Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  Robin Duffy sat at the card table in the den of Charles’s apartment. His beer rested on a coaster, and his pile of change lay in the center of the green gaming surface. An overhead light exaggerated Duffy’s jowls and gave him the look of a bulldog. He was pouring out his troubles to Rabbi David Kaplan. Though Duffy was a devout Catholic, this man would always be his rabbi.

  “I got another offer on Markowitz’s house today, Rabbi. Why won’t the brat sell it? I hate to see it empty every day. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s Kathy’s home.” The rabbi’s face was composed in a serene smile. His elbows were propped on the table as he scrutinized his cards. “That old house is all she has left of her days with Helen and Louis.”

  “Naw, I don’t think that’s it. She hardly ever goes there, and she never stays the night. It should have a nice family in it, some kids—life.”

  “My parents died before I turned twenty,” said Charles, looking down at his own cards. “It took me almost another twenty years to sell their apartment.”

  “Well, I know seventeen-room condos don’t move all that fast,” said Edward Slope, “but twenty years?”

  “It was home. I didn’t always live there, even when my parents were alive. I spent most of my life at schools. But it was home.”

  “Kathy should have a real home,” said Duffy. “Gimme two cards. She should have a husband and kids, lots of kids.”

  Edward Slope put down his cards and looked to some distant point in the room. “I’m trying to picture a world with a lot of little baby felons who look like Kathy.”

  The largest pile of change was in front of Edward Slope. The rabbi’s pile and Robin Duffy’s were smaller but respectable. As always, the obvious loser in this first hour of the game was Charles Butler, who had gambled wildly at the start, and now nursed a rather small pile of quarters and dimes. For the next round, the rabbi held the deck, and five cards were dealt to each player, four cards facedown and the last card showing. The high card, an ace, fell to Charles Butler.

  “Don’t pick up your cards,” said a voice behind his chair, Mallory’s voice. The other players looked up in unison.

  “Trust me, Charles,” said Mallory. “Just let the cards lie there facedown. Now ante up.”

  He put his quarter alongside the other three quarters in the pile at the center of the table, not knowing what his hand held, only trusting Mallory. As he looked around at his friends, he saw three suspicious faces focussed on her. All of these people had known her since she was a child. And now his trust in her increased.

  “If you want to play, pull up a chair and do it properly,” said Edward Slope.

  “I don’t need a chair in the game to beat lightweights like you.”

  There were raises of quarters around the table, and she nodded to Charles when it was his turn. “See that raise and raise him another quarter.”

  They went through this ritual until the pot at the center of the table had grown considerably. Charles had only three quarters and a small assortment of dimes and nickels left to bet with. According to the rules of long standing, when he lost his change, he was out of the game. His faith in Mallory was flagging. Logic dictated that he could be cleaned out by the player with the largest store of change, and that was Edward.

  “Too rich,” said the rabbi, as he folded his cards. “I’m out.”

  It was Robin Duffy’s play. “Give me a minute,” he said, rearranging his cards to make it seem like he had at least two pair. Now he looked to Charles’s hand with only the single ace showing. The graduate of Harvard Law School continued his deliberations over the twenty-five-cent bet.

  “I’ve got a question for you, Doctor,” said Mallory, with such exaggerated formality, Charles had to wonder what they were feuding about now. It was always something. “How long can a person live on liquids but no solid food?”

  “Depends on the liquids,” said Edward. “Not long if all you’ve got is water, maybe ten, twelve days. Some people have fasted for months on fruit juices, and vitamin supplements.”

  “Suppose the liquid is wine?”

  “You can kiss that idiot goodbye. He’ll be severely weakened after a few days with no food, and probably hallucinating. He might last a few days more before dehydration kills him. Alcohol is a diuretic.”

  Robin Duffy put in his quarter and met the last raise. Edward Slope pitched his coins to the center of the table, and raised the bet with a dime.

  “Ante up, Charles, and raise him a quarter.”

  “But shouldn’t I at least have a look at my cards? I am getting rather low on change.”

  “Bad idea, Charles, just let them lie there.”

  He did as she told him. Then Robin Duffy folded his cards, eyes fixed on Charles’s ace.

  Mallory stood by Edward Slope’s chair now. “Let’s say the fast has been going on for three days, and he has a bottle of water. What would you add to the diet if you only wanted to keep him conscious and functioning?”

  “Oh, crackers or bread would be the simplest things for the body to break down and utilize quickly.” Edward pitched his quarter into the pile, and raised by only a nickel this time.

  “Meet that and raise him a quarter, Charles.”

  “If I raise him another twenty-five cents, I’ll be down to fifteen cents.”

  “Do it.”

  Charles laid his last quarter down in a raise. And Edward Slope folded his hand. The doctor looked up at Mallory, and something passed between them, part anger, part admiration. Charles looked from Edward to Mallory.

  “You knew he was going to fold.”

  “Yes, Charles.”

  “But how could you possibly know?”

  “Dr. Slope is a gentleman of the old school.” Mallory spoke to Charles, but fixed her eyes on the doctor. “That’s what Markowitz called him. The old man always did this to him early in the game, but only when the game was at our house. Markowitz would bet his whole stash and win the pot every damn time.”

  Charles knew something was going by him but not what. “Mallory, I don’t see the—”

  “Charles, you’re his host, and the night is young. He wouldn’t let you lose everything and then just sit out the rest of the game. Of course, when Markowitz did this to him, the old man always looked at his cards. But you can’t do that. You couldn’t run a bluff if I put a gun to your head—not with that face.”

  And now Charles’s face was a signboard advertising all his frustration and incredulity. “But you’ve put me in the position of taking unfair advantage of Edward.”

  Three men looked to the ceiling, but held the line at not laughing out loud.

  “That’s right,” said Mallory. “Now you’ve got it. Try not to lose that pile, okay?”

  Edward Slope pointed to Charles’s cards. “Okay, let’s see ’em. What were you holding?”

  Mallory quickly reached across the table and grabbed the deck of cards. She swept up Charles’s five cards and mingled them into the deck with the waterfall shuffle of a seasoned gambler.

  Edward Slope looked down at the hand which held his beer bottle in a death grip. “I know you only did that to drive us nuts.”

  Robin Duffy leaned toward the doctor. “And you always said the kid had no sense of humor.”

  Mallory settled behind the rabbi’s chair. “I’ve got a religious question.”

  Edward dealt the next hand. “Rabbi, if you want to keep my friendship and esteem, you’ll tell her to get lost.”

  The rabbi was staring sadly at the deck of cards in the doctor’s tight fist, the deck which contained the insoluble mystery of Charles’s winning hand. “Edward’s right. You do a thing like that, and then you ask for my help?”

  “You’re my rabbi, you have to help.”

  “All right, you got me twice in one night. What is your question?”

  “I need to know what you have to do to get kicked out of a Catholic seminary.”

  “Kathy, as I recall, Helen gave you four years of a very
expensive Catholic school education. Go and ask Father Brenner. He’s semiretired now, but I believe he’s filling in the vacation schedule at St. Jude’s this week.”

  “Father Brenner and I aren’t exactly on friendly terms. Maybe you could ask him.”

  “It’s been what, maybe ten years now? He’s not one to hold a grudge. It’s not as if you broke that nun’s leg.”

  After Mallory left the room, the other players fixed on the face of the rabbi in dead silence. He cast his sweet smile on each player in turn, which was easy because he was holding the best cards of the evening. But he never said another word about Kathy Mallory and the nun, not even when they withheld his sandwiches and beer for a time. He would not talk.

  Gregor Gilette stood in front of the church, hatless in the drizzle.

  He began as a pilgrim, climbing the steps vast and gray, leading up to the church doors. He had come here to find his wife. This was Sabra’s church, not his.

  As a small boy he had once wandered into a Catholic church, where he was dazzled by the spectacle of flaming candles and stained-glass windows lit with images of heaven and hell. He had stared at the tortured figure on the cross beyond the altar and then looked up and up to the high ceiling with its carved, curving beams. Sky high it was. As a child, he’d had the sense of a magical place. It had frightened him, and filled him with awe.

  Gregor had come at the right time in his life. He was only twelve then. The following year he would not believe in anything magical, under pain of ridicule by peers. Then, the boy had put this feeling away with the comic books and the toys, and had forgotten where he left it.

  Now the man remembered. He had come back for it.

  Unshaven, unbeliever in this holiest of places, he was looking here for Sabra, though she was probably miles away and worlds, sitting somewhere cradling her own mind like a child upon her lap.

  It was magic, it seemed, that sent her over, so he lit a candle now to bring her back. But how far and from exactly where? She had begun to leave him on the day Aubry died, growing farther and farther away, killing him as she left him, going away from him, bit by bit of her mind, and then altogether gone and taking her body with her.

  Once Sabra’s life had been filled with glorious color. Color had throbbed about her in an electricity of bright scarves, textured stockings and summer dresses of impossible combinations of purples and greens. When she lived alone, her apartment had been alive with color. The rugs and drapes held vibrant, clashing conversations. Each careless thing that lay strewn about the rooms would contradict the thing it lay upon.

  This had been a part of the excitement of her, the wild charm of Sabra. After they were married, he began to work his changes on her, maintaining all the while that he loved her as she was. First he changed the shape of her body with their only child. Then he refurnished her environs, save for the rocking chair that had been her mother’s, all that he approved of, good solid wooden thing. But glaring prints of rugs and drapes were cast out with the trash and the multicolored coat.

  Standing in the perfect quiet of the church and gazing up at the stained-glass windows, he saw again the wild colors in a jam of rolling rainbows, escaping down Bleecker Street in the junkman’s cart. And he watched Sabra running after the cart, shaking her fists at the junk-man, and returning triumphant with her coat of many colors.

  Oddly, it was never Sabra the mother he saw whenever she walked into a room in middle age with thickened waist, but wild Sabra, her bright colors flashing and waves of jet-black hair.

  And then insanity had come to their house with the death of Aubry.

  It seemed as though it happened in one night when Sabra came downstairs, very late, to sit in her mother’s chair. At first he thought she’d come to keep him company as he grieved for Aubry in the dark. Then as he stared at his wife and she took form in the poor light from the street, he realized that her lustrous black hair was gone. Her crown was a cap of stick-out hair, and in some places she was shorn to the gleam of white scalp. Then Sabra had begun to rock, slowly at the beginning and then faster and faster, rocking furiously. Laughing like a mad child, she spilled out onto the floor, and crawled like a baby to the stair.

  Twelve years later, Gregory Gilette lit a candle for his wife, and then another candle, and another. He went on to the next statue and the next, lighting all the candles. One by one, he begged the saints who stood above the flames, did they know where his Sabra was? Did they know the way she had gone and, most important, the way back?

  The poor Protestant atheist, rational man of show-me country, broke down like a child when stones would not consult with him.

  And that cat-size creature at the far side of the roof, twitching and compulsively rubbing its hands. Was that a mouse? Surely not. Mice were cartoons, and rather cute. This was something loathsome.

  Tonight, the creature had come close enough to be splashed with champagne. Not to waste the wine, Andrew made a cross in the air above the scurvy animal, and he christened it Emma Sue. Then he tried to smash it out of existence with the bottle. But he was too slow—the empty bottle too heavy.

  His head lolled back and he was staring up at an empty sky. Empty? He was too tired to crawl to the edge of the roof where he had left the binoculars. He shivered and hugged his knees to his body. His naked eyes drifted slowly from side to side, scanning heaven, searching for the stars.

  But they were gone.

  He fell into a light sleep, awakening at the thud behind him. He turned around slowly to see the brown paper bag, torn open to reveal a small loaf of bread.

  A miracle.

  He fell on the loaf, ripping the cellophane wrapping away from the bread. He broke the loaf open and smelled it, and then he wolfed down the sweet, white, fibrous, glorious bread, his gift from the sky.

  So, there was a God.

  Riker had a few bad moments watching her make the drop from the edge of Bloomingdale’s roof to the narrow ledge beneath the top-floor window. When she was safely inside the building, he breathed again. He trained the binoculars on Andrew Bliss and watched him feeding on the loaf.

  Riker’s binoculars strayed to the surrounding buildings and then down below to the stream of late traffic. Ah, New York, all decked out in city lights like sequins on her best dress—all dazzle and smart moves. He had seen the city in harsher light, and he knew she was really a whore, but that could be fun, too.

  He had underestimated Mallory’s time in crossing the street and climbing to this tenth-floor roof. He turned to the right, and she was standing beside him, looking down on Andrew Bliss.

  “Mallory, there’s gotta be a better way to feed him. That ledge is dangerous.”

  “Yeah, right. A little old lady wouldn’t have a problem with that ledge. The roof would be crawling with reporters right now if the bastards weren’t afraid it would kill their story. Whoever Andrew’s hiding from will get to him eventually.”

  “Didn’t Markowitz ever tell you it wasn’t nice to hang a taxpayer out as bait?”

  “I think he did run that by me once.” She checked the bolt action on the assault rifle, and aimed the sight on the roof of Bloomingdale’s to test the night scope. “Charles thinks Quinn is stalking me.”

  “Quinn has good taste. He only goes after the brightest and the best. You’re his type, kid.”

  “So was Aubry.”

  “What are you saying, Mallory? She was his own niece.”

  “Oh, right, and murderers are such stand-up moral people. What was I thinking of?” She walked off to the other side of the roof and stood there staring down at Andrew, her pet mouse, as he was nibbling at his bread.

  “It doesn’t work for me, kid.” And he suspected it didn’t work for her either, but this was her idea of sport. He turned the binoculars to all the dark corners of the roof below, and lost track of Mallory by sight and sound.

  “But the killing of Dean Starr suits him,” said Mallory, close to his ear now, spooky kid, back for another shot at him. “According to
Quinn’s bio, he’s a fencer, a former Olympic champion,” she said. “He’d know where to put the steel to do the most damage. And it was such a neat crime, wasn’t it? No mess. And that suits him too.”

  “So now you’re thinking revenge?” Riker shook his head and lowered the binoculars to face her. “Quinn’s not the type to go on a vigilante solo.”

  “Quinn held out on the old man, and he held out on us. He knows what the connection is. Dean Starr was tied to the old murder case, but I’m betting he wasn’t the only one.”

  “Well, you’re not thinking that poor little bastard down there could have done murder with an axe?”

  “Andrew? He knows something, and so does Quinn. I’m sure there’s more than one killer.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think Starr could have taken the artist and the dancer down by himself.”

  “Peter Ariel was stoned on dope that night. A twelve-year-old could have done him in.”

  “But Starr was a junkie too. So what about the dancer? Physical peak, good reflexes and some muscle.”

  Well, the killer couldn’t have taken Mallory down, but Aubry was not the same species. She had been young and protected. Mallory could only see the muscle of the dancer, the reflexes. That was as close as she would come to Aubry.

  She paced behind him. “I think Quinn could tell us who wrote that letter to Special Crimes, but he won’t. He wanted Starr dead. If he didn’t do the killing, he’s still part of it somehow.”

  “Truth, Mallory? I think Oren Watt killed the artist and the dancer. But let’s say he had some help, maybe Starr’s help. If Starr’s death was revenge, I’m on the perp’s side of this one. You can’t know what that crime scene was like. All the pictures and all the reports won’t tell you. If Starr was part of that, I’m glad the freak is dead. If Quinn had any part of the killing, I’d rather give him a medal than arrest him.”

  “When I catch the perp, I’m gonna bust him. I don’t care who he is or why he did it. Those are the rules.”