters on the wall above the stove, paying them no attention, eyes already closing to sleep again before she opened the door on her bedroom and left the red garish message at her back.
Margot sank down at the foot of a stone lion which guarded the entrance to the public library. So many hours had passed since she left the bank, but she could feel the soreness in the bones of her legs from the hard pounding on the sidewalk. She was out of shape. When had she last been to dancing practice? Could she be that far gone in only a few days?
That little bastard of a banker had probably called the cops and told them she had pulled a knife on him. Well, that would prick their ears up. Suppose they went to her apartment and saw all the damn knives?
No, he wouldn't call. He'd been a jerk to jump the alarm. And he wouldn't risk the possibility that she might be who she said she was. Henry would know how to fix this. He'd at least be good for a loan to tide her over. But he hadn't answered the phone in the dozen times she'd called his apartment. Damn Henry who sometimes left his phone off the hook for days at a time. What a miserable twit he was, a bastard, her only friend, her confessor, and sometimes God to her.
She would go back to the apartment in the early morning hours, maybe break a window. Yeah, when there was less chance of being seen. The cops avoided her neighborhood at the dangerous hours. She picked another paper cup up from the sidewalk and jingled her last pennies for the late-working stragglers until the coins swelled into a subway fare.
She rode uptown and down, wondering about the time but having lost the sense of it. She had no idea what hour it might be. She leaned over to read a passenger's watch. Twenty to ten? Could she have been riding that long? The pain in her gut said it was so. How long with no food? She stared into the faces of the other passengers until their eyes met hers and their glances crashed, and then fell away from her eyes, which had gone to a sleep-starved glaze.
Days ago she had believed she would never ride the subway again. She drifted into the light sleep of the longtime subway-rider.
The train slowed to a stop. The bell sounded and another passenger got on. She jerked awake and lifted her head to look at the boarding passenger. She came hideously awake. It was him. Of course it was. It was the same train, the same time of night.
The man was not so tall as she remembered him, nor so broad at the shoulders, but then, he had become almost mythic over the past two years, growing with each nightmare. She had forgotten how very human he was, with his acne scars and his runny, large brown eyes. Was his knife also smaller than she remembered it? The knife, the knife dancing up to her eye, then ripping down her face. Perhaps he had come back for her, to cut her on the other side and make her twisted smile symmetrical.
She drew her legs up to her chest and closed into a ball. The passengers on either side of her got up and moved to the far ends of the car when she began to whimper and rock, face drawn into her chest, hidden behind her knees. Her eyes darted from side to side, watching her abandonment in the ever-increasing circle of alone. You're on your own, said this new seating arrangement.
The train was slowing. She might make it to the door before she was hurt too badly. And then what? Would he catch up to her and drag her by the hair again, ripping handfuls from her head. There would be no cop on the platform. There hadn't been one the first time.
The train stopped. She bolted for the door. It was still closed as he came up behind her. She banged her fists on the metal until it parted, sliding back into the walls of the car. She ran through the opening, colliding with another man on the platform who was boarding. The man of the dancing knife walked past her, glancing in her direction, looking through her, and then was gone. He didn't know her.
How was that possible? He was on rape-and-cut terms with her, how could he not remember her?
He was climbing the stairs. She followed after him, up and out of the subway. How could he not remember her? She followed him down the street. When he entered the office building on Seventh Avenue, she watched through the glass door as he showed his pass to the security guard. So he worked the ten-to-six shift. She moved back away from the doors and crossed the street, melding in with the darkness and the trash at the curb, hearing the rats but not fearing them, settling in to keep company with vermin.
Warm rectangles of light showed from the windows of the house. Television voices emanated from within, and Mallory could smell twice-blooming roses by the porch railing. It was a living memory of the Markowitz house when people lived there – when they lived. Before she could ring the bell, the door opened and she was staring into Helen's smiling eyes. This older woman must be Brenda's mother. She was a less exact copy of Helen, only rounding out at the hips now the way Helen had rounded into middle age.
"Sergeant Mallory?"
"Yes," she said, relieved that it was not Helen's voice. She dug into her back pocket for the shield.
Mrs Mancusi didn't wait for the identification. "Please come in," she said, standing to one side of the wide-open door.
"I'm sorry to bother you so late in the evening." She followed Mrs Mancusi into the wide living room. It was arranged for comfort in the grouping of massive furniture and hassocks. A folded-back newspaper lay discarded by the recliner chair. Dinner smells had not yet evaporated. The interrupted carving of a Halloween pumpkin lay on the table, knife and seeds, pulp and one triangular eye cut from the orange fruit.
"You're not bothering me at all, Sergeant. Brenda called to say she's running a bit late, but she'll be home in a few minutes. I only wish my husband was here. It's his late night at the clinic." She picked up a ball of yarn and a bit of knitting off the seat of the recliner. "Sit here, Sergeant. It's the most comfortable chair." Mrs Mancusi sat down on the couch opposite the recliner. "You must be tired working these late hours. That chair leans back. Put your feet up if you like. I know what you need, a snack. Can I get you something? Coffee? I have half a pie in the kitchen."
"Thank you, no." This woman might not have Helen's voice, but her conversation was very Helen-like, all comfort and sympathy and a belief in the healing powers of pie.
"We'd like to help you all we can. Louis Markowitz was a lovely man. I cried when I heard the dead man was Louis."
"You knew him well?"
"For a few months. We had him to dinner every two weeks or so. Brenda's known him much longer of course. He was the one who talked her into coming back to us. She was only sixteen when she ran away."
"When he came to dinner, I don't suppose he ever discussed his work with you? It would be natural for you to be curious about a high-profile case."
"Louis never talked about business – well, police work."
"What did he talk about?"
"His family. His wife died a few years ago, and he missed her terribly. He had a daughter, though. She's very smart, and very beautiful. He was so proud of her, you could hear it in his voice. When I read about the funeral in the paper, I tried to call her. I called every Markowitz in the phone book. You have no idea how many there are. But I couldn't find her. That poor child must have been wild with grief."
There was that catch in Mrs Mancusi's voice to say that grief had come to this house, too.
"Brenda should be home soon. She goes to school during the day, and what do you think she does at night? She dances at the Metropolitan Opera. Louis got her the job. Said it was nothing, he'd just called in a favor. They have operas with grand ballroom scenes, and my Brenda dances. Sort of like an extra on a movie set. During the day she dances at school. That's different of course. She's studying modern dance and classical ballet."
Mallory heard the front door open and close. A gust of cool air came into the room with young Helen who was called Brenda. Mrs Mancusi made the introductions, and Brenda sank gracefully to a low hassock facing Mallory. She smiled shyly. Her hands entwined under her chin, arms propped on elbows, accidental elegance in every movement.
"I really loved that old man," said Brenda with a child's soft voice. "Did you know him? Did you work with him or something?"
"We were in the same department. I'm interested in the Brooklyn Dancing Academy. He never talked about it at work."
"He came regular, like every single Tuesday night for maybe a year. He paid for lessons, but he was much better than any of the instructors. He taught me old Fifties-style rock'n'roll. After work, he walked me home to my apartment.
"You know, I used to hate that job. Pushing old farts around the floor, fielding gropes. I hated it. I was going to quit the night Markowitz showed up. You might think an old man like that – he was pushing sixty – you might think it would look silly, he was so heavy and all, but no. He was amazing. He was wonderful."
Markowitz, you dancing fool.
Mallory closed her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up as Mrs Mancusi was pressing a plate of pie into her hands and lowering a coffee mug to the table by her chair. She was gone back to the kitchen before Mallory could thank her. She turned back to Brenda who was digging a fork into her own pie.
"The nights he walked you home, did he ever talk about his work?"
"Mostly, we talked about me, about going home and doing it right, going back to school, stuff like that. He got me to enroll in a dance school, even loaned me the money for my first semester. I started in September."
"That's why you quit the Brooklyn Academy?"
"Well, we'd been after her to quit," said Mrs Mancusi, reappearing with a sugar bowl and a creamer which she set down on the table by Mallory's mug. "We could well afford her tuition. But she wanted to buy a gift for Louis with her own money."
"Mom and Dad insisted on paying him back for the tuition." Brenda stood up and moved toward the doorway. "I'll show you what I got for him. Wait just a minute."
Mrs Mancusi sat down on the couch and leaned forward to whisper to Mallory, "She's hoping you'll give it to his daughter. This is very hard on Brenda. She's not over his death yet. Neither am I, really. I'm not good at death."
Brenda was back, lighty tripping into the room. She danced up to Mallory with the pent-up energy that went with the territory of being seventeen years old, and put a small box into Mallory's hands. Mallory opened the box and pulled out a gold pocket watch.
Mallory pressed on the winder to open it. On the inside cover it was inscribed with the words I love you inside a heart that a child might have drawn. In music-box fashion, the watch played the opening notes to a golden-oldie rock tune. It must have cost the girl a fortune to customize that music.
"His old pocket watch didn't work," said Brenda. "He wore a wristwatch and carried this old broken watch around in his pocket. Funny, huh? So, do you think his daughter would take it? Would it be okay, do you think? Will you give it to Kathy?"
"I'm Kathy."
A sound that might have come from a kitten escaped from deep inside of Brenda Mancusi. She folded down to the floor by Mallory's feet and sat tailor-fashion and silent. Her head hung low as she was trying to make sense of the world by tracing the intricate pattern of the rug with one finger, searching the weave for clues, and not finding any. Failure was in her eyes when she looked up again. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Her voice was cracking. "And I'm not helping you am I? I'm not helping you at all."
"Yes, you are. The watch is beautiful. He would have loved it. I love it. Thank you. It was odd, wasn't it, the way he carried two watches. Brenda, do you remember anything else that was odd, out of the ordinary?"
"He was an out-of-the-ordinary man. God, I loved him. At least I got to tell him that before he died."
Mallory looked down to the watch as one hand closed tighty over it.
"I think I went on too long," said Brenda. "I embarrassed him maybe. He got up and left in a hurry. That was the last time I ever saw him."
A hurry? Markowitz never did hurry. He tended to mosey everywhere he went. He was a slow, ambling man, easy in his steps, strolling along with an impossible grace for one so stout. Never did he do anything in a hurry.
"Do you remember the conversation? I know it was personal, but it might help me a little. What were you talking about just before he left?"
"I was trying to tell him what he meant to me. When I took that stupid job at the Brooklyn Dancing Academy, it was all I could get. It was that or hit the streets like my room-mate. She was a prossie. But the dancing turned my life around. First, I did it for the money, and then he taught me to love it, and then I couldn't live without it. I told him that. I told him it was like it was meant to happen, my meeting him, one thing leading to another. It was like that meeting put everything else in motion. And then he left. So fast. Does that help? I really want to help."
"Yes, it does."
No, it didn't. It only told her what she already knew, what she already had to work with. No, wait. It told her what Markowitz knew before he died. Maybe it was time to step to the side instead of following him into the hole he had died in.
"God, I loved that old man," said Brenda, drained, exhausted, as though she had danced a hundred miles. She brought her hand up to cover her face. She cried.
And Mallory didn't.
It was a video extravaganza. The VCR sat in the far corner of the room playing the tape of Louis dancing with young Helen. And on the clear wall she projected slides of murder scenes, old ladies cut to pieces. Washes of blood flowed across the screen and covered Mallory's face with the ricochet of colored light from the projected images of death. Click: victim number one. And Chuck Berry sang to the dancers. Click: victim number two. The hard beat of the music was moving Mallory's head, manipulating the foot that tapped in rhythm.
She rigged the VCR to loop the tape for continuous play and the partners danced on through the night without tiring ever. Mallory focussed on the slides, looking for something that would not jive, something out of whack, not belonging. She knew it was there. Markowitz had seen it. It had nagged her awake, night after night. What was she missing?
No, that was a mistake. She could see that now. She was also stuck in the loop with the dancing Markowitz and young Helen. Markowitz, had he been there, would have told her to look beyond the parameters of what he knew. She had more to work with now than he had ever had.
The sky, what Margot could see of it, was the deep violet of the hours before sunrise. She watched the man saying his goodbyes to the security guard, and then, pushing his way around the revolving door and into the street.
Oh, yes. He was the one.
She crawled out of the torn and discarded mattress box, out onto the sidewalk where the rats were still dancing, still brave while the dark lingered. One rat, bolder than the rest, ran across the back of her spread hand. She pulled it into her chest and then looked at it as though the rat might have left prints.
The man was walking slowly, heading back for the subway station. She rose up on two feet. And only now, the rats took notice of her and left the sidewalk with slithering quickness. On feet not so fast as a rat, Margot followed the man.