Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  “Because the murder was neater and cleaner?”

  “No, nothing that cute, McGrath. You and I both know it would be impossible for Oren Watt to go anywhere unnoticed. He’s more famous than a rock star. The room was crowded that night. Not one of those people could place him at the scene of Dean Starr’s murder.”

  “Can you tell us anything about the killer?”

  “The killer was reasonably well dressed. This wasn’t the typical art show. The opening was black tie, invitation only, and it was a money crowd. Mr. Koozeman tells us that at least ten percent of the gathering crashed the party, but a shabby dresser would’ve been stopped at the door. So we have very little interest in the unemployed, badly dressed psycho in the FBI profile.”

  “You think the killer was an artist?”

  “Well the idea was just creative as hell, wasn’t it? It’s someone with a background in art, but it could just as easily be a collector.”

  Another hand went up, and Coffey noted that all requests for time were going through Mallory now. With a curt nod, she recognized a woman in the front row.

  “What about this art terrorist angle, Mallory?”

  “That’s a joke. Only the lunatic on the roof of Bloomingdale’s has made that connection so far. Oh, and I believe Agent Cartland mentioned it.”

  “So the FBI is dead wrong on almost all counts, is that what you’re saying?”

  “But we certainly appreciate all their help,” said Mallory.

  The reporters politely restricted themselves to sniggers and other sounds muffled by tight lips. When the FBI agent had lost his ramrod posture to sink down in his chair, and Beale’s eyes were glistening with emotion, a small sprinkling of applause followed Mallory as she left her chair on the dais and walked toward Coffey at the back of the room.

  Coffey put one hand on her shoulder and walked beside her through the wide door and down the quiet hallway. “I’ve never seen Beale look so happy. After that performance, you could commit murder and not wind up on Beale’s shit list.”

  “Really?”

  Coffey only had one bad moment, when it crossed his mind that she might translate that into a free kill. The moment passed in confidence that Markowitz had raised her to repress any grossly antisocial acts. But he wondered what the FBI profilers might have done with Mallory’s psych evaluation. He made a mental note to hunt down all her records, and to destroy the most damning lines. He was a good political animal, and if this case should go wrong, he would not like to find himself in front of the Civilian Review Board explaining why NYPD had a sociopath on the payroll.

  A tall man was blocking the hallway. As they drew nearer, he recognized him, though he had only seen J. L. Quinn on two or three occasions. The man’s remarkable blue eyes drew Coffey in with fascination and then repelled him with their coldness. The art critic was a handsome man, and ageless. His ice-blue eyes were fixed on Mallory now, and Coffey felt suddenly protective. He wondered if Mallory understood how politically well connected Quinn’s family was. Would she even care?

  Quinn dismissed Coffey from the immediate universe with a nod of recognition. He focussed all his attention on Mallory, as though they were alone. “I stopped by Special Crimes Section. They told me I could find you here. I thought we might have lunch. Perhaps we could discuss what else I might do to help you with your investigation.”

  “I think we’ve covered that, Quinn.” She started to walk past him.

  He put his hand on her arm to detain her. She looked down at his hand, and he drew it back as though she had burned him.

  Coffey willed her to be careful. This man was money, influence and power.

  “There must be some other way I could help,” said Quinn with insistence and the confidence that came from background, wealth and the sure knowledge that he could crush her if he wanted to. He would not be put off by her, yet she seemed determined to do just that.

  Jack Coffey was suddenly very alert. There was something not right about this man. All his instincts told him a likely suspect was the one who tried to insinuate himself into the investigation. Well, maybe the attraction to the case was something as simple as Mallory’s pretty face.

  She was staring at the man as though he had just crawled out of a sewer. “Quinn, I’m sure you told me everything you knew.”

  The implication was What use are you to me?

  “Well, I expect you’ll be taking the case in new directions. You may have new questions,” said Quinn. “I’m at your disposal. Ask whatever you want of me.”

  “All right,” said Mallory. “I want to know who your sister’s friends are. I want to know all the places where Sabra hung out before she disappeared.”

  Now Coffey saw regret in Quinn’s eyes. The man had not foreseen this. Twelve years ago, he had gone to a great deal of trouble to keep the police away from his family. And now that he had given Mallory carte blanche, how would he get out of this?

  He wouldn’t.

  Suddenly, Coffey understood that Mallory had spent the last few minutes digging a deep hole for Quinn and covering it over with twigs and branches. And now she had him. It was the old man’s style. Markowitz would have been proud.

  And what’s this? Plaid trousers? Flared? Andrew Bliss leaned over the wall, bullhorn at the ready, target in his sights.

  “You down there, the man with the plaid clown suit!”

  The man stopped.

  “Yes, you! The sixties are done. Get yourself a life. Men’s—on the first floor—and hurry, for God’s sake.”

  It was afternoon when he saw Annie on the sidewalk. She was smiling up at him and making the round “okay” with thumb and forefinger. Bless Annie, she had worn black pumps for the occasion. Now she gestured to the mobile news unit pulling up to the curb. More publicity, and hallelujah. Annie was motioning with a sweeping gesture which encompassed the small crowd massing at the foot of the building, and then she blew him a kiss.

  Throughout the day, crowds gathered and dispersed, as he periodically retired into a bottle to rest his voice and kill the pain of the previous night’s bottles.

  There was one small horror, realized on his second day out: he had no shampoo, deodorant, soap, none of the little niceties. And today, he was down to his last bottle of designer water for his morning espresso. He had thought to cart up two potted trees, but no toothbrush or paste. Though he had many changes of clothing, his body had begun to stink. His hair had become greasy and matted. Experimental bathing in champagne had only brought down a plague of flies. And then there was nothing for it but to get drunk and drunker, until he could no longer feel the flies running barefoot through his hair.

  A fat dollop of water splashed the bridge of his nose, calling his attention to the sky and the coming rain. He began picking through the mounds of material, sheets, towels and silk pajamas, searching for the rope with which to make his canopy of raincoats. Now he uncovered a woman’s hand, and he drew back too quickly, losing his footing and landing on his rear end with a look of dumb surprise. On all fours, he crept close to the hand protruding from the pile of cloth. It was a mannequin, of course, but why had he brought it up to the roof?

  He uncovered the mannequin woman with raven hair, a silver dress and dancing shoes. He dragged it off to a far corner of the roof and put a sheet over it. He retreated and sat down with his back against the opposite retaining wall, arms hugging his knees. He began to rock from side to side. Now that the mannequin was laid out and draped like the dead, it frightened him even more.

  A small bell tinkled over the door as Mallory and Quinn passed under the amber light of the old Tiffany lamp. “That lamp was purchased in the early fifties,” said Quinn. “Every stick of furniture can be dated to that era. This place was Sabra’s favorite hangout.”

  They settled at one end of the bar. There were patrons up and down the length of mahogany. Mallory picked up a cocktail napkin and stared at the logo for the Hilda-Godd Bar. “I thought it was called Godd’s Bar?”

 
“Well, Mike Godd died twenty years ago. Hilda Winkler is still alive, but she might as well be a ghost. Her name just dropped out of use. See that old woman over there? Even the bartender doesn’t know this, but that’s Hilda, the owner.”

  An old woman sat in the far corner of the room, and tipped back a sherry glass. In the way of a specter, she kept to the darkest shadows of the place.

  “Regulars of ten years’ standing have no idea who she is. The bartender only knows that the old lady drinks sherry and never pays a tab. She’s there when he comes to work in the afternoon, and still there when he leaves at closing time.”

  The phone was ringing, and the bartender moved up the length of the bar to answer it.

  “Watch the old woman now,” said Quinn.

  The bartender picked up the phone and said, “This is Godd, whaddaya want?” and the old woman shuddered when he did this, as though she might be wondering if she was the ghost, and not her long-dead partner, whose name lived on.

  Quinn looked toward the lineup of drinkers at the bar and then over his shoulder to the scattering of patrons among the polished tables. “Almost all of these people are painters or photographers.”

  A young man dropped a coin into the jukebox, an elaborate art deco piece of ornate zigzag lines and curls of bright, colored lights. The music pouring out of the box was the big-band sound from a time when the old woman had been younger, prettier, more alive than the other permanent fixtures of Godd’s Bar. Mallory recognized the music from Markowitz’s record collection in the basement of the old house in Brooklyn.

  When she was a child, Markowitz had played the old records for her and taught her how to swing to the big-band music which had filled the basement with a fifty-piece orchestra. The dancing lessons had begun with the waltz, leading into bebop and then on to rock’n’roll—the old man’s real passion. But she suspected Markowitz had harbored a special feeling for the early fifties. He would have loved this place.

  She was intent on the bartender’s back, waiting for him to turn around. When he did turn, he read her lips as she ordered a scotch and soda. He smiled and nodded at her, added a word each to two different conversations, mixed a tray of drinks for the cocktail waitress and splashed her scotch into a glass without a spill or a wasted motion. It was a magic act. He moved up the length of the bar, dancing to the music from the jukebox. One hand ringed a twist of lemon around the rim of the glass as he set the napkin in place on the bar. The glass appeared to settle there of its own accord, so sly was the hand. Long dark hair grazed his shoulders and he seemed to have no bones. Now he produced a bottle of sipping whiskey from the backbar and poured a neat shot without Quinn having to ask for it. The bartender was introduced as Kerry.

  “Thanks again for the gig at Koozeman’s,” Kerry said to Quinn. “The opening is gonna be a big night. He packs a lot of money into those crowds. It’s a networker’s dream.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Quinn. “I did it for selfish reasons.” Turning to Mallory, he said, “Kerry is one of my best sources for news in the art community.”

  Now Kerry was pointing to a patron sitting alone at the other end of the bar. “He just got the commission to shoot the plaza of Gilette’s new building. Gilette’s bringing down the wooden construction-site walls so they can photograph the place before the sculpture is installed.”

  Quinn turned to Mallory. “Every time a building goes up, the architect is obliged to let the city put its own sculpture in the plaza. It’s usually something pretty awful. The architect always likes to get the before shot so he can remember it the way it was meant to be.”

  Style, thy name is Kerry. She watched the bartender dance away to pour another round for a patron. Without facing Quinn, she asked, “Why were you at the old East Village gallery on the night of that double murder?”

  “Don’t you ever shift out of the interrogation mode? I told Markowitz. I’m sure he left—”

  “I don’t care what you told him. I can place you in each of Koozeman’s galleries at the time of two different homicides. That’s bound to make me curious, isn’t it? Now talk to me.”

  “I was told to meet Aubry there. A message was left at the newspaper in her name. Later, I figured that I’d been set up. The killer wanted to be critiqued, or that was your father’s thought.”

  “Was it? I don’t think you cared what Markowitz thought.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I think you spent all your time steering the old man in the direction you wanted him to take. I think you were obsessed with your own theories.”

  “You’re interrogating me, aren’t you?”

  “Cops do that.”

  “Are you considering me as a suspect? You think I murdered Starr? That’s ridiculous. The only kind of artist a critic can kill is a good one. Mediocrity is indestructible. You can step on it and flush it down the toilet, if you like. Not only will it survive, it actually flourishes in the crap.”

  While she quietly ruminated over his toilet metaphor, he signaled Kerry for another round of drinks.

  The jukebox was playing a tune from the late forties. All the records were perishable vinyl, played with needles to grooves. Mallory understood to the penny at what great cost these collectible recordings were rounded up, played until worn and replaced with others.

  She listened to the clear, sweet notes of the girl singer and wondered who she might have been. It was a distinctive voice, but she didn’t recognize it from Markowitz’s collection. She left the bar and walked to the jukebox. The song was ended, the record slowed and stopped. The singer’s name was on the record label below the name of the band, and in very small type—Hildy Winkler, the owner of the bar. So Quinn had missed that, or else he would have thrown it into the tour ramble. What else might he have missed?

  Hilda Winkler was shaking her head slowly as she waved one hand at the wide plate-glass window. Mallory caught the motion out of the corner of her eye. The old woman’s face swiveled quickly back toward the bar, and she was surprised to see Mallory staring at her. It was guilty surprise, a look Mallory knew well. She smiled at the elderly bar owner, just the line of a smile to ask, What are you up to, old woman?

  Mallory turned to the window in time to see the back of an old hag dragging a wire cart down the sidewalk.

  So that was it. Just waving off the riffraff. Move along, was all the old woman on the inside meant to say to the crone on the outside, No loitering, no rest for you-not at my door.

  Charles rang the bell again. Punctuality was her religion. He was genuinely stunned that Mallory was not at home. They had agreed to meet at eight o’clock, and it was ten of the hour now.

  He stood outside Mallory’s door as people passed by him on the way to a party in the apartment at the end of the hall. And every passerby looked at the man with the flowers, the tuxedo and the foolish smile. He was so transparently in love, they could read the plaque bearing Mallory’s apartment number through his soul.

  The elevator announced itself with a metallic ping. The doors opened and Mallory appeared, striding down the hall, a canvas tote bag slung over one shoulder. “Hi, Charles.”

  “You’re not dressed.”

  “You said eight o’clock.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only ten of eight now.”

  He followed behind her as she pressed through the door, dropped her tote bag on the rug and disappeared into her bedroom. “Clock me,” she called back to him as the door was closing.

  He sat down in a massive armchair. He wished everyone’s furniture was so accommodating to his large frame. Every object in this room had been selected for simplicity of form and function. If he didn’t know this was her apartment, there would be nothing to give him a clue to the inhabitant’s character. This was a non-atmosphere, impersonal, with no imprint of background. All the furnishings were expensive, but nothing was sought for show. There was a Spartan quality to the bare walls where the giveaway photographs and paintings should be. There was not a single bookcase to tell anyone
that Mallory had a life of the mind. Her reading matter was squirreled away in her office at Mallory and Butler, Ltd.—all manuals for machines, and no literature to show even a passing interest in human beings. He looked around him again. Yes, he could believe that a machine lived here.

  The tote bag toppled over on its side and a slew of photographs spilled out onto the rug. He was staring down at the image of a man’s severed head. He looked away. He knew this must be the head of the artist who had been murdered twelve years ago. Though the photographs had never been published, no adult living in New York City had been spared one gruesome detail of the deaths in the old Koozeman Gallery. He did not want to look at the photograph, but could not help himself.

  When his gaze was drawn back to the picture on the floor, the bloody head was partially obscured by one green satin dancing shoe.

  Beauty triumphed over bloody violence. His eyes lifted to the stunning sight of Mallory, green eyes and flowing green satin, waves of golden hair curling just above her bare white shoulders. He would have wagered anything that no other woman in Manhattan could have managed this in less than an hour. She had done it in less than five minutes. But then she was beautiful in blue jeans. She needed little else but the red lipstick to go with her flawless red nails. More would have been less.

  In years past, the ball had been the social event of the season and quite successful on this account. However, as a charity function, it never failed to lose money. The most lavish gala of New York society drew funds from the families of the Social Register Four Hundred and many power moguls of Fortune’s Five Hundred, but it rarely turned much profit to the coffers of any worthy cause. Most years it ran to red ink, and this year the ball had barely broken even.

  The elderly chairwoman, Ellen Quinn, was photographed in the act of handing an envelope to the administrator of the Crippled Children’s Fund. There was, of course, very little in the envelope, the chairwoman hastily explained in a whisper, and alas, no more was forthcoming. And so the administrator of the fund was photographed with an authentic expression of shock and slack-jawed surprise.