Dead Famous aka The Jury Must Die

by Carol O'Connell

  A few of Dr. Apollo's notes? One of these pages might have explained Riker's cryptic line about the wine.

  Well, this was not the plan – not her plan. Riker was running a different game. There could be no other explanation for this travesty of ashes. It was like cheating at chess – also Riker's game, or once upon a time it was. There was no chess set in this apartment. She had looked for it on previous expeditions, recalling the set he had thrown away and wondering if he had bought a new one. Evidently he never played anymore, and Mallory sometimes wondered if she might be the cause of that.

  As the foster child of Helen and Inspector Louis Markowitz, most of her baby-sitters had been cops. The Markowitzes' early experiments with civilians had all ended badly; tender old ladies and teenage girls had proven no match for a ten-year-old semireformed street thief. Out of all her cop wardens, Riker had had the most staying power. He had taught her to sit still for hours – he had taught her to play chess. The child had loved the game, but hated losing, and she had devised schemes of distraction to cheat him. One night, his hand had been faster than hers. He had captured her tiny fist, which had barely concealed a stolen chessman, the pawn that had previously blocked her hopes of bringing down Riker's queen.

  "Is this fun for you, kid?" Those had been his last words to her that night. She had watched him pick up a letter opener and gouge the cheap plastic pawn with a A for Kathy. He set it on his mantelpiece, then tossed the other chessmen into the trash can along with the board and never mentioned it again – no punishment, no lecture, nothing but silence. And he never ratted her out to her foster parents. Secrets had such power.

  Every night for a week, that ruined pawn on Riker's mantel was the last thing young Kathy thought about before she went to sleep. Guilt was not in her vocabulary; she was simply mystified. This puzzle followed the little girl all through the days. She bought a new chess set, actually paid for it instead of stealing one. Every day after school, she carted her chessmen and her board to Special Crimes Unit and sat for long hours in the squad's lunchroom – waiting. After three days, Riker finally came in to play.

  She lost, lost every game, game after game, for a week. And then she won. And then, while Riker was still at work, she broke into his apartment and stole that defaced pawn from his mantelpiece. She had it still. It was in the back of her closet, hidden in the small box of a child's treasures: shoplifted items and baseball cards.

  During her years as a cop, what sometimes passed for conscience was an echo of Riker asking, "Is this fun for you, kid?"

  Yes. Yes it was. She loved to win, and she did not cheat the pieces of evidence that worked against her cases. She won because she was good – and because she was not above unlawful entry, robbing data banks and lying like crazy. But she never destroyed evidence. Mallory stared at the ashes in Riker's fireplace.

  Well, the man was not in his right mind, and she blamed Dr. Apollo for this. Yes, it was the doctor's fault. Mallory fixed this thought in her mind and pushed away the idea that she was cheating the pieces to hold Riker harmless and blameless.

  At the end of the hour, when the last of the patients had filed out, Riker entered the next room to catch the psychiatrist unawares amid a clutter of wet tissues, ashtrays and paper coffee cups. This was Jo transformed. Earlier, he had only glimpsed her from a distance and only the back of her shawl. Most of his observation time had been devoted to the long expanse of nylon stockings below the short skirt – oh, and the high heels, stilettos, his personal favorites. But now he was staring at her wine-dark lipstick, and it shocked him. Until this moment, he had only seen her face naked.

  "Hey, Jo."

  She was folding metal chairs and leaning them against the wall when she turned to see him standing near the door. Guilt was there to read in her face and her body language. Her head lowered and her hands folded in prayer, as if asking forgiveness for her crimes. His partner would have loved this moment, but Riker was not enjoying his role this afternoon. He was at war with himself. Always inexplicably happy to be in the same room with Jo, he was also unsettled by suspicion, a symptom of Mallory's poison.

  Aw, lady, what have you done?

  He kept his silence, waiting for Jo to speak. There was a rhythm to an interrogation and it came as naturally to him as breathing. He was already predicting her opening gambit and laying plans to stun her and knock her sensibilities loose from their moorings.

  "So you've read everything," she said. "And now you want an explanation." She slowly settled down on a chair, head bowed in the time-honored posture of the police interview.

  How many times had she been through this before?

  His face was somber as he walked toward her. "You know who the Reaper is."

  Jo shook her head.

  "That wasn't a question, lady. Agent Kidd told you. That's what brought you to New York. The Reaper's here, isn't he?"

  "Timothy never told me."

  "Then you worked it out on your own."

  "You'd have to be as paranoid as Timothy to – "

  "Been there," said Riker. "The Reaper was the guy he met in the liquor store. I believe his story." And now he saw shock in her eyes – and something else. Fresh guilt? Yes, and he nodded to say, I can read your damn mind. Aloud, he said, "But you didn't believe him, did you, Jo? Not then.

  Not till he died."

  "And now you know all my secrets." She smiled to pass this off as banter. "I failed him – badly."

  "What about Bunny, that poor homeless bastard? What was that all about? Did you use him for a sparring partner? Is that how it started? Just a little practice for the main event?"

  "That's not fair."

  "Yeah, life sucks." He stood before her, not bending one bit, forcing her to look up at him as he was looking out at her – as if across a great gulf. "And what about Mugs? I think that cat keeps you in a constant state of alert. Hard to tell when he'll go ballistic, isn't it? Good practice for a scary situation. Or is Mugs your burglar alarm? Wouldn't take much to set him off."

  "And sometimes a cat is just a cat. I love Mugs, I do." "Then don't take chances, Jo. Live a long life. 'Cause if you die, you know what'll happen to that cat. If you're not around to protect him, he'll get kicked in the teeth by the next cop he mauls. Nobody's gonna take him to the vet and put him down with a nice painless needle. Whoever finds him first is gonna stomp him into the rug. Or maybe Mugs will get away with just a few missing teeth and some cracked ribs."

  She rose from the chair, then picked up a plastic bag and collected a fallen tissue from the floor, clearly announcing the end of this conversation. Not so fast, Jo, not quite yet.

  "I won't be coming back to work." She avoided his eyes, and her voice became more formal, as if he were a stranger, just one more cop to deal with. "I left my resignation with Miss Byrd."

  "Yeah, I heard. So you'll want your suitcase back." "Yes." She walked about the room, bending low to pick up the cups and to empty the ashtrays into a plastic bag. "If you don't mind, could you drop it off at my hotel?"

  "No, I don't think so." His voice was flat, giving away nothing, as he pulled one of Ned's business cards from his wallet. "You'll have to come and get it." He scrawled his address on the back of the card, then left it on the metal chair. "My place, seven o'clock. I'll cook. You bring the wine."

  Jo walked everywhere in grace, and so the stumble gave her away. Knowing his preference for cheap bourbon and beer, she would probably bet her stock portfolio that he did not own a corkscrew, and now her thoughts must go to the wine in the bottom drawer of her armoire.

  Riker ambled across the floor, taking his own time. He paused at the far end of the room and turned around to stare at her. All the trappings of a cop fell away for a moment, and he was only a man, as easily killed as any other. And she could kill him – with words, a look. He wanted to say something to her, something – personal. Ducking his head a bare inch, as if expecting a hail of laughter for this foolish unspoken idea, he held her glance a moment longer befor
e turning back to the door. These days he left every room with a bang – not so loud as a paralyzing gunshot – just a satisfying slam that rattled every door in its frame.

  Chapter 9

  RIKER COULD NOT SAY HOW HE HAPPENED TO FIND himself so far uptown in the neighborhood of wealth. From long habit, his feet knew the route of subway stairs and sidewalks leading to this Park Avenue apartment building. A liveried doorman greeted him with genuine affection, and another fiver traveled from Riker's pocket to his, though there was nothing new to report. Even at this posh address, betrayal was cheap and affordable.

  Riker stepped back to the curb and looked up at one lighted window. A pale woman hovered there – expectant. This was the mother of the boy who had ambushed him. Her face was so much like her son's, though she lacked that wild-eyed look of crazy all the time. Her eyes were only fearful – of him. That much detail could not be seen on such a high floor; he simply knew this to be true.

  And the woman knew.

  If her child came home again, Riker would kill him.

  As if reading his thoughts, the woman shrank back from the window, and Riker bowed his head in the manner of a shamed terrorist who has brought his bomb to the wrong door. He carried himself away from this innocent woman and walked on down the broad avenue – a man waiting to explode.

  Mallory's small tan car pulled up in front of the Park Avenue building. The wealthy tenants, a man and a woman, withdrew to the safety of the lobby, preferring to communicate via the doorman, their conduit to the outside world. Over the past six months, they had grown skittish and shy of being waylaid by reporters, and they had come to fear police. Their faces were pale from infrequent forays into the sunlight.

  As Mallory left her car and approached the doorman, she glanced at the couple on the other side of the glass entryway. They were staring at her, discussing her. Then they caught her eye, and now they fled across the lobby toward the elevator. She wondered if they knew about the doorman's profits and how easily he sold their private lives.

  "Mallory." The doorman moved toward her, edging sideways like a crab, wanting no one from the building's interior to see the folding money that he anticipated. "You told me Riker wouldn't be back." He feigned a sigh. "Ah, those poor people. I don't think they can handle any more of this."

  "I said I'd take care of it." She handed him a bill much larger than any of Riker's shabby bribes, instantly renewing this man's friendship and allegiance. He pocketed his money, then gave her a broad smile that said, Screw those poor people. What can I do for you today?

  "What did Riker want?"

  "Same old thing. He asked if they'd left the building in the last few days. Oh, yeah, and did they have any new visitors."

  "And you said?"

  "They don't go nowhere. They don't see nobody." He looked over one shoulder to be sure that the lobby was clear of prying eyes. "The missus, she feels sorry for Riker. But the mister's really steamed."

  "But no threats, right? They didn't call in a complaint?"

  "Naw, they don't want any more trouble with the cops. The truth, Mallory? They were more afraid of their own kid than Riker. Poor bastard. I told 'em the guy's a little nuts, but not the dangerous kind of crazy. Not like that son of – " He stopped abruptly, correctly intuiting that she would do him some damage if he continued with this line of prattle.

  "He's not crazy," she said. "Don't you put that idea in their heads one more time."

  Mallory felt no compassion for the parents of Riker's shooter. Those poor people had spent a million dollars on lawyers so their son would be free to ambush a cop. "You tell them I don't want to hear about any harassment complaints. Make that real clear."

  Had that sounded sufficiently menacing? Yes. The doorman was backstepping.

  She wanted fear to be the strong point of his translation when he carried her message back to those millionaires with their psychotic genes and good lawyers. They had always known what kind of monster they had raised, yet they had not locked the boy away. And now they had no right to whine about the damaged man who sometimes haunted Park Avenue.

  In honor of Johanna's visit, the dirty laundry had been stashed in his bedroom, where yesterday's socks joined the pairs previously scattered about the front room. While Riker waited, he began to see his apartment through Mrs. Ortega's eyes. He regretted tossing out the cleaning woman before she could do much more than leave her little footprints in the dust. A man could lose a corpse beneath the mound of black plastic garbage bags piling near the door. How much time had passed since he had last been inspired to carry out trash on collection night? Weeks?

  A month?

  He looked at his watch, then dismissed the idea that Mrs. Ortega might make an emergency house call. After closing the doors to the kitchen and bathroom, two problems were solved. And now he rationalized away the rest of the mess in the front room. The state of this litter pit would take the lady by surprise. She would never see the first shot coming.

  And the walls were thick. If she screamed, no one would hear it.

  Mallory passed through the stairwell door, and entered the squad room of Special Crimes Unit, a large space with a haphazard arrangement of desks and one wall banked with tall, grimy windows overlooking the narrow SoHo street. Six men were working overtime tonight, filling in the gap left by Riker's forced departure and her own unauthorized sabbatical. The detectives sat amid the clutter and litter of their caseloads, files and notes and coffee cups, shouting questions at one another, barking deli orders to a police aide and holding telephone conversations.

  All noise and motion ceased.

  The men lifted their heads in the unison of chorus girls with shoulder holsters. Their eyes were trained on the squad's lone female as she crossed the room to her desk, the only desk at perfect right angles to the wall. Three days ago, this had been the most fanatically neat work space on the planet. No more. The locks on the drawers had been pried open, leaving scratch marks on the metal. The contents had been pawed over and jumbled, some of it strewn across her blotter, and the rest was on the floor. Case files and notebooks lay open, and her penchant for compulsive neatness was exposed in the spill of a drawer stocked with cleaning supplies.

  But Mallory did not implode.

  And hope died all around the room, for the show was obviously over and hardly worth the wait. The frozen tableau came back to life as talking and shouting resumed and papers shuffled.

  Mallory turned to Detective Janos, a man with the large and solid build of a refrigerator that could talk and quote Milton. He had a brutal face that appealed to parents and parole officers alike, one that could frighten their charges into good behavior, and his was the most compassionate face in the squad room tonight. But sympathy was not what Mallory wanted.

  He rose from his chair and slowly ambled toward her ruined desk, shaking his head to convey the commiserations of Ain't it a shame? and What's this world coming to? His voice was incongruously soft when he said, "I know what it looks like, kid, but nothing was taken." He hunkered down to retrieve a can of metal polish that had rolled under her chair.

  "This is Coffey's work," said Mallory. Lieutenant Coffey might as well have gouged his name into the metal alongside all the other scratches. No one else would have dared to desecrate her personal space.

  Janos shot a glance at the window that ran the length of the lieutenant's private office. The blinds were drawn, and the door was closed. "I wouldn't go in there right now if I were you. The boss just got rid of two vultures from Internal Affairs. They found out that Riker was working full-time for his brother Ned."

  "He doesn't work there anymore. I took care of that." "But he did work there." Janos, the quintessential gentleman, was on his knees, picking up the case files and notes strewn at her feet. "And the whole time Riker was working, he collected checks for full disability."

  "He never cashed those checks." Mallory snatched the papers from his hands before he could put them into the wrong drawer. "And Riker only took a job afte
r the department stopped his payroll deposits."

  "Oh, the lieutenant knows that," said Janos, gathering pens and paper clips into his large meaty hands. "And that's what he told IA. Then he told 'em Riker was railroaded into a pension and showed 'em a copy of the appeal forms. And then he says, 'Where do you bastards get off harassing a decorated cop, a wounded cop?' So the boss holds up four fingers, and I'm thinkin', naw, that's three too many. But then he yells, 'Four bullet wounds! Count my fingers, you morons'. I thought that was a real nice touch. And then the bastards left – real fast. Case closed."

  Mallory stared at her violated desk. "But that's got nothing to do with why Coffey popped all these locks. Right?" "I'm getting to that."

  Janos dumped his collection of small objects into her top drawer with no regard for the correct compartments of the plastic desk organizer. Mallory bit back a rebuke and quickly slotted the paper clips, pens and pencils into the proper square and rectangular wells.

  'The district attorney sent one of his twits over here to hassle you," said Janos. "He wanted the package you promised. The trial's tomorrow, and he's a little antsy about it."

  And that would be all the evidence she had been asked to develop for a pending court case. It had taken only a few hours to gather it, and she had done that three days ago but never turned it in.

  "Coffey tried to reach you." The large detective rose to a stand, holding her feather duster delicately between his thumb and forefinger. "But you don't answer your beeper anymore."

  "I'm on comp time." She snatched the feather duster and dropped it into its proper place. She planned to close this lower drawer quietly, not wanting to give the other men the satisfaction of a slam.