“You can’t tell Mallory about this,” said Riker. “Promise? I don’t want her to know I wrecked it.”
Stole it, robbed it from a crime scene.
But his partner would never know about that if Charles believed—
“It’s hers?” Charles should never be allowed near a poker game; his face expressed every feeling, every thought. And just now, he was thinking that Riker had lied to him. The office across the hall contained all the books that Mallory owned. Most dealt with computers; none were fiction. And, before leaving college to join NYPD, she had received two years of an elite education at Barnard. No way could he believe that this book was her property. Yet he nodded and said, “Understood.” Charles reached up to a shelf above the work space and pulled down a bundle of blotting papers. “You were never here. We never had this conversation.”
“Great. Thanks.” Riker imagined that he could hear the man’s beautiful brain kicking into high gear and making connections at light’s speed.
Charles teased the block of pages away from its paper spine, then noticed his guest’s anxiety and mistook paranoia for concern. “Don’t worry. I can put it back together.” After setting the cover to one side, he peeled away a top sheet of advertising and stared at the underlying page. “Oh.” His face conveyed that everything had suddenly been made clear. “Well, I can’t blot this one. I’d lose most of the ink. I can save the inscription, but Louis’s signature is gone.”
Calmly, the detective asked, “What?” And inside his head, he screamed, What?
“This is Louis Markowitz’s handwriting, isn’t it? I imagine there’ll be trouble when Mallory sees the damage.”
Startled, Riker looked down at the inscribed page. An old friend’s quirky penmanship trailed off in a wash of blue ink. “No, it’s okay. She hasn’t seen it yet. I was gonna give it to her later—a present.”
Charles read the inscription. “So it’s a gift from Louis to Mallory. Almost poetry. I gather he wanted her to have it after his demise. A posthumous good-bye?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Untrue. On the only day when that note could have been written, Louis Markowitz had not been anticipating his own death; he still had many years ahead of him, time enough to raise Kathy Mallory. The old man must have forgotten that the book existed, and so had Riker—until it floated past him in Sparrow’s apartment.
“Louis’s funeral was some time ago.” Charles used clamps and cotton batting to fix the page to a board, then picked up a palm-size heater and switched it on. “You’re delivering this a bit late, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” Riker was slowly coming to terms with shock. A dead man had corroborated his lie—fifteen years before it was told.
An hour later, every surface in the room was covered with a book leaf pressed between blotting papers. Only the inscription page was exposed. The detective stared at the scrawl of blue ink, the words of a man who had loved a homeless child. The lines suggested that the book had been inscribed after the old man had seen convincing proof that the ten-year-old was dead and gone. Yet that grieving cop had obviously clung to the insane idea that Kathy might come back.
Riker bowed his head over the page to read the passage again.
Once there was a little girl. No, scratch that, kid. You were always more than that, bigger than life. I could have set you to music—the damn “Star-Spangled Banner”—because you prevailed through all the long scary nights. You were my hero.
After Charles had bid Riker good night at the elevator, he saw a crack of light under the door to Butler and Company. Mallory? He had not seen her face since early June. And now he forced himself to walk, not run, as he entered the office and passed through the lighted reception area, then moved quickly down a narrow hall, pulled along by the dim glow from Mallory’s room—where the machines lived.
He paused at the open doorway, staring at the back of his business partner. She sat before a computer workstation, one of three. Most of her personal office was lost in shadow, a sharp contrast to the halo, a silhouette of burnished gold made by lamplight threading through her hair.
What could he say to her? He doubted that she would regret or even recall their missed dinner date, for she was in holy communion with her machines and oblivious to human disappointment.
Years ago, he had written a rather poetic monograph on her gifted applications of computer science. Over the course of his career, he had evaluated many wizards who could force electronics to do remarkable things. But she was a creature apart, employing an artist’s sensibility similar to a composer of music. She merged with the technology, fashioning effect by thought, blending the psyches of musician and mathematician to write original notes for electronic bells and whistles.
During his study of her, Charles had indulged in a fanciful, albeit unpublishable, notion that Nature had planned ahead for this new century, that some long-sleeping gene had awakened when she was made. Later, after learning more about her childhood, his vision had altered and darkened, for Mallory had been hammered into what she was—the perfect receptacle for something cold and alien. And her intimacy with machinery chilled him.
Once, he had been ambivalent about computers. Now he saw them as perverted soldiers that blurred the demarcation line between her fingertips and the keyboards. He had sought to dilute their influence with offerings of fine art and the soft edges of antiquarian objects. Mallory had fought back, encroaching on the office kitchen with ugly technology that he could not abide. Then she had invaded his personal residence, staging a surprise attack to reconfigure his stereo system. Stunned, he had been assaulted from all sides by musical perfection via enemy components that removed the necessity of human hands for turning the knobs and fine-tuning the song. The sheer beauty of it had seduced him for a time. But now, seeing her like this, he was back in combat mode, dreaming new schemes to disconnect her computers, to unplug them all—and Mallory too.
It was a good fight.
She never looked up as Charles approached. He stood beside her chair and stared at the monitor. Her only task tonight was the harmless typing of text. All that angst for nothing. Bracketed question marks pocked the glowing screen. A battered notebook lay on the metal surface of her workstation. It was open to a page of faded coffee stains and lines of blue ink from an old-fashioned fountain pen. Charles could even describe that pen; Louis Markowitz had willed it to him. For the second time in one night, he was staring at a sample of an old friend’s handwriting. Mallory was deciphering her foster father’s shorthand scribbles between the clearly written words, duct tape and rope.
She raised her face to his, and they exchanged grins of hello. Their technology wars had caused no hard feelings between them. They still smiled and waved at each other across the great divide.
3
Riker watched the sidewalks roll by the passenger window of Mallory’s tan sedan. The landscape kept changing on him. Early memories of beatniks in funereal black gave way to colorful flower children, hippies with love beads, and bless the girls with diaphragm earrings who had bedded every boy with a guitar.
Rock ’n’ roll. Salad days.
Nose rings were the next new thing in another parade of fearless children with hair every color of the chemical-neon rainbow. Girded in tattoos and vintage corsets with cruel metal spikes for nipples, they had flung themselves into the badlands of the East Village.
This morning, he saw a girl in a white polo shirt and jeans still creased from the store hanger. Another yuppie strolled by in a similar uniform. One day, while Riker’s back was turned, the kids had all gone shopping at the Gap.
He turned to his partner behind the wheel. “Maybe I should do the interview with Tall Sally.” He might as well have added the words “just to be safe.” It was not the size of the ex-convict that worried him, but Sal’s history with Sparrow when Kathy Mallory was a child. “It’s not that you can’t handle it—”
The car stopped before the light turned red. No warning! Not fair! She hit the brakes h
ard and slammed him toward the dashboard. His teeth were saved by a seatbelt, but it was a near thing. “So that’s a definite no,” said Riker.
After the silent wait for a green light, the car moved on, and Mallory lowered her dark glasses. “You think I should do the old woman instead?”
Enough said. According to a police report, the elderly witness was very fragile in mind and body. Mallory might want to take her out for a drive.
The detectives pulled up to the curb in front of the crime scene. Riker stepped out of the car and watched it drive off, passing only one other moving vehicle. Sparrow’s street had a tranquil character in the early morning light. There were flower boxes on some of the window ledges, a sign of gentrification, law and order, though last night’s mob had made off with all the blooms, and now the headless stalks were turning brown.
The detective on loan from Lieutenant Loman was hovering near the front steps of the apartment building. All dressed up in a suit and shiny new shoes, the youngster shifted his weight from foot to foot, suspecting that he was in trouble—and he was.
Riker’s gaze traveled over the smoke-stained bricks, then down to the yellow crime-scene tape lying on the sidewalk. It had been pulled aside so a man in coveralls could board up the broken window. A familiar uniformed officer stood guard over Sparrow’s basement apartment. Riker smiled. “Hey, Waller. Go grab some food. I’m gonna be here awhile.” He nodded toward the workman and the young detective. “I’ll make sure they don’t run off with anything.”
After the patrolman had crossed the street and passed out of earshot, Riker turned to face the worried young cop in the dark suit. The new man was in that whiteshield limbo between a uniform’s silver badge and a detective’s gold. And he was too young to have been promoted without a father-in-law at Number One Police Plaza. His sole distinguishing feature was bleached hair that went beyond blond; it was yellow, the color of a baby duck.
And Riker christened him accordingly.
Department politics dictated that he handle Duck Boy with great care, and so he held up the young detective’s report and crumpled it into a tight ball, saying, “This sucks.” Riker was not usually that fancy with his critiques. The wadded-up paper should have made words unnecessary, but he was feeling expansive this morning. He looked toward the window of a first-floor apartment directly across the street, then squinted to make out a woman’s head piled high with white hair.
How he loved old ladies, the watchers of the world.
He opened the crumpled ball of paper, Duck Boy’s idea of an interview, and read the closing words aloud,“‘Religious fanatic. Ramblings of senility.’ That’s it? What the hell kind of a witness statement is this? When I send you back to Lieutenant Loman, he’s gonna think I didn’t raise you right.”
Officer Waller had returned with his breakfast in a brown deli bag, and now Riker crossed the street with Duck Boy following close behind, and they climbed a short flight of stairs leading up to the front door of a narrow building.
“This is a school day.” The senior detective pushed the buzzer. “Keep your mouth shut and listen.”
The door was opened by a bespectacled elderly woman in a long and flowery summer dress. Her lenses were thick, and one eye was clouded with cataracts, yet she recognized Duck Boy immediately, and it was obviously not a pleasant memory. “Oh, you’ve come back.”
Riker detected a trace of the Southland in her accent. “Emelda Winston? I’m Detective Riker. May I call you Miss Emelda?”
“Why, of course you may.” Her eyes lit up, and even her red-painted toes were thrilled, curling and uncurling in her sandals. She belonged to him now, charmed by this old custom of address never observed in northern climes.
“Now you boys come right in.” She stepped back to open the door a little wider. “I’ve got a nice breeze goin’ in my parlor.”
When the two men had been seated awhile on a gigantic horsehair sofa, Miss Emelda returned to the front room, rolling a tea cart laid with white linen, glassware and a plate of chocolate chip cookies.
“So you’re here about Sparrow.” She lifted the pitcher of lemonade and poured each of them a glass. “You know, I was the one who called in the fire.”
“So that was you?” Riker glanced at the younger man. “No one told me.” He bit into a cookie that was definitely homemade, for it lacked the preservatives to keep it from turning to stone. “So, Miss Emelda, how well did you know Sparrow?”
“Not well at all, I’m afraid. That poor girl. She just moved in a few weeks ago.”
“Then you don’t know what she did for a living?”
“Oh, yes. She was an actress. But I don’t see how she made a living at it. I went to her dress rehearsal yesterday. The play was in the basement of the elementary school, and they were only planning to charge a few dollars a ticket. I suppose they’ll cancel it now.”
Riker nodded. “I wondered why Sparrow was wearing those clothes. Long-sleeved blouse, long skirt—boots. So that was her costume for the play?”
“Yes, they were doing a period piece, something by Chekhov, I think.” The old woman smiled. “Sparrow was surprisingly good. A very moving performance.”
After consuming two more rock-hard cookies and nearing the dregs of the lemonade, they were old friends, Riker and Miss Emelda.
“Ma’am,” said Duck Boy, violating orders of silence, “why don’t you tell him about the angel.”
“Oh, yes—last night. Well, the crowd parted, just for an instant, mind you, and there was the angel floating in front of Sparrow’s window.” Miss Emelda clapped her hands. “Just glorious. But there was nothing about the angel in the morning papers.”
Riker continued to smile, as if she had just said something perfectly rational. “Can you describe the angel?”
“I think it was a cherub.” She fished in the pocket of her dress and pulled out a small Christmas tree ornament. “I showed this to the young man.” She nodded toward Duck Boy, then spoke to Riker in a stage whisper. “But he didn’t seem to understand. He thinks I’m pixilated.”
Riker shook his head in sympathy. “Kids today, huh?” He stared at the ornament in her hand, a pair of white wings attached to the disembodied head of a child with gold curls. The detective turned to the window behind the sofa and its view of Sparrow’s apartment across the street. And now he knew that the old woman’s angel was a cop. Last night, Mallory’s black jeans had disappeared in the dark; Miss Emelda had only discerned the blond hair and white blazer, a winged thing on the fly.
“It was a miracle,” she said, hands clasped in prayer.
Riker was satisfied that, thick lenses or no, the old woman could see well enough. He drained his glass, then leaned forward, speaking as one gossip to another, “Just between you and me, who do you think did it? Who hung Sparrow?”
“The reporters. Naturally.”
Duck Boy rolled his eyes, then winced when his supervisor kicked him. This act was hidden behind the safe cover of the tea cart’s linen. It was a clear shot to the shin-bone, and Riker hoped it hurt like hell. He turned back to his star witness and smiled. “I never trusted reporters myself.”
She nodded. “They’re everywhere. Even in the trees—watching us all the time. I saw one of them out there with his camera. And that was before I smelled smoke. Very suspicious, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” said Riker. “So this reporter—did you get a good look at him?”
“I’m sorry, no, not his face. His back was turned. I remember his camera. Oh—and he wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans. He might’ve had a baseball cap. Yes, he did. I’m sure of it now.” She made a delicate moue of distaste. “I remember when reporters wore suits and ties.”
Riker glanced back at the window, attempting to judge the zone of Miss Emelda’s vision. She could not have seen anything across the street in great detail, or she would never have made Mallory into an angel. “How close was this guy?”
“He was in a tree. Didn’t I tell you that? Oh,
yes, right in front of my building. Then that van showed up with the other newspeople from the TV station. The name of the news show was painted on the side of the van, but I can’t remember which one it was—I’m so sorry. Well, as you can imagine, it was quite a time. The fire engines came a minute or two after that. Of course the fire didn’t amount to much—thank the Lord.”
“Amen,” said Riker. “So the guy with the camera climbed a tree before the news van showed up?”
“Yes, and before I smelled smoke.” Miss Emelda walked behind the sofa to stand before the window. She pointed at a nearby oak on the sidewalk. It was large, one of those rare specimens that thrived in cement. “That’s the tree.”
“Ma’am?” Duck Boy took out his pencil and notebook. “Did the suspect’s videocam have a network logo?”
A confused Miss Emelda turned to the senior detective, silently asking what language the youngster was speaking.
“I know,” said Riker. “All cameras look alike to me.”
“I can show you mine.” The woman bustled out of the room, then returned with an old Instamatic. “Now, his was a bit smaller than this one, and maybe the brand was different. His could’ve been a Polaroid. But the pictures popped out the front, same as mine. They develop themselves right before your eyes. I’ll show you.”
Duck Boy was blinded by the flash and caught in the act of snapping his pencil in two.
The carpenter was gone when Riker emerged from Miss Emelda’s apartment and crossed the street with Duck Boy. He had one more piece of information from his witness, and—serendipity—the man he most wanted to hurt was within reach. Ex-cop Gary Zappata was starting down the steps to Sparrow’s basement apartment when Officer Waller grabbed him by the arm and roughly pulled him back to the sidewalk.
“Back off! I got business here!” The shorter man puffed out his chest the better to display a fire department logo emblazoned on his T-shirt, as if this passed for credentials.
Crime School Page 5