Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  “My wife tells me Madame eats dancers for breakfast.”

  “I still think I can take her two falls out of three.”

  “And I understand she’s very good with her cane. I only saw it once-it’s formidable.” He stopped smiling and leaned toward her, all serious now. “When I say Madame Burnstien is tough, I’m not being facetious. She survived two years in a Nazi concentration camp. I don’t know what you could have in your own history that even comes close to that horror.”

  “Four years with the nuns at the academy.”

  “You’re so competitive.”

  “So what’s the best approach?”

  “The key to Madame Burnstien is respect. Try to earn it without bloodshed.”

  Mallory stood on the sidewalk staring up at the old brown building reported to be the finest ballet school in the country. It had been a factory once, and now eight stories of lofts had been converted into rehearsal halls and classrooms. Girls and young women hung off the fire escape, dangling limbs sheathed in bright-colored leg warmers. Some smoked forbidden cigarettes, others lifted their faces to the weak light of the sun, leaching what warmth there was so early in the spring.

  The rabbi’s wife, Anna Kaplan, had warned her that today there would be at least a hundred children underfoot. When Mallory passed through the front doors, she entered a wide room with high ceilings, where pandemonium ruled. Small breastless girls and a sprinkling of boys bore numbered cards hung around their necks with strings. Mothers hovered over them, clutching the leg warmers and costumes, harried and frazzled women consumed by the tensions of audition day.

  The front desk was besieged by shouters and elbowers. A man with a phone attached to one ear was holding four separate conversations. And above all of this, a loudspeaker called out numbers, and children were separated from their mothers, taking positions on one side of the room.

  Beyond this crush of tiny dancers stood a young woman close to Mallory’s age. They exchanged a look across the room. At first the other woman’s expression recognized Mallory as neither mother nor novice, but a fellow creature of the ballet. She smiled and shrugged to say, Awful, isn’t it? But now her head tilted to one side with the realization that Mallory was an altogether different animal, and interest intensified as Mallory moved toward her, advancing on the mob of children. They parted for her in a wave, the act of one mind in many small bodies.

  “Where can I find Madame Burnstien?”

  “Third floor. The stairs are quicker. The elevator takes forever.” The young woman pointed to a narrow staircase several feet away. She called a loud warning after Mallory. “If she’s not expecting you, she’ll nail your hide to the wall.”

  A hundred small faces turned in unison, eyes rounding.

  “I can handle it,” said Mallory. “I went to Catholic school.”

  Fat chance old Madame Burnstien could outdo an insane nun.

  Mallory took great pride in her enemies, and she was particularly proud of Sister Ursula.

  She climbed to the third floor and stopped at the wide-open door to a rehearsal hall. There were other students in the room, leaning against the walls and seated tailor-fashion on the floor, but all Mallory could see was the single dancer hurtling through space in a powerful swirl of music, her body arching in the leap-call it flight- and at last touching to ground in tattered red satin shoes.

  She wore bright purple tights and leotard, and brilliant orange wool covered her legs from ankle to knee. A long braid of lustrous black hair floated on the air behind her as she stepped and turned before the mirrored wall. And now she began to twirl like a dervish, sweat glistening on her young body, spinning madly, wonderfully, and finally coming to rest before a white-haired woman with a wine-dark dress and a cane.

  This old woman only frowned, declining any comment with the slow shake of her head, and disappeared through a red door, slamming it behind her.

  The young dancer’s head bowed. Her body seemed to be losing strength, all confidence and power gone now.

  Mallory watched her for a moment, trying to understand her and failing. The ballerina should have known how wonderful she was, but apparently she did not.

  Markowitz would have understood. It had been his gift to sit across a desk from strangers, and then to steal inside of them, peek out through their eyes, walk in their flesh, go where they go, and then to know what their soft spots were. He had called it empathy.

  Mallory had none, and she knew it. She might be adept at crawling into the living skin of a killer, but never would she be able to go where the ballerina goes.

  Now she crossed the wide room, passing by the defeated dancer, to knock at the red door. After a full minute the door opened, but only a crack.

  “Yes?” said the old woman facing her. Madame Burnstien was small and slight, hardly threatening. Her white hair was captured in a bun, and every bit of skin was a crisscross of lines. The only hand visible through the crack of the door was a cluster of arthritic knots wrapped round the cane.

  “I’m Mallory. I have an appointment with you?”

  “You are Rabbi Kaplan’s young friend?”

  Mallory couldn’t immediately place the woman’s accent, but then Anna Kaplan had said that Madame Burnstien hailed from too many countries to call one of them home. In youth, she had danced for the whole earth. Mallory could not believe this crone had ever been young.

  “Rabbi Kaplan said you would see me.”

  “I said I would look at you, and I have. You’re a beautiful child, but you are too tall. Go away now.”

  The door began to close. Mallory shot one running shoe into the space between the door and its frame. The old woman smiled wickedly and showed Mallory her cane, lifting it in the crack-width of the door to display the carved wolf’s head and its fangs.

  “Move your foot, my dear, or you’ll never dance again.”

  The cane was rising for a strike.

  “Madame Burnstien, you only think I won’t deck you.”

  The old eyes widened and gleamed. The smile disappeared and her brows rushed together in an angry scowl as the cane lowered slowly. There was exaggerated petulance in her cracking voice. “I like determination, child, but you waste my time. You are still too tall.”

  “Everybody’s a critic.” Mallory showed her the gold shield and ID. “I want to talk to you about Aubry Gilette.”

  “I have had many students. Aubry was a thousand dancers ago. What do you expect me to remember of one girl?”

  “Oh, I think you remember her better than most. Don’t make me show you the autopsy photo. You’re old. It’d probably kill you.”

  “Dream on, child.” The wicked smile was back, and the door was opening.

  Madame’s office was generous in size, and showed Charles Butler’s penchant for antiques. The light of the corner window washed over an ancient ornate desk piled high with large paperbound books, sheets of archaic penmanship and notes of music. All but one brocade chair was filled with costumes. Every bit of the far wall bore an autographed photo, or a drawing of a dancer in motion. The only respite from the dance was a small painting behind the desk, a still life of flowers. Mallory had attended Barnard College long enough to recognize a Monet. She knew this must be the real article, for she had already learned that the old woman was death on second-best. Her eye moved on to a larger canvas hanging on the next wall, and this she recognized as Sabra’s, even though there was no signature.

  “So Madame Burnstien, you knew Aubry’s mother well?”

  “Very good, my dear. That’s a portrait of Aubry.”

  There was someone dancing in the painting. Although the subject was abstracted, there was a figure there, ephemeral, shimmering, flying over a wide space. Action strokes gave it life, and the space surrounding it pulsed with color. Fuchsia juxtaposed with brilliant greens and vied for the foreground to create a depth of field that confounded all laws defining the flat planes of canvases. Flourishes and dabs of paint had the rhythm and the punctuation of mus
ic. Mallory turned away with the afterimage of a full ballet and even its score.

  “Do you know what happened to Sabra?”

  The old woman sat down and averted her eyes. “Has there been an accident?” One gnarled hand went to her breast.

  “Not that I know of. She disappeared years ago. Do you know where she went after she left the asylum?”

  “No.”

  This was the simple truth. There was no pause, no telling sign of a new furrow in the old woman’s face, or a nervous shift in her body. And there was no hint of a question or a surprise in her eyes. So she was close enough to the family to have known about Sabra’s asylum years.

  “You were at the funeral. I saw you in the old photographs. What was Sabra like that day? Was she already crazy?”

  The old woman shook her head. Frowning, she waved her hand as if to chase away the words. Mallory came closer and leaned down to meet Madame’s eyes. “Maybe I should have asked if you’d seen Sabra recently.”

  Madame Burnstien said nothing. But that was something. There was no convenient, polite lie to fill the gap. This woman might be capable of deception, but the outright lie was not Madame’s style. So Sabra was alive. She backed off now, to give the woman space.

  “All right, then tell me about Aubry and the artist she died with. Was Peter Ariel really her boyfriend? Or was there someone else?”

  “She had no lovers.”

  “She was a very attractive woman, and these days, twenty is old for a virgin.”

  “The world changed, the ballet did not. It’s a grueling, demanding profession. Aubry had great ambition. She had no time for friends or lovers. This is what she loved.” Madame Burnstien pointed to a large photograph of a dancer’s ruined feet, half-healed sores and open wounds, all the punishment of the cruel shoes. “When Aubry was not performing in her ballet company, she was here, taking classes. The classes never end, you know, not for your entire life span as a ballerina.”

  “She had some connection to that gallery she died in. There was something going on in her life. She could have been meeting her boyfriend in the hours after the lessons and performances.”

  “No, she couldn’t!” The cane beat the floor with a thud and left a round impression in the rug. There were many such impressions about the room.

  “You can’t know that, not for sure.” Mallory leaned back against the red door. “You weren’t with her every minute.” Her words were taunting, to lead the old woman into the fray. She had learned a great deal from the rabbi. “You were only her teacher. She could have had a hundred boyfriends.”

  And now the old woman sat up a little straighter, head lifting, rising to the bait. “Aubry could not have been carrying on an affair, not without my knowing. Dancing takes tremendous strength, great care with one’s health. I myself was overtrained. My arthritis began when I was only a little older than Aubry. A dancer needs rest above all things. Aubry retired as early as her evening performances would permit, and she was here every morning taking class. There were no late-hour bruises to her eyes. Aubry only danced!” Lower and less emphatic now, “She never had a life.”

  Mallory folded her arms in the skeptic’s pose which the rabbi used when he thought she might be lying.

  Madame Burnstien rose from her chair. The pain of movement was concealed well, but not completely. There was evidence enough for Mallory to know the arthritis had taken over the entire body of this former prima ballerina.

  The old woman stood by the window, her back turned to Mallory when she spoke. “You saw all the children downstairs? Out of the hundred, perhaps one will make it, perhaps not. And all the children who are not chosen- I like to think they have escaped.”

  Mallory moved behind her, coming upon her so quietly that the old woman started at her first words. “According to the newspapers, Aubry and the artist had an affair. An art critic named Andrew Bliss said-”

  “A pack of lies.”

  “People who knew them both were quoted-”

  “All lies!”

  “Or maybe you’re lying to me now.” But she knew that Madame Burnstien was not. When the old woman spoke next there was no confrontation, no defense, only the simple facts of Aubry’s time on earth.

  “She only danced. She never really lived. And then she died.”

  “More blackmail, Mallory?” Edward Slope made two notations on a chart and set it down on the table by the gutted male cadaver and former taxpayer. “What do you want now, the pink slip on my car?”

  He pulled off his gloves and slapped them down on the body which had done nothing to offend him. She held her ground. No emotion whatsoever, and that never failed to disturb him. He suspected this was her method of getting a rise out of him, forcing him to fill the emotional void from his own store of frustration.

  “Just a few questions,” she said. “Did Markowitz ever ask you how much time it would take to cut up the two bodies?”

  How in hell did she know that? He turned away from her as he pulled off the bloody surgical gown. “Yes, he did ask. But I was angry with him. I told him to buy a leg of beef and figure it out for himself.”

  “That’s just what he did.” She pulled a yellow napkin out of her pocket. “It took him a long time to cut through that leg. That gave him a lot of trouble with the time frame of the murder. It looks like there had to be more than one person working on the bodies. I think that was another reason he wouldn’t close out the case, another thing that wouldn’t fit.”

  He took the napkin from her hand and read the log of cutting meat and bone. “Poor bastard. I could have helped him with that. But you were right, we weren’t speaking then.” He handed the napkin back to her. “The killer worked the limbs at the joint. Easier that way, though I couldn’t tell you how much time was saved.”

  “Can you think of anything else that might help?”

  “I suppose you could say the joint cuts were an oddity, and I should have told him that, too. In most dismemberment cases, the fool takes the leg off at the bottom of the torso, not the hip joint-cuts through the bone when he doesn’t have to. The bones at the joints weren’t cut, but I did report the damage from the axe. He might have misread that. And I suppose I misled him with that leg of beef.”

  “So would the joint cuts indicate some knowledge of anatomy? Like art school anatomy?”

  “It might.”

  “Oren Watt never went to art school.”

  Slope thought she delivered that line with entirely too much smugness. He could fix that. “It might also indicate that the killer had simply carved his share of Thanksgiving turkeys. Nobody cuts the bone of the drumstick. But Helen always served a roast for Thanksgiving, didn’t she? So I can understand how that one got by you. But you’re so stubborn. I have to worry about what else you might be missing. You just can’t admit that Oren Watt could’ve-”

  “One more question,” she said. “Why did you back up Quinn? You told him Aubry was the most likely target.”

  “Yes, I did. I also told him I thought Oren Watt was the most likely suspect. I still believe that little bastard did it. Why must you go back into that case again?”

  “Why did you support the idea that the girl was the real target?”

  “Because she was the only one to suffer. The other one was hacked up postmortem. I know you read the report. You could probably recite it by heart. But it’s only a collection of data to you, isn’t it? Try to imagine it. She was crawling when the attacker followed her along the length of the floor, inflicting blow after blow. That was something that bothered Markowitz a lot. The girl was the victim of unmistakable savage rage.”

  “It’s a pity you and Markowitz weren’t on speaking terms after the autopsy. Markowitz questioned Watt on Aubry. Watt didn’t know her at all, not the first thing about her.”

  “So he didn’t know her. So? Perhaps he hated all women. It was a lunatic act and a crime of rage. You have the evidence of madness in my original report. He took a damn souvenir, her brain, for Christ’s
sake!”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? It was the brain that Markowitz used to rule out Watt’s confession.”

  “You don’t know that.” He knew she was running a bluff. Sometimes she forgot he had been playing poker for decades before she was ever born. “You’re only guessing.”

  “Yeah, but I’m real good at that. Call it a gift. And I know my old man’s style. You weren’t talking to Markowitz. You were angry with him. You never talked about the case again. It would have been a bad subject after what he asked you to do. Now suppose Peter Ariel was the primary target. What then? If Markowitz was alive, standing here right now, would you have anything else to tell him? Would you change anything?”

  In a way, Slope felt that Markowitz was alive. He sensed the man’s presence every time she was near. She was a living reminder of a lifelong friendship. Even in death, Markowitz stubbornly refused to abandon her, forcing everyone who had loved him, to love his daughter too.

  “No, Kathy, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “Mallory,” she said with insistence.

  “Kathy,” he said with great deliberation. “One day your father’s friends will all be dead, and there’ll be no one to call you Kathy. That’s my biggest fear for you. Terrible thing being loved, isn’t it? It’s like a debt hanging over your head, and it pisses you off, doesn’t it? Well, good.”

  She was angry now, and that was good too. Her anger was his only method of ferreting out her humanity in what limited range of emotion she possessed. She returned his broad smile with an icy glare. She advanced on him, gathering size as she closed in on his person, one hand rising to within striking distance of his face.

  After she had gone, and the door was closing behind her on its slow hydraulic, he muttered, “Perverse little monster.” For she had touched his face so gently and kissed his cheek. She had left him disoriented, flailing for understanding in her disturbing wake, and she had done that to a purpose. He knew it-for he truly believed it was her mission in life to confuse him.

  The photographer set up the tripod on the sidewalk, facing the plaza of Gregor Gilette’s new building. Workmen were pulling down the last section of the wooden wall to reveal the graceful stone arch. This gateway to the plaza mimicked the shape of the building’s lower windows.