Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  One hand clawed through his matted hair. “Am I screaming?” he screamed. “Do I sound a little frantic?”

  The chair withdrew into prolonged silence. He turned away, tears running freely.

  When he turned around again, a beautiful woman was sitting in the chair. He recognized the moon-gold hair, though in the better light of the standing lamp, it was closer to burnished copper, and her eyes were long slants of green. The tailoring of her blazer was superb. This was definitely his angel.

  “Good evening, Andrew,” said the angel, in a soft, silken voice. It was nearly music.

  “Good evening.” And now he wished he had paid more attention to the nuns’ instructions on the order of cherubim, seraphim, and assorted supernatural messengers.

  “I understand you’ve been praying for a sign.” She perused the labels of a small store of wine on the side table and found a bottle of red that she approved of. “Andrew, I really worry about you, up here all by yourself.” One long red fingernail split the skin of the seal around the cork. “Anyone can get at you…Anyone.”

  She held a small silver device, which she now opened to expose a cruel screw of metal. She smiled. Andrew tucked in a breath and held it. She drove the point of the screw into the heart of the bottle cork and began to work it deeper and deeper.

  Her blazer opened as she leaned forward to pour the wine into a silver goblet which had suddenly appeared on the low table. He saw the gun in her shoulder holster. Well, that was intriguing.

  Now he was afraid.

  So this was not his guardian angel at all. She was an avenging angel. He supposed that was only fair. So be it. “I see you carry a gun.”

  A vertical line appeared between her eyebrows, only a faint line to show her annoyance. Andrew lowered his foolish eyes to look down at her feet, which were inexplicably encased in rather expensive running shoes. “It’s just surprising to see a gun. I suppose I expected a sword, a great shining sword.”

  “Well, the world changed, Andrew.” She replaced the bottle’s cork. “We use revolvers now.”

  “I suppose vengeance is vengeance, sword or gun.”

  “You got that right.” She brought a handful of communion wafers from her pocket.

  “How shall I address you?”

  “Mallory-just Mallory is fine.” She set the wafers on the low table near the wine goblet and her cellular telephone.

  “Mallory? Is that from the order of Malakim, the Virtues?”

  If so, that would be good news. The Virtues liked everybody, and never slew anyone as far as he knew.

  “Just Mallory.”

  “I don’t know that one. No disrespect intended, but what rank is that?”

  “Don’t piss me off, Andrew.”

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m sure it’s a very high rank. I’ll just assume it’s right up there with the archangels.”

  “Right. I’m a damn angel.” She picked up one of the wafers and held it out to him. As he took it from her hand, she said, “This is the body. Take this body and eat.” And then she picked up the wine goblet and offered it to him, saying, “This is the blood. Take it and drink.”

  He looked down at the wafer and the wine goblet and then looked up at her with a mixture of fear and sadness. “But I can’t take communion. You see, I haven’t made confession for my sins. I can’t even remember the last time I made confession.”

  “Yeah, right. That is a problem.”

  “Will you hear my confession, Mallory?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  His speech was slow and slurred as he began to describe his sins. Far into his confession, which she could make nothing of, he fell asleep, and the only sound on the roof was the steady rhythm of his snoring.

  The angel brought her fist down on the arm of the chair with enough force to make a loud crack in the wooden frame.

  The penitent slept on.

  CHAPTER 8

  He awoke to a pair of staring eyes, tiny and red.

  The angel was gone, the rat was not. The beast was only a foot away from his face. He waved his hand lethargically, but the rat did not move. Andrew felt weaker today than yesterday. Would he be able to fend off the rat when it came for him in earnest?

  A loaf of bread lay a few inches from his hand. The angel must have left it for him. He was reaching out for it when he heard a beeping noise. He looked up to see the cellular phone on the table by the chair. She must have left that for him, too. But why?

  He picked up the phone and extended the antenna. “Hello?”

  “Is Mallory there?” asked the brisk voice of a man in a hurry.

  “The Archangel Mallory?”

  “The what?”

  Now the man recited a telephone number, and Andrew confirmed that this was the same number printed on the phone. “But she’s not here now. Can I take a message?”

  “Yeah, my name is Coffey. Tell the little angel to get lost for a few days. Tell her our negotiations have hit a snag. The chief is sending uniforms to pick her up. He wants her now.”

  Father Brenner was not wearing his priest’s collar. He had spent the morning working in his garden, and he was still dressed for a day in the soil and the sunlight, wearing a flannel work shirt and a pair of old trousers. He passed through the cordon guard of nurses and receptionists without the protection of a priest’s vestments to elicit their best behavior. Today, he felt very much a man like any other, and perversely, he believed that he was getting away with something. For one guilty moment, he wondered if he hadn’t left his proper dress at home for the sheer pleasure of getting a rise out of Sister Ursula.

  The old woman was one of perhaps forty people seated in the lounge area, yet he picked her out of the crowd immediately. He fixed on her dark, angry eyes before there was time to register the white wimple which hid all but her face from the eyes of fellow earth people, most of whom she doomed to the low-rent echelons of hell. She was dressed all in white, as she was on the day she had been wedded in the church. She looked very much the elderly bride of Christ in her flowing robe and slippers.

  Robe and slippers?

  Perhaps he had gotten his days mixed up. He was getting to that age. But he could have sworn that today was the day they had agreed upon to pick her up at the hospital and drive her back to the rectory in Manhattan for a proper dinner and a long visit with her only tie to the world, himself.

  “You’re not dressed,” said the priest as he sat down beside her.

  “And neither are you.” Her appraising gaze wandered over his person and found him wanting. In most respects she was solidly entrenched in the old ways, but she had never kept to the custody of the eyes. She looked at him squarely, all disapproval.

  “You came early this time,” she said. “You’ve never done that before.” And there was an implication that he should not do that again. Ursula was death on punctuality. “We have to wait until the proper time before some young puppy will give me my clothes.”

  Only a few minutes into a polite conversation about weather, flower gardens and hell, said young puppy in nurse’s garb arrived by Ursula’s chair and led the old woman off to change her clothes. He supposed this was a reasonable precaution in such an institution. It wouldn’t do to have the inmates wandering out the door, unescorted and dressed for the unsuspecting world.

  A few minutes later, Ursula was back, striding down the hall, moving very fast for a nun in full regalia. She was no modern woman of the church, no short skirt and lipstick fashion sister, but a dress-code nun, a great black warship at full sail. Her heavy crucifix swayed from side to side as she closed in on him.

  Father Brenner tried to see her from the point of view of a small child. He closed his eyes against that vision.

  When they were in the car and heading toward the city skyline, Ursula broke her stoic silence. “Tell me more about Kathy’s extraordinary new habit of stealing candles from the church. What do you suppose she’s up to this time?”

  Father Brenner winced. He shou
ld have known better than to tell her, but under the circumstances, the theft of candles was the only cheerful note he had to offer the elderly nun, all that he was not prevented from repeating. And surely Kathy was safe from Ursula now. All the children were safe.

  Though he had never liked this woman, she was continuity to him, a last tie to the old days. He suspected she would live to speculate on whether or not his immortal soul had been admitted above or below.

  “I’m glad to see you looking so well,” he told her in all sincerity.

  “Thank you, Father. Now, about Kathy.”

  “I was rather pleased that she remembered where the candles were kept. Sorry I can’t enlighten you further, Sister Ursula, but she didn’t stop to chat.”

  “How many times do you think she’s done this?”

  Perhaps Sister Ursula’s true vocation was police work. Interrogation had always been her forte.

  “She’s only stolen candles once that I’m aware of, but the candles have gone missing several days in a row. So it would seem she is coming to church on a regular basis. I thought that might make you happy.”

  “She can buy votive candles in any supermarket or bodega for a few dollars. Doesn’t it make you wonder why she steals them from the church? Don’t you wonder what dark things she might be doing with them?”

  This had been a grave mistake, he could see that now. Ursula had something new to fixate on, to draw out into long strings of conspiracy. Why had it taken him so many years to rechristen her eccentricity as madness?

  “Well, I’m pretty confident that she’s not selling the candles on the black market.”

  The nun glared at him, to let him know his levity was not appreciated. “I know she’s doing something we would not approve of. She’s certainly not burning those candles to the glory of God.”

  The priest sighed. Ursula was a compulsive soul who would harbor dark suspicions of any parishioner who had not died the minute after baptism. She had been this way even in her young days.

  No, now that he thought of it, she had never been young. Even when her face was fresh and unlined, she had been dry as a stick, humorless and without mercy, condemning children to hell in her mind for the sins of youth and beauty, knowing to what use they would put those attributes in adult life.

  Kathy Mallory had been the supreme target, wild of spirit, possessing grace in the body and uncommon intelligence. But the little girl’s worst crime had been her lovely face. In Ursula’s mind, such a child should have been hidden from the world, so as not to create temptation in every man who encountered her.

  This beautiful child had brought home the truth that Ursula was quite insane. Among all the generations of children passing through the school, only Kathy Mallory had struck back.

  “Stealing candles from a church. Well, I’m not surprised. Once a thief, always a thief,” said Ursula. “I always wanted to catch her red-handed.”

  “Well, you broke up the floating poker game. That was something.”

  “But even under the threat of everlasting damnation, the other children wouldn’t give her up. It was never a clean win. She was only a child, yet she was the most worthy adversary I ever had.”

  Sister Ursula’s devotion to God was beyond the pale, and she could not have told a lie under torture. Young Kathy had been a gifted liar, an amoral character, a thief, a sinner only Nietzsche could love. Her simple creed in those days had been the child’s code of honor: Thou shall not rat on anybody.

  And yet, on the last day of the world, when the earth gave up all its mysteries and all questions were answered, it would probably not surprise him to learn that God loved Kathy Mallory best-because she had not ratted on the nun.

  The child had taken her revenge, cradling a broken wrist in her good hand as she kicked the nun’s leg out from under her and brought the screaming Ursula to ground. Then Kathy had stalked off, never to break her silence, never to give in to the Markowitzes’ questioning or his own. She had been utterly satisfied with her revenge, and in the child’s mind, the affair was settled.

  Kathy’s old enemy now sat beside him, an aged monster at the end of her ruthless quest to suck the spirit from generations of children, an overzealous vampire in the service of God.

  “Thank you, Father, for bringing me this new information about Kathy.”

  “What are friends for?”

  This was not friendship, of course, for he suspected Ursula did not like him, and proximity to madness had always made him nervous. Whatever their relationship was, it would continue until one of them gave up the ghost.

  It is penance.

  He nodded at this new insight.

  When Mallory was certain there were no stakeout vehicles near her condominium, she stepped into the street, heading for the front door. A long black limousine stopped in front of her, a window rolled down and a familiar face nodded her back to the curb. She waited on the sidewalk as the car pulled up. A door opened and she slid into the rear seat beside the aged Mafia don.

  He smiled at her, displaying red, receding gums and broken, crooked teeth with wide gaps between them. She knew his type. He would take great pride in having all his own teeth, however rotted they might be. He was probably unaware that it gave him the look of an old dog who could no longer chew.

  He turned to face her. His breath reeked. “I hope those offshore account numbers were of some use to you.”

  She nodded.

  He leaned over to speak more intimately. “Mallory, have you ever thought of getting into another line of work?”

  “No. I like being a cop. I’m good at it.”

  “You take after Markowitz.” He reached out one gnarly hand to touch hers. She balled her hand into a fist to warn him off. He did pull back, but he also smiled, as if he found her gesture of violence exquisitely charming.

  “I suppose you learned a lot from your father.”

  She nodded again. “So the sooner you retire, old man, the better.”

  His cracked lips spread wide over the yellow teeth, and his frail body shook when he laughed. The laughter turned into a barking cough. He reached out to the bar recessed into the back seat of the limo. Where the booze should be, there was a water pitcher and a portable pharmacy of medication. He fiddled with a plastic mask attached to a small bottle of oxygen. He clasped it over his face and inhaled deeply.

  Enjoying the good life, old man?

  Mallory glanced at her watch while she waited out the dregs of the coughing spasm. “I haven’t got all day,” she said. “What do you want?”

  He removed the mask. “I came to warn you.” His every breath was a ragged piece of work. He held up one hand to call for a time-out. In another minute, he was himself again. “Blakely tried to hire one of my boys to whack you. I put a stop on that.”

  “How comforting.” She touched the glass partition that separated the driver from his employer. “Bulletproof glass?”

  “Yes, and soundproof-very private. I conduct all my business in this car, so my driver checks it for bugging devices every morning.”

  She could only see the dark hair of the man behind the wheel. He stared straight ahead. “And who checks the driver?”

  “He’s family-my nephew’s youngest boy. Satisfied? Now listen to me, Mallory. Don’t underestimate Blakely. He’s scared now-not thinking straight. Next, he’ll lean on one of his own people to do the job. He’s gone underground. It may take me awhile to find him. But I can give you a good bodyguard-”

  “I don’t want your bodyguard. And you don’t touch Blakely-you got that? You can’t kill all your mistakes, old man. Blakely is being threatened with tax evasion, not mob connections. There won’t be any investigation. I keep my bargains-you better keep yours.”

  The driver’s head turned slightly to find her reflection in his rearview mirror. He looked away quickly, as though she had caught him at something.

  Now what was that about?

  “I want you to take the bodyguard.” The old don’s voice was insist
ent, but not so confident anymore. “I’m going to give you a man I would trust with my own life.”

  “So you’re still worried that it’s all going to come back on you.” And if she didn’t live through the night, it would. Buying Blakely had been a bad mistake, and the payoff trail to a senator had left the old Mafia don vulnerable. It was only a matter of time before his own people realized what a liability he was.

  She caught the eyes of the young driver in the rearview mirror. Was this man suddenly worried too?

  “Cops don’t need bodyguards.” Her eyes traveled over the car’s lush appointments, looking for the thing that didn’t belong here.

  “Cops don’t usually have gunmen after them,” said the don, as though explaining elementary facts of life to a small child.

  “Yeah, they do-every time they hit the street.” Her eyes were fixed on an irregular upholstery stud near the glass partition. She leaned closer. The black stud was not leather but plastic, and it had three machine-made holes. She pulled it from the plush leather. It came out easily, only anchored by a pin. She blew a shrill whistle into the small plastic transmitter.

  On the other side of the glass wall, the driver put one hand to the ear where the receiver must be hidden. There was real pain in the mirror reflection of his eyes.

  The old man looked from the driver to the eavesdropping device in Mallory’s hand. Eyes rounded with shock, he knew he had been betrayed, yet he tried to deny it with the slow shake of his head.

  Mallory knew everything in the don’s mind: This could not be happening, not to him, not at the hands of his own family.

  “Soundproof? Bugproof? Don’t you wonder who your driver reports to?” Mallory touched the button to lower the glass partition. “Let’s ask him.”

  The man at the wheel was turning around, one hand fumbling in his coat where the holster would be. She was already pointing her revolver at the driver’s face-and the bulletproof glass was sliding down.

  The driver left the car at a dead run. Across the street, Frank the doorman was averting his eyes from the running man with the gun in his hand. Frank was a good New Yorker. What he did not see, he could not witness to in court at the cost of a day’s pay.