Angel Kipling scanned the bulletin board, her bright eyes rocketing across the scrolling lines, seeking out the evidence of fresh lies and wondering how much it would cost her this time. Perhaps it would cost her one husband in addition to the fees for keeping her name out of the press.
Each time he kissed her cheek, she recoiled, wondering where he might have been, wondering what he might have done, had to wonder, couldn’t stop herself. His lies were unnerving, and her logic was relentless in puzzling out each one.
Early morning sun obscured only a few of the lines which repeated endlessly. Angel glared, but the lines would not go away.
‘Don’t panic,’ she whispered. ‘You always panic.’
It was probably a shakedown. If it wasn’t a shakedown, it would have exploded all over the media.
So, nothing’s going to happen for a while. We wait for a connection.
She looked to her reflection in the glass of the monitor. ‘See how simple things can be, if you only let them be?’
She wished sometimes that he would die. As long as he lived he would be within harming distance. Would that he might die, and she could be done with him instead of always listening to his lies and his excuses and his endless apologies. He had apologized very nicely for illegally putting up the condo as loan collateral. But then he apologized for clearing his throat. He apologized to the dog, and then he apologized to her in the same tone.
The concierge surveyed his world, the lobby of the Coventry Arms, and found nothing amiss. Perfectly attired people went to and fro in their designer dresses, tailored suits and handmade shoes. He paid more attention to the clothes than to the faces, and the faces of the occasional children registered not at all.
His toe tapped to the quick, bright notes of a Vivaldi mandolin concerto which played throughout the lobby at a tasteful level of background music.
Less tuneful, downright disruptive music of high-pitched barks and guttural growls was coming from the elevator in its descent to the ground floor. The doors opened and the dog fight overflowed from the elevator and into the lobby.
The concierge waved his hands at the porter, but the porter was hanging back a safe distance from the fray. Of course, no job description required the man to be torn to shreds by a pit bull and a mastiff. The owners were displaying the same common sense. And now the doorman had abandoned his post and entered the lobby to cheer on the mastiff. The porter displayed a five dollar bill and placed a silent bet with the doorman, his money on the pit bull.
Well, something had to be done.
The concierge, who had never been invited to a dog fight before and didn’t understand the rules, found himself standing too close, and now he was wincing with a bite from the mastiff, his own scream chiming in with the barks.
All comings and goings had stopped, and twelve people gathered to watch. Between the blood flow and the betting, not one of them noticed the key being taken from the rack behind the desk, and then being replaced with a key similar to Mallory’s.
‘Did you like the CD player?’
‘Yes, thank you. And the recording of Louisa’s Concerto was a nice touch.’
‘You have to change to CDs, Charles. You might be able to transfer most of your records. They’re in good shape.’
‘For artifacts, you mean? I like the records. I like the turntable.’ He did not want any more technology invading the house.
‘Your record collection can’t grow with obsolete technology. And you can’t replace worn out records any more. I noticed you didn’t have a copy of Louisa’s Concerto in your collection.’
‘I wore it out ages ago. There was another one in Max’s collection downstairs, but I’m afraid I ruined that one. The timing of your gift was perfect.’
‘Whatever happened to Max’s friend, crazy Malakhai?’
‘Oh, he’s living a quieter life these days.’
‘I suppose he is pretty old.’
‘Yes, he’s getting on in years.’ Since when did Mallory make small talk?
‘And Louisa? She’s really still with him?’
‘Oh, yes. But Louisa would still be young, just nineteen, forever.’
Charles watched her pinning more printouts to the cork board which spanned the wall of her private office. ‘Are you quite sure you’re on to something with the business of the lie?’
Mallory tapped the printout from the real estate agency computer, and he did not ask if the real estate agency had donated this material by consent or by a hijack on the midnight rail of the electronic superhighway.
‘Four days before the abortion, she made an offer on a small house upstate. According to her agency file, she was concerned with local school systems and area playgrounds. During the next four days, according to the doctor, she hardly ate or slept. I’m guessing this is where he told her the lie. So it worked on her and then she had it out with him.’
‘The outburst at the keyboard was just before her death, wasn’t it? Could we have this wrong? Might that be the day she caught him in the lie?’
‘No. The lie made her abort the child. It worked on her. Maybe she just couldn’t take it any more. She snapped late.’
‘There’s a flaw in the logic here.’
‘You can’t always go by logic. You have to get into the perp’s skin. When you know him, you know how and why. All I’m missing now is who.’ She turned to him. ‘How well do you think you know Amanda?’
There was only a subtle shadow across his mind. She couldn’t know what he was doing with Malakhai’s magic madness. But the timing of her gift of music was entirely too perfect. Had she made a trip to the basement and seen the ruined record? No, of course not. That was paranoid.
‘Based on the manuscript, I might know Amanda well enough to guess her reactions to events, but not the events themselves, not the lie that was told to her. I can only tell you it had to be something monstrous. She had a gentle personality, a wry sense of the ridiculous. I rather liked – ’
‘Nothing in the monster category in the background checks. But she had to turn it up with the usual research avenues. If she found it, I can find it.’
‘Not necessarily. And you have to consider that this might not have been his first kill, that he’s done it before and gotten away with it. That might be what she uncovered. It’s better logic – ’
‘If there was no record of it, how did she find it?’
‘Mallory, these two people had very intimate knowledge of one another. This was no great love story – but they shared a bed; there was conversation. If he lied to her, she may have caught it in the untechnological way the rest of us catch lies. When you tell the truth, it’s always the same truth. When you lie, you must have a superb memory, or it will be a different lie in every telling.’
And now his eyes took on some pain as he clearly understood their separate roles in this business: Mallory could crawl into the mind of a killer with disturbing ease. She had left the difficult job to him, the job of identifying with a frail human being who had no pathology or defenses in a brutal landscape peopled with those whom Mallory identified with best.
He wished he could wire Mallory into his delusion of Amanda and remove himself from the game. And a game it was to Mallory. Murder was the best game.
Now she was unloading a pack of tapes from the morning’s scavenging. ‘Something on television could have tipped her. The judge had a lot of air time in the past two weeks.’
Could it be that simple? A clue in Amanda’s last days? They were spent in the upheaval of the lie: lack of sleep, anxiety and guilt from the abortion.
He walked the length of the cork wall at the back of the office. This was not Louis Markowitz’s style. All the tiny little detailing was missing. Mallory’s quick brain could not stop for the minutiae which had been Louis’s obsession. He had to keep reminding himself that she was not obliged to be a copy of her father. Now he read the interview with the doorman.
‘What’s this about?’
‘It looks like that’s the day she finally snapped. The doorman said she was agitated. Then she went home, obsessed about it, and that same night she logged on to her computer. Maybe she was working late to get her mind off it. But the book was about him, wasn’t it? That’s when the YOU LIAR outburst occurred.’
She fed one tape to the VCR. ‘These are all the broadcast cuts from the past two weeks.’
The first tape was a press conference. Judge Heart’s stage presence was commanding, and he seemed to know it. He singled out women reporters for questions, and looked into the eyes of each one as though she might be the center of his universe.
Even more entertaining were the tapes on the Senate hearings for Judge Heart’s nomination to the highest court in the land. Mallory’s candidate for wife beating was rambling on and on about his concern over sexual harassment in the workplace. The senator from Maine was nodding in approval of each lie he fed her on his empathy for women and the need to protect them.
Charles was wondering what might draw Amanda to this man. Power had its attractions, he supposed, and fame. And Heart’s intelligence was undisputed.
‘The judge is always in the paper. Pretty dry stuff -coverage on the hearings, pictures of candidate and family. Did I mention that I think he killed his elderly mother?’
‘Slope ran that by me at the poker game. He’s not convinced. There’s no evidence. It’s pure speculation.’
‘Sometimes speculation is all you ever get to work with, Charles. And you did ask me to keep an open mind about the possibility that he had killed before. A mother killer. You think that might put a woman off having a baby, just on the off chance that matricide was genetic?’
‘Perhaps. By your description, Harry Kipling seems harmless enough.’
‘And he’s just the type to panic. All the testosterone in his marriage is Angel’s.’
They sat in silence throughout an hour of Mallory fastforwarding tapes and stopping the action to have a closer look. Over the two weeks of tape, he noted a growing tension in Heart.
‘Now watch the judge lie to this reporter.’
A young woman approached him, smiling brightly, and the judge beamed down on her with his most avuncular smile. He was the man every boy and girl wanted for a daddy.
‘I’m going to wrap this up on the twenty-sixth,’ said Mallory. ‘And this conversation is between us, not us and Coffey and Riker.’
‘How can you orchestrate the day? You don’t even know which one it is.’
‘Oh, not just the day. I can even plot the moment roughly.’
‘How?’
‘I was always in charge of him, Charles. When I get him on camera, I start pushing his buttons. I’ve got the usual buttons for Franz and Kipling. I’m going to get the judge in motion by telling him that I’m going to get the paperwork to dig up his mother.’
‘Slope won’t support – ’
‘I don’t need Slope’s permission to dig up a dead mother.’
Indeed, she didn’t seem to need anyone. ‘You have a favorite, don’t you?’
She ignored this.
‘I’m going to wrap him up for the DA on the day after Christmas.’
‘Is it me you’re wrapping up?’ asked a small voice behind them.
Justin Riccalo stood in the doorway. The boy was staring from one to the other. ‘Is it me?’
‘Does that worry you?’ asked Mallory. She didn’t wait on his answer, but turned her back on the boy. ‘Charles, when little kids can just walk into the building, I’d say we had a security problem.’
Charles looked down at the boy. ‘How did you get in, Justin? Why didn’t you use the intercom?’
‘I walked in with an old man on crutches. He dropped his package, so I carried it in for him. It seemed kind of silly to go back outdoors and use the intercom. It’s cold out there.’
‘Mugridge let you in?’ Mallory seemed skeptical – and with good reason. The elderly Mugridge was the most security conscious person in the building.
‘Yes, ma’am. I did knock on the office door. You probably didn’t hear me.’
‘There’s a buzzer on the door,’ said Mallory.
In an effort to ward off any further interrogation by Mallory, Charles ushered the boy into his own office and pulled the door shut.
‘Mallory hates me, doesn’t she, Mr Butler?’
‘She’s suspicious of everyone, even me. Don’t take it personally. What can I do for you, Justin?’
‘I wondered if we could go back to the cellar.’
‘I didn’t think you would want to. Not after – ’
‘Yes, I would. I think I do like magic after all.’
‘Your parents don’t mind you missing a morning of school?’
‘School’s out. It’s Christmas vacation.’
Of course. It was Christmas Eve. Where was his mind?
‘Well, I’ll just give them a call to let them know where you are.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that. I’m supposed to be at the Tanner School right now.’
‘But you just – ’
‘I am on Christmas vacation. The Tanner School is warehousing me for the day. It’s a holiday program for working parents. My parents are doing the cocktail circuit this afternoon. Every corporation in town is having their Christmas parties. So they think I’m at school.’
The boy sat on the edge of the straight-back chair, his wriggling feet not quite touching the carpet. His hands gripped either side of the wooden seat, as though unsure of the chair’s intention to remain stationary.
‘I see.’ How would Robert Riccalo react to his son’s truancy? Not well. ‘You know, I did want another chance to talk to you alone. I have an idea that your parents make you a little nervous.’
‘You have a gift for understatement, Mr Butler. They both drive me right up the wall. Your partner makes me nervous, too. She thinks I’m doing it. You don’t believe in this levitation crap, do you?’
‘Oh, I don’t believe anyone is levitating anything. Humanity has enough bizarre problems without dragging in the occult. Parapsychology is a non-science as far as I’m concerned. But I do think one of you is rather good at illusion.’ Or maybe not. Even if it was a slipshod job, who looks for the obvious thread when a sharp object is flying toward them?
‘I’m betting on my stepmother.’
‘But she seems to be the target.’
‘I think she’s using this to turn my father against me. He doesn’t even like me any more. He avoids looking at me. And she’s already gotten to your partner. One day, I saw Sally talking to her on the street. I know she turned Mallory against me.’
‘Where was this?’
‘In front of her apartment house, the Coventry Arms.’
‘Your stepmother followed her there?’
‘Yes. She made me wait in the car down the block, but I followed her. I know what she’s trying to do to me, and no one will believe me.’
‘Justin, I really am on your side.’ The boy seemed unconvinced. ‘I know something that will cheer you up.’ He gathered up his house keys from the drawer of the desk. ‘Let’s go down the basement. But no music this time – only magic.’
As they walked into the hallway, Mallory was disappearing into the elevator with no goodbye, no I’ll see you this evening. She was not usually inclined to unnecessary words. But, she never missed appointments. The sun might not come up in the morning, but Mallory would come back at eight of the clock for dinner.
Now, in some part of his brain, he was recalling each bit of small talk on the subject of Malakhai, and wondering what to make of this deviation in her.
He and the boy walked down the hall in the silence of their separate thoughts. Charles looked down on Justin, who was clearly miserable. But not frightened. This time, the boy led the way down the winding staircase to the room below, drawn along by the stored remains of Maximillian Candle’s Traveling Magic Show.
When the wall partition was pulled to one side, Justin was first in, not waiting for the light of the globe to go exploring. The dull light caught up to the wandering boy and cast a fuzzy moving shadow on the trunks of props and costumes.
‘Oh, cool!’ said Justin from the other side of the tall Chinese screen. And he knew the boy had discovered the guillotine. But as Charles rounded the panels of rice paper, he could see it was the knife set that had Justin’s attention. Charles touched another globe and another light came to life as the boy was staring at the rack of knives.
He looked up at Charles and then to the old, much punctured red-and-white bull’s eye which was propped on an antique easel. One hand reached out to the knife rack, hovering tentatively, as his eyes shot up to Charles to ask permission.
He nodded. ‘You will be careful with them, won’t you?’
Justin picked up the first knife and missed the target, though it was large and close.
‘Don’t feel bad. It takes a bit of practise. Max had many years of practise.’
‘I can tell,’ said the boy, approaching the target, which was pocked with scars. His finger traced the outline of a human body surrounding the area free of knife holes. ‘That was where his assistant used to stand, right?’
‘Right.’
‘He cut it close, didn’t he? I can see the holes of the knife points between the fingers. Can you do it?’
‘Yes I can. Once, when I was your age, I stood in the target center. It was a birthday present from Max.’
‘You’re kidding. Weren’t you scared?’
‘No. Then Max gave the knives over to me, and he stood in the center of the target.’
‘So you can really do it. Really?’
‘Really.’
The boy moved into the center of the target and flattened out on the rings of the bull’s eye. ‘Do it. I trust you. Go ahead.’
‘Actually, you would only have to trust me not to let go of the knives. The blades come out of the target, they don’t go into it. You pretend to throw the knife, but you really drop it into this pocket.’
He turned a small table so Justin could see the black velvet bag which hung just below the table top. He pointed to the black lever by one leg, and the wire trailing away from the table and toward the target.
‘The trigger for the knives is in the foot pedal. See? Then the hilt of the blade springs out from inside the target with a springload. But the audience sees what it’s conditioned to see. A knife is thrown, and a knife appears on the target. It would take me a few minutes to set the springs. It’s perfectly safe once you know how the trick is done.’
If Justin was the one who rigged the flying objects, this might be a practical application for his gift. He was wondering how he was going to sell a future in the magic trade to the boy’s father when Justin walked away from the target, all interest in it lost.
The boy looked up to the guillotine. ‘And that’s only a trick too, right?’ as if he were asking if this was only another lie, a cheat.
‘Yes, sorry. It has a failsafe mechanism. It’s wicked looking, but harmless.’
As a child, Charles remembered being enthralled by the trickery, not the danger. Justin was of an opposite bent. He seemed disappointed at the lack of danger. Perhaps the magic trade was not the right area for Justin’s intellect. Whose then? The stepmother? The father?
‘Justin, I know you’ve been told what your IQ is. Have you given any thought to the future, what you might do with it, how you might develop it?’
‘What’s to develop? A brain is a brain. And if you believe me when I tell you I don’t make things fly around the house, then I don’t have any talent either.’
‘Well, you might have a talent for observation and deductive reasoning. That’s something we can test for. And it might even be fun. Suppose I help you figure out how the objects fly. Then you’ll know what to look for. So you work with me for a while, and we’ll help each other. Deal?’ as Mallory would put it.
‘Deal,’ said the boy, his small hand thrust into Charles’s for a handshake.
‘Good.’ He was lifting a black ball with holes in it from a box at his feet. ‘This was one of the few floating illusions in Max’s act. It only takes a few minutes to set it up.’ Where was the fluid container?
He found the bottle he sought in a neighbouring box covered with dust. While Charles pondered the shelf life of chemicals, Justin was examining another box, and apparently he had tripped the spring, for now bright colored scarves exploded from the box, shooting straight up and then billowing out, flowing on to the floor in a loam of silk.
Justin was trying to smash the scarves back into the box as quickly as he could pluck them from the air. He looked over his shoulder to Charles, guilt and apology on his face, and fear was there too. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right, Justin. Just let them be. There’s no harm done, really.’
‘You’re not angry with me?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘You know your partner hates me.’
‘Oh, I doubt that.’ He trained the beam to another dark quarter of the basement, searching out a trackline post. Ah, there it was, and it was still set with the running wires. ‘Now why would Mallory hate you?’
‘My father says people hate other people for what they hate in themselves.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s sometimes true. But what might that be in Mallory’s case?’ Matches? Oh, yes. He pulled an old box from the chest of drawers in the open steamer trunk.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know much about her.’
‘Well, she’s a loner, like you,’ said Charles, disappearing into the dark at the edge of the globe’s small circle of light, and then reappearing with empty hands. ‘She doesn’t mix well with people.’
Other qualities in common? He had to wonder. There was something between her and the boy, a mutual understanding he could not understand.
‘All right, Justin. Ready?’
The boy nodded.
Now there was a bright flash of light, and a glowing ball of flames was hurtling straight toward them. It stopped three feet short of its targets, man and boy, and then rose over their heads and was extinguished in the darkness beyond them.
Justin whistled and clapped his hands.
‘Now that’s a flying object,’ said Charles. ‘And miles more fun than pencils, don’t you think? It runs on a track of wire. It’s the only floating illusion I know, but there are crates full of books on magic if you want to look through them.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe the less I know about this stuff the better off I am. Why did everyone assume I made the pencils fly?’
‘Well, when teams go out to investigate the odd ghost story or some other instance of paranormal activity, they usually discover the origin of the event behind a neighbor’s garage in the form of three small children laughing their tails off.’
‘But this isn’t funny. Sally’s gone nuts. I can’t sit in the same room with her, she’s such a basket case. And she’s always staring at me. It just never lets up. Every time something happens, we’re all together, but I get the blame.’ Justin kicked at a box. ‘It isn’t fair. I need somebody on my side. Somebody has to listen to me.’
As Charles was facing the boy, they both heard the noise to the left. Charles turned to see the knife sticking out of the target, the blade still wafting with the vibration.
Justin’s eyes were wide this time. This was no flying pencil, no ball on a wire.
‘Now you’ll never believe me,’ said the boy. He turned and ran in an uncoordinated jagged stagger, out of the circle of light and into the dark, hitting against cartons and trunks in his mad flight, his wild search for a way out, for the light of an exit. His thin, flailing arms were poor versions of moth wings.
Memory guided Charles through the darkness and swiftly to the door. He opened it to a rectangle of bright light. In a moment, the boy was through it and flying up the stairs, shoes slapdashing the iron work. On the top landing, Justin fell. Charles lifted him to an upright stand and held him by the shoulders.
‘Are you all right?’ No, he could see that the boy was not all right. Justin’s eyes were filling up with tears. The child slumped against his chest, and Charles held him until the racking stopped.
Captain Judd Thomas of the West Side precinct sat dead center in the hierarchy of arranged chairs in Jack Coffey’s office. The captain was wearing his diplomatic smile, just enough teeth showing to say he wanted to keep this meeting friendly, no blood drawn, not today.
‘Palanski wants in on this case.’
‘I don’t think so, Judd,’ said Jack Coffey, who was overworked, understaffed, and only wanted the meeting done with. All of this was in his face, the shadows of too little sleep, the lines of too much stress.
‘Palanski has a way of getting information from these people.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Mallory.
Captain Thomas’s tiny eyes became even smaller as he turned on her. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Mallory rose from her chair and left the room so quickly, there was no time for Coffey to threaten her with a look that promised charges of insubordination, charges which would have meant nothing to her.
Riker smiled.
Coffey was looking at Captain Thomas with something approaching temper in his eyes, but not crossing the line with the words.
‘Who told Palanski she was working that building?’
‘He’s got sources in that crowd.’
Riker leaned forward. ‘And I’ll bet his sources don’t stop with the doorman. He can work those wealthy people like street weasels. Is it just me? Am I the only one in this room that finds that interesting?’
Coffey shot Riker a look that said, Shut up.
Captain Thomas ignored him and looked at Coffey with raised eyebrows, clearly asking if Riker was housebroken and leash trained. ‘Palanski is one of the best detectives I have. He’d be an asset to any investigation.’
‘It’s Mallory’s case, Judd. You don’t get squat. That’s it.’
‘Commissioner Beale and I go back a long ways, Jack.’
‘As far as Beale is concerned, the sun only shines on Kathy Mallory this week. The little bastard’s grinning like a ghoul. She’s the only cop ever commended by the Civilian Review Board for shooting a citizen. She can do no wrong.’
‘But what about you, Jack? You’re in line for promotion. This is a high-profile case – big money, big names in that building. Palanski’s got sixteen years’ experience. Mallory’s a kid. You don’t want her to blow that promotion out of the water, do you?’
‘Judd, if I thought you were threatening me, I’d have Mallory blow you out of the water, ’cause I just really hate that.‘
Riker sat back in his chair. If Coffey kept up this insubordination with superiors, then one day he might have to stop ragging the kid and show him a little respect. Then what would he do for fun?
‘Tell Palanski to back off, Judd.’
The captain sighed. ‘You know, Jack, with all the moonlighting and the free food and discounts for cops, all the little fiddles getting worked all over town, if we ever enforced the rules, we wouldn’t – ’
‘I don’t know where you think you’re going with this, Judd,’ said Coffey. ‘You got something on one of mine, you spit it out! Now!’
Thomas put up his hands to say, Okay, enough, and he lifted his bulk out of the chair and left the room.
And Riker knew that was too damn easy. He was wondering what the captain’s own fiddle might be when Coffey turned on him, angry.
‘Do you know what Mallory has on Palanski?’
‘No idea. She’d never rat out another cop. She might shoot him if he gets in her way, but she’ll never rat on him.’
‘You went too far with Judd Thomas.’
‘It’s her life on the line. You know Palanski is dirty and I know it. He’s responsible for all the damn leaks. One of those leaks could get her killed.’
‘You went too far, Riker. Thomas finds Palanski useful the way I find Mallory useful. If all she’s got on him is flashy clothes and fifty-dollar haircuts – Mallory’s clothes are tailor-made, for Christ’s sake, and she doesn’t cut her hair over the bathroom sink, does she? Right now, we’re real lucky the captain got his new job with politics instead of brains. But let’s not count him a complete moron. Let’s not push our luck, okay?’
Riker hated it when Coffey was right. ‘You want me to see what I can turn up on Palanski?’
‘No. I’ve got someone else working Palanski undercover. So just table that, okay? No more speculation, even if your lips don’t move.’
‘You didn’t put it through Internal Affairs?’
‘No, no IA men. I want to keep this one in the family. When you see Mallory, tell her to get her ass back in here. I think it would be nice if she went through the formality of handing in reports – just to be polite.’
‘You know, this might be her version of professional courtesy. Maybe she thinks you’d rather not know what she’s doing and how she’s doing it. She might have something there. Think about your pension.’
‘I’ve already got a problem with the way she’s handling the case. She’s trying to cover three suspects by herself. It’s a scattergun approach for one cop. If she doesn’t get him soon, she’ll lose him.’
‘Oh, I think she knows which one it is. If she tells you she has three suspects, you can figure two of them for smoke. She thinks you don’t trust her to run her own investigation, and that’s wise on your part. I haven’t trusted her since she was ten.’
‘It’s nothing supernatural, I promise you,’ said Charles.
Justin was deathly quiet, his small face turned to the cab window, to the fall of snowflakes silently crashing against the glass.
‘When I get home, I’ll go back down to the cellar and have a close look at the target. I’ll find that the old mechanism was triggered by accident. You probably jostled it when you leaned on the target. It’s that simple. In fact, I don’t even need to look. And I won’t look, that’s how much faith I have in you. There’s no other explanation, Justin. The knife came from the other side of the target. No one made it fly through the air. All right?’
The boy turned to him. In that small face, there was clearly a will to smile.
When they exited the cab in front of the school on the Upper East Side, Charles stayed awhile to watch Justin join the other boys who were standing about the yard in groups of threes and fours. But Justin did not join them. Hands in his pockets, head down, he stood alone by tacit agreement of the yard.
Charles winced, for he was watching a living memory of his own school days. Now a bell called the boys back into the building, two by two, and three by three, and Justin on his own.
Charles unfurled his umbrella against the hard drive of snow and stared at the park on the other side of the wide street. Mallory would be a straight shot across the park and a jog in the road north. Perhaps he would visit her if she was at the Rosens’ apartment. Also just the other side of the park was the crime scene.
Cabs passed by him, empty of passengers and ripe for the hailing, but he liked to walk in the snow. Over the years, he had acquired a taste for all the solitary occupations. And so would young Justin.
On his foul-weather meanderings closer to home, Charles would frequently encounter others in this select club. He was on a nodding acquaintance with fellow rain walkers and snow walkers, and they would smile at one another in passing, recognizing the secret sign – the gait of no pressing business, while all the other pedestrians were hurrying along, anxious to be out of the wet and the cold.
He crossed the street and took a path that wound down from the sidewalk and into a pristine valley of new snow. Only his footsteps marked the way until he came to the road which led through the park. He walked along the road, wondering what Mallory was up to, wondering if he would actually want to know that.
Now a horse-drawn carriage approached him. The snow ploffed on his umbrella, and it suddenly occurred to him that his shoes were not meant for snow. It crossed his mind to hail the carriage driver. But no. He let the carriage pass unhailed. New shoes could be got, new snow was not so easy to come by. He continued his solitary tracking.
What would Markowitz have said about Mallory’s negligence in failing to visit the crime scene? What might she have missed? Nothing, probably. Her refusal was most likely only an overreaction to Riker’s lecture on procedure.
Suppose he visited the scene himself, and possibly noticed something useful? How would she react to that? Well, they were partners, weren’t they?
‘You’re living in a fool’s paradise,’ said a voice which had come to shelter under Charles’s umbrella. ‘Behold a pale horse,’ said the man who materialized at his side to hold a conversation with a third person who was not visible to the naked mind.
Charles felt an involuntary shudder. He looked down to a shiny bald spot in the center of the smaller man’s matted swirls of gray hair. The old man’s coat was dirty, but good wool. A scarf was wrapped around his neck and trailed behind him on the ground. It was the longest scarf Charles had ever seen, and with all the colors of an unwashed, unkempt, unraveling rainbow. The man continued to walk along with him, accepting the shelter of the umbrella as though it were his due.
Charles knew he could never look on madness in the same way again. He had done his own time with one who was not there. And he had to wonder how often Malakhai had done that trick before the damage became permanent, before it became impossible to send Louisa away. Each thought changed the configurations of the very brain itself.
‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.’
‘I’m Charles Butler. Good day.’ He moved the umbrella to one side, the better to protect his gray-haired companion from the driving snow which dusted the old man’s sloping shoulders.
‘And lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,’ the old man intoned.
‘Well, perhaps it hasn’t been a good day,’ said Charles.
‘A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon at her feet.’
What is Mallory’s day like? What is she up to right now?
‘And there was war in heaven.’
That might not be far from the mark.
Now the old man parted company with Charles, as the invisible partner in conversation led the man down another path of revelation and gravel covered over with snow.
When Charles came to the site of the murder, the yellow strands of tape were still in evidence, stake-tied by their broken ends and waving in the white wind of snow.
He walked to the place confirmed by Heller’s map as the original murder scene. He stood by the water and looked around in all directions. So far he had learned nothing that Mallory might not have gleaned from the map. The site was within view of the path along the water. That fit nicely with Mallory’s theory of a spontaneous act. There was not sufficient cover to do a murder undisclosed.
The murder had taken place on a rainy day. Few people walked in the rain and the snow, but those who did were habitual in their defiance of the elements. He stared up at the towering building on Central Park West. The upper floors reached above the tree line of bare branches. Mallory might be looking out of one of those windows at this moment.
He walked around the leg of water to the path lined with benches, and then he sat down to wait. He had not been sitting there for very long before the one he waited on came walking along the path – the other walker in the snow.
He nearly missed her, though she was close. The bright snow had strained his eyes, and he had to work to pick out the particulars of her, the white face, white hair covered by the white woolen cape. She was as close to invisible as one could be without being a figment of the mind.
Cora pulled the hood of her white cape close about her face.
Too late.
He had seen through her camouflage. The man was very tall, but not threatening in his stance. She squinted to focus on his face which became clearer as he walked toward her.
Well, with that silly, wide grin, she might assume that he was one of the more docile lunatics who roamed the park at will. No, he was not dangerous.
Her hands went past the layers of sweaters beneath the white cape, and into the deep pockets of her white woolen trousers, looking there for a few coins.
‘Excuse me,’ the man said, standing before her now and bowing down to her so the wind wouldn’t take his words, and no matter if it did, for she read the words off his lips.
She drew the coins from her pockets and offered them to him. ‘Now promise me you won’t spend this on wine.’
‘Oh, no thank you. It’s not money I need.’
And now her suspicions were aroused anew. He didn’t want money? Well, he must be crazy, and perhaps dangerous as well. She turned away from him. He circled round to the opposite end of the path, but kept a courteous distance. There was an apology in the way he stood, and a foolish, hopeful look to his eyes, the pair of which had entirely too much white around the irises.
Oh yes, he was quite mad.
‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘It’s about what happened there on the morning of the nineteenth.’ He turned to point to that place across the dark water where the broken yellow tapes were waving in the wind. He turned back to face her before speaking again. He had already picked up on the fact that she was a lip-reader. That spoke well for presence of mind.
‘Ma’am, I don’t suppose you were out walking that morning?’
He seemed sane enough now. The shape of the words on his mouth had a good neighborhood to them, without slang or slur of form, and she could find no fault with his manners.
‘Yes, young man, I was out walking that morning.’
‘Did you happen to notice two people, a man and a woman, standing over there?’
He must be speaking of the young lovers, Blue Legs and the tall umbrella. Oddly, she felt protective of the young couple. Who was he to pry into their secret meeting?
‘Why do you ask?’
When he was done explaining that the lovers were murderer and victim, she felt the need to sit down. He sensed this and guided her to a bench a few feet up the path. He dusted it for her with touching chivalry and sat down beside her.
Now the man’s face was all concern. Was he reading the new horror that was setting in behind her eyes? She had taken Blue Legs’ wound for a flower. What a fool she had been. A rose in winter? Why hadn’t she known the young woman was on her way to dying? Perhaps she could have…
Oh yes, she could have. If only she had not the fool’s idea to go out without her glasses and her hearing aid. And now she bowed her head with the weight of a dark understanding. In the same way she had prevented the carnage twixt a beetle and a spider, with only the flick of her wrist, she might have prevented a murder.
So a bug survived, a woman died.
Blue Legs, I am so sorry.
He touched her hand lightly to call her face back to his so he might ask another question. Had she seen anything else, anything out of the ordinary?
Well, no. The young lovers had taken all her attention.
A speeding blur of red cap and jacket with churning blue-jeaned legs ran past them in a boy’s whiff of spearmint gum and wet wool. A dog was fast on the heels of the boy. Dog and boy left the path and put new tracks in the virgin snow of the incline behind the benches. Then they were gone.
‘Oh, the dog. Yes, there was a dog racing up that hill, and he caught his leash in the brambles. I suppose I should have thought it odd to see the dog with the leash and no human attached to the other end. But you know, people will let the dogs run wild in the park, though it is against the law.’
‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ said the man. And now she found his smile quite engaging – though still a bit loony.
When they stopped to speak with the doorman at the Coventry Arms, the man’s friend, Mallory, was not at home. The doorman checked the name against a list on frayed, creased paper. He smiled broadly and invited them to wait for Miss Mallory in the lobby.
‘Mallory, just sit down and shut the hell up.’
To Coffey’s surprise, and he hoped it was concealed surprise, she sat.
‘Don’t you ever walk out on a meeting again. I don’t want any more grief from you. Don’t you even think about irritating me any more, no more insubordination, none of that crap. I’ve got Riker for that. If he thinks you’re stealing his song and dance, he won’t like it.’
‘I’m not going to work with Palanski.’
‘No, you’re not. But that was my decision, not yours. And now about that other little job I gave you. Did you pull the records for me?’ Did you steal them for me?
She said nothing and he had to make what he could of the silence. He was operating by Mallory’s rule book now.
‘I hope you’re doing this discreetly.’ Don’t get caught.
Silence.
‘I’ve got an idea Palanski does a lot of overtime.’ He’s on the take.
She only nodded, but that was promising.
‘He seems to have some kind of radar for homicide scenes within smelling distance of money – even on his days off. He was on vacation time when the body turned up in the park. Oh, sorry, Mallory. I’m telling you what you already know. That’s rude, isn’t it?’
He was close to joy when the side of her mouth dipped with annoyance. So even Mallory had buttons. ‘Did you bring me the records?’
‘You don’t want to see his records,’ she said.
‘Mallory – ’
‘Markowitz never turned on a cop.’
‘Shut up, Mallory. Granted, I’m no Markowitz, but neither are you. Your old man was a detail fanatic. He’d take any information he could get, from anywhere, anybody. You should have learned more from him when you had the chance. Your lone cowboy attitude isn’t something I expect to cure in a day, but I do want to keep you alive long enough to bring you up on charges the next time you cross me. Someone at the Coventry Arms tipped Palanski to the activity. It might be your perp, or it might be you rattled another cage and it’s unrelated. If I’m going to plug the leaks, I need the dirt on Palanski.’
Her arms folded across her chest. No, she was telling him, she was not going to roll over on a cop.
‘I’ll handle Palanski,’ she said. And then she threw in, ‘If you like,’ as a concession. It was a small gift from Mallory, a consolation prize as she was telling him to go to hell. Another round was lost.
‘Okay, you handle it.’ Was he losing his mind, loosing her on Palanski, giving her carte blanche? ‘Don’t do anything Markowitz wouldn’t ask you to do.’
‘Understood.’
Later, in the washroom, he saw a ghost in the mirror over the sink. It was Markowitz – no, it was Jack Coffey wearing Markowitz’s old worries over Mallory and what she did and what might come back on him. Breaking laws to keep them was the norm now.
He was so easily seduced by her.
He was going to kill her. It was the only way. But first, a little fun. He would make her pay for torturing him, and she would pay slowly.
Thoughts of her came and passed. When she was in his mind, she brought with her a burning sensation, inflicting a hot red flush all through his body and his brain. When he thought of her, it was her eyes he saw before him, the bright lanterns of an onrushing accident, running mindless, relentless, along a single track, no one at the wheel, no way to stop her.
And each time that moment of helpless fear and panic passed on, he was left with exhausted humiliation and anger. Now his hands balled into fists so tight, his nails left red indentations on his palms. One of those indents was filling with blood.
He looked down at the bleeding flesh. She had reached out and done this to him. She had drawn first blood, and she would be sorry.
A fat gray bird strutted along the ledge by his open window. It was still there when he returned from the kitchen with the bread. He crumbled a slice in his hand and slowly reached through the window to lay a line of crumbs for the bird.
It jerked and started and cocked its head to look at him with one eye only. It was a city pigeon and unafraid of humans, who had failed in all their pathetic attempts to annihilate its entire species as a defecating public nuisance. Contemptuous of the hand which lay only inches away, the bird concentrated on the meal of bread crumbs which brought it ever closer to its death.
A young woman stood at the desk in the lobby. Something was concealed behind her back and concealed quickly at first sight of the couple being pointed out to her by the man behind the desk.
Formal introductions were made to Cora by her new friend, the man with the foolish smile, and now the small party moved up through the floors of the tall building to the spacious apartment which did not fit the personality of the young woman called Mallory.
‘Mallory, you were right,’ said the man whom Cora now called Charles.
He was well mannered in the way he kept his face toward her so that she should not miss any part of his conversation with the young woman.
‘Amanda was meeting him in the park that day. It was a spontaneous act, as you said. And the murder occurred at 7:45. We have a witness. Mrs Daily, may I introduce my partner, Mallory? Mallory, this is Cora Daily, who likes to take long walks through the park in bad weather.’
‘How do you do,’ said Cora. The child before her was so lovely, but there was an aspect to the girl that was inhuman. Eyes like a cat she had. Well, that was all right, in fact, that was fine. In seventy-eight years, Cora had outlived many cats and had no fear of Mallory.
‘What did you see?’ asked the young woman, who was also quick to pick up on the lip-reading. She brought her face low and close. ‘Did you see the murder?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Did you see him strike her? The first blow?’
‘No. But I did see the meeting between them.’
‘So you can identify the killer?’
‘No, you see I wasn’t wearing my glasses. But I know he was a tall man.’
And now Cora could tell this was not news to the girl. She felt she had let down the charming Mr Butler. ‘I saw the red wound to the side of her head after he struck her. There was an umbrella in the way when the blow must have been struck. But he was holding on to her before and after the wound appeared. Is that helpful to you?’
‘Tell me more about the perp.’
‘Excuse me? The…’
The perpetrator, you said he was tall. How tall?‘
‘He was taller than the woman.’
‘How much taller?’
‘Hard to say. The umbrella was an impediment most of the time. And I suppose the way he held it made him very tall, but – ’
‘Do you think I’m very tall?’
‘Oh, my, yes.’
‘Are you even sure it was a man? Or did you assume that because you thought they were lovers?’
‘You’re quite right, of course. I shouldn’t have assumed that. I haven’t been very helpful, have I?’
‘Of course you have,’ said her young man, gallantly jumping into a breach of uncomfortable silence. He looked up and exchanged expressions with the young woman. His face said, Play nicely. And her face said, Why the hell not. And now the young woman smiled.
‘You were better than most. I have nightmares that any case will hang on an eyewitness. Eyewitnesses are never any good. Their testimony is the worst evidence you can bring into a court room. But you confirmed the scene of the crime. That’s useful. You placed the time of the murder, that’s helpful. You saw the first blood. I like that. All in all, a good job.’
And now the smile evaporated, and Cora could read nothing in the young woman’s face any more.
Charles leaned forward, still careful to include Cora in the conversation by not averting his lips as he spoke. ‘Mallory, do any of the suspects have dogs?’
‘Everyone in the building has a dog. Why?’
‘Cora tells me there was a dog running through the park that morning. He was dragging a leash. Maybe one of your suspects walked the dog that morning and then lost track of the animal while he was doing a bit of murder.’
Mallory turned to Cora. ‘You saw the dog?’
Cora nodded.
‘What was the breed?’
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say. My glasses – ’
‘What size was it?’
‘Oh, a standard size, not awfully big or very small. I’m sorry, I can’t – ’
‘What color was it?’
‘I don’t remember, but I think it might have been dark – but not black, not that dark – maybe a brown dog.’
‘Maybe?’
She had no answer for that. She had underestimated the young woman, and now she was wondering if there had been a dog at all, or a pair of lovers. Could they have both been women? Might the dog have been -
‘Well now,’ said Charles, lurching once more into the silence. ‘You place a dog on the scene, and you’ve ruled out toy poodles and Great Danes.’
The young woman nodded. This was useful to her, which seemed to please Charles very much. Any fool could see he was in love with the girl. Well, at least he was happy. Good job. She had come to like this man.
When she rose, announcing that she must take her leave of them, he escorted her down in the elevator and handed her into a cab. He insisted on paying her fare to the driver. As she shook hands with him, she said, ‘You were born in the wrong century, my dear.’
When he returned to the apartment, it was difficult to miss the sharp knife lying on the coffee table next to the canvas duffel bag. As if she didn’t own enough weapons. First there was the very large gun which bulged under the blazer. She removed this now and took it into a back room. Then there was the gun that she ought to be carrying, the one the police department actually approved of. He supposed she kept that one at home. And last, there was Markowitz’s ancient Long Colt, which she kept in the desk of her office at Mallory and Butler, Ltd. He would never have pictured her with a knife.
He picked it up and turned it in his hand. On the reverse side of the blade was the crest of Maximillian Candle.
‘It’s probably none of my business,’ said Mallory, walking back into the room and nodding towards the knife, ‘but I wondered what was going on in the basement. I just came from there. The door was unlocked, and the partition for Max’s equipment was wide open.’
‘My fault, I left in rather a hurry. You didn’t by any chance pull that knife out of the target, did you?’
She nodded.
Charles stared down at the knife and forgot to ask what had brought her to the basement, so great was his surprise. It was the wrong knife of course. All the blades that came from the interior of the target were partial blades without points, and fixed to the mechanism. They could be pushed back into the compartments but not drawn out, and not with a full blade and a point.
When he had explained it to Mallory, she asked, ‘Could anyone else have been in the basement with you and Justin?’
‘Well, it’s possible, but I doubt it.’
‘Did you tell the parents what happened in the basement?’
‘Yes, of course. I called them from the office. It took me forty minutes to track them down to a cocktail party. The child had been in trauma. They had a right to know he was upset.’
‘Well, you also left the basement door open. Has the boy had time to go back and change the knives, the boy or one of the parents?’
‘But the front door of the building wasn’t unlocked. It’s self – ’
‘And we both know that a kid can bypass that security. How tough do you think it would be for an adult?’
‘I just can’t picture one of them – ’
‘Easier to picture that scenario than a knife flying through the air on its own. Someone has gone to some trouble here, and this is quite an escalation from flying pencils. This business has got to be cleaned up, and it’s up to you. I’ve got my hands full with a murderer.’
‘You truly believe someone in the Riccalo family is going to get hurt?’
‘Oh, sure. It’s coming. Count on it.’
‘There’s no supportable argument for that.’
‘So?’
So, when did logic ever interfere with her train of thought? It was her method first to settle upon a target hypothesis and then to move toward it with great velocity, and let nothing get between her and it.
An eye-blink ago, the space by Mallory’s feet had been empty, and now it was full of cat. Nose was picking up her bad habits.
‘Are you still planning to wrap up Amanda’s death by the twenty-sixth?’
She nodded. ‘If I don’t move on it now, I’ll lose him. If I string him out too far, he might get to a lawyer before I can nail him.’
‘Lucky for you, all three suspects are spending the holidays in town.’
‘If one of them had left town, I would’ve crossed him off the list.’
‘But logically – ’
‘Logic only works on paper.’
‘Jack Coffey seems to think – ’
‘You talked to Coffey? You didn’t tell him about the novel, did you?’
‘No. Why didn’t you tell him? Why all the secrecy? You work with these people.’ No, wait, fool. She doesn’t. She works alone.
‘A cop is leaking information. I’m not taking any more chances.’
‘But you’re taking terrible chances. Suppose you’ve underestimated the murderer. Coffey says you underestimate every – ’
Mallory’s posture was ramrod straight. Her chin lifted only a little.
‘I know this man. He cleaned that apartment over and over again. He cleaned things he couldn’t have touched. He had to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t miss anything. And so he can never be sure he didn’t miss something. He’s the only one who can tie me to Amanda Bosch, because he’s the only one who knows she’s dead, and that I was mistaken for her. He wants to run, but he can’t. He figures I know something, but he doesn’t know how much. It’s driving him crazy, me being here. Every message I leave on the computer puts him closer to the edge. He can’t leave. He was my prisoner the day I moved into this condo. He’s waiting for me to come and get him. Every knock on his front door is the end for him. When he can’t stand it any more, when he snaps, he’ll come to me. And I will pick that moment.’
For the duration of her soliloquy, he could swear she never blinked her eyes. There was an edge to her voice. It was the sort of edge fools like himself were prone to falling off of, crashing as they fell, and proximity made him nervous.
‘Jack Coffey’s right, you know.’
Nose locked eyes with him as though asking how he could have said such a thing out loud.
‘Coffey is?’
‘Well, yes, I think he is right about a few things.’
The cat looked away, giving him up for dead.
‘And I’m wrong?’
The measured weight of her words also carried the second question: Whose side are you on? For it would always be that way with her, this demand to choose up sides – her side versus the balance of the planet.
‘Mallory, if you string out all the facts, just the bare facts, they don’t amount to much of a portrait, certainly not what you’ve extrapolated. You can’t bet your life on it.’
It was Nose who picked up the warning signs first, with an animal’s radar for the impending storm. He bristled and crept under the couch. And Charles was suddenly reminded of the old man in the park quoting from Revelations – warnings of earthquake, the dark of the sun.
The long red fingernails disappeared into the duffel bag on the coffee table and emerged again with a small bundle of printouts sectioned off with paper clips. She selected one clipped bundle of sheets and held it up to him.
‘Okay, Charles. Let’s take a look at your own little problem with the flying objects.’ The light sheaf of papers hit the coffee table with real force. Her face was rigid.
‘These are the facts - my contribution to the partnership. Two women died. Two insurance companies paid off. A third woman is frightened, or at least she acts that way. The kid’s trust fund is down by a full third. The father is the executor of the trust. You might assume he just made bad investments because his own portfolio and accounts are also depleted, but that would be supposition, and I’m sticking to the facts. The stepmother is a computer programmer with a financial background. She has a FAX origin number, access to the executor’s signature and documents. She knew Robert Riccalo for ten years before she married him. Per your own notes, nothing flies unless the three of them are in the room. A pencil flew at the stepmother. Now it’s easiest to make the pencil fly to the person pulling the thread, but I made it fly to you, didn’t I?’
Her voice was entirely too civilized, prompting the cat to stick its head out from under the couch.
Where was all this background information coming from? As quickly as he framed that question, he filed it away among all the other unspoken, unanswered questions which were suspended from the rafters of his brain like bats sleeping in the dark. When she got information for him, he had ceased to ask where she got it, and he tried not to speculate on the source, setting his ethics adrift – becoming more like Markowitz.
Another printout hit the coffee table with a hard slap. The cat was gone again.
‘The boy used to keep normal school hours. He had one after-school program to fill out the parent workdays,’ she said. ‘Now his hours are longer at the Tanner School. He sometimes goes six days a week without eating a single meal at home. The new stepmother arranged that. And Justin was right about all the wives being copies of one another. They all favored extended after-school programs. None of them wanted the kid around. The kid’s trust fund is down, and Dad’s in a hole. The new stepmother is top-heavy with insurance from her job. The natural mother had a history of heart problems. The suicidal stepmother had a brief psychiatric history. These are facts.’
‘I suppose the one with the psychiatric history saw things flying through the air?’
‘No way to know. It’s a fact that a shrink was observing her for signs of paranoia during a brief hospital stay. She didn’t leave a suicide note. The ME investigator tried to do the work-up for a postmortem psychological autopsy. He said the family never discussed flying objects with him. There’s the file on the woman’s death. There are personal notes in there about the kid. The word spooky is mentioned twice. I’m only repeating the facts.’
There was a restrained violence to the words, a force being held in check. Though her anger was increasing in pent up energy, there were no signs in the cool mask of a face.
‘Well, the suicide rules out the insurance motive.’
‘No, Charles, in fact it doesn’t. Riccalo went to court to make them pay off. There was no suicide exclusion, and she had no psychiatric history at the time she took out the policy.’
‘And Robert Riccalo was the beneficiary.’
‘That’s a fact. The settlement was deposited into the boy’s trust.’
‘That sounds sinister.’
‘Let’s stick to the facts, Charles. The settlement barely covered the amount lost in bad investments the previous quarter. If that trust fund had dropped too low, it would have triggered a bank audit. He didn’t have much choice about depositing the money back into the trust. So, just at the right time, a heavily insured woman dies. I call that interesting.’
‘You have nothing to indicate foul play. As I understand it, there was no one in the house when it happened.’
‘That’s speculation. The department won’t check an alibi unless the case is written up as a homicide. If you stick to the facts, you have a logical case to fit any one of them. But, if instinct counts for nothing, how come I know the perp from the next victim, and you don’t?’
The air between them was chill to dangerous. Even Malakhai in his debunking days would have found her quite unnatural in the world. All the good logic of his good brain excused itself and went off to keep the cat company under the couch. Too late, he had come to believe in her as others might believe in magic.
‘Which one of them is doing it?’
‘Too bad I can’t tell you. I didn’t figure it out with logic, so it doesn’t count, does it?’
‘Which one? Who do you think it is.’
‘Oh no, Charles. I’ve seen the light. I’ve got religion. I’m only a cop, a detective. You’re the genius, and now that you have it trimmed down to logic and solid facts, the rest should be easy for you. Let me know if you ever work it out.’
‘But there’s a case to fit any of them. Logic – ’
‘Logic is your handicap, not mine. If logic is king, how come I know and you don’t? Have fun, Charles. Don’t forget to duck. Send postcards.’
She began unpacking new boxes of disks from the duffel bag.
‘You make it sound like I won’t be seeing you for a while.’
‘I’ve got things to do.’
He only turned his back for a moment, looking for something to say to her. When he turned back to face her, she was gone. The door to a back room was closing behind her, the cat was padding after her, and he was left to show himself out.
‘So, we’re still on for this evening, right?’ he called to her through the door to the back room.
Silence.
As he walked to the front door, he had to examine another set of facts. She had been right about the manuscript being autobiographical, certainly to the extent of the pregnancy and the dancing cat. And right about the meeting, the spontaneity of the act. He had closed the door behind him and was standing at the elevator when he thought to go back, to pound on her door and demand to know which one of them made the pencils fly.
She knew.
And only now he remembered the knife was still sitting on the coffee table. Why had she brought it back to the Rosens’ apartment? What had she been doing in the basement?
Robert Riccalo still managed to dominate the large room, though he had retreated behind the financial pages of his newspaper, which obscured all but his trouser legs and the green leather of his chair.
The chair was positioned like a throne and elevated above the cushions of the couch where his wife perched. Justin sat in a small wingback chair which might have been made with a child’s size in mind.
The rustle of Robert Riccalo’s newspaper could be heard above the television chatter of a commercial for fabric softener. Every grunt or sigh from the throne called Justin’s eyes up and away from his book. Each time he looked up, he would catch his stepmother staring at him, finding Justin a hundred times more interesting than the television set which played on to no one.
All three heads turned in the same direction when they heard the crash of glass in the next room. Robert Riccalo looked at his son, who scrunched down in the chair. Sally Riccalo was rigid as a board, sitting ramrod straight at the edge of the couch cushion, eyes fixed in the direction of the noise, her long thin nose pointing to it like a compass for things that went bump in the night.
Robert Riccalo was first into the dining room. Pieces of blue glass lay on the marble tiles. Four of the longest shards were lined up in a row pointing toward the room he had just left. Now he turned quickly at the sound coming from his wife, who stood behind him. It was from deep inside of her, a squeak that escaped. Her eyes fixed on the bits of broken glass.
Justin was last to enter the room as the first shard of glass was inching along the floor toward Sally Riccalo. She stood there paralyzed, unmoving. Now she broke formation and pointed at Justin. ‘It’s him, he’s doing this to me. He’s trying to kill me! It’s him!’ Her finger pointed at the boy, and Robert Riccalo turned to his son, thunder brewing in his eyes.
Justin fled the dining room and ran down the hall to his own room. He turned the lock and strained to move furniture across the door.
‘Justin.’ his father bellowed. ‘Justin.’ The yelling was› coming closer. ‘Justin!’ Almost at the door now. The doorknob moved as the lock was tried. He listened to the large man turning on his heel, footsteps fading off to get the key. Then Robert Riccalo was back and fitting a key into the lock.
Justin backed up to the far wall as the door cracked against the dresser and that heavy piece of furniture was being moved slowly, relentlessly out of his father’s way.
It was the five-year-old who caught her attention when he yelled in anger, ‘I want to see the body!’ and now Mallory wanted to see it too. She walked toward the group of pedestrians clotting the sidewalk in front of the next building. The boy kicked the leg of a woman who held him by one arm. The woman was of a different color, and by her uniform, a different piece of the planet earth, one closer to the ground than the highrise strata where the child dwelled.
‘I will not go inside!’ said the child, balling his tiny fists.
Now she noticed the long black coat of outstanding tailoring, even by Mallory’s standards. It was draped on the man who was pushing at the body with the tip of his umbrella.
‘Is he dead?’ asked the woman next to him, drawing back. ‘Is that why he smells?’
‘No,’ said another woman. ‘They all smell like that.’
Mallory pushed through the small group to see the umbrella successfully rolling the stiff body of a man. The eyes were closed as if in sleep, and there was no trauma to the grimy face, no trace of insult at the prodding umbrella, for he was dead. The bottle by his side, the spill of vomit, and the ragged clothing told his story. He had crawled into the bushes late at night and frozen to death, too far gone with booze to seek better shelter. Or perhaps he had choked to death in the vomit. The third shift doorman, whose job in life was to drive off the poor, had probably been sleeping on duty or reading his paper when the man had taken refuge from last night’s snow beneath the slim cover of a bush.
The child was looking up at Mallory, having ferreted out some authority in her. ‘Is the doorman gonna call the road kill wagon, like he did for the dog?’
‘What dog?’
In the glee of a really great conspiracy, the boy said, ‘I saw a dog murdered. It happened right there.’ He was pointing to the curb. ‘I was upstairs – ’
‘How far upstairs?’
The nanny stepped forward. ‘He lives on the tenth floor. He keeps going on about the dog, but I don’t know if he could have seen – ’
‘I did too see it! And I wasn’t on the tenth floor. She just says that so my parents won’t find out I was unsupervised,’ said the child, giving care to this last word, which was obviously a newly acquired tool to blackmail the nanny. That would explain why the nanny wouldn’t fight back. The kid had something on her.
‘I was standing in the hall on the third floor,’ he said. ‘I looked down, and the man was murdering the dog.’
‘How?’
‘He strangled it. The dog pulled on the leash, and I guess he didn’t like that. He lifted the dog up by the choke chain. He lifted it right off the ground, and the dog was kicking and kicking. And then it stopped moving. It was dead. He kicked the body into the street. I wanted to go see the body, but the doorman wouldn’t let me. He said he was waiting for the road kill truck.’
‘When was this?’
‘I don’t know.’
Mallory looked to the nanny now. ‘When did it happen?’
The nanny shrugged. ‘It never happened. He makes these things up.’
‘I don’t, I don’t!’ said the boy, with another well-placed kick to the woman’s leg.
‘Maybe I should talk to the doorman or his parents,’ said Mallory.
‘It was on the nineteenth,’ said the nanny, with instant recall. ‘The day it rained.’
But neither doorman nor boy had been able to describe the dog. And Mallory knew the world would be a better place without the clutter of eyewitnesses.
The door was open. Mallory shifted the bag of groceries to one hip and pulled out her gun. With the gun concealed by the bag, she pressed through the door and into the apartment.
The concierge was standing in the front room when she came through the foyer. Now all of the room was exposed and she could see Angel Kipling opening the closet door.
‘Looking for something?’
The concierge spun around.
‘Oh, Miss Mallory, pardon the intrusion, but Mrs Kipling was sure she heard a scream coming from this apartment.’
‘It must have been the cat,’ said Angel. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Had to be. You always keep him locked up in there?’
‘It’s a big bathroom. I don’t want him shedding on the Rosens’ furniture.’
When the concierge had excused himself and closed the door behind him, the woman turned on Mallory.
‘We got your message.’
‘What message?’
‘Don’t be cute. I saw the setup in there.’ Kipling nodded to the door of the den, which was wide open. ‘Most of us only have the one computer. All the harassment comes over the computer. It explains a lot. So what do you want? How much?’
‘To keep quiet?’ Too good to be true. Pity the cameras weren’t rolling, but whatever Angel gave her couldn’t be used against the husband. ‘I’d rather deal with your husband.’
‘You’re dealing with him. I’m the husband in this relationship.’
Advancing on Mallory, Angel Kipling opened her mouth to say more, but then she either lost her words or thought better of them. The woman backed up in the way of the cat when Mallory’s glare said, Enough. Kipling stiff-walked to the door and slammed it behind her.
Mallory walked into the kitchen and set down the grocery bag. She laid the gun alongside it on the counter and put the perishables in the refrigerator. The phone rang. She let it. She put the butter away, and closed the door on the second ring. She walked into the front room in her own time with no hurried motions. The cat was pawing at the glass on the aquarium, maddened by the swim of fish, unable to get at them.
‘I know just how you feel,’ said Mallory. On the fourth ring, she picked up the receiver. ‘Mallory.’
‘It’s me, Justin. It wasn’t me that made the pencil fly.’
‘What?’
‘It wasn’t me. Will you help me?’
‘You know the conditions. When you’re ready to tell me the truth, I’ll help you.’
She heard the child’s sudden intake of breath, and then the connection was broken abruptly.
Justin was forgotten in the next minute. Through the open door to the back room of the Rosens’ den, she could see the vase falling from the small table, bouncing on the plush carpet, strewing yellow roses and water. Damn cat.
But now she heard Nose mewling from the room behind her. She stared at the roses until she was distracted by the warning light from her computer system. Another fax was coming in.
She brought the fax up on her monitor. It was addressed to Judge Heart. The logo bore the name of a law journal, and the text was a request for permission to reprint one of the judge’s papers in an upcoming edition.
She fed the fax into the graphics file where she cut and pasted the logo and signature on to a clean page. And then she typed her own text: ‘The journal is considering a manuscript, and we want to cover ourselves for libel. There are only a few little things to clear up. Is it true that you beat your wife on a regular basis? Is it true that your mother died of a savage beating?’
Then she sat down to a quiet hour of computer terror, tailoring new messages for the building bulletin board.
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ said Riker as he approached Mallory’s door. Was that what he thought it was?
It was the genuine article all right. He pressed the buzzer and pounded on the door. ‘Mallory! You in there?’
When she opened the door, he grinned. Mallory would never know the relief that was washing through his system, shutting down all the reflexes that would have broken in the door if she hadn’t been quick enough to answer it.
He pointed to the large scrawled X on her front door. The marking could only be blood. They could both tell catsup from death.
‘Nice touch, Mallory,’ said Riker, walking past her and heading toward the phone on the table by the door. ‘A little ostentatious, but I like it. The perp knows your name, and where you live. That wasn’t enough? You thought he might lose his way?’
‘Definitely a squirrel,’ was all she said, still staring at the X.
‘Now let’s have another little talk about your pet theory. This guy’s stalking you. It doesn’t square with a frightened perp who kills in a panic and runs away. It’s a different game.’
‘Maybe it is. Or maybe somebody’s working with him?’
‘Okay. Two of the suspects are married. Say one of the wives is a different type of personality. More like yours. Either she’s a ballsy monster in her own right – ’
‘Or she does whatever she’s told.’
‘Still an open game, huh? Or maybe you’re shaking out too many trees. You had to scare all three of them? It never occurred to you someone else might come after you, maybe with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the city?’ Or a weapon. He looked back to the door. ‘How long do you think it’s been there?’
‘It wasn’t there an hour ago when I got in.’
Riker was on the phone now, saying, ‘Ask Heller if he can get down here. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If the blood is human, it might be his.’ He put down the phone and turned to Mallory. ‘Time for backup, kid.’
‘Don’t call me kid. And I’m the low budget case, remember?’
‘You can’t stay here alone any more.’
‘I don’t have that high an opinion of the perp. Look at this.’ She pointed to the center of the bloody X on the door. ‘Feathers. Our fearless perp murdered a bird. So no backup. I’m not letting anybody screw this up for me.’
They were still playing ‘backup, no backup’ when Heller arrived with his kit and began to scrape the samples off the door. Riker was worn down to ‘okay, no backup’ when Heller left.
‘When do you figure to bag him?’
‘Maybe on Sunday.’
It figured that she would pick the day when God was resting, not looking – if she wasn’t lying to him again.
The cat was purring around Mallory’s legs as she holstered her gun. Mallory picked the cat up in her arms. Nose nuzzled her face, licking her skin with a pink sandpaper tongue, eyes closed slowly in the cat’s idea of a smile. Mallory walked to the door of the bathroom, held the cat out at arm’s length and dropped it on the tiles. The cat stood up and began to dance.
Riker whistled low. ‘Has he ever done that before?’
‘No.’
Kneeling down, she took the paws in her hands and put them firmly on the floor.
The cat purred at her, half closing its eyes again. She stood up, and now the cat’s eyes were open hurt as she was closing the door. What did I do wrong? asked a confusion of rounding eyes and jerking starts of the small head, the paws rising.
The door shut.
If only she had been a woman of standard intelligence and ambition. If only her countenance had not been the beautiful antithesis of his own clown’s face; if she had only been normal, he would have given her everything he had. But she was abnormal and deviant, and if she wanted it, he would give her everything he had.
He had known she wasn’t coming at only five minutes past the hour. Now he measured the passage of time by the ice melt in the silver bucket. The red wrapping on her gift looked pathetic to him now. Stupid box, ridiculous thing, sitting there all dressed up for a woman who didn’t care to open it. For an hour more, he stared at the door she would never knock on. And then, he was pulling on his coat and opening the front door, which he would not remember locking behind him, because he hadn’t. He passed through the halls and down the stairs and into the dark to walk and think.
The night was crisp and cold. To the north he could hear the bells of the convent on Bleecker Street, and to the west the bells of St Anthony’s. He was such a fool that he found the night romantic, though he had no one to share it with, and perhaps he never would.
Mallory was everything Riker said she was: no heart, no soft places he might reach. Of course she thought him a fool. Of course he was one. He always said the wrong thing. If only there were some aspect of her that was conventional, a bit of sure ground that he could understand.
The CD player slammed on his thigh from the deep pocket of his coat. He had thanked her for the gift, but never used it. Well, perhaps this bit of technology was the bridge to Mallory. He pulled it from his pocket, set the earplugs in place and pushed the play button. Music poured into the center of his skull and seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. It was wonderful. It was all new again, this music he had carried in his head since childhood.
And something new had been added to his homemade madness.
For a moment, he forgot to breathe as he listened to that sound that was not music, and neither car horn nor church bell. He knew it was Amanda’s footstep behind him, even before she came abreast of him. A delusion with audible footfalls. Her tread was too light and a bit off stride, an as yet imperfect imitation of a living woman. He turned away from her and turned the music off.
The footsteps vanished.
He kept his eyes other-way directed and focused his concentration on Mallory.
She knew who made the pencils fly. Perhaps she also knew the dynamics of his small telekinetic family in a way that he could not. Was it signs of abuse she recognized in Justin? Or, as Justin had said, something she saw in the boy that she did not like in herself? Or was it something simple that allowed her to see what he could not? Something simple – the absence of a heart?
‘Sometimes they can’t love back,’ Amanda said, keeping time now with his own footsteps. His delusion had a near human persistence. Amanda had come back to keep him company for a while. He looked down at her sad face, and fear of her turned into curiosity.
‘You weren’t loved back either, were you?’
‘No.’
‘And when you came to know this man, contempt killed what feelings you had for him. Am I right?’
‘Yes. But you will never have contempt for Mallory -it’s not the same. My contempt was for his weakness. She has a terrible strength that’s not quite in the normal scheme of things, and frightening sometimes, isn’t it? You’re lost, Charles. I was better off than you. It’s better to have a definite end to the loving.’
‘In the end, it was only the child you cared about.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why then, did you ask to have the child cut away from you?’
‘He lied to me.’
Her footsteps made less noise now, as she walked along beside a lonely man who cast one shadow for both of them. He had gone to no trouble to create her this time, and this should have worried him, but he was oddly glad of her company.
‘Do you know why she gave you my manuscript?’
‘So I could give it a thorough read, maybe find something of value to the investigation.’
‘You know she read every page before she gave it to you.’
‘Of course she did.’
‘It was the love of the child she couldn’t fathom. She couldn’t understand how I could want to build plans for a lifetime around the future of an unborn baby.’
‘But Mallory was a much loved child. Helen and Louis were devoted to her.’
‘Yes, after the damage had been done to her out on the street. What about Mallory’s own mother? How was a child so quick, so beautiful left wandering the streets? She was the child women pray for. How was she let go? If you’re still looking for the link to the boy, it might lie in her history. What do you really know about her early days?’
Charles sighed. ‘Mallory is an intensely private person. Her history was never open to discussion.’
‘If you could bend your mind outside the parameters of fact and logic, you might reach the conclusion that Mallory’s mother is dead, perhaps murdered.’
‘I think that’s a bit far-fetched, Amanda.’
‘Is it? She’s predicting violence in the Riccalo family. You see a link between her and the boy. They’ve both lost their mothers. Doesn’t it make you wonder? What sent her into the street, a small child on the run? What was she running from?’
‘Perhaps she was abused as a child?’
‘By her mother? No. She loved Helen on first sight. Someone taught her to trust women like Helen Markowitz the nurturer, healer of scraped knees, lover of children. Suppose Mallory saw her mother killed?’
‘Oh, this is absolute rot. There are no facts to support that line of reasoning. Next you’ll be telling me that Justin saw his mother die, and that’s the common bond, as though Mallory could read that in his mind.’
‘Maybe they read one another’s eyes. Don’t they both have the look of damage? Justin doesn’t behave much like a child, does he? He doesn’t have a child’s conversations. There’s another commonality. Mallory was the same way, wasn’t she?’
‘The purpose of creating you was to find out who killed you.’
‘Yes, but was that your idea? She only gave you my manuscript when she realized that once you had this intimate piece of me, you could do the succubus illusion.’
Could she be that convoluted? Mallory? Certainly. All those prompts about Malakhai? What else could that have been about? He’d been had.
Amanda nodded her understanding and walked ahead of him.
‘And what about you, Amanda?’ he called after her. ‘Who killed you? How could you be killed that way and why?’
‘He lied to me.’
He was too tired to sustain her and thus restrain her. Unable to keep her with him, he watched her go into the shadows. She was of such frail substance, she was killed by the first patch of darkness she encountered.
To be abandoned by two women in one day.
He stared at his shoes for a moment as he walked on, in and out of the light. Lost for a while in thoughts of Mallory, he meandered south and east for too many blocks into territory he was unsure of, unsafe in. When, at last, his eyes were looking outward again and he realized this, he found he didn’t care. And he was only dimly aware that the time was passing from Christmas Eve into Christmas morning.
He shuffled through the pile of newspapers close to the brick of a building wall, and then he went sprawling. The cement came up to meet his face with a hard hello. Something small and alive was squirming out from under his splayed legs.
She was standing in front of him now, and wearing a little red coat.
Oh, dear God, he had tripped over the body of a child. She must have been sleeping under the newspapers. He was staring into the smudged face of a little girl with matted hair and the biggest eyes he’d ever seen. She might be six or seven. The child was extending a cup to him. It was torn and jingled with change. It took him a moment to grasp the idea that the little girl was begging for money, that she was thin and shivering.
‘Where’s your mother? Why are you – ’
Now the child was backing away from him. Bright eyes, quick with intelligence, had sized him up for a non-donating type, and maybe an authority type, and possibly even a cop, or worse, a social worker. As quickly as he realized all of this was going on behind her eyes, he was watching the back of her as she slipped away in the dark.
He found his feet and gathered himself up to a stand and ran after her, pounding down the sidewalk, in and out of the black and bright zones of street lamps, intact and broken. In one of these dark patches, she had disappeared. He stopped to listen for her soft footfalls.
Silence.
Now a jingle.
He looked up to see her straddling the top of a chainlink fence, and he held his breath as she monkeyed down the links with amazing speed. He came up to the fence in time to see the small red coat flapping around a corner in the distance.
And now the child was altogether gone, and with her, a ghost of Mallory’s Christmas past.
Oh, fool.
His head bowed into the cold metal of the fence. His eyes closed tightly. His heart was breaking.
Fool.
Her eyes were not a Christmas green, nor the green of living things, but cold and, just now, eerie. The lights from the dashboard made them glitter in the shadows. They seemed lit from within, as though Mother Nature had thought to do something different with the makings of Mallory – to break up the monotony of stereotypes and throw an occasional scare into Riker.
‘You know, Mallory, if I thought you had a heart, I’d think you were worried about me offering myself for the holidays.’
Yeah, right, said the dip of her mouth on one side and no words necessary.
He closed the passenger door of her small tan car. ‘I won’t be a minute – just a few things to pick up for breakfast.’ He turned and walked toward the dim glow behind the plate-glass window of the bar. He peered in and waved one hand. Peggy leaned her broom against the bar and waved back to him. He ambled toward the front door.
The beer he’d already put away had numbed him. He was only dimly aware of the teenage boy thirty yards to his right. Now he looked casually toward the boy. The kid was looking in all directions, probably waiting for someone. Riker looked back to Mallory, who was lost in the darkness of the car. The bartender opened the door, and he walked in.
‘Who’s your friend, Riker?’ asked Peggy, looking over his shoulder.
Riker slowly turned his head to see the teenager behind him. Peggy was not so slow, not drunk at all, and she was backing up to the bar where she kept her shotgun. Too late for that now.
He was watching the boy reaching into his jacket, hand closing on the gun in his belt. Riker wondered if it would be the fast reflexes of youth that would kill him, or could he put it down to his own slowed reaction time – too much booze? Either way, the young thief would have him. All this was calculated in the second it took for the boy’s hand to pass into his jacket, just another second out of sixty.
The boy never got the chance to pull the gun. Suddenly, a rush of manic energy with bright curls was pushing the boy through the open doorway, slamming him into the near table so hard Mallory nearly cut him in half at the gut level. She reached into the jacket and pulled out a.22 revolver. Now she was cuffing him and hustling him out of the door. Momentum, stunned wonder and pain had made the boy docile.
Riker never said a word to Peggy. He lifted his hands to catch the brown bag with his breakfast six-pack on the fly as he followed Mallory and her new pet out to the sidewalk.
Hey, what’s the deal here?
Mallory was pressing down on the boy’s head to ease him into the front seat of the car on the passenger side. Any kid who watched too much television would know the perp rode in the back of the car. What was she up to? She opened the back door of the car for Riker and said, ‘Sorry about the inconvenience, sir. I’ll get rid of him as soon as I can.’
Since when did Mallory ever call anybody sir! She hadn’t called him that even when he’d held the rank of captain. But that was one wife and how many bottles ago. He nodded and settled into the back seat to play out her game.
When Mallory was in the driver’s seat, she leaned over to the boy and said in a low voice, ‘It’s too bad you had to witness the deputy police commissioner drunk in an after-hours bar. I guess I’ll have to kill you. You understand, don’t you? It’s politics and nothing personal.’
As Mallory drove the streets, Riker watched the boy’s face. The kid was sweating, and his body was weaving between This is crap and true believing.
‘It’s a damn shame you had to pull this stunt on a night when a top cop is drunk in the back of my car. Yeah, I guess I’ll have to kill you.’
It was ludicrous, but now Riker realized that this boy was so young, it had not been so many years ago that he had bought into Santa Glaus and the Tooth Fairy. And then the kid had additional proof in Mallory’s eyes, the eyes of an assassin.
Yeah, the kid was buying it.
Riker felt a worry coming on in the pit of his stomach where he kept his ulcer. She hadn’t waited for the kid to pull the gun, to commit the crime. She hadn’t read the suspect his rights. She’d broken every rule, and now she was making up new ones to break.
Well, he could relax a little. She wouldn’t actually kill the kid, because Markowitz wouldn’t have liked that. In the absence of a normal sense of right and wrong, good and evil, Mallory was much guided by what would have pissed off Markowitz and what wouldn’t.
Now they were in the Wall Street area, deserted on Christmas Eve. She pulled into a blind street closed off by construction signs. Her eyes roved over the bins of debris left on the site.
‘No, not here,’ she said. ‘Sorry it’s taking so long, sir. I’ll get rid of him on the next block. Okay?’
‘I won’t tell!’ screamed the kid.
Mallory said nothing as the minutes rolled by slow with the creep of the car, stopping in dark places, shaking her head and driving on.
‘I gotta wonder where that gun came from,’ she said at last, ‘and I gotta wonder what you’ve done with it.’
Riker found it interesting the way her expensive education fell away at warm moments like this one. Her voice had a rough edge that would scare any sane person into backing off with no sudden movements. He could only guess at what was going through the kid’s mind. His own body was pressing into the upholstery of the back seat.
Mallory and the perp looked so young to him. With their unlined faces and blond hair, they might have been brother and sister. But he could almost feel the car dip to one side with the power on the driver’s end of the front seat.
‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ asked Mallory, her voice switching gears, all mother love in her tone. ‘Yeah, my gut hurts something awful,’ said the boy. ‘Good. I noticed there weren’t any bullets in the gun. That’s not too bright, is it?’
The kid looked from the gun to Mallory and back to the gun, genuinely startled.
‘So you stole the gun, but not the bullets? When I wash this registration number through the computer, am I gonna find out that some taxpayer was burgled by a moron who thinks the gun makes its own bullets? What else did you steal?’
‘Nothing, I didn’t – ’
Riker jolted forward as Mallory slammed on the brakes. The boy didn’t fare as well. With hands cuffed behind him, his head hit the dashboard. The boy moaned and Riker looked away, the better not to see Mallory drawing first blood of Christmas morning.
Wall Street was a ghost town after the financial houses’ end of business day. You could do what you liked in this neighborhood without fear of another pair of eyes.
Mallory leaned over to grab the boy by his shirt collar. ‘You are stupid. When I run the gun through, you think they won’t mention the rest of the stuff?’
‘It was nothing. There was a ring and a bracelet, but it was junk. I took it to a jeweler. He said I’d be better off selling it at a flea market, and that’s the truth. I’ve known him all my life. He wouldn’t lie to me.’
Riker shook his head and smiled. A baby felon who took stolen goods to his neighborhood jeweler. The criminal class was getting dumber every year. And no bullets. Didn’t these kids learn anything in school?
He listened as Mallory called in on her car phone to run the dates and the jewelry description. But she neglected to mention that she had the suspect in custody, and she never mentioned she had the gun, and at the last, she said, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t match up,’ and closed the call.
‘It checks out,’ she said to the boy. ‘I’m gonna cut you loose. But you never tell anyone you saw the deputy police commissioner drunk in an after-hours bar. Deal?’
The kid nodded his head like a trick pony. Yeah, whatever she wanted, so long as she didn’t hurt him any more.
Riker stopped smiling. He sat still in the dark at the back of the car and tried not to lose the glow of the previous six-pack of beer. No good. He was becoming unwillingly sober as he crept up on Mallory’s mind.
Of course. It all fit.
It was only the thief’s gun she wanted. He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling of the car.
Ah, Markowitz, you bastard. How could you die on me and stick me with your kid? Can you hear me, you son of a bitch‘? Look at what your baby’s doing now. She’s robbing another baby.
‘If I don’t see you when I count to ten, I don’t shoot you. Okay?’
She leaned across him to open the door on his side of the car. Riker listened to the metallic mechanics of Mallory unlocking the irons. She sat back. But the boy was tied to the upholstery by fear, and she had to finally cut the cords with ‘GET OUT, you idiot!’
The boy did his dumb-pony nod again as he was half falling, half stumbling from the car. He staggered in a weaving line for all the seconds it took to understand that he was free, and then he ran.
Riker got out of the car and slid into the front seat.
‘I’ll take the gun, Mallory.’
‘No, it’s mine.’
‘You never planned to take him in, and that wasn’t to save me the embarrassment of showing up at the station house drunk. Everyone already knows I’m a drunk. No, you wanted his gun for a throwaway piece. You wanna save it for the perp in the condo. Now if I’ve got this wrong, just stop me.’
But he wasn’t about to let her stop him, and he went on with the relentless energy of a train running at her full speed, because it was the only way to deal with her – if he lost, his breath, he lost his turn, and the train would turn around and crush him.
‘You figure the perp’s weapon of choice is his hands. If you have to kill an unarmed man, the Civilian Review Board will get you. But if you pull another gunslinger stunt, let’s say you get him in the knees, Coffey will get you for it. He’ll lock you up in the computer room, and you’ll never see the street again. Almost seems like you can’t win. But if the perp has a weapon lying on the floor beside him, if it looks like he brought his own gun to the party, you can’t lose, can you?’
She wouldn’t look at him.
‘Markowitz never carried a throwaway piece, not in all the time he put in on the force. He hung out there in the breeze with all the rest of us. He played it straight, and that took guts. Maybe you don’t have the stuff, Kathy. Did you learn anything hanging out with the old man? Anything at all?… Kathy?’
‘Mallory to you,’ she corrected him.
‘You’re going to give me that gun, or I’ll beat the crap out of you and take it. I loved Markowitz longer than you knew him. I’m not gonna let his kid screw up. Give it to me. You know I don’t bluff. Never have, never will.’
Nothing.
She was rigid, deaf and blind to him.
‘Now, Mallory, or it starts to get real ugly.’
She handed him the gun. ‘And Merry Christmas to you too, Riker.’
The device on his belt gave off the annoying beeps, the mechanical, nagging request to call in, and quickly. He picked up the car phone and dialed the number for Special Crimes Section.
‘Yeah,’ he said into the receiver, ‘I know him… No, it’s no problem, I’m on my way.’
To Mallory he said, ‘Charles is at the station. He needs something and says I’ll vouch for him. You coming?’
‘No, I’ll drop you off.’
‘Trouble between you and him?’
‘Charles asked for you, not me. He doesn’t need my help. He made that pretty clear.’
When he stepped out of her car ten minutes later, he leaned down to say softly, ‘Have you given any thought to the toy gun on the inventory sheet?’
Her eyes shone with sudden understanding. She smiled slow and sly. He really hated it when she did that.
Charles sat on a yellow plastic chair which was too small to accommodate his long body. His legs crossed and uncrossed, tucked in and splayed out, looking for a way to look unfoolish.
At three in the morning, there was a constant activity under the bright fluorescent lights. A woman, wrapped in a blanket and screaming, walked past between two uniformed officers. A dazed and docile teenager was led along by a plain clothes detective Charles knew slightly. Two tourists came in yelling. By the snippets of their conversation, he deduced that they were minus their luggage, wallets and jewelry. Next in the parade, two young men in handcuffs were escorted by four officers.
Merry Christmas, said the bright silver paper letters strung over the desk of the civilian clerk who had taken his report.
Charles looked down at the lines and pockmarks on the floor until he saw the familiar scuffed pair of worn brown shoes, topped by a bad suit and a cloud of beer that was Riker’s breath.
Riker nodded to him and walked on in the company of the two officers who had tried to reason with Charles and failed to communicate that there was no way to catch a kid who didn’t want to be caught. They had no problem catching grown-up felons, they told him, but kids could fit into hiding places they had never dreamed of. Then, in desperation, Charles had resorted to the crime of name dropping. One phone call from the desk sergeant, and only minutes later, here was Riker, the improbable knight.
Now Riker was sitting down at a desk and nodding amiably as the two officers leaned down to tell him all their problems with his friend the lunatic. Riker picked up the phone, and Charles watched him make three calls in quick succession. On the fourth call, Riker smiled into his telephone, eased back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. His hand waved to tell the officers they could go on about their business. In parting, one officer put a friendly grip on Riker’s shoulder.
Riker set down the phone after another minute and motioned Charles over to the desk. He picked up the sheet of paper which Charles recognized as his report, and began to read it aloud.
‘So, your small friend had a little red coat that didn’t quite fit, right? Mismatched shoes and socks, matted brown hair and light colored eyes?’ Riker did a double take on the next line. ‘She was unwashed, malnourished, but excellent motor skills, good reflexes, three feet six inches tall, approximately seven years old, and in a big hurry?’
‘Yes, that’s her.’
‘And she had head lice, Charles. You left that out. I found her. You done good. You scared the little brat right into a shelter for runaways. They know this kid as a regular. She came in with big eyes and gave them this fairy story about being chased by a giant. I guess that was you.’
‘I didn’t mean to frighten her.’
‘Good thing you did. She’ll get a hot meal and a bed.’
‘What else can I do?’
‘Nothing, Charles. You’ll never see that kid again. You’ll never find out what happened to her. I won’t even give you the name of the shelter, because a deal is a deal. Normally, they won’t tell us anything at all. You see, we hold the legal position that the kid belongs to the parent. The shelters sometimes take the view diat the kid will live longer if we butt out. But this supervisor owes me one. So, with the understanding that we never had this conversation, I tell her about my crazy friend who wants to turn NYPD upside down to keep a kid off the street on Christmas morning – and she asks me how tall you are.’
‘I’m a fool.’
‘Don’t ever change.’
‘I’ve ruined your holiday.’
‘My wife left me on Christmas Day. It isn’t much of a holiday for me. Let me buy you a drink.’
‘I insist on paying.’
‘No, my treat. I’m gonna get you the best scotch money can buy. Come with me.’
They passed through the swinging doors that led down the familiar corridor on the way to Special Crimes Section. When Markowitz was alive, Charles had been this way many times – up the narrow staircase and into the cavern of dimmer lights and dead quiet, broken now by the plaintive ringing of a single telephone. Two detectives sat alone in separate pools of light on the other side of the wide room. One lifted his head and waved to Riker.
Riker opened the door to Jack Coffey’s office, which had once been Markowitz’s office. He sat down in the chair behind the desk and seemed at home as he pulled out a wire, jiggled the lock on the bottom drawer of the desk, and extracted a bottle and a half-empty package of plastic cups.
Charles folded his long frame into the opposite chair, smiling and utterly companionable in this small criminal activity. He accepted one of the poured shots and lifted his plastic cup in a toast. ‘Merry Christmas, Riker.’
‘Merry Christmas, Charles.’ Riker downed his shot and smiled. ‘So what’s the problem between you and Mallory? Anything I can help you with?’
‘We had an argument at the wrong time. She’s not speaking to me. Did she tell you about the Riccalo boy?’
‘Flying objects, and no hands in play? Yeah.’
‘There’s something she sees in the boy that I can’t see. Something like a memory, a kinship or a likeness. I need to know what the link is. But she’s not talking to me any more. What should I do? Apologize?’
‘Oh no. Worst possible idea. You don’t ever want to lose face with her. Never show a weakness.’
‘Then what do I do?’
‘What makes you think there’s a tie?’
‘Well, it’s not logical of course, I’ve got nothing to support the idea, but I do believe she sees something of herself in the boy.’
‘You mean the kid’s a monster?’
‘I was thinking along the lines of abuse. Do you know what her past was like before she went to live with Louis? Any clue at all?’
‘Markowitz did wonder about it. He spent a lot of time trying to trace her. Helen was hot to adopt the kid. But Mallory wouldn’t cooperate, not even for Helen. She would have died for Helen, but never told her a thing. After a while, Markowitz and Mallory came to an understanding. It was her history, not his. And he backed off.’
‘Did he ever speculate on it?’
‘He respected the kid. Whatever he figured out, he never let on, never shared.’
‘You think child abuse could’ve been a factor in her early history?’
‘If anyone had tried to abuse her, the bastard could’ve figured on losing an arm… No, Charles. You only think I’m kidding. I watched her grow up.’
‘But surely – ’
‘When Markowitz pulled the kid off the street, he recognized her position on the food chain – she was a baby predator. Mallory may rack up suspensions, but she’ll never lose her job with NYPD. None of us could stand the strain of having her on the other side. All you need is a few simple rules – don’t ever let her down, don’t ever rat her out, and don’t ever trust her.’
Was Riker changing the subject, or was this his imagination?
‘I need her connection to the boy. This is very important.’
Riker pulled out his wallet, which was falling apart at the creases, and slid a photograph out of the cracked plastic holder. ‘Maybe you’ve seen this before. It’s the one Markowitz always carried. That’s what the brat looked like at ten. See anything familiar?’
Charles stared at the photograph. She had been so defiant when she posed for it. Yes, there was an unsettling aspect of the boy in Mallory, that same look of damage.
‘Riker, do you think it’s possible that Mallory witnessed a murder when she was a child?’
Riker spilled a portion of his drink, and it was not from lack of coordination. Wasting liquor was a breach of Riker’s religion.
Curious.
Riker reached down into the drawer and pulled out a brown bag, upending it and spilling a passel of deli napkins on the desk. He kept his eyes down as he mopped the desk with the napkins, buying the time to recompose himself. Now he shrugged as he looked up at Charles. ‘She was out on the street for years. She could’ve seen a murder, I guess. She never said.’
‘Perhaps I should ask Edward Slope. He’s known her as long as you have.’
And now something in Riker’s face said he wished Charles wouldn’t do that.
What might Riker be holding out on him?
Charles looked down at a roll of paper in the path of the spreading puddle. He picked it up. It was a computer printout, and scrolling on forever, the words said: I PROMISE TO SHOOT TO KILL. I PROMISE TO SHOOT TO KILL, line after line. Charles held the roll up to Riker.
‘What lunatic did this?’
‘Mallory,’ said Riker. ‘Turns out the kid has a sense of humor after all. Coffey reamed her out, and she dropped that on his desk the next day.’
‘Why is Coffey angry with her for not killing the mugger? He was holding a gun on an elderly man, and she – ’
‘Coffey figured she was playing with the perp, and she was. I backed her on that one, but Coffey was right. She screwed up. When you draw a gun to shoot an armed perpetrator, you’re trained to shoot for the widest part of the body, the best shot you can place to stop the perp cold.’
‘That sounds pretty brutal.’
‘It is. You may only have that one chance to save your life. And every civilian in the area is in your care when you draw that gun. From the moment she arrived on the scene, that old man, the victim, was in her care. If she’d blown the shot, the old man would’ve taken the bullet after hers.’
‘All the people on the Civilian Review Board – ’
‘Yeah, the Review Board, the city’s grand experiment with amateurs. So this week, Mallory’s a hero. But if the perp isn’t happy with the crook of his little finger after the surgery on his gun hand, he’ll sue the city for a million dollars. It happens. Your high-minded civilians will remember they’re also taxpayers. They’ll turn on her. Every one of them will curse her for not killing the perp, because dead men don’t sue. I love this town.’
‘What am I going to do about her? She knows something crucial about Justin, but she won’t talk to me.’
‘Learn to think like Mallory.’
‘How can I? I don’t have an underprivileged childhood to draw on, and I still don’t know much about hers.’
‘Charles, you’re a very smart man. I think that’s why Lou asked you to look after her. Now think. She’s too old to need a nanny, right? The old man figured you were the only one with a prayer of outsmarting her. He left her to you, not one of his old cronies like Doc Slope.’
‘Yes, he would have been my choice. Edward Slope is a very intelligent man.’
‘True. He’s a smart old bastard. So why not him, you wonder. You always hear him bitching about her defects. He can see every scam coming, right?’
‘Right.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, she walks all over him. He’d break his Hippocratic oath for Mallory. And the rabbi would take her side against God’s.’
Riker finished his shot and poured another. His red eyes rolled up to Charles with a question which could only be And, what would you do for Mallory?