Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  Quinn looked toward the lineup of drinkers at the bar and then over his shoulder to the scattering of patrons among the polished tables. “Almost all of these people are painters or photographers.”

  A young man dropped a coin into the jukebox, an elaborate art deco piece of ornate zigzag lines and curls of bright, colored lights. The music pouring out of the box was the big-band sound from a time when the old woman had been younger, prettier, more alive than the other permanent fixtures of Godd’s Bar. Mallory recognized the music from Markowitz’s record collection in the basement of the old house in Brooklyn.

  When she was a child, Markowitz had played the old records for her and taught her how to swing to the big-band music which had filled the basement with a fifty-piece orchestra. The dancing lessons had begun with the waltz, leading into bebop and then on to rock’n‘roll- the old man’s real passion. But she suspected Markowitz had harbored a special feeling for the early fifties. He would have loved this place.

  She was intent on the bartender’s back, waiting for him to turn around. When he did turn, he read her lips as she ordered a scotch and soda. He smiled and nodded at her, added a word each to two different conversations, mixed a tray of drinks for the cocktail waitress and splashed her scotch into a glass without a spill or a wasted motion. It was a magic act. He moved up the length of the bar, dancing to the music from the jukebox. One hand ringed a twist of lemon around the rim of the glass as he set the napkin in place on the bar. The glass appeared to settle there of its own accord, so sly was the hand. Long dark hair grazed his shoulders and he seemed to have no bones. Now he produced a bottle of sipping whiskey from the backbar and poured a neat shot without Quinn having to ask for it. The bartender was introduced as Kerry.

  “Thanks again for the gig at Koozeman’s,” Kerry said to Quinn. “The opening is gonna be a big night. He packs a lot of money into those crowds. It’s a networker’s dream.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Quinn. “I did it for selfish reasons.” Turning to Mallory, he said, “Kerry is one of my best sources for news in the art community.”

  Now Kerry was pointing to a patron sitting alone at the other end of the bar. “He just got the commission to shoot the plaza of Gilette’s new building. Gilette’s bringing down the wooden construction-site walls so they can photograph the place before the sculpture is installed.”

  Quinn turned to Mallory. “Every time a building goes up, the architect is obliged to let the city put its own sculpture in the plaza. It’s usually something pretty awful. The architect always likes to get the before shot so he can remember it the way it was meant to be.”

  Style, thy name is Kerry. She watched the bartender dance away to pour another round for a patron. Without facing Quinn, she asked, “Why were you at the old East Village gallery on the night of that double murder?”

  “Don’t you ever shift out of the interrogation mode? I told Markowitz. I’m sure he left-”

  “I don’t care what you told him. I can place you in each of Koozeman’s galleries at the time of two different homicides. That’s bound to make me curious, isn’t it? Now talk to me.”

  “I was told to meet Aubry there. A message was left at the newspaper in her name. Later, I figured that I’d been set up. The killer wanted to be critiqued, or that was your father’s thought.”

  “Was it? I don’t think you cared what Markowitz thought.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I think you spent all your time steering the old man in the direction you wanted him to take. I think you were obsessed with your own theories.”

  “You’re interrogating me, aren’t you?”

  “Cops do that.”

  “Are you considering me as a suspect? You think I murdered Starr? That’s ridiculous. The only kind of artist a critic can kill is a good one. Mediocrity is indestructible. You can step on it and flush it down the toilet, if you like. Not only will it survive, it actually flourishes in the crap.”

  While she quietly ruminated over his toilet metaphor, he signaled Kerry for another round of drinks.

  The jukebox was playing a tune from the late forties. All the records were perishable vinyl, played with needles to grooves. Mallory understood to the penny at what great cost these collectible recordings were rounded up, played until worn and replaced with others.

  She listened to the clear, sweet notes of the girl singer and wondered who she might have been. It was a distinctive voice, but she didn’t recognize it from Markowitz’s collection. She left the bar and walked to the jukebox. The song was ended, the record slowed and stopped. The singer’s name was on the record label below the name of the band, and in very small type-Hildy Winkler, the owner of the bar. So Quinn had missed that, or else he would have thrown it into the tour ramble. What else might he have missed?

  Hilda Winkler was shaking her head slowly as she waved one hand at the wide plate-glass window. Mallory caught the motion out of the corner of her eye. The old woman’s face swiveled quickly back toward the bar, and she was surprised to see Mallory staring at her. It was guilty surprise, a look Mallory knew well. She smiled at the elderly bar owner, just the line of a smile to ask, What are you up to, old woman?

  Mallory turned to the window in time to see the back of an old hag dragging a wire cart down the sidewalk.

  So that was it. Just waving off the riffraff. Move along, was all the old woman on the inside meant to say to the crone on the outside, No loitering, no rest for you-not at my door.

  Charles rang the bell again. Punctuality was her religion. He was genuinely stunned that Mallory was not at home. They had agreed to meet at eight o’clock, and it was ten of the hour now.

  He stood outside Mallory’s door as people passed by him on the way to a party in the apartment at the end of the hall. And every passerby looked at the man with the flowers, the tuxedo and the foolish smile. He was so transparently in love, they could read the plaque bearing Mallory’s apartment number through his soul.

  The elevator announced itself with a metallic ping. The doors opened and Mallory appeared, striding down the hall, a canvas tote bag slung over one shoulder. “Hi, Charles.”

  “You’re not dressed.”

  “You said eight o’clock.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only ten of eight now.”

  He followed behind her as she pressed through the door, dropped her tote bag on the rug and disappeared into her bedroom. “Clock me,” she called back to him as the door was closing.

  He sat down in a massive armchair. He wished everyone’s furniture was so accommodating to his large frame. Every object in this room had been selected for simplicity of form and function. If he didn’t know this was her apartment, there would be nothing to give him a clue to the inhabitant’s character. This was a non-atmosphere, impersonal, with no imprint of background. All the furnishings were expensive, but nothing was sought for show. There was a Spartan quality to the bare walls where the giveaway photographs and paintings should be. There was not a single bookcase to tell anyone that Mallory had a life of the mind. Her reading matter was squirreled away in her office at Mallory and Butler, Ltd.-all manuals for machines, and no literature to show even a passing interest in human beings. He looked around him again. Yes, he could believe that a machine lived here.

  The tote bag toppled over on its side and a slew of photographs spilled out onto the rug. He was staring down at the image of a man’s severed head. He looked away. He knew this must be the head of the artist who had been murdered twelve years ago. Though the photographs had never been published, no adult living in New York City had been spared one gruesome detail of the deaths in the old Koozeman Gallery. He did not want to look at the photograph, but could not help himself.

  When his gaze was drawn back to the picture on the floor, the bloody head was partially obscured by one green satin dancing shoe.

  Beauty triumphed over bloody violence. His eyes lifted to the stunning sight of Mallory, green eyes and flowing green satin, waves of golden hair
curling just above her bare white shoulders. He would have wagered anything that no other woman in Manhattan could have managed this in less than an hour. She had done it in less than five minutes. But then she was beautiful in blue jeans. She needed little else but the red lipstick to go with her flawless red nails. More would have been less.

  In years past, the ball had been the social event of the season and quite successful on this account. However, as a charity function, it never failed to lose money. The most lavish gala of New York society drew funds from the families of the Social Register Four Hundred and many power moguls of Fortune’s Five Hundred, but it rarely turned much profit to the coffers of any worthy cause. Most years it ran to red ink, and this year the ball had barely broken even.

  The elderly chairwoman, Ellen Quinn, was photographed in the act of handing an envelope to the administrator of the Crippled Children’s Fund. There was, of course, very little in the envelope, the chairwoman hastily explained in a whisper, and alas, no more was forthcoming. And so the administrator of the fund was photographed with an authentic expression of shock and slack-jawed surprise.

  Charles made an entrance with Mallory. They passed through the great doors and into the spectacle of cathedral-high ceilings and a chandelier of a thousand lights, a room of silks, sequins and brilliant color interspersed with black tuxedos. A full orchestra was on the bandstand in black tie. The acoustics were marvelous. Music swelled to all points of the room, and perfumes swirled past them on the dance floor. Mallory walked close beside him, her hand on his arm to complete the overload of all his senses.

  As Charles and Mallory moved through the crowd, heads throughout the room began to turn, each head alerting the one behind. The ball photographer abandoned his model of the moment to flash picture after picture of Mallory, exploding the flashes only a few feet before her eyes. The photographer’s former model, the director of New York’s largest bank, was left to smile foolishly at nothing at all in a pose with his wife, who also continued to smile.

  Other women in the room were carefully coiffed and lacquered. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds could not have dislodged a single hair. Mallory’s hair waved in natural-looking rivers and curls of blond silk slipping over silk, moving as she moved. Her eyes had a charming, startled look which was largely attributable to flashbulb blindness. People continued to stare, some boldly, some covertly, at the young woman in the sea-green satin ball gown.

  Charles danced one dance with her and then lost her to another partner and another. The dancing men came in legion. The ball gown lived its own life, capturing the lights and threading them into the fabric. Twirling amid the green satin fireworks, Mallory seemed not to touch the ground at all.

  J. L. Quinn captured her for a waltz. They made a striking partnership, opposites of dark hair and light, turning, twirling. The other dancers slowed to watch the pair, and some of them altogether stopped. The fascination for beauty overcame envy in the pinch-faced women with too little flesh, and the men with red-veined noses and too much flesh, socialites who had no breasts, and the gangly boys who had no beards.

  Charles stood alone, not dancing and not wanting to watch anymore.

  Quinn held her out to admire her, and then pulled her close again, dancing her toward the center of the room. “My God, it must have been sheer hell growing up with a face like yours.”

  “I’ll tell you just one more time,” said Mallory. “Dance me over to Gregor Gilette and change partners with him. Do it now.”

  “And give you up? I’d rather be killed outright.”

  “I’m a cop, I can arrange that.”

  Contrary to a direct order, Quinn was not leading her in the direction of Gregor Gilette, but quite deliberately leading her away. She regretted leaving her gun at home.

  “There’s really no need to disturb Gregor. I can tell you anything you need to know,” said Quinn.

  He probably could, but would he? She didn’t think so, not without a weapon to his head, and perhaps not even then. “Did your brother-in-law have any enemies twelve years ago?”

  “Of course he did. He’s a profoundly talented architect. You can find a list of his enemies in any copy of Architectural Digest.”

  “What about the art community?”

  “He and Sabra had a few common enemies. I suppose Emma Sue Hollaran would be at the top of that list. The woman scorned-you know that song.”

  “She was involved with Gregor Gilette?”

  “Only in her dreams.”

  “So she was jealous of Sabra.”

  “Yes. The animosity was rather overt. Hollaran used to be an art critic for an upscale newspaper that’s since gone under. The editor thought her barnyard critiques would make a nice contrast to the good writing in the other columns. She tried to destroy Sabra in the column. But Sabra’s work was critic-proof. Now Hollaran is on the Public Works Committee and perfectly positioned to go after Gregor in a more direct fashion.”

  Mallory caught sight of Gregor Gilette dancing closer. “Did you ever talk to Gilette about my interview? Did you even ask him if he’d cooperate off the record?”

  “He can’t go into that horror again. I want you to stay away from him.”

  “Is that his decision, or yours?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You didn’t talk to him, did you? I thought you wanted to help me.”

  “I do, Mallory. But there’s nothing Gregor can tell you.”

  “You stopped the police from interviewing the family twelve years ago. You’re not going to do it again.”

  “Oh, but I will. He’s been through quite enough. Now that’s the end of it.”

  Quinn’s elderly mother waltzed by in the arms of a young man. The old woman was a graceful dancer, but Mallory noticed the wince when the young man pressed her hand for the turn. Mrs. Quinn was probably arthritic, though she hid the pain well.

  So, the old lady was fragile. Good.

  “You know, Quinn, I don’t think anyone ever got around to interviewing your mother, either. She looks like she’s pushing eighty.”

  Quinn held her away at arm’s length as though she had just bitten him, and rather viciously. “There was never any reason for the police to talk to my mother. No one even suggested it.”

  “I can question Gregor Gilette. Or I can go after your dear old mother. Choose one.”

  And now they had come to a standstill in the center of the room, as all the dancers swirled around them.

  “You know I could-”

  “Have me fired? And I suppose you thought Markowitz was afraid of losing his job? He wasn’t! Markowitz let you get away with a lot because he figured he could use you. You were his tour guide through the art community. But I don’t think you were as useful as you could’ve been. I think you held out on my father, and I think you’re holding out on me.”

  “You can’t possibly believe-”

  “It’s a given. Everybody does it. Who wants to strip naked for a homicide investigation? If you want to go after my badge, go for it. But if you get it, I’ll have to get even with you, won’t I? I’m good at revenge. I’ll turn your life inside out, and I know how to do that. I’ll see you in tabloid hell. You only think you know what naked is. And you don’t want to think about what I could do to an old woman like your mother. I could do her with my eyes shut. Now change partners with Gilette.”

  Emma Sue Hollaran began the tortuous journey across the ballroom floor. She was moving slowly, smiling despite the pain and nausea. Her swollen, bruised legs were encased in the tightest long-line girdle made. Every step was agony in this grotesque parody of the little mermaid of fairy tale, whose every step on human feet was the thrust of knives through her soles. Emma Sue was in constant pain now, but she had become accustomed to it over the years of surgeries.

  Resplendent in her designer gown of iridescent colors, she was closing the distance on Gregor Gilette. He was stirring every part of her mind and the nether regions of her body where pain could not obliterate simp
le longing, ungodly desire that never ended. Once she had sent him love letters every day. He had never answered one of them. It was Sabra who eventually responded, if one could call it that.

  Ah, but Sabra was gone, and Gregor was back from his long exile in Europe.

  Emma Sue Hollaran banished Sabra from her thoughts and all the way to hell where she belonged, for Gregor Gilette was turning around now. Any moment he would see her in her finest hour, her new-formed body, her much worked-over face.

  She was closer to him, nearly there, almost within touching distance. And now she was staring into his remarkable eyes, which penetrated her facades and knew her secrets; they probed the places of heat and sex, all the soft places. She felt herself being drawn into him as if she had no more substance than light. For this one stunning moment, she was young again, with all her possibilities intact.

  Her hand fluttered up to her chest to quell the havoc there of blood rushing unchecked through her veins, heart pumping faster, chasing blood with blood, filling her with warmth and flooding her face with a vivid redness. Every step toward him was a knife wound, but she would have endured much more for this moment of triumph. She had waited so long.

  And now.

  His eyebrows shot up with recognition-followed closely by the revulsion in his eyes.

  He turned away from her as introductions were being made to a young woman in a green satin gown. And now, Gregor and this woman were revolving, spinning away from her, locked in one another’s arms, moving across the floor with grace and speed.

  He was out of her reach.

  She turned away from the dancing pair and, trembling, she walked aimlessly through that room, awash in physical pain and the worse agony of humiliation. Finally, she summoned a cab to take her home to a bed that was too wide.

  At fifty-eight, Gregor Gilette was far from old. His white hair was incongruous with the bull’s chest and the limber, supple motions of the body. His golden-brown eyes were remarkably young, and the craggy contours of his face also insisted on youth and strength. It was a face where paradox lived, beautiful and yet strikingly grotesque, animal sensuality and keen intelligence.