“No, that’s not it,” said Mallory. “Beck’s lawyers were behind a slew of court appearances. That’s like begging for the story to get out. Why would he make it a bigger story? Why drag out the fight?”
“A costly fight.” Robin turned the pages of another transcript. “This is the last court hearing. The playwright stalled the play’s opening with injunctions while his contract was in dispute. He was in control on that front—until a judge sided against him.” Finding the sheet he wanted, the lawyer pointed to a paragraph. “The play was undercapitalized and over budget. They’d laid out enormous funds for marketing, and Beck’s lawyers killed the ads.” He tapped one line of text. “Here’s where the judge accuses the playwright of using financial-starvation tactics for extortion.”
“He wanted them to restore his own play,” said Mallory.
“That would’ve made sense, but—” Robin turned the page. “Here it is.” He traced the lines of a closing paragraph with one finger. “The judge reminds Beck that he can sever the contract at will, and he tells the man to fish or cut bait. But Beck won’t do it.” The lawyer closed the document. “And that’s why the play was finally allowed to open with certain provisos. The theater couldn’t use the playwright’s name or his title on their marquee, and the—”
Correctly guessing that he was losing Mallory’s interest, the old man leaned across the table to catch her eye for a wink and a promise that, “It gets better. You’ll like this part. Dickie Wyatt was also the producer. His financial backing came from a Chicago investment group. This play was just another line on their company spreadsheet—oversight by bookkeepers. But they had a solid interest in all this litigation. I’m damn sure they were paying for it. The legal fees were gigantic.” He opened another document that began with a list of attorneys and their clients. “The investors were never represented in court.”
And, yes, she did like that part. “Better leverage. Beck could’ve nailed them.”
“Right you are,” said Robin. “If the backers were never told that their funds were used to finance litigation—and for the wrong play—Dickie Wyatt could’ve faced criminal charges. And I’m sure the attorneys pointed this out to Peter Beck.”
“And that was his hole card,” said Edward Slope. “He could’ve shut that play down anytime he liked.” The doctor turned to Mallory. “So he was going to make that announcement on the night he died. There’s your motive for murdering him.”
“But that’s insane . . . isn’t it?” The rabbi turned to Charles. “Mr. Beck fought so hard to have his own words restored. Why would he use his only leverage after the play opened? Doesn’t that defeat the objective of a hole card? You’d play that card to win a game—not to send the other players home and walk away with nothing.”
And now all eyes turned to Charles, who only spread his hands to say, Who knows?
But they were patient. They waited him out. Edward pulled the sandwich plate beyond his reach, and David confiscated his glass, leaving the psychologist to cast about for some honest loophole in his high standards that prohibited channeling the thoughts of the dead. Ah, and now he had it! A rough profile might pass for the witchcraft they wanted from him.
“Well, given only the facts at hand . . . his play was being erased slowly. Pieces of it getting lost every day.” Whiskey and sandwich were restored. “Over time, frustration would be building. Anger. Humiliation. Beck was a celebrated playwright. That stature usually comes with a substantial ego. And that works nicely with a need for ultimate control right up to the end. He might’ve been in a volatile state of mind and—”
“Going crazy,” said Mallory, lover of brevity. “And then he snapped. That’s why he went to the play the night he died. He wanted a public showdown.”
David Kaplan turned to Mallory. “This murder was planned in advance?”
“It was.”
“Then . . . the murderer knew what was going to happen. So Mr. Beck must’ve played his hole card before he got to the theater.”
“Right.” Mallory nodded homage to the rabbi’s logic. “But obviously it didn’t work. So all he had left that night was revenge. Beck was there to get even with all of them. He was going to kill that play—loud and public.”
There were nods from the others in deference to this reasoning, for she was the recognized Queen of Get Even.
“Dickie Wyatt had the best murder motive—the most to lose,” said Charles. “But he died days before Peter Beck. In fact, I’m wondering now if that heroin overdose was an accident. It might have been a suicide if he—” Charles pressed up against the back of his chair, as if Mallory had pinned him there with an angry look, or, more precisely, ocular evisceration. The documents on the table were fair game, but how dare he disclose information found on the cork wall—her wall?
David Kaplan rested one hand on her arm, calling her attention away from Charles.
Thank you. Thank you.
“So Mr. Wyatt is off your list,” said the rabbi. “Who else was likely to be aware of Mr. Beck’s intentions that night?”
Mallory was not inclined to give up more details—or waste any more of her time. She opened her pocket watch, a pointed reminder that she had business elsewhere. Facing the rabbi, she sweetly called him on his cards, and then destroyed him by beating his three kings—though her own hand could only be read as a straight flush in a world where grown men had previously agreed that deuces were wild cards on a night with a waxing moon.
Charles turned to the window. The moon was indeed lit like the slanted grin of a vanishing Cheshire cat.
Edward Slope killed all her joy in his own slaughter by simply laying his cards facedown in surrender. In a deviation from their personal war games, he failed to make the usual allusion to her childhood habit of dealing from the bottom of the deck. “I know what’s bothering you, Kathy. It’s all about style and odds. Am I right? Dickie Wyatt was the victim of a poisoner—not a slasher.”
What? Three surprised men turned to the doctor, and Charles spoke for the lot of them, saying, “That was murder?”
Mallory glared at the chief medical examiner, who correctly interpreted her expression—her intention to gut him—and he smiled.
“Your secret’s safe.” After a glance around the table, Edward said, “They won’t tell anybody. . . . So first, Wyatt was poisoned. It would’ve been more logical to kill Peter Beck the same way. Why fool with success? And the two victims were on opposing sides. The motive for Beck’s murder won’t work for Wyatt. That’s also a problem, right?”
“But you’ve got it all figured out.” She tapped her long, red fingernails on the deck of cards, a clear warning that he was annoying her—and that should stop.
Delighted, the doctor continued. “Your suspect pool is a small one—all theater people. Not a street gang, not a drug cartel. So you’ve got zero odds of two killers with unrelated motives. Fair enough? . . . Well, I say the director was poisoned in a failed attempt on the playwright. Now you’re down to only one killer, one motive for murdering Beck. And Wyatt’s death gets written off as collateral damage. Neat, isn’t it?” He puffed on his cigar and taunted her with a smile. “You like neat.”
In unison, the other three players, who comprised the gallery for this new game, turned to Mallory’s side of the table, awaiting her counter shot.
And she said, “You know Wyatt’s last bowl of chili was heavy on meat. But Beck only ate rabbit food. So, even if we make the stretch, and assuming those two would ever sit down at the same table—it’s not like they could’ve eaten the wrong meals by mistake. . . . I thought you liked logic.”
The three spectators turned back to Edward Slope for the next slam.
“That’s what saved the playwright,” said the medical examiner. “If the poisoner didn’t know—”
Mallory put up one hand to prevent him from finishing that thought. “The cast and crew ate lunch together. Everyone knew Beck was a vegetarian—everyone who might want him dead. Does that simplify things f
or you?”
The gallery nodded in unison, all three of them silently awarding her the game point. Ah, but wait. The doctor was showing signs of a rally.
“There is such a thing as vegetarian chili,” said Edward. “In any case, my logic still holds. You can’t argue with indisputable odds.”
Now it occurred to Charles that Mallory may have wanted that hair-strand test to look for evidence of a previous attempt on the playwright’s life—by a poisoner, lately turned slasher. Had this occurred to Edward? No, the doctor showed no poker tells for a trump card yet to play.
Edward Slope expelled cigar smoke, and now came the barely repressed smile that always accompanied a winning streak. “The odds are what they are, Kathy. You only get one motive to cover both victims.” His smile changed to the one that advertised his intention to needle her. “No other scenario is plausible . . . because you’ve only got one killer.”
“Sounds like a bet.” And perhaps just to drive the doctor insane, she said, “What are the odds I’ve got four killers?”
Edward’s smile was cagey. “You mean . . . conspiracy? That might only indicate guilty knowledge.” He had clearly seen that one coming, and now he dismissed it with a wave of his cigar. “Every conspirator faces a murder charge—even if they don’t do the hands-on killing.” He shook his head, feigning sadness, a suggestion that Mallory was off her game tonight.
Wrong. That much was evident at a glance.
Working around the bylaws of the game, rules designed so that no player could lose more than ten dollars in one sitting, she held up a hundred-dollar bill, stating no bet, only saying, “I say what I mean. I don’t need conspiracy charges. Four killers.”
Judging by his rare air of confusion, Edward Slope knew nothing of the Rinaldi twins and their possible link to an old massacre. Yet now, for all the world and every poker chip thrown in, this esteemed forensic pathologist—who would have cheerfully bet against two killers—could not tell if Mallory was running a bluff with four of them.
It was a stellar moment in the annals of poker night. Charles knew that Robin and the rabbi shared this thought with him, and they were all somewhat humbled by it.
Poor Edward had to wonder. A poisoning and a slit throat were solo acts, were they not? And his morgue was short a few victims to fit her four-killers scenario. Or was there a cheat of words he had missed, some verbal variation on palmed aces and marked cards? The doctor had only to nod and the bet would be made—such easy money—but he just sat there, considering her angles, paralyzed with his wondering.
What was she was up to? Even Charles, a master of poker tells, could not tell.
Mallory’s gotcha smile was in place as she rose from her chair and left the table on that maddening note of impossible odds for a game that was not rigged—or even a game that was. And of course it was, though damned if the doctor knew how.
Ah, but making people crazy was her favorite sport and the only possible objective in this gambit. Or was it?
Well, no.
Charles now recognized Mallory’s sideways you’ll-never-see-this-one-coming maneuver. And it was foreseeable that Edward Slope would lose a night’s sleep. Come morning, the man would still lack a resolution for her wildly illogical count of killers. And then there was the wager. By habit, she only made sucker bets that she could not lose. And so, starved for logic, Edward would do the hair-strand test that she wanted for Peter Beck. Oh, yes. That seed planted, the doctor would first look there for something, anything that might have gotten past him, rather than face the humiliation of her explaining it to him.
How predictable.
Mallory had won, even though Edward, a most decisive man, was still stuck in wager limbo when she walked out the door.
ROLLO: Granny was the last one. I remember the soles of her feet. Wet. Red. She’d walked through the blood of her daughters and her granddaughters.
—The Brass Bed, Act II
This stretch of Broadway had seen an era of elegant dining dissemble into honky-tonk days of performing fleas and whorehouses that later gave way to peep shows and then a drug trade, which in turn was replaced by giant cartoon characters, Jumbotrons—and a pizza parlor.
Charles Butler was accustomed to white linen laid with fine china and crystal—a far cry from the bare Formica tables and paper plates of this hole-in-the-wall establishment. It was smashed into the grand-scale circus of Times Square, where electronic animation and dazzle laid down a carbon footprint to shock the world—and no shame. He rather liked it.
The Theater District was the neighborhood of electricity. It was in the very air and also wired into one of his companions. There was a tempo to the gopher’s nervous energy. Feet tapping the floor, hands lightly slapping the tabletop, he was waiting—waiting—anticipating the psychologist’s first taste.
“This pizza crust is superb.” Charles smiled at the little man who had led them here. “Excellent choice.”
Bugsy ducked his head under the weight of this praise. The little man obviously lived to please, and now he continued his conversation with Mallory, she who must be pleased at all cost. “No, it was nothin’ personal, but Dickie never wanted Alma for that part, not from day one.”
After wolfing down his slice of pizza, the gopher elaborated on this for Charles’s benefit. “Ya see, the playwright rammed this girl down the director’s throat. That didn’t help. An’ we’re talkin’ Broadway here. Alma just wasn’t good enough to make the cut. . . . But, ya know? At the beginning, she wasn’t that bad. There were times when she made Dickie’s eyes light up. The talent was always there, but her boyfriend didn’t believe in acting classes. Peter didn’t have no use for directors, neither.”
Charles could tell that this was old news to Mallory. Nevertheless, she pushed her untouched paper plate toward the gopher—a reward that said, Good dog—and he grabbed up the pizza slice. She leaned back to watch him demolish his food. And when he was done chewing, she asked, “So how did Alma feel about the director?”
“She worshipped Dickie,” said the gopher. “He was God to her.”
This was clearly not what Mallory had expected. Her eyes narrowed as she leaned toward the gopher. “You told me he was riding her all the time.”
“He was. And Alma worked her tail off—just to get one payoff smile from him. That always put her over the moon. After Dickie left, her acting went down the tubes.”
“Something happened,” said Mallory, prompting him.
“Blame the drugs,” said Bugsy. “They make people crazy.”
The detective’s mouth was a grim line, a sign that her patience was frayed. She had been seeking an event, not a diagnosis.
Bugsy turned to Charles’s friendlier face. “Alma’s a little squirrelly. She thinks the ghostwriter’s after her. The poor kid.” The gopher’s sympathy was there to read in the simple lift of one thin shoulder. “She works so hard. But it’s hard to be good when she’s scared all the time . . . stoned all the time.” The little man looked down at his watch. “I gotta go. I can’t be late. This job’s all I got.” His anxiety was palpable, and yet he sat there waiting on the detective to release him. She nodded and, that quick, he was out the door and gone.
Mallory turned to Charles. “Don’t tell me he has a split personality. I don’t want to hear that.”
“Oh, no, nothing of the kind. Multiple personalities begin with early childhood trauma. Bugsy’s personality was fully formed long before his wife died. Based on what his mother told me, this current behavior was triggered by grief and—”
“Behavior? He’s delusional.”
Well, of course. So simple. Why had he ever bothered with all those years of schooling and training? “According to Mrs. Rains, her son was clinically depressed after the death of his wife. Now that’s a documented mental illness. I promise you Alan Rains did not wake up one morning as Bugsy the gopher. But it takes more than twenty minutes to do a proper evaluation. I’d need a few sessions alone with him.”
He wa
s losing Mallory. She preferred speedy bullet replies over considered, thoughtful ones. Patience exhausted, she pushed back her chair and rose from the table. Raising one hand in goodbye, she walked toward the door.
“Oh, one more thing,” said Charles. “About that old sanity hearing years back. The court document might be useful if you can get me a copy.”
Well, that stopped her. Mallory turned around to face him. Was that surprise or suspicion in her eyes? Either way, this could not be a good thing.
“You’ve already seen it,” she said. Not asking. Insisting.
Charles shook his head.
The detective sat down at the table. “You’ve seen everything, the whole wall.”
“But no court transcript.” And it was not as if eidetic memory would allow him to forget a document like that one—or even a fly speck on her cork wall of papers, photographs and diagrams. “If it had been there, I would’ve—”
“No!” Mallory slapped the flat of her hand on the Formica. The table rocked on its uneven legs. And then she spat out, “Deberman!” At the mention of that name, Charles felt the heat of a blush coloring his face. She leaned toward him. “I believe you met him.” And, with more sarcasm, she said, “You remember that day.”
He was unlikely to forget grabbing a detective by the lapels of his coat and lifting the man off the floor—in defense of her honor. When word of that foolish altercation had gotten back to Mallory, had she laughed? The others did. Or had he merely annoyed her?
“Think! You were in the incident room. Where was Deberman standing when you went after him?”
“He was in front of your case wall. But I didn’t read any material that day. I was just waiting for—”
“After Deberman left, was there a blank space on that wall?”
Recently, her wall had become a bit jumbled with paperwork tacked up in the haphazard way of normal people who did not possess her mania for neatness. Though, he must say she had done her best to right many a wrong-hanging sheet. But on that day, the wall had been different; he had only taken notice of it because the paper display had been so obviously shaped by Mallory’s pathology—machinelike precision.
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