Mallory's Oracle

by Carol O'Connell

  Sensing the seduction had no effect, she looked down at her red fingernails as if they might not be perfectly aligned.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “I’m working on spec. It’s something related.”

  “Kathleen.” In those two syllables, there was only a gentle suggestion that she might be lying through her teeth.

  “Mallory,” she corrected him. “There is a con game going on in Gramercy,” she said in the tone of ‘I am not lying’—though they both knew she was. But Charles was such a gentleman, wasn’t he. “I recognized the medium from a rap sheet description.”

  “And it’s nothing to do with Louis’s murder.” And the sun came up twice this morning.

  “Not.”

  “I’m worried about you. You would tell me if you were mixed up in that business, wouldn’t you?” And the earth might altogether stop revolving around the sun for an hour or so when that happened.

  “Oh sure. Why not?”

  Why not? She was genuinely fond of him. If a lie would make him feel better, she wouldn’t hesitate. She liked him that much.

  “So you’re only interested in the medium.” ‘And I, Charles Butler, am Queen of the May,’ said the shrug of his shoulders.

  “The medium is into computer scams. Not a genius programmer, but she knows her way around the information networks. Just like the old con artist in 3B.”

  “What?”

  “Edith Candle, the old woman upstairs in 3B. She has the same setup. Computer services for news clippings and research, magazines from all over the planet, a credit-check service.”

  “So you ran a background check on Edith. Please leave the tenants alone from now on. I’d rather you didn’t invade their privacy. And there’s nothing suspicious about Edith’s information network.”

  “Sure.”

  “She hasn’t left this building in more than thirty years, not since the year her husband died.”

  “I never said she wasn’t nuts. I just said it’s the same setup Pickering’s medium had the last time she was arrested.”

  “Edith is a recluse, but she hasn’t left the race. She uses information networks to stay in contact with the world. She can probably tell you more about what’s going on out there than people who live out of doors. And the credit-check service goes with the territory of being a landlord. It’s all quite harmless.”

  “But she’s not a landlord anymore, and her subscription is up to date. It’s been what?—a year since you bought the building? And why would a multimillionaire want to hole up in a SoHo apartment?”

  “Edith made a reasonable fortune but nothing in the multimillions. There wasn’t even a quarter-million profit in the building. It was refinanced a few years—Sorry, I forget who I’m talking to. I assume you do know the exact amount of the mortgage?”

  Of course she did.

  “Charles, she’s got more money than God. She’s a stock market freak. Did you know she had a rap sheet with the Securities and Exchange Commission?”

  “What? No, scratch that. I don’t want to know.”

  “Insider trading. I’ve got all the documentation on it.”

  “Oh, well then, it must be true if you’ve seen it in black and white.” He threw up his hands and stared at the ceiling for a moment. His sarcasm lacked acidity, and she sometimes had to strain to catch the false notes. He went into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out his wallet.

  “Let me shake your faith in all-holy documentation.” He fished out his driver’s license and dropped it on the desk in front of her. “Look at that. It says I was born on the twenty-sixth. My birth certificate says the same thing. The doctor was tired after sixteen hours of a difficult delivery. He put down the wrong date. So much for documentation.”

  “She was served with a subpoena, the SEC filed a formal order of investigation.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more of this.”

  “Why not? I pulled this stuff out of the U.S. Attorney’s office. That makes it credible. You want to see the printouts?”

  “No!”

  She had only meant to sidetrack him and now she had gone too far. It was rare to see him angry. Once before, they’d had a conversation about his aversion to invasion of privacy. She hadn’t been able to make sense of it then, either, thought him deficient and handicapped, offered to straighten him out. And she could do that, she had implied then. He had come to the right place—

  “I didn’t mean to yell.” His voice softened. “Let’s try it again, shall we? Everything you learn about people redefines your relationship with them. I’ve known Edith since I was a child. Her husband was my father’s cousin. She’s all the family I have left. I don’t need to know any more about her than I do.”

  “So you don’t want to know about the insider trading.”

  “No! ... Sorry.... Suppose someone came to you and told you something unpleasant about Louis or Helen?”

  “Okay. Enough,” she said.

  No, he didn’t think so. That much was in his eyes. Too pat an answer, entirely too easy. She would have to watch that in the future.

  They said their strained good nights to one another in the hall. She walked to the elevator and pressed the button. The doors opened on the startled face of Herbert Mandrel. His small head jerked in the way of a bird startled by the sudden display of Mallory’s perfect teeth. He looked to the ceiling and walls, evaluating the limited number of exits in an elevator, and then moved as far to the rear as he could go without leaving an indent on the back wall. As the doors closed and the elevator began its slow ascent, he was puffing out his bird’s chest and standing a little straighter, as though this might buy him the inches he needed to look her in the eye.

  She noted the army fatigue jacket and a familiar bulge at his side. His hand moved to cover it, but too late. She was smiling down on him as she reached out to tap the red button to stop the elevator at the third floor.

  The cords in his neck were bulging. He would not meet her eyes when she brought her face very close to his and said softly, “You watch a lot of television, don’t you, Herbert? Cop shows, things like that? If I told you to assume the position, would you know what I meant?”

  Now he did meet her eyes, and the little bird’s chest was deflating. He rallied, puffing out once more, eyebrows knitting together, preamble to a New York attitude of ‘get out of my face.’ “You have no authority to—”

  She grabbed him by one arm, spun him around and slammed him back against the wall of the elevator. With one foot, she knocked his legs apart. When he was spread-eagle and somewhere between surprise and soiling his pants, she said, “If you move, I’m going to hurt you. You got that?”

  He nodded and then froze. She patted him down, and then her free hand moved around to the front of his belt and unhooked the heavy metal object.

  “You can turn around now, Herbert.”

  He was still for a moment longer in the attitude of a specimen mounted on a collector’s wall. He slowly straightened and turned to face her, looking up and clearly hating her for being tall, among her other crimes against him.

  “What’s this?” She dangled the speedloader by its strap.

  “I bought it from a guy at my gun club.”

  “Where’s the gun?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “That doesn’t work for me, Herbert. A speedloader and no gun?”

  “I don’t have a gun. The city’s jerking me around on the license. My lawyer’s working on it. Ask Edith Candle. She knows. I asked her for the name of a lawyer. I only practice shooting with the guns at the club.”

  “Where’s the gun club?”

  “West Fourteenth Street.”

  “Barry Allen’s place?”

  “Yes. He’ll tell you the same thing. Check it out. Ask Barry, ask Edith.”

  “I will.”

  She pressed the button to open the doors to the third-floor hallway. She stepped out of the elevator, turned and tossed the speedloader back
to him. He reached out for it and clutched air as it fell between his outstretched hands and rolled to the back of the elevator. He was on his knees when the doors closed on him.

  It made sense to her. Herbert wasn’t the type to have connections to buy stolen, unregistered guns. Barry Allen was an ex-cop with a good reputation—no worries there. But how long would it be before a buddy at the gun club sold the little jerk a gun?

  She dismissed the little man and turned her thoughts back to the argument with Charles. She had understood him well enough. She would have done serious damage to anyone who had maligned Helen or Markowitz. So she would let the stock scam go by. But damned if she would let slide the mention of Pearl Whitman of Whitman Chemicals in the SEC reports. Markowitz had once told her half of police work was tracking down the linkages of persons known to those unknown. Pearl Whitman had known her killer. Perhaps Edith Candle knew him too. This was her thought as she pressed the buzzer of apartment 3B.

  There were muffled interior sounds of footsteps approaching, but no metallic clicks of locks being undone. The door opened on a comfortably rounded woman with white hair and the whitest skin Mallory had ever seen on a living human. It was luminous. Edith Candle smiled as though she were facing a long-anticipated friend, and not an unannounced total stranger. Mallory found this attitude far from the basic New York religion of security, which mandated one dead bolt and two sturdy Yale locks, a Doberman, a pit bull, and a peephole in the door.

  “I’m a friend of Charles Butler.”

  “Well, any friend of Charles is welcome in my home.” She stood to one side, inviting Mallory to pass through the door. As they walked into the brighter light of the living room, Edith Candle failed all of Mallory’s expectations for a stock swindler. She was small in stature. Her head was disproportionately large, and a neat bun gathered at the nape of her neck. The lace collar of her wildly out-of-date dress disappeared under three chins. Her hands were knots of arthritis, and she wore glasses with thick lenses which made her eyes into expectant blue saucers.

  Mallory was being pulled into the room by the gentle touch of a warm pudgy white hand on her arm. “Sit down, dear. I’ll put on the coffeepot. Or would you rather have wine?”

  “Coffee is fine, thanks.”

  She had learned enough from Charles to know the antique furniture was not a collection of cheap knockoffs. The room also housed a clutter of pricey bric-a-brac—porcelain figurines and silver candy dishes, frilly lampshades, small clusters of photographs on each broad windowsill—everything designed to catch and trap dust, yet nothing did. The air smelled of pine scent and furniture wax, all the sensory cues of Helen Markowitz, world’s foremost homemaker. Another familiar aroma was emanating from the kitchen, lingering after-dinner traces of pot roast from a thousand Sunday dinners and Monday morning lunch boxes.

  “Who was she?”

  Mallory spun on the woman suddenly and startled Edith Candle backward a step to collide with a chair and set it to rocking. The old woman adjusted her balance and her glasses. The chair continued to rock as though inhabited.

  “There are memories of a woman here, aren’t there?” The old woman sat down on the couch and automatically readjusted a doily on the padded arm. “There’s certainly nothing in this room to say a man lived here. Was it your mother you were thinking of?”

  “I never knew my mother.”

  “You breathed deep. There are no flowers in the air, only the smell of a good cleaning. And you approved the order of things. That was in your face. Apparently, you were raised right. Someone loved you. Who was she?”

  “Helen. You say was. How did you know she was dead?”

  “You were looking at a memory.”

  Oh Christ. So this was where Charles got it from.

  “Yes, dear,” she was saying when they were seated in the spacious kitchen and sipping their coffee. Edith Candle pushed a plate of brownies across the table. “His parents used to visit quite often when Charles was a child. Did you know his mother gave birth at the outrageous age of fifty-six? The Butlers were lovely people. Max and I took care of little Charles when his parents attended university conferences out of town. I used to take him to the park and watch him make false starts with the other children. He was always so hopeful and always being crushed to death. His IQ alone was enough to set him apart, but then his appearance didn’t help. He was born with that nose, you know. The only newborn I ever saw with a big nose. I also spent a lot of time with him when he was doing postdoc research. He used me as a test subject. I used to be a psychic, you know.”

  “I know. We’re working on a case with a fake medium now.”

  There was a humorous glint in the woman’s eye at the drop of the word fake.

  “Oh well, you came to the right person. I probably know every scam there is. But you should be a bit more open-minded. Charles can tell you that some of them have genuine gifts, an aptitude for reading souls. What I read in yours, my dear, is pain ... killer pain.”

  Two cups of coffee later, Edith Candle was opening the door at the end of the hallway. Mallory followed the old woman onto the small platform which joined the wrought-iron staircase in the progress of its winding. The railing spiraled down and around in a pattern of stark white walls and black metal. Spindle shadows slanted against the rounding stairwell, and naked light bulbs radiated from the doors of the lower platforms leading to each level of the building.

  Mallory descended the stairs in the wake of Edith Candle’s foray into the world beyond her five rooms. They walked down and around the circling stairs, passing the doors marked for the second and first floors, on down to the basement level and the last door. This had to be the only door without a lock in all of New York City. She put out one hand to gently restrain the old woman. She was aware of the heavy gun in her shoulder holster as she pushed through the door and into the darkness. One hand felt along the wall left of the door, seeking and finding the light switch. It didn’t work.

  “There’s a flashlight on top of the fuse box, dear,” said the old woman behind her.

  Mallory opened the door wide to admit more light from the stairwell. A fuse box was mounted on the wall to the left of the doorframe. She reached up and touched the flashlight on the top of the box. It lit up at the press of the button, and she turned it on the fuse box. All the fuses were good. She tested a fuse connection, turning the glass knob.

  “It’s not a fuse, dear,” said Edith, blinking up at her. “That light switch hasn’t worked since Max and I bought the building. It was a mystery to three generations of electricians.” She took the flashlight from Mallory. “If I recall, there’s another light by that wall. Yes, there.” She picked her way across the floor, skirting boxes and trunks, to an old standing lamp with a frilled shade. She turned the switch and it lit a small area of the cellar with a soft warm glow. “I know where there’s a much brighter lamp,” she said, smiling. “Follow me.”

  Mallory walked behind her as shadows loomed up on all sides, in a makeshift corridor of shipping trunks piled high with boxes and crates. Old furniture sat under dust covers, and at the end of the aisle, a headless tailor’s dummy stood off on its own.

  “All of Max’s illusions are down here,” said Edith. “We built this storage room—it takes up half the basement.” She fitted a key into a lock and the wall began to accordion, panels shifting, opening onto a cavernous space illuminated only by the light from the wide window at the sidewalk level and above her head. The source of the light was a first-floor window on the other side of the air shaft. There was light enough to see the quick movement of a rat among the garbage cans lined up near the glass.

  At the basement level, Mallory could make out the edges of crates and a tall section screen standing on three panels.

  “It’s been a long time since I was down here,” said Edith, walking in ahead of Mallory and touching a globe, which came to light and glowed dully. Within the small radiant circle of this lamp, light invaded a clear plastic garment bag, rippling
through the folds of silks and bouncing off sequins.

  “Other magicians have stopped by to offer condolences and ask if they could buy the mechanical devices. But I would never sell Max’s secrets. It’s a point of honor. Would you like to see one of his most famous illusions? Do you have a strong heart? We only performed this act one time. Too much blood, the theater owner said. Are you frightened easily?”

  Mallory looked down at the old woman. “Give it your best shot.”

  Edith switched on a footlight at the base of the section screen, which nearly touched the high ceiling of the basement. A dragon, mouth full of fire, was illuminated on three panels of delicate rice paper.

  “Wait here,” said the old woman. “I’ll just be a moment. I have to test the equipment. It hasn’t been used in more than thirty years.” She handed the flashlight to Mallory and disappeared behind the screen.

  Mallory felt a prickling sensation on the backs of her hands. All her good instincts made her wary. She took inventory of the shadows on the periphery of the globe lamp. The beam of the flashlight found the eyes she had only felt at her back the moment before.

  Charles?

  No. She was staring into the eyes of a disembodied head. The flesh had to be wax, she knew, but something icy was leaving a slick trail down her spine as she drew closer. The thing sat on a trunk at her own eye level and stared back at her with eyes entirely too real. The irises had more normal proportions of blue to white, but the wide-eyed stare of a Christmas-morning nine-year-old was definitely genetic. This was Charles’s cousin.

  Hello, Max.

  Mallory heard her name called. She rounded the screen and walked through a passageway of wardrobe racks, stopping ten feet short of the old woman, who was kneeling at the base of a guillotine fifteen feet high. The white hair was covered by a red turban, and her neck lay between the posts and locked in place by wooden braces with three openings to accommodate head and hands. Above her neck was a wide and wickedly sharp blade hanging high and waiting.

  Edith smiled up at Mallory. “Pull on that, dear.” She nodded to an ornate golden lever at the side of the guillotine.