Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  The painting had been hung on her bedroom wall all those years ago. Even when she had come to hate Sabra, Emma Sue could never bring herself to destroy the painting. All these years later, she still found herself staring at it for hours, her head pressed into the pillows, hand hesitating on the lamp switch, watching, waiting for the passionate blood storm to come, in the delusion that, for her, it had not already passed her by.

  She turned off the lamp and plotted in the dark.

  Gregor would be sorry, very sorry.

  Mallory had doffed her ball gown and her yellow taxi cab. Long after midnight, she had returned to what she was, a cop in blue jeans, carrying a large gun in a shoulder holster and striding across a rooftop on the east side of town, ten flights in the air.

  Riker waved one arm to say hello. He had his binoculars trained down on the roof of Bloomingdale’s across the street. He was focussed on the thing beneath the makeshift canopy of raincoats. The wind whipped at the canopy, and a coat flapped up to expose the mannequin in the silver ball gown. Andrew Bliss was tenderly draping the plastic figure with a raincoat, as though he thought she might be cold.

  “Strange little guy,” said Riker.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “I think he’s starting a new religion. Right now he’s lighting a candle in front of a giant Barbie doll.”

  Mallory took the binoculars, and watched Andrew light the tall formal candles of a silver candelabra set on a table before the mannequin. “It does look like an altar, doesn’t it?”

  She had been schooled in two religions, Jewish and Catholic. Both lit candles, but this little rite of Andrew’s was closer to the church than the temple. Now Andrew was making the sign of the cross. It was this very act, performed unconsciously as a child, which had tipped Helen Markowitz off to her real mother’s religion, and the foster mother had felt an obligation to condemn Kathy Mallory to four years of parochial school.

  “Riker, how much food do you think he has in that little fridge?”

  “No food. I saw him open it an hour ago. It’s packed with wine and one bottle of water. There’s no sign of food anywhere.”

  “Take off, Riker. Get some sleep.”

  “G’night, Mallory.”

  After the rooftop door had closed on Riker, Mallory plugged in her directional microphone and scanned the roof, counting up wine bottles. When she focussed on Andrew again, he was stumbling to his bedding of quilts. He must be tired and weak from the dearth of food and the glut of wine. Yet he did not sleep except in starting fits. He was having nightmares, if Mallory understood those screams. She could remember a childhood of screaming herself awake in the night as Andrew did all the night long, until the candles failed, burning to the nubs and going out.

  When he woke again, an hour shy of daylight, he discovered his melted candles, and he went ballistic. She watched him tearing through his entire stock of goods until he found another candle. He lit it and went back to sleep.

  Curious.

  It wasn’t fear of the dark. Electric light bloomed everywhere on the roof. She counted ten lamps tied by a network of extension cords. The candles must mean something more to him.

  Just before daybreak, he fell into an exhausted sleep with no more screams, and he did not wake again before Mallory left him.

  Gregor Gilette remained in Godd’s Bar until closing time. Then he sat in an after-hours bar until near sunup, pondering the possibilities of dark genius.

  When he did go home to his Fifth Avenue residence, he was weary in so many ways. He went to the large kitchen at the back of the apartment. He selected a bottle of red from the wine rack and carried it through the rooms, slowly working the screw into the cork.

  Gregor unlocked the door of the only room in the apartment which his housekeeper was not obliged to clean. He entered his den and sat down in a chair opposite the enlarged image of a bloody severed head. He casually fumbled in a drawer for his cigar cutter. Behind his chair, Aubry’s murdered face, in full color with open, staring dead eyes, seemed to watch as he struck a match to a Cuban cigar, and then poured his wine into a goblet.

  He turned to his left, seeking an ashtray. He was so accustomed to the wall covering on that side of the room, he never even glanced at it. From the baseboard to the ceiling molding, the wall was splashed with a collage of photographs and yellowed newspaper clippings, held in place by nails driven into plaster. Four of the photographs were large and glossy, in full color, and the predominant color was the blood of wounds.

  The young woman in the photographs was more recognizably human in the newspaper clippings below. Each clipping told much the same story. Each said, in much the same wording, that here was a wildly talented young dancer who was going somewhere in this world.

  There were retractions printed in articles at the base of the wall, which said in varied garish tabloid headlines that they had lied; she had died; she would never go anywhere now.

  CHAPTER 4

  The kitchen was Riker’s favorite room at Mallory and Butler, Ltd. It was a bright and airy space, a proper sit-down kitchen, where the best of conversations took place in the company of people he cared for, and the coffee was always first-rate.

  Riker slumped low in his chair and came to grips with the early morning. His daily routine had been so completely upset that he did not even have the continuity of his customary hangover. Mallory had taken the late shift on the roof, and yet she looked fresh and new. When did she ever sleep?

  She set a platter of croissants and cheeses on the table. There was also a side dish of jelly doughnuts as a special concession to himself.

  Charles stood at the counter, bending down to read a light display on the coffee machine. In the kitchen of Charles’s apartment across the hall, he still used a manual bean grinder, and brewed the coffee, drop by drop, into a carafe. Here he dealt with a computer which organized the grinding and brewing, set the richness of the flavor, and all but fetched the mugs from the cupboard after announcing that the coffee was ready. This room was the middle ground between Charles the lover of all things antique, and Mallory the machine. Now Riker noticed the recent addition of a microwave oven sitting on the counter in company with a small television set and a radio with a CD player.

  So Mallory was dragging Charles, appliance by appliance, into the twentieth century.

  “I would think Oren Watt was still the most likely suspect,” Charles was saying.

  “No one saw him there.” Mallory laid the silverware on the table.

  Sunlight slanted through the squares of the kitchen curtain and made a bright chessboard on the gleaming hardwood floor. The cleaning woman, Mrs. Ortega, owned the credit for the polished woodwork and all the odors of cleaning solvents that lingered for a day after her visits. Riker envied Charles the services of Mrs. Ortega. His own place had not had much of the dust disturbed in all the time he had lived there.

  Charles turned to Mallory as he was pouring coffee into generous mugs. “If you took more of an interest in the fine arts and attended a few gallery openings, you would know that no one has any idea what’s going on in the room. They stand in front of the artwork in little clusters and gossip. It’s not like anyone is watching the room or even looking at the art. Actually, Oren Watt could’ve done it.”

  “No, Charles, he couldn’t.”

  Riker noticed that her attitude in dealing with Charles was the same one she might use to housebreak a pet. Of course, she had no pet but Charles. Her voice was softer as she went on. “I watched him at the gallery installation for the television film. People stared at him everywhere he went. His face is a standout, and they all knew who he was, even though he’d cut off his hair and wore dark glasses. It was creepy. I don’t care how crowded the room was, or how preoccupied the guests were. Whoever was there and not dead would’ve noticed him.”

  “I’ll make a bet with you.” Charles carried the mugs to the table. “If I can prove that Oren Watt could’ve done it, you pay for lunch. Deal?”

&nbs
p; Riker grinned. “I didn’t think you were much of a betting man, Charles.”

  “It’s a science experiment with him.” Mallory sat down at the table and selected a golden croissant. “He can never win at poker, and he doesn’t know why. So he’ll keep doing experiments until he figures it out.”

  “What’s to figure out?” Riker reached for a doughnut and studied it with grave suspicion, wondering if he could eat it without a beer to wash it down. “You play poker with sharks, Charles. Doc Slope was born with a poker face. Rabbi Kaplan is a walking book of knowledge on human nature, and Duffy’s a goddamn lawyer. A genius IQ won’t save you in a game with that crew.”

  “Riker’s right,” said Mallory. “The game is tonight?”

  “Yes, in my apartment.” Charles sat down to breakfast with a bright smile. “Incidentally, I have figured out how to win at poker, and tonight I’m going to win big. And this morning I’m going to beat you, Mallory. Do we have a bet on Oren Watt?”

  “You’re on.”

  “Oh, I have your research.” Charles placed a bundle of Xeroxes by Mallory’s coffee cup. “These are samples of Dean Starr’s reviews under his real name. He was not a brain trust. Just barely literate.” He set another bundle on top of this one. “And these are all the articles that appeared following Watt’s confession. The first fifteen stories are descriptions of an affair between Peter Ariel and Aubry Gilette.”

  Mallory scanned the first two sheets. She turned to Riker. “According to Markowitz’s notes, Quinn said there was no personal relationship between the artist and the dancer. That’s it? There was no follow-up on these articles?”

  “I did the follow-up,” said Riker. “Quinn was the spokesperson for the family. According to him, the parents had no idea she was having an affair until they read about it in the newspaper. I talked to all the people quoted by the reporters. I had the feeling they didn’t really know Aubry at all. That happens sometimes. Everybody wants to get their name in the papers.”

  “So all we’ve got on her relationship to the painter is what we read in the papers? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Quinn told us no one who really knew her could corroborate it.”

  She handed him one of the sheets. “It seems Andrew Bliss knew her, and he corroborated it. He had his own newspaper column, so it’s not like he needed to break into print.”

  Riker read the short interview where Bliss was quoted, and he knew he was reading it for the first time. “Damn.” He looked at the date of the article. It was a full month after the case had officially shut down, but Markowitz had still been working it. So this had gotten by them.

  She plucked the sheet from his hand. “Didn’t Aubry have any friends who could help you sort this out?”

  “Naw. She was a lonely kid. She didn’t have any friends at all.”

  Mallory pulled an old battered notebook from her pocket and opened it. Across the table, Riker recognized the scrawl that had been Markowitz’s handwriting. She flipped back the first three pages and put her finger to one note. “Aubry was twenty years old. She attended the same ballet school for six years.”

  “A couple of girls who took classes with her were interviewed. None of them ever saw her outside of class.”

  Mallory scanned two more pages. “What about this Madame Burnstien? It says Aubry took classes with her for the entire six years.”

  “We couldn’t get a statement from Burnstien. She’s old but she’s fast. The first time, she gave Markowitz three minutes. The second time he tried to talk to her, she gave him the slip. I think Quinn had something to do with that. All the family information came through him, and he was really tight with the personal stuff. Maybe the old lady was close to the family.”

  “I want to see this woman.”

  “Lots of luck, kid. Markowitz could charm snakes, and he couldn’t get anything out of her. So I figure you haven’t got a prayer. I got five bucks says you can’t get near her.”

  “Deal.”

  Jack Coffey stood before the desk for a full minute before he was invited to sit down in the leather wing chair. Coffey stared at the window beyond Blakely’s head while waiting out the ritual of being ignored. This set his status in the world far below the level of the chief of detectives, a man with more important things to do, or such was the chief’s own personal mythology of himself. On his rare visits to the Special Crimes Section, Blakely carried his bulk like he owned all the real estate he walked upon.

  Coffey studied the man behind the desk, who filled a chair to overflowing, his body gone to soft flab, and skin the sallow color of sickness. The office had the smell of opulence, an odor that always made Coffey suspicious. The rugs were not the standard city expenditures on civil servants. The desk was miles too broad to have any efficient use. All over the walls were souvenirs and proofs of power. Blakely appeared in photographs with famous and important people. Every portrait represented the currency of a favor owed or a favor paid.

  Two years ago, Coffey had been invited to sit down in Markowitz’s office for a chat with an FBI agent. The agent had asked him if he thought the mob owed Blakely any favors. Coffey had said no to the agent, never mentioning the rumors that said otherwise. He remembered Markowitz nodding his approval behind the agent’s back. It was best to keep the dirty stories in the family, and stories were all they ever were. But now Coffey looked at the photographs again, almost expecting to see Blakely frozen in a warm handshake with a Mafia don.

  He continued to wait while Blakely read his newspaper. From the opposite side of the desk, Coffey stared at the upside-down photograph of Mallory in a ball gown, dancing with a white-haired man. A cup of coffee sat at Blakely’s left hand and the aroma blended with a hint of rot. The patches of bad wood in the exposed floor near the baseboards might account for that, but he could not lose the idea that the decay originated with Blakely.

  The chief folded back the paper to frame the photograph. He held it up to Coffey. “You’ve seen it? This shot of Mallory and Gregor Gilette?”

  “Yes, sir. She went to the ball with Charles Butler, an old friend of Markowitz’s. Butler has some social connection to the Gilette family. It’s only natural that she should dance with the man. She probably danced with a lot of men.”

  “I thought I told you to pack her off to Boston.”

  “That was before the press conference.”

  “Nothing has changed, Jack. She goes.”

  “This can’t be the commissioner’s idea. He loved every minute of Mallory torching that fed in public.”

  “She’s going today. She can embarrass the feds in Boston, too. I know what you did at that press conference, Jack. You sicked her on that poor bastard, Cartland. And I know why you did it. And it worked for a while. Beale thinks she walks on water. But now it’s time for her to move on to another case. We’ll leave it to the feds to clean up the Starr murder.”

  “They’ll screw it up.”

  “And they’ll take the heat. This time you will do what I tell you to do.”

  “What’s the real reason for losing Mallory?”

  “I don’t need one, Jack. Insubordination is a bad mark on the record of a man who’s bucking for a captain’s rank.”

  “Who suggested it? The city attorney? Is he that worried about a lawsuit from the crazy artist? Heat from the Quinn family? Or maybe it’s Senator Berman. It wouldn’t look too good for the ex-commissioner if it turned out Markowitz could have proved Watt didn’t do it-if his hands hadn’t been tied.”

  “Jack, think about your pension, your job. Oh, and your promotion, which is all but in the bag as we speak. Then shut your mouth and get out of my office while you still have all of that in your future.”

  Andrew Bliss understood what it was to suffer for one’s art. As he leaned over the retaining wall, he felt dizzy. He pulled back and pondered the vitamin content of wine. He was weakening more each hour now, and his stomach was a churning knot of cramps.

  Lately, the avenue had been do
minated by K-mart escapees. That tyranny must end, and he didn’t care how he brought it about. He had no time to ruminate on the morality of terrorism. He was on a mission. Ruthlessly, he would strike out at every passing offender.

  And he had been true to his cause, jump-starting his heart each morning with espresso and Russian cigarettes which were actually manufactured in New Jersey. The traffic-watch helicopter flew by. Andrew returned the cheery wave with a harsh critique of the traffic reporter’s tasteless, low-rent, polyester jumpsuit. The copter veered off sharply.

  And to every ragged panhandler, he screamed, “GET A JOB AND A CHARGE CARD!”

  After a time, Andrew’s bullhorn fell silent. Green-haired children from SoHo and tourists from Iowa were allowed to stroll the avenue unmolested.

  No sign of life could be detected around the canopy of raincoats, nor through the leaves of the browning potted foliage which Andrew had thoughtfully watered with wine.

  The Koozeman Gallery was quiet today. And the walls were bare. The gallery boy left them alone in the main room, where Starr had died. Charles scrutinized the floor, disappointed that there was not at least the drama of a chalk outline to mark the place where the dead man had fallen. “Where was Dean Starr standing when he was stabbed?”

  Mallory walked to the center of the right-hand wall and paced four feet straight out. “Here. Slope said he lived for at least a full minute. So he might have been able to walk a few feet in any direction, but this is where he fell.”

  “So he might have been standing closer to the wall.” Charles ran one finger along the painted surface behind her and smiled broadly. “I bet I can sneak up behind you and stab you.”