Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  What now?

  Oh, that. Of course he had attended the funeral. He was an art critic, wasn’t he? Her feud with Koozeman shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with his own job. That was asking too much. He had half a mind to leave, and perhaps never to return. She’d be ruined then, wouldn’t she? Who but himself would tell the ignorant bitch when she had lipstick on her teeth? This heinous symbiotic relationship worked more in her favor than his.

  What? Oh, right.

  He bade farewell to the wine as he felt its effects abandoning his brain cells, being displaced by chilling sobriety.

  The upper half of the office wall was solid glass, a wide window on the larger area of Special Crimes Section, where uniformed officers and civilian clerks moved in crisscrossing patterns through the labyrinth of file cabinets, desks and chairs. A score of taxpayers and suspects sat with detectives under the bright lights of the second shift. Across the room at the far desk, one of the taxpayers was crying. Her face contorted with pain; her mouth opened wide.

  The woman’s scream never penetrated Lieutenant Coffey’s office. On his own side of the thick glass, it was a drawn-out silence that disturbed Jack Coffey. The muscles of his neck tightened as every quiet second was adding to the tension of the room.

  Detective Sergeant Mallory had turned her back on him and faced the wall of glass. Her blond hair hung in curls over the collar of a long, black coat. Only a few inches of her blue jeans were visible below the hem. And now Coffey noticed Mallory was wearing her formal black running shoes tonight—all dressed up for the funeral service.

  Sergeant Riker had made no such effort for the murdered artist. He was slumped in a chair by the desk, staring at his scuffed shoes. Coffey’s first indication of trouble was the absence of Piker’s cigarette smoke and sarcasm. This evening, the man was actually deferring to his younger superior officer, and this worried Coffey. How much damage could they have done tonight?

  “The focus is on the murder of Dean Starr,” said Coffey. “We are not resurrecting the old Ariel-Gilette case. Is that real clear, Mallory?”

  Was she even listening to him? Jack Coffey thought not. His own ghostly reflection wafted in the glass behind Mallory’s, the image of a man thirty-six years old, not tall or short, hair and eyes neither dark nor light—best described as average in every aspect but his rank. In a bygone era, Coffey would have spent five more years in the slow mentoring process before he got his own detective’s shield. Now, the younger investigators dominated every squad room. But at twenty-five, Mallory was the real standout. And in this young woman, Coffey could see all the flaws and virtues of the new NYPD cult of youth.

  Lieutenant Coffey looked from one detective to the other. Riker was too easy a target. There were entirely too many things he could threaten this sergeant with; first among them was the aroma of wine imbibed on overtime. Jack Coffey was not one to press unfair advantage on a man.

  So he turned on Mallory.

  “Sit your ass down, Mallory! I want to see your damn face when I’m talking to you. I don’t want to hear any crap later on about how you didn’t quite hear a direct order.”

  She turned to glare at him. Well, that was something. Even Riker was impressed enough to lift his sorry head.

  “I want to know where these orders are coming from.” Her tone of voice put her on the borderline of insubordination. She had been straddling that line from the moment she walked in the door with Riker. Coffey had to admire her tactics. Whenever she was in deep trouble, she always went on the offensive.

  She continued, not waiting for his reply, not wanting to lose momentum. “Oren Watt is out of the asylum less than a year, and we’ve got another body fixed up to look like a work of art. That bastard should be sitting in an interview room right now. Don’t you think it’s just a little strange that we can’t touch him?”

  Her sarcasm stayed within the gray zone, where Coffey could not challenge her without playing the fool.

  “You know she’s right,” said Riker. “This is trouble. The press is already carping about it. Everybody’s gonna think it’s odd if Watt doesn’t make the short list.”

  “Oren Watt has been vouched for,” said Coffey. “He was never in the gallery the night Dean Starr went down.”

  “Who vouched for him? His quack psychiatrist?” Mallory faced the window, stepping on his authority by the simple act of turning her back on him again.

  “Senator Berman vouched for Watt,” said Coffey. “You might remember Berman. He was the police commissioner when you were just a little girl.”

  Riker was trying not to smile, and Coffey knew he had scored a game point by knocking Mallory down in size. He walked over to the window, tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Sit down, Sergeant.”

  She shrugged off the trench coat and folded it neatly over one arm. And now, as though it were her own idea, Mallory pulled up a chair and settled into it. She stretched out her long legs, and avoided looking at him—yet another sign of trouble.

  He addressed both of his detectives. “Senator Berman says Oren Watt wasn’t there, and none of the other guests saw him either. When Berman was the commissioner, Oren Watt’s art show was the biggest, bloodiest case of his career. Watt’s face was all over the papers for months, so it’s not likely the senator would forget what the bastard looked like. None of us will. If Berman says the man wasn’t there, we take his word for it.”

  “You talked to Senator Berman?” There was a light incredulity in her question. It was a well-placed shot, for he had not been allowed near the senator.

  Good guess, Mallory. “Blakely interviewed him.”

  “That figures,” said Mallory. “The chief’s one hell of a political animal, isn’t he? So this is all coming down from Blakely’s office, right? Twelve years ago, it was Blakely who tried to force Markowitz to close out the double homicide.”

  “That’s bullshit, Mallory! It made sense to close out the case. Watt was insane—he couldn’t stand trial, and you know—”

  “And what about the gallery owner?” Riker’s voice carried a suspicious amount of respect this evening. “Do we ever get to talk to Koozeman?”

  “No,” said Coffey. “We already have his statement from the first officer on the scene.”

  “He should be at the top of the suspect list.” Mallory turned to Riker. “Can’t you just smell the money? I want to go over Koozeman’s books.”

  “You don’t go near him!” Coffey’s gut sent him a sharp message of pain, and then he realized that she was only torturing him for fun. Well, shot for shot, Mallory. “If you can’t follow orders, I’ll bury you in the computer room, and you’ll never get out on the street again. Is that understood?”

  Oh, she didn’t like that one bit.

  He could see her return volley coming, the predictable threat to quit the force. The slight lift of her chin was all but telegraphing a reminder that she could make twice the money in the private sector. Maybe she would escalate her illegal, unauthorized fiddle and become less than a silent partner in Charles Butler’s consulting firm. Coffey stood a little straighter, squaring off his body, gearing up his mind for the inevitable fight. Just let her try to jerk his—

  “You’re right,” she said softly. “It was a bad idea to go after Watt. And the less the gallery owner knows, the better.”

  What did she expect him to do with all this excess adrenaline? Maybe she was hoping it would burn a hole in his veins.

  She crossed the room to settle on the corner of his desk. One long blue-jeaned leg draped over the edge of it. One black running shoe dangled as she smiled. He had to wonder what she was planning to do to him. Boxing with Mallory so fascinated him, he was ruined for every other form of blood sport.

  “You think I don’t understand your position,” said Mallory. “But I do. If Blakely found out you disobeyed an order, he’d go after you, wouldn’t he? It makes a lot of sense to keep a low profile.”

  He was digesting her if-you-only-had-a-spine implication when
she reached down to the canvas tote bag on the floor and pulled out a set of photographs.

  “These are the old shots of the dancer’s funeral.” She held out one panoramic view of a large group of people. “The Gilettes hired security to keep the circus out. Only friends, relatives and police. Look at this figure two heads away from Markowitz.” Mallory was pointing at the one outstanding mourner, remarkable for his height of six four, and his large nose. “Look at that. It’s Charles.”

  Charles Butler had been one of her foster father’s closest friends. Though Louis Markowitz came from humble environs and Charles was descended from Park Avenue stock, commonalities had outweighed their differences—Charles was also a charming man with a giant brain. But years before Charles and Markowitz ever met, they had attended a funeral together.

  “This is gold,” said Mallory. “I’ve got my own connection to the Gilette family, and I can work it quietly. Charles has Social Register connections and art connections. He spends a fortune at the galleries. You want to keep it quiet, right? Do you know anyone more discreet than Charles Butler?”

  Coffey knew he was about to be sucker-punched, but not quite how she was going to do it to him.

  “Riker and I can work the case out of the office in Charles’s building,” she said. “It’s perfect. Nothing in print lying around for a clerk to sell to a tabloid. And if Blakely asks you what’s going on, you won’t know, will you?”

  Did she really think he was that stupid?

  “Oh, but I like to know what’s going on with you, Mallory. Just every damn minute of the day.”

  “Markowitz never did.”

  True. When Markowitz had command of Special Crimes, things had been quite different. Every time she had illegally raided a computer to pull information, Markowitz knew he could claim the ignorance of a computer illiterate. Well, he had inherited Markowitz’s job, but thanks, Mallory, he would rather run the place his own way.

  He pulled his sportscoat from the hanger on the back of the door. “We’re going to run a clean investigation.” He put one shirtsleeve into the coat to signal to his detectives that this meeting, in fact, this day was at an end. “I give the orders, Mallory, and you follow them. It’s a novel idea, but you’ll get used to it.”

  “I have to work the old case to—”

  Well, that tears it.

  “The old case is off-limits.” His coat was off again and roughly slung over one arm as he turned on her. “Off-limits! That’s the last time I’m going to tell you, Mallory.”

  Her body was stiffening. Her leg ceased to dangle over the edge of his desk. The running shoe was frozen at an angle of tension. He never moved, but in his mind, he was putting up his own fists as they squared off from opposite sides of the room.

  Well, good. Let’s get this out on the table. And right now!

  “Twelve years ago,” she said, voice on the rise, “Markowitz didn’t just think Watt’s confession was a fake,” louder now, “he knew it!”

  “Markowitz doesn’t work here anymore! That case is closed!”

  “Not officially! Markowitz never closed it!”

  “Well, I’m closing it! Don’t you remember? Watt confessed!” he outshouted her.

  “Markowitz didn’t—”

  “The hell with Markowitz! That wasn’t the only time your old man screwed up!”

  Riker shot him a warning glance. You’ve gone too far, said the slow shake of the sergeant’s head. The last time her father made a bad mistake, the only bad one in living memory, it had gotten him killed in the line of duty.

  Coffey felt the heat rising in his face. Why had he said it? Markowitz had been his mentor, quietly cleaning up the debris each time the rookie had made a mess of something. The old man had given out more second chances than Coffey deserved. And now he had just thanked him.

  Forgive me.

  Too late—Mallory was staring at him with solid hatred.

  She eased off the desk and came toward him. Coffey recognized the gait of the pugilist. Her hands were curling into fists, and there was a physical menace in the movement of her body. In peripheral vision, he could see Riker rising from his chair with the same idea and perhaps a plan to slow her down before the damage was done. But Mallory stopped dead, her face a bare three inches from Coffey’s.

  “All right,” she said, “forget Markowitz.”

  As if he could.

  “Blakely’s interference is as dirty as it gets,” she said. Actually, she spat the words out. “I can link the old double homicide to Dean Starr—a fresh murder, and suddenly the chief’s hot to bury it.” Her voice was on the rise again. “And all you can say is the case is off-limits? Don’t try to snow me, Coffey. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  And she couldn’t be snowed when she was a kid. She was not much changed over the years he had known her. The anger had always been there, beneath the tightly controlled veneer of manners. Her foster mother, Helen Markowitz, had installed that rough coat of etiquette on Mallory’s psyche when she was ten. When that good woman died four years ago, her handiwork had not faltered. When Louis Markowitz died, it had developed cracks to drive a truck through, yet somehow it held.

  Mallory’s voice was lower now. “You want me to work around department politics? Okay, I will. Let me run this case my way, and I promise nothing will come back on you.”

  The orphan standing in front of him now was hardly helpless or pitiable, was she? But a ten-year-old street kid was always lurking under the skin of her, peeking out to remind him of her baby days on the road, stealing every necessity, biting every hand that tried to reach her.

  Until Markowitz.

  As much as he had loved Louis Markowitz, sometimes he cursed the man for dying and leaving her so alone.

  Mallory walked over to the desk and pulled another photograph from her tote bag. She came back to him and placed it in his hands—a present.

  It was one of the old crime-scene photos of the artist and the dancer. He had never wanted to see this piece of cruelty again, and now he could not look away. It was truly stunning, the effect of these two young corpses, eyes wide for the camera. He was staring into the heart of Special Crimes Section, the core purpose of its inception—the abyss—and it was looking back at him.

  Suppose Markowitz had been right? What if the butcher was still out there?

  He met her eyes as she took the photograph from his hands. Seconds dragged by as Coffey and Markowitz’s daughter played the staring game which would determine where the power lay. And now, she confounded him by dropping her eyes and giving him the scoring point of the match, in full view of Riker, and thus saving his face.

  “Okay, Mallory. You and Riker work it your way.”

  Andrew Bliss had no memory of crawling out of Emma Sue Hollaran’s apartment. When vision and mind achieved parity of clarity, he was standing on the first floor of Bloomingdale’s.

  Of all the department stores in all the world, only Bloomingdale’s had parishioners, and Andrew was one of the faithful. His greatest fear was not death, but being locked away from his store of choice. It was a psychedelic womb. His raison d’être was here in the mazes of color and light, a vast array of goods on floor after floor, enough to shut down the neural synapses of the novice shopper. There were no less than five restaurants in Bloomingdale’s, if one counted the espresso bar, but his favorite was Le Train Bleu, and he was on his way to it.

  On the first floor, the salesclerks held fragrance bottles in a vaguely threatening manner, fully prepared to recondition any offensive odors which might enter the store on two legs. Other women with perfect makeup and clipboards were suggesting to shoppers that their faces would not do, in fact needed to be completely made over.

  Nearing the escalators, he observed the confusion of an amateur shopper, and he knew the woman was searching for a way to get to the cleverly hidden second floor. Sometimes even hard-core veterans couldn’t immediately find their way to the escalators. Andrew could do it blind drunk, and he did.

>   One hard-boiled shopper found the escalator too slow. She ran up the moving staircase, leading a charge of tourists who chatted only in Japanese. “Trust me,” the woman said to the confused faces of a party of obviously non-English-speaking people. “I know where to find it. I know their stock better than they do.” Her foot soldiers smiled and nodded. Somehow she had communicated product without foreign-language skills. Well, product was everything, wasn’t it? Truly transcendent.

  He changed escalators on the second floor and rode upward and onward, heading slowly toward last call for wine at Le Train Bleu. Rising to the third floor, he rode into the spectacle of a raven-haired mannequin in a silver gown, all dressed up to go dancing. The mannequin reminded him of Aubry Gilette, the young dancer who had died with artist Peter Ariel. On the fourth floor, two workers passed the escalator with a headless, handless mannequin, and this was Aubry too.

  On the fifth floor, as he stepped off the escalator and walked to the next moving staircase, he looked down at the carpet, which had always brought to mind the color of red wine. Now it was more the color of blood, blood all over the floor, every bit of it. He nearly slipped in it, so complete was the illusion of the guilty eye.

  Finally, he stepped off the mechanical stairs on the sixth floor and headed for Le Train Bleu. The restaurant was open late this evening to cater a party of fashion designers. He approached the maitre d’ and extended his invitation. The man smiled at his most loyal patron and escorted Andrew through the space arranged in Orient Express ambience. The dimensions of the pale green room, the banks of square windows, and every appointment of brass, wood and crystal kept to the design of a train. Crisp white napkins graced linen tablecloths, and plush green chairs completed the atmosphere of fine railway dining from an era gone by.

  His personal shopper, Annie, was seated at his usual table. He was oblivious to the crowd as he sat down. He beamed his widest smile on Annie, for she was his treasure. She made his lunch and dinner reservations, called for his cabs, did his shopping, and rearranged his business appointments when they interfered with special shipments and sales.