The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

by Carol O'Connell

  “My favorite is the light that goes on in Louis’s den after the evening news is over. It’s that window under the gable,” said Robin, pointing his beer bottle toward the picture window of his living room to indicate the dark gable of the house beyond the glass. Now he picked up his new card and fitted it into his hand.

  Charles had no way to know if Robin had bettered his hand any. The man’s face gave away nothing. Yet everyone seemed to know what was in his own hand. Edward laughed out loud when he raised the ante on a bluff. Folding his cards in humiliation, Charles stared out the window at the row of blinking colored lights which trimmed the porch roof of Louis Markowitz’s house. “You know, for a moment I thought Mallory had done it.”

  “The lights? You mean as a gesture of sentiment?” Edward was studying Charles’s face over the tops of his cards, perhaps checking for signs of a fever.

  Charles nodded, and Edward looked to the ceiling. “Charles, I’m telling you this as a friend—you’ve got to let go of this strange idea of the gunslinger with a heart of gold. I’m a doctor, you can trust me on this one. She has no detectable heartbeat.”

  “She loved Helen.” Rabbi Kaplan perused his cards, and his sweet smile dissolved into the mask of the veteran poker player.

  “Okay, you got me there. She even loved Louis in her bizarre way.” Edward folded his cards.

  “This speaks well for a heart,” said the rabbi, laying down his cards next to Robin’s splayed hand, and simultaneously raking in the first pot of the evening. “Robin, the electric menorah in the window was a nice touch.”

  Robin was dealing the next round of cards as Charles was asking, “Was she was raised in both religions?”

  “Kathy has no religion,” said Edward as he gathered up his cards. “We think she works for the opposition.”

  “The way you talk about her,” said the rabbi. “She’s not a criminal.”

  “The hell she isn’t.” Edward slammed his cards down on the table. “Now she thinks I’m going to steal for her. She wanted me to raid my investigator’s personal notes and give them to Charles. Too many leaks in the department, she says. You know she’s just bypassing Jack Coffey.”

  “Coffey should be grateful she works around him,” said Robin. “If he learned anything from Markowitz, he’d never want to know what she was doing. You’re doing him a favor.”

  Edward pulled a fold of papers out of his back pocket and pushed the wad across the table to Charles. “These are the investigator’s notes. No police request would have turned them up. If an investigator gives his notes to a case detective, he can wind up spending a few days in court defending things that were just idle thoughts and speculations. It’s a bit like reading a diary.”

  Charles was looking down on a straight flush. The other players followed Edward’s suit and folded. How did they always know? The four quarters in the pot might represent his only win of the evening. “Did you find anything interesting?”

  “Not really. She wanted a report on the death of Judge Heart’s mother. I told her we don’t send M.E. investigators for a natural death if a doctor’s in attendance. She said look again. Turns out we did send a man out, but it was a mistake of an inexperienced dispatcher. I also found ER hospital records for injuries to the old woman. Two broken bones were set in a one-year period. Old bones break easily. There’s nothing solid there. Tell her I’m not going to move for an exhumation on Judge Heart’s mother until she gets real evidence of foul play. You tell her that, Charles.”

  Robin Duffy put an envelope on the table by Charles’s hand. “That’s the dirt on Eric Franz. It’s a transcript of the court session for the traffic accident that killed his wife. The Franzes were having an argument at the time of the crash. But according to witnesses, he didn’t help her into the path of the car, if that’s Mallory’s angle. He was at least three feet away from her throughout the argument and right up to the moment the car got her.”

  “I would have thought she’d be more interested in the accident that blinded Franz,” said Charles.

  “She was,” said the doctor. “Eric Franz was blinded in an accident three years ago. The settlement was in seven figures. There was no apparent restoration of sight immediately following the corrective surgery, and he changed doctors before the next exam was scheduled. I have no idea who the new doctor was. His records were never forwarded.”

  “Is it possible that his sight was restored at some later date?”

  “The surgeon gave an eighty/twenty possibility, but it wasn’t in Eric Franz’s favor.”

  “There wouldn’t be much point in faking it,” said Robin. “He was definitely blind when the court awarded the settlement. Even if the surgery had restored his sight, he would’ve kept the court award. And his wife’s life insurance benefit was donated to charity. I’d say the guy is squeaky clean. I don’t know where Kathy thinks she’s going with this one.”

  “So, Charles,” said Edward, “do you know why Kathy didn’t drop by to pick up her own dirt?”

  “She said she couldn’t come tonight because she was barred from the poker game.”

  Edward smiled. “Is that the story she gave you? She’s not here tonight because she wants to be legally one person removed from these records.”

  “Smart kid,” said Robin with some amount of paternal pride. “She learned that trick from Markowitz. No time lost with warrants, no paper trail for opposing counsel to follow.”

  “But she was barred from the poker game, wasn’t she?”

  The other three players stared down at their cards. There were no volunteers.

  “Why was she barred from the game?”

  Robin raised his head. “I’m still holding a grudge from her kiddy days. Markowitz used to bring her along if Helen was going out for the evening. The kid used to win so big Markowitz had to buy her a little red wagon to carry home all the loot.”

  The rabbi turned to Charles, “Her biggest win was thirty dollars in a penny-ante game. The legend grows.”

  Charles shuffled the deck and dealt the first card to Rabbi Kaplan. “What was the real reason, Rabbi?”

  “Charles, such suspicions.”

  The second card was dealt to the doctor.

  “I knew Mallory would be a bad influence on him.”

  And the third to the lawyer.

  “She can’t play. It’s not fair. The little brat was born with a poker face.”

  Charles sat in polite silence, holding on to the rest of the cards and waiting on a better answer.

  “Okay,” said Robin. “Kathy was attending a private school, a girls’ school with young ladies who had never played poker. Kathy taught them the game.”

  Charles dealt out the second round of cards.

  “She was bringing home three bills a week when Helen and Lou were called in for a little chat with the principal,” said Edward.

  And now all the cards were in play.

  “We thought it was great.” Robin rearranged his hand. “The kid was champion poker material, and we took a lot of pride in that. But it upset Helen.”

  “And worse,” said the rabbi, hardly looking at his cards.

  Edward folded his hand and pushed the cards to one side of the table. “Lou didn’t want Kathy thrown out of school, so he took the fall for her. He told the principal it was a bad joke that had gotten out of hand, and Kathy couldn’t be expected to understand that what she was doing was wrong after he’d put the idea in her head.”

  “Louis was a gifted liar,” said Robin. “He was so good that Helen bought the lie. It was the only rift between Helen and Lou, ever. Kathy knew it was her fault, but she didn’t understand why. And you know, it was a semihonest racket. It wasn’t like she marked the cards or anything.”

  “She was just light-years ahead of every child she fleeced,” said Edward. “You never knew Helen. You don’t understand how it was between her and Lou. They held hands under the dinner table. They sat up and talked until two in the morning.”

  “So,
suddenly,” said the rabbi, “there’s silence in the house. Helen believes that Louis had damaged Kathy. Louis was devastated, but he went on taking the blame for Kathy’s racketeering. Kathy felt the rift between them, the terrible silence. She came so close to understanding the difference between right and wrong.”

  “But then it slipped away from her,” said Edward.

  “But she wouldn’t play poker again,” said the rabbi. “Kathy barred herself from the game. It was her version of penance.”

  “You credit her too much. She’s a heartless little monster. She corrupts every—” Edward was interrupted by the loud jangle of the telephone.

  Robin answered it and handed the receiver to Edward. When the doctor put down the phone, he turned to Charles. “My wife says Kathy left a message on our answering machine. She’ll pick up the folder herself.”

  “Kathy’s coming here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Eight-thirty.”

  “It’s five past that now,” said Charles. “Odd, she’s never late by even one minute.”

  “Oh, God, the lights!” said Robin. “Kathy doesn’t know about the lights.”

  And she was never, never late. They turned in concert to the window. Mallory’s small tan car was parked at the curb.

  It was Edward Slope, her greatest detractor, who flew out the door, without his coat, to fetch her. He was down the flagstone path before the others could rise from the table.

  Now three men congregated in the open doorway, unmindful of the chill night air. Charles stared at the back of the man running across the street.

  Later it would hurt him to remember this small event with such great clarity. But there was a crystalline quality to a cold winter night. Even from the distance of a road’s width, no detail was lost to him, not the line of her cheek, nor the lamplight on her hair, nor the terrible stillness, the eerie quiet broken only by the footfalls of the doctor.

  There was Mallory, alone on a small field of new snow. But for the frost of her breath on the air, she was a statue in blue jeans, standing in the yard of the old house across the street. She was staring in the window at the Christmas tree and the menorah. And now her face turned upward as a window came to life on the second floor where Louis’s den was.

  Slope came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was low, near a whisper. She never moved nor spoke to him, but only stared at the second-floor window, so entranced was she by the light.

  An ex-partner was like an ex-wife, even if the partner had been a man—which Peggy was not, most definitely not. He missed her sorely since her early retirement via a bullet in the lung. He missed her, though he saw her at least once a week as though a night in the bar were a sacrament.

  Riker’s eyes were on Peggy as she left him to run her white rag over the wet ring on the mahogany and pocket the change left by the last customer.

  Age had hardly touched her, but only because she fought it off. Her hair was dyed a honey blond to cover the gray, and her figure was only a little fuller at the hip and thigh. In the dim light and from the distance of the other end of the bar, she had changed not at all.

  Oh, all those years ago when she was young, and he was younger, when he was still sober most of the day, when Peggy packed a gun and a shield. Now that was a time.

  The matron draped on the stool next to his might be the only civilian in the bar tonight. The woman had that soft look, and she was staring at him with the disapproving eye of a taxpayer. Even in peripheral, the civilian was annoying him with her waving arms. The woman was making a damn point of waving the smoke away from her, and she had to reach into Riker’s own personal piece of the bar to do that.

  “Did you know that secondhand smoke kills nonsmokers?”

  “Good,” said Riker.

  The woman picked up her purse and moved to the other end of the bar, and Peggy came back to him with a broad smile and a fresh beer.

  “So where were we, Riker?”

  “The early warning signs.”

  “Right, the early warning is in the money area. That would be a natural for Mallory. Have her check the credit card accounts for favorite bars and restaurants. A gym membership is a good giveaway. They like to keep in shape for the new one. Is the guy buying his own underwear? Something with a little flash? That’s another one.”

  “If there’s so many signals, how come the wives don’t catch on?”

  “They do. The husbands aren’t too quick to spot a cheating wife, but the wives always know what the husbands are doing. Even when they come in here and tell me that for years they had no idea. They knew what was going on—they knew from the beginning. It’s the blind spot that won’t let them acknowledge it. That damn blind spot. They’re staring straight at it, they can describe everything around it, but they don’t see it.”

  “Ah, Peggy. I can’t buy—”

  “They rationalize it away. The amount of rationalization these women do is in direct proportion to what they’ve got to lose. With no kids and no mortgage, a woman can be pretty cynical about a cheating husband. With eight kids, she will sit down with the man and help him work out the lies she can believe in.”

  Riker pulled out his notebook. A silver ornament on a chain was entangled in the spiral. It freed itself and dropped to the bar. Peggy picked it up. “So what’s with the Star of David? You’re an Episcopalian.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Ah, Riker, you’re dreaming those social-climbing dreams again. If you want to be an alcoholic, you have to go to meetings.” She handed him the six-pointed star.

  “Okay, I’m a drunk with aspirations.” He stared at the star in his hand. “Lou Markowitz used to carry this around with him. Mallory thought I might like to have it.”

  “You sentimental slob.”

  “That’s what Mallory calls me, but she doesn’t think I’m sentimental.” His pen hovered over the notebook. “Okay, markers for the runaround husband. Suppose he’s not a regular cheat, suppose it’s a first-time fling?”

  “He’ll start changing his habits. Maybe he walks the dog without being asked four times. Or he takes up a new sport for two—like tennis. Look for out-of-town trips that don’t match up with his job description, late hours at the office as a change in routine.”

  “Is he a good liar?”

  “Oh, they all think they’re great liars, but the wives have probably caught them in more lies than they can remember. It’s a pity you can’t just ask the wives. And a pity that most of them wouldn’t tell you.”

  In Riker’s notebook, it said only “dog walking.”

  “So, Riker, you think Mallory’s right about the perp? He panicked and ran?”

  “I think she underestimates him. She thinks the guy is a wimp who’d run if a mouse screamed.”

  He liked it when they screamed. But he loved it when they howled.

  Bitches. All women were bitches.

  Did she think he would not recognize her as an enemy? How transparent and stupid she was.

  He stood in the shower and let his hatred of her wash over him with the water. She was the enemy. He stepped from the shower, and water pooled at his feet as he rubbed a clear place on the glass. He stared at the mirror until his eyes seemed to float independent of his flesh.

  What intelligence lay therein, what quickness of thought, thoughts running to the color red. But that insect in the background of his reflection crawling on the tiles, it marred his serenity. Better step on it quick. He did, and each time he did this, his enemy screamed and died. He beat her face in as he beat his pillow, and then wondered why he could not sleep. When sleep did come, his dreams were all of death, angry death. Now the cancer of hatred was all, waking and sleeping. He was complete and invincible.

  Mere humans had never proved a match for cancer. There was no cure.

  With one long red fingernail, Mallory tapped the wad of papers which had traveled from Edward Slope’s hand to Charles and thence
to her. She stared into the troubled face of a young investigator from the Medical Examiner’s Office. The man would not meet her eyes. His hands were worming around his coffee cup, which had grown cold. A waitress was standing near them. Mallory waved her away.

  “Slope doesn’t figure you’re dirty, but I do. I know how much you have in your bank. I know every transaction in your stock portfolio, and I know your salary.”

  “Your old man never ratted on anybody.”

  “No, he didn’t. He just transferred them to hell. Most of them quit. They decided they’d rather live than do hard time in death precincts. I know that because I did the computer work for him. And what I did to them, I can do to you—and more. I can send you to a worse hell than early retirement on a partial pension.”

  Ease up, Kathy, a memory of Markowitz cautioned her. If you scare them too much on the first go-round, they go for a lawyer. You don’t want that.

  She sat back in her chair. “I just wanted to give you a little something to think about over the holidays—give you a little time to go over your notes on the Coventry Arms visit. Merry Christmas. I’ll get back to you real soon.”

  Nice touch, kid, said the memory of Markowitz which would not go to that part of the mind reserved for the dead.

  Pansy Heart lay in her bed, watching him rise and walk back into the bathroom. She was imagining, for a few moments of quiet horror, that her husband crawled along on eight legs.

  She was quiet for all the bathroom noises and the sheet rustling and the click of the bedside light switch. She sighed in the dark and wondered if he heard. And then she felt she could breathe again, breathe but not sleep. Not till she heard his own regular breathing and knew he would not wake until morning. And even so, she lay awake until the exhaustion of fear overtook her in the dark.

  Angel Kipling looked up as Harry walked into the kitchen. His face was still dazed from sleep. He hovered in the doorway as though debating whether this was safe ground or battleground. Between coming and going, she nailed him with the first shot.