Shell Game

by Carol O’Connell

  Mallory’s eyes fixed on the crossbow that was going to kill him. She flew toward it, almost there. Charles was almost dead. Her hands closed on the crossbow – too late. The string released before she could unseat it from the pedestal.

  Charles screamed in pain.

  She turned to see the arrow buried in his chest as he rolled away from the target and stopped struggling. He was not holding an arrow in place this time. He sank down, dangling by one manacle, eyes closed.

  And Mallory’s whole world took on the dreamer’s quality of walking underwater. Sound was dulled, and her movements were slow. She was unaware that she still held the pistol grip of the crossbow. The uniforms were racing up the stairs. Dr. Slope had left his wife and child in the front row and he was climbing over the edge of the stage. Now he was also running past her on the staircase. All the rest of the world was moving faster. Her legs were so heavy. Each step was a great effort. Her hands were frozen, wrapped tight around the grip of the crossbow pistol.

  It was another replay of Oliver’s final act – different actors. The policemen lowered Charles to the floor of the platform stage, handling him gently, as if he were not beyond pain. Edward Slope knelt beside the body, pressing one hand to Charles’s throat, desperate to find a pulse that wasn’t there.

  Mallory reached the top step and looked down on the corpse. No magic here. This was the very real death of Charles Butler.

  Dr. Slope stood up and turned to the audience. In a loud voice, he announced, „Well, that’s showbiz.“

  What?

  The audience was clapping and cheering as Charles stood up to take his bow. He pulled the arrow out of his chest. The shirt was torn where he had ripped a button free, and she could see a flash of the chain-mail vest and the tube that had held the arrow.

  Her hand unconsciously opened and dropped the crossbow to the floor.

  Edward Slope leaned close to her ear. „I’ve been rehearsing that line all day.“

  Mallory slapped the doctor’s face so hard, she left the red imprint of her hand on his flesh.

  Everyone laughed but Edward Slope. He was shaking his head, eyes saying, Sorry, so sorry. „Mallory, I thought you knew. I thought you were part of the act.“

  The splintered piece of the broken post was dangling from the manacle on Charles’s wrist. And now she saw the peg in the wood. She looked up at the post to find the peg’s receiving hole in the damaged section. So Malakhai was right; Oliver had made his own replica too well, missing this one feature.

  A damn breakaway post.

  It left just enough maneuvering room to avoid the final shot. So Charles had pulled the arrow from the target and fitted it into the tube in his chest.

  „That’s it?“ She was outraged. The audience was ecstatic. Her voice was still being amplified by Charles’s microphone, and her angry face was magnified by the video screen on the wall. „That’s all?“

  Charles turned to her with his loony smile. And now the laughter masked his words for everyone but Mallory. „Well, you couldn’t figure it out.“ He raised his hand to dangle the wood in front of her. „Malakhai was putting you on. The handcuffs were never supposed to open. That was Oliver’s mistake.“

  She heard Robin Duffy’s voice calling out to her from the first row, where he stood with the rabbi and Mrs. Kaplan. She turned to look down at Robin’s adoring face as he said, „Kathy, you were wonderful.“

  Mallory turned on the uniformed officers standing at the side of the small stage. She yelled, „Give me agunl“

  The audience roared, and so did the men in uniform. She tried to take a gun from Harris’s holster. He laughed and held it high in the air. She turned to Patrolman Briant. In the spirit of a playground game of keep-away, he also held his gun out of her reach.

  This was humiliation on a scale she had never known before, yet she resisted the urge to kick Officer Briant’s testicles across the room; not a good idea in front of three thousand witnesses, almost as serious as shooting a sick rat.

  Mallory bent down to the floor to pick up the crossbow pistol. This sent the audience into helpless shakes and quakes of laughter. And their screams of hilarity increased with every arrow she pulled from the target.

  Well, Malakhai had not lied to her. The crossbows had all fired arrows, and Charles had not escaped from the handcuffs.

  Mallory gave the driver the address for Nick Prado’s performance in the theater district. The cabby was nodding, driving slowly and not paying any attention to the street. He was fixated on the rearview mirror, eyes wide open and showing entirely too much of the whites as he watched her loading arrows into the crossbow magazine.

  Perhaps the cabby was lamenting the fact that his car had no bulletproof glass between him and his passenger, a fool’s economy measure in New York City. And oddly enough, by this lack of protection, Mallory pegged him as the cautious type, only picking up the safe passengers – nuns, Girl Scouts and upscale theater patrons. Who knew a crossbow would turn up on a fare from Carnegie Hall?

  Her next theory was that the driver might be carrying a pistol. People who owned guns traveled in a false bubble of security, always believing the weapon would be at hand when trouble happened. It never was. Lots of dead cabbies had carried guns.

  The last arrow fell into the crossbow magazine. Mallory leaned forward. „Give me your cell phone!“

  The driver plucked the phone off the dashboard and threw it back over his shoulder, not wanting any contact with her. Mallory dialed Riker’s number and counted two rings.

  Riker, answer me.

  Why had Malakhai waited so long? There had been other chances to kill Nick Prado.

  She looked at her watch. It was nearly time for the hangman finale. Prado would be stoned on sedatives to get him through an act on a high narrow stage. He would make an easy, slow-moving target.

  „Yeah, Riker here,“ said the voice in the cell phone.

  „Riker, is Nick Prado still on stage? Do you have him in sight?“

  „Naw, he was gone before I got here. I don’t think – “

  „Gone?“

  „Yeah, they changed the time slots. He went on when I was still uptown at Faustine’s.“

  Damn Lieutenant Coffey. With only one extra man, she could have covered all three theaters.

  „Riker, see if you can find Prado backstage. Malakhai is headed your way, and he’s got a gun.“

  „Jesus.“

  „I’m on the – “ The cell phone went dead. Oh, great, just great. A perfect evening. She tossed it over the seat of the cab. „You need new batteries.“

  This was getting too complex, not Malakhai’s style at all. More like Prado’s sense of spectacle for maximum effect, his convoluted planning. It was almost as if the publicity king had orchestrated everything.

  Of course, he did.

  „Turn this cab around! We’re going uptown.“

  „Anything you want, princess.“

  The cab pulled over to the curb and she waited while the traffic crawled by. Finally, he made the illegal U-turn, and they were moving north toward Faustine’s.

  She leaned close to the back of his head. „Do you have a gun?“

  The cabby turned his head to look at her. He was more surprised than afraid, and his New York attitude was rising to the surface from sheer force of habit. „Lady, you’re already loaded for bear with your own damn – “

  Mallory held her gold shield inches from his eyes. „When I ask to see your weapons, you show them to me. That’s how it works.“

  „A cop. Well, why didn’t you – Aw shit.“ His hands loosened their white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. „Freaking cops.“

  He reached over to the glove compartment and opened it. The city lights were crawling by the windows of the slow-moving car. Scattered raindrops hit the glass as the man pulled out his inventory. „I got a lead pipe, a razor, a knife.“ He showed her an aerosol can. „This is mustard spray, but it’s real old stuff.“ He pulled out a second can. „Here�
�s the pepper spray. But no gun. Satisfied?“

  In a city with two lethal weapons per person, you could never find a gun when you needed one.

  „Speed up. And you can go through all the red lights. That’s your tip.“ She threw two twenties over the front seat. „That’s the fare. I don’t need a receipt.“

  And now the cab accelerated. Money always worked better than a badge in Manhattan.

  A young man stood outside the stage exit of Faustine’s Magic Theater. He wore an old-fashioned usher’s uniform and a matching green pillbox hat. As he dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk, his mouth hung open, and he never even considered trying to stop the running woman with the crossbow pistol.

  Inside the theater, a man in coveralls was doing last-minute repairs on a newly installed window when she burst through the door with a push that sent the knob into the wall with a crash of breaking plaster. And this man was equally reticent to get in her way as she raced toward the wings of the stage.

  Mallory paused by a dustbin, and looked down the dark corridors created by layers of giant plywood screens. There were boxes and cartons everywhere, too many hiding places. She walked past the edge of the closed curtain. Now she had a clear view of a man in evening attire standing before the audience with a microphone in hand. He announced the next performer, Franny Futura.

  Mallory was not surprised.

  The audience clapped with more than polite applause for the overhyped act they had all come to see. This was a sporting town. Who had not played the conspiracy game of every daily newspaper? True New Yorkers, the audience had probably made book on a man’s life: Would he show or not, was he dead or alive? She could almost see the money changing hands out there in the dark.

  Nick Prado was standing in the wings when she came up behind him, soft-stepping across the wood.

  A man in coveralls was crouched on the floor nearby, frozen in the act of bending over his toolbox. The streetwise workman rose slowly and backed away from Mallory with no sudden movements, abandoning the toolbox in his haste to avoid witnessing anything that might require a court appearance.

  Mallory tapped Prado on the shoulder and stood back out of reach. He turned around, only showing slight surprise.

  „Mallory, how are you this evening?“

  This might have passed for a normal encounter, except for the crossbow. She was aiming at his eyes.

  He was stoned again. His reaction time was too slow. How many pills had it taken to get him through the hanged man routine in the downtown theater?

  Prado nodded at the weapon. „I like it. Suits you even better than a gun.“

  She glanced at the people gathering behind the curtain. A long black table was being assembled by two stagehands. Another man was moving a large upright rectangle of clockwork gears into position at the rear of the stage.

  „So Franny’s still alive,“ said Prado. „Are you crushed, Mallory? I hope you didn’t have any money riding on that theory of yours.“

  She looked up beyond the valance of the curtain to the catwalk, a bridge of wooden planks and metal handrails. Her eyes traveled to the vertical rod of steel hanging over the stage. The end of the stalk held a silver crescent razor, a cruel-looking thing, nicked – and familiar. „That’s not a replica. It came from Charles’s basement.“

  „Yes,“ said Prado. „A loan from Charles. Franny didn’t want to risk another one of Oliver’s botched tricks.“

  „You won’t feel safe until he’s dead, will you, Prado?“

  „You think I might’ve tampered with Franny’s act? Can’t be done. He’s not doing it Max’s way.“

  „Because he doesn’t know how. Oliver didn’t send him the plans for the pendulum. He gave Futura the Lost Illusion – the platform and the crossbows.“

  „My compliments, Mallory. Yes, that was a particular bit of sweetness on Oliver’s part. Franny had such a tired act. The Lost Illusion would’ve made him a headliner. Of course, Franny never had the guts to go through with it. Turned it down. Poor Oliver was such a bad judge of character. He gave everyone credit for his own large heart.“

  Mallory nodded. „Oliver was a brave little man, wasn’t he? So it was easy to talk him into doing the illusion himself. I know you arranged the Central Park show – just like you arranged that old man’s murder. You even wrote the invitations. The wording wasn’t Oliver’s style – everyone said so.“

  „Franny murdered Oliver.“ His words had a tone of disparagement. „I assumed you understood that.“

  „And Louisa?“

  „Also Franny’s murder. Emile will back me up. I only carried her backstage, a few spots of blood on my shirt. Franny was covered with her blood.“

  Interesting that he was so forthcoming with Futura’s guilt, though she knew he was being truthful. „Scaring Futura, getting him to kill Louisa – that was the only smart thing you ever did.“

  Prado didn’t like that. He wanted pure praise.

  She relaxed her bow hand to point the weapon at his heart. „You knew Malakhai would come tonight. His second chance – last chance. He has to do this execution while he still remembers why he’s doing it. You stashed Futura so you could go on working the wires, the timing, orchestrating everything.“

  „Perhaps you give me too much credit.“ Though his smile said she had not given him credit enough – not nearly enough.

  The curtains opened and Franny Futura was joyously grinning in the spotlight. Behind him were six people in scarlet capes, their faces shadowed by hoods. Mallory was intent on bits of anatomy exposed with the movements of these men. The hoods made their height misleading, but they were all close to the same average stature of the magician in the tuxedo, none tall enough to be Malakhai.

  „Such a frightened little man,“ she said. „Hard to imagine him killing Louisa. But you told him a fake death would never fool the Germans. And you were right about that. So you got him all worked up, crazy with fear, hysterical. Did you tell him Louisa knew about his connection to the Resistance movement?“

  Prado was enjoying this. „You know, at the time, I didn’t even know Franny was in the Resistance.“

  „But you knew St. John was connected. I know you’re the one who gave him up to Futura. You exposed your best friend to up the ante. When fear wasn’t enough, you made a woman’s murder into an act of patriotism.“

  His eyes flickered and his mouth opened in dumb surprise – wordless, stunned. It was more than the stupefying effect of drugs. She had guessed right.

  Mallory turned to scan the audience, searching for Malakhai’s face. Young men in workmen’s clothes and old men in tuxedos were clustering in the wings at the opposite end of the stage. She motioned Prado to walk ahead of her and beyond the backdrop curtain.

  „Prado, I know you’re running this show. You want Futura to die while all those people are watching. That’s part of the kick, isn’t it? Did you rig his act? Or did Malakhai do that?“

  „I’m not here to – “

  „We’re going up there.“ She waved the crossbow to the ladder for the narrow catwalk. „No witnesses. Most people never look up.“

  Prado stared at the ladder. His reflexes might be dulled by drugs, but the anxiety of acrophobia was surfacing. His head snapped back, as if she had shot him seconds ago and the arrow had just caught up to him. „Mallory, if you really think Franny’s act is rigged, why not just stop the show and check his props?“

  „That’s not as easy as you might think. Move!“ And now Prado had confirmed that she would find no evidence of tampering. If she did stop the show, she would only become the butt of a joke for the second time in one night.

  And the threat would not come from the direction of the audience either. She knew Malakhai was not out there planning to risk another long-range shot, not with a revolver. He had stolen her handgun for something up close, point-blank and fatal.

  Prado rested one tentative hand on a rung of the ladder. She prodded him with the crossbow. He climbed slowly toward the suspensio
n bridge that stretched across the stage. Eyes shut, he gripped the ladder so tightly, it was an effort to uncurl his fingers from one rung to the next.

  Mallory followed him, inching one hand along the rail, aiming the crossbow at his backside. He stepped off the ladder and onto a small metal platform. Mallory stood behind him. „Keep moving.“

  His eyes opened in disbelief, head shaking in denial.

  Were the drugs wearing off?

  She put the crossbow into the small of his back. Gingerly, he put one foot on the wooden planks, and the suspension bridge moved beneath him. He gripped the handrails. Mallory prodded him again, and he moved forward. The wooden planks swayed with every step. He froze to make the motion stop, and Mallory shifted her weight to make the bridge move again.

  „All right!“ He edged forward.

  When they were over the center of the stage, Mallory said, „Stop here.“ She looked down at the floorboards. A glass coffin rested on the long black table. Futura was standing by a microphone as the six assistants carried a burlap dummy in the fashion of tap-dancing pallbearers. Recorded music blared out of amplifiers in the wings. It was a second-rate show tune she could not name.

  „Canned music and chorus boys,“ muttered Prado. „Franny hired chorus boys.“

  He gripped the rails and lowered his head to look down. She had not expected him to do that. The thing that terrified him also fascinated him. „That dummy is all that’s left of a beautiful illusion. Franny wanted to use a pumpkin for the demonstration. Can you imagine that?“

  „So you did help him with the act.“ She had caught the false notes in his voice, a catch in the throat as he made a hash of forced bravado. She studied his face and found it wanting in terror. How many pills had he taken to get him through the hangman illusion?

  „You should’ve told Emile you were afraid of heights. He wouldn’t have asked you to do his act.“