Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  “So?”

  “Well, the ultimate payoff is forgiveness—you won’t die with a stain on your soul. But before you can be forgiven, you must confess your sin, and there must be an Act of Contrition and a devout intention never to repeat your sin, a sincere desire to change your ways.”

  “Did you ever light candles when you were a kid?”

  “What? Well, yes. For my father. He died many years ago when I was a boy. But I still light the candles.”

  “So he won’t get lost?”

  “Yes, something like that. People do get lost in time, don’t they? Images and memories fade. But when I was very young, I think I lit the candles so I would not be lost.... Kathy? ... Kathy?”

  She stared at the candle, transfixed by a memory of hell. And the old priest continued to call out to her across the wires of the worldly telephone company.

  Andrew’s eyes scanned the clouds for the hide-and-seek stars which winked on and off, appearing within holes in the overcast sky and then gone again. The night was chilly and he gathered his blankets about him, but never took his eyes from the heavens.

  It was like waiting up for Santa Claus, who never showed until all the children of the house were fast asleep in their beds. He feigned sleep, lying back and closing his eyes to slits.

  He had no sooner done this than he heard the sharp thwack on the roof. When he opened his eyes, three votive candles rolled out of a brown paper bag which also contained another small loaf of bread. He turned his face in time to catch the fleeting glimpse of his savior’s head, a cap of moon-gold curls in flight just beyond the edge of the roof. Slowly, he crept to the retaining wall and looked over the side, afraid of what he might see.

  No one there.

  He knelt down to light his candles, and an hour later, he was still on his knees.

  CHAPTER 6

  “BUT THE HOMICIDE RATE HAS GONE DOWN.”

  “Well, it’s an election year. The mayor won’t let us drag the East River,” said Riker, over the rim of his coffee cup. “Don’t worry about it, Charles. We’ll snag all the bodies next year and bring the stats back up.”

  Riker was reading Charles’s magazine, which detailed the new and improved New York. “Hey, Mallory, listen to this. ‘Fashionable New Yorkers adore the subways.’ ”

  “They didn’t print that,” said Mallory.

  “The hell they didn’t.” Riker slapped the magazine down on the kitchen table beside her plate.

  Mallory set down her coffee cup and picked up the magazine. She leafed through the pages, frowning. “Why do you read this stuff, Charles?” Her tone implied that she had caught him with a porno rag and not an upscale magazine for well-to-do New Yorkers.

  “I rode the subway once,” said Charles, as though this were an accomplishment. “But now that I think about it, it was an abysmal experience. The train was supposed to be a local, and then it turned into an express and dropped me a mile out of my way.”

  Mallory leaned toward Riker. “Did Markowitz really buy that fairy tale about Quinn showing up at the gallery late because he took the subway?”

  “Not at first,” said Riker. “But Quinn’s private car was parked in his garage all night. The garage attendant verified that, while Markowitz kept Quinn busy. It’s not like he had time to bribe the kid. And the only taxi log was for the dancer. Now if Quinn was running late, he might have taken the subway. Maybe he’d worry about a cab getting bogged down in traffic. He wouldn’t want his niece to spend any time in that neighborhood alone. The subway would’ve been the fastest way to get there.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s why I took the subway,” said Charles. “It was urgent that I—”

  “And Charles screwed up too,” said Riker.

  Mallory scanned the article titled “Gilette’s Last Building.” The unveiling of the plaza was slated for the day after tomorrow according to an interview with Emma Sue Hollaran. She closed the magazine. “Riker, what do we know about Emma Sue Hollaran?”

  “I never heard of her.”

  “She’s the chairwoman of the Public Works Committee,” said Charles. “That’s the group that made Andrew Bliss a respectable shoplifter.”

  “And she was an enemy of Gilette’s,” said Mallory. “I got that from Quinn.”

  “Waste of time,” said Riker. “The old homicide wasn’t a woman’s crime.”

  “I’m a woman.”

  “Okay, we’ll put her on the list.” Riker pulled out his notebook and made a scribble of Hollaran’s initials to pacify Mallory.

  “Actually, I was thinking Hollaran might make a good victim. I’ve got two dead critics now. Maybe it’s worth a stakeout.” She turned the magazine facedown and smiled at Riker. “Speaking of critics, you know that scar on Quinn’s face, just above the moustache? He told me Charles did that.”

  Now Charles had Riker’s complete attention as a coffee cup hovered in midair.

  “It was a fencing accident,” said Charles.

  Riker’s cup settled to the saucer with a small crash, and Mallory’s eyes were bright as she leaned forward. “You scarred him with a sword?”

  “Well, it’s a long story.”

  The detectives looked at their watches. “Give us the short version,” said Mallory.

  “It started with my acceptance to Harvard. I didn’t want to go.” No need to explain to them that he was only ten years old on the eve of his freshman year at college. “My mother asked Jamie Quinn to talk to me because he had just finished his junior year, and she thought he might be able to convince me that I would like Harvard.”

  Young Jamie Quinn had immediately understood the problem of a child leaving the shelter of a school for the unreasonably gifted to matriculate among tall people of normal intelligence.

  “He gave me a fencing lesson. He thought it might be a good sport for me. He said it would give me confidence.” And it might prepare him for the more subtle combat of navigating among the older students as a child with freakish intelligence which exceeded all known scores.

  “So we went out on the terrace of his parents’ apartment. He gave me the sword he had used as a child. But he had noticed the rust on the old mask and insisted that I wear his new one.”

  Mallory had done some fencing in college, but Charles was certain that Riker had not, and so he described the mask as a protruding steel mesh that allowed for peripheral vision. “It fits on the head like a protective cage. It has a padding around the face, and there’s a biblike padding at the throat to—”

  “Could we cut to the good part, Charles?” Riker poured another cup of coffee, and looked at his watch again. “I’m gettin’ old here.”

  “Yes, of course, sorry. It was a freak accident—in fact, a combination of accidents. My saber was at least ten years old and it had—”

  “Sabers? Like the cavalry?” Riker cut a Z in the air.

  “Yes. Well, no. I do have an antique set of cavalry sabers, but the saber you fence with is more of a vestigial cavalry sword. There’s no cutting point, no cutting edge. It’s a tapered rod of steel with a blunted metal bulb at the point. Unless you’re using a sword that’s electrified for competition, and then, of course, the tip is quite—” He noticed Riker’s eyes glazing over.

  “Sorry. It doesn’t look much like the old cavalry saber, but the motions are the same. You make the slice and the stab, just as you would if you had a cutting edge and point. So I was using Quinn’s old saber. The sword seemed to be in good condition, but you can’t detect metal fatigue with the naked eye. He was going to give it to me as a gift, so I could—”

  Riker made a rolling motion with his hand in an attempt to speed up the story.

  “The tip of my sword broke off while we were fencing, and it made a jagged point of the blade. It was my first time with a saber in my hand. I was rather clumsy. I didn’t realize the blunt bulb was gone. I made a wild swing, and my sword went through the mask where the metal had rusted, and Quinn was cut.”

  “I
’ll bet he was pissed off,” said Riker.

  “Actually, no. After the doctor patched him up, I tried to apologize. He just waved me off. Said he was honored and rather liked the scar. Then he thanked me for it. He really is the quintessential gentleman.”

  “But you were just a kid,” said Mallory. “He must not be a very good swordsman.”

  “He was superb, an Olympian. He was only nineteen years old when he won his first gold medal.”

  “But if a little kid can beat him,” said Mallory, “he must have a weakness, an opening.”

  “None that I’m aware of. And I didn’t beat him. I made a wild swing.” He turned to Riker. “You see, after a point is scored, you break apart. But I didn’t realize that, and I made the swing when he wasn’t expecting it.”

  “So he was unprepared for the unexpected, and he’s well mannered to a fault.” Mallory turned to Riker. “I’ve got fifty dollars says I can beat him.”

  “With a saber?” Charles stared at her as though she had proposed a flight to the moon. “You can’t be serious. A few fencing lessons at college do not prepare you to beat an Olympic champion. You can’t possibly win against him.”

  “If you want to bet against her, I’ll take a piece of it,” said Riker. “Is a marker okay, Charles? I’m short this week.”

  “Riker, I won’t take your money. She can’t possibly win.”

  “Then why not bet with him, Charles? You don’t do well at poker. I’d think you’d want to win at something.”

  “This is ludicrous. Quinn’s been a swordsman all his life. You fenced for one semester at school.”

  “She’s half his age,” said Riker, “and she fights dirty. I think she can do him.”

  Riker’s cellular phone beeped. He extended the antenna, and as he listened attentively, he made a fist. When he ended the conversation and folded his phone away, he turned to Mallory. “That was an old friend of mine in Blakely’s office. I hope you got what you wanted off Koozeman’s computer last night. Blakely’s boys impounded it, and they got all of Koozeman’s books.”

  “How’s the chief going to justify that?”

  “He won’t have to. We’re officially off the case. Blakely’s turning it over to a third-rate dick, and the FBI offered to assist. They’re giving a joint press interview right now. Special Agent Cartland is playing it as a stranger kill.”

  “A what?”

  Riker drained his cup. “A random murder, Charles. The perp doesn’t know the victim. It’s the crime where the FBI really shines. Cartland’s a local PR jerk, but their team at Quantico is first-rate.”

  “But it’s clearly not a stranger kill,” said Charles. “How could Coffey go along with that?”

  “He didn’t, and that’s the worst of it,” said Riker. “Coffey wouldn’t play along with Blakely, and now he’s going down. The paperwork is in the machine for a demotion on grounds of insubordination and disobeying a direct order. There’s another list of bogus charges that might force him out of the department.”

  “Blakely will never make the charges stick,” said Mallory. “Coffey goes by the book.” And by her tone, Charles knew she considered that one of Jack Coffey’s flaws.

  “Blakely can do whatever he wants with Coffey.” Riker’s voice was all resignation. “Internal Affairs hasn’t gotten any smarter since the Dowd fiasco. Coffey’s going down, kid. Count on it.”

  “No. I can fix this. A lot of the people on Koozeman’s A list were in city government, the mayor, the ex-commissioner, the lieutenant governor—”

  “No you don’t, kid. You don’t go near any of those people. You think you’ve got more power than you have. You can’t blackmail the politicos to keep them in line, not even to save Coffey’s tail. The job is to keep the law, not to break it.”

  “The ends don’t justify the means? You’re beginning to sound like Charles.”

  Charles sat between them, sincerely not knowing whether or not to take offense.

  “I was hoping one day you would sound more like Charles. I don’t expect that anymore.” Riker’s mood was darkening. “Don’t go near Blakely. He’ll get you. Don’t think of him as just one old bastard, think of the whole machine. It’s an ancient thing. You’ve got the talent, but you’re just not old enough to be that mean and dirty. Markowitz would tell you the same. You can’t save Coffey. He’s dead meat. Don’t go down with him.”

  “Riker, I thought you liked Coffey in your own twisted way.”

  “I got a lot of respect for the guy. But you’re the one who needs looking after. You think you’re such a hotshot. You don’t ever go after a cop—you got that?—and never a top cop. You think you’ve got your own power base, but you—”

  “I do—in spades. Between the data off Koozeman’s computer and Markowitz’s old case notes, I can hurt Blakely.”

  “Don’t ever tip your hand, Mallory. Don’t ever let on you’ve got those notes. What the old man put down in writing is court evidence. Don’t make Blakely feel threatened.”

  “Markowitz would have covered Coffey’s tail.”

  “Yeah, he would’ve. But you’re no Markowitz, kid. He used finesse—you use a hammer.”

  Mallory did not stand at attention before the chief’s desk. Nor did she wait for an invitation to be seated, a courtesy Blakely rarely granted to those with the rank of sergeant. Uninvited, she settled deep in the chair opposite his desk and crossed her legs. He did not look up. The only clue that she had annoyed him was in the crumple of the paper in his hands.

  “I want you to reconsider taking us off the Dean Starr case.” Her tone of voice did not frame this as a request.

  The sheet of paper he had been reading was now a crushed ball flying into the wastebasket. “No deal. Now get out of here, or I might forget how much I liked your old man.”

  She sat well back in the chair and gave no signs of going anywhere.

  “Move your ass, Detective, or you’ll be going down with your boss.”

  She was smiling when she said, “I don’t think so, Blakely.”

  “You know the drill, Mallory. You will address me as sir or Chief; and those are all the choices you get.”

  “Makes you wonder what I’ve got on you, doesn’t it? But I’m not here to talk about how you got your job.”

  “Careful, Mallory.”

  “I bet you’re wishing the old police commissioner had been more careful about the way he spent his payoff money—he’s a senator now, isn’t he? That must put a lot of pressure on you.”

  “Mallory, don’t push your luck with me.”

  “Milking the payoff from a mob bodega was really ballsy, Blakely. I liked that a lot. It made me wonder how much hard evidence you had on that operation to make them come across with the money.”

  He was rising from his chair.

  “I did a little digging in Markowitz’s personal notes,” she said. “I came across an interview with a dealer who did business out of that same bodega.”

  He sat down again, slowly. She continued. “Quite a busy place, between the drug deals and the racketeering. Their delivery boys covered three states, didn’t they?”

  His chair squeaked as he swiveled around to face the window. “So what’re you planning to do with all this crap, Mallory?” His fingers drummed softly on the red upholstery.

  “Nothing. I’m sure the feds would like to know you shielded an interstate operation—but I don’t owe the FBI any favors, do I?” She looked down at her red fingernails. “So that’s old business. Right now, I’d rather discuss Lieutenant Coffey. You see, when you climb up his back, he climbs up mine. And I really hate that. So you will back off, won’t you? Sir? I think you can trust Coffey to assign his own detectives.”

  “Anything else?”

  She knew his voice was too calm. But he was not fighting back, so it was all going well, wasn’t it? “You attached a lot of charges and a bad review to Coffey’s record—you might want to rethink that. Markowitz always said, ‘What goes around comes around.’ �
��

  She could hear the old man saying that now, but Markowitz was saying it to her—a prickling warning from the back of her mind.

  Blakely was silent. She wished she could see his face. He continued to stare out the window, and the only sound in the room was the soft drumming of his fat fingertips on the red leather arm of his chair.

  Well, what had she expected, a signed contract? Their deal was concluded. There was nothing left to say. But she stood up with the uneasy feeling of unfinished business.

  Mallory was across the room and through the door before she heard the squeak of Blakely’s chair swiveling around again.

  Riker sat at the desk in Mallory’s private office, holding a telephone to his ear, and making an occasional scribble with his pen.

  Charles sat down in the metal chair opposite the desk. He hated the decor of this room and wished Mallory would let him furnish her office with a few Oriental rugs and perhaps a desk from the last century. But he knew she was more comfortable in this atmosphere of stark simplicity.

  Riker was speaking into the telephone. “What’s Blakely doing with the inventory sheet on Markowitz’s house?” And now he listened and his face was clouding over with anger. “Robin Duffy was the family lawyer. He got a ruling on the old man’s personal papers. All the personal papers belong to the estate and the estate belongs to Mallory. There’s no way he’s gonna get any of it.” Now he covered the mouthpiece with one hand and spoke to Charles. “You got a number for Duffy?”

  “He’s on a fishing trip in Canada. He’s due back in a few days, but I suppose I could track him down if it’s important.”

  Riker shook his head and spoke into the mouthpiece again. “Duffy’s out of town. I’ll have him call Blakely’s office when he gets back.... Right.”

  Riker put the receiver back on the cradle of Mallory’s state-of-the-art phone center, which spread tentacles to a fax machine, a recording device, and other equipment Charles could not readily identify.