Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  He shook his head. “I won’t do money with you.”

  “Not money. I was thinking along the lines of anything I want, against anything you want.”

  “Those are outrageously high stakes, Mallory. I won’t take advantage of you. No bet.”

  How predictable.

  “You shouldn’t be afraid to bet—unless you’re afraid to lose.” She looked at the clock. She must leave soon.

  “You can’t possibly win, not with your limited experience. It’s not a fair wager.”

  “I’m not worried. If you do win, I know you’ll pick a forfeit I can easily make.” She had to do this quickly.

  “You know that for a fact?”

  I know you.

  “It’s your character, Quinn. Charles tells me you’re the quintessential gentleman—I know the breed.”

  “You’re right. I would never ask a forfeit you couldn’t afford. So I’ll concede that you know me very well.” He stood up and turned to face the clock. “But no one knows very much about you, Mallory-not even the people who knew you best.”

  He moved to the window and spoke to the glass. “Your origins are a complete mystery. You wouldn’t give the necessary information to the Markowitzes so they could formalize your adoption. Child Welfare made an exhaustive search, but they could never trace your family. Juvenile Hall records show two brief incarcerations at ages eight and nine, but no success in learning your right name. And they were never able to hold on to you for more than a few days each time. There’s a note in a folder with your photograph. It says, ‘Brilliant child.’ ”

  He turned around to see what effect his words had on her. He seemed pleased with the result. “My own investigators are very thorough. They’re the best in the world, and they have no idea where you came from. Suppose your forfeit was to tell me everything I wanted to know about you, your history, everything. Could you afford that?”

  She had underestimated him.

  “I keep them in here.” Charles stood aside to let her pass through the door. Mallory had never been in his bedroom before. She did not seem overly excited by the seventeenth-century dower chest at the end of his hand-carved bedstead. She probably thought if she had seen one precious antique, she had seen them all. What captured her attention was the glass case mounted on the wall over the chest. It contained a pair of crossed swords.

  “Charles, they’re wonderful. These are nothing like the sabers we used at school.”

  “You trained with a blunt saber, right?” He opened the closet and took out a long brown leather bag and unzipped it. He carefully lifted out a pair of swords. Holding one in his right hand, he sliced the air with its tapered rod. “Now this is what you’ll be using with Quinn. It’s a competition saber. It’s wired so you can be scored on a machine that—”

  She wasn’t listening. She put one knee on the carved chest and reached up to the case, looking to him for permission. He nodded. She opened the case and removed one saber from the rack. She eased off the chest and stood at the center of the large room, hefting the sword in her right hand. Now, with utter disregard for the weight of the steel and its sharp edge, she easily slung the handle through the air from one hand to the other. She held the edge up to examine it. She smiled to say, Now this is a weapon.

  “This has a really wicked point.” She touched the sharp edge of the blade. “It could use some sharpening, but not bad.”

  “Well, it’s the real thing. It’s much heavier than what you’re accustomed to.”

  “No, it’s about the same.”

  What? Oh, of course. She was comparing the weight of the sword to the weight of her gun.

  “The pair was an heirloom of the Quinn family. Jamie made me a present of them after I’d scarred him. It was an outrageous gesture. They’re very old and quite valuable. I think he gave them to me because he was afraid that the accident might put me off the idea of fencing.”

  “He is a gentleman, isn’t he?”

  “To the nth degree. He’s also the finest swordsman I’ve ever met.”

  “But you scarred him.”

  “That was an embarrassment, not a victory.” Oh, wait. That wasn’t properly translated into Malloryspeak. “It was a pure accident, a fluke.” He held up the competition saber. “This is a very good blade. You’ll need a mask—I’ve got that. Now the fencing jacket. I have an old one that might fit you. And the vest, the body wire—the club will have those items, no need to buy them.”

  She kept her eyes to the sword in her hand. “I wish we could fence with these.”

  “Not a chance. He’d never agree to that. These are not sporting weapons. He wouldn’t risk hurting you. You know, you can’t beat him, Mallory.”

  “I have to beat him. The stakes are very high.”

  “I know this man. He won’t hold you to the bet. I’m sure he didn’t want to make it in the first place.”

  “I have to win.”

  “I don’t think you understand what it means to be an Olympic champion. You don’t respect your opponents, and that will cost you.”

  He took the cavalry sword from her hand and replaced it with the competition saber. Next, he handed her a white fencing jacket he had worn as a child, albeit a rather large child. “See if this fits.”

  When she had zipped up the jacket and fastened the high collar, only the wide shoulders were outsized.

  He reached up to the top shelf of the closet and pulled out two white helmets with dark steel mesh. “Put this on.” He threw her one mask. She caught it easily and put it on, slipping the strap over the back of her head, and settling her chin into the screen cage. He didn’t like the sight of her in the mask. It made her face a near-black oval, and gave her the appearance of an unfinished machine, an imitation of a human without a face.

  He pushed the few pieces of obstructing furniture to the wall and moved to the center of the wide room. She gracefully followed him into the en garde position, feet placed at right angles with space between them, her body straight and evenly balanced between her heels.

  She did not wait for the courtesy of the saluting swords. With no warning, she lunged, arm and sword extended for the thrust to his midsection. Her speed was astonishing, but he easily parried the thrust and sent her blade away from his body.

  “If you’re counting on the element of surprise to beat him, you will lose in that first move, and you’ll have nothing left. Strategy is everything, and it’s intricate.”

  He lunged and feinted the sword to her left, then quickly described a half circle in the air to make a strike to her right side. She parried, but badly and too late. One hour later, he could not fool her with that maneuver, but she had made very few strikes and lost every bout.

  He ended the last round by removing his mask and saluting her. She followed his every move, bringing the hilt of her sword to her lips, blade pointing straight up, and then down.

  He settled into a chair by the wall. She sat on his bed. “You need a strategy to win, Mallory. But you haven’t the experience to formulate one. Every move you can make will be predictable to him. Experience and skill are everything. Your reaction time will be twenty-five years younger, but that won’t save you. You’re very fast, but he’ll destroy that edge by always being moves ahead of you.”

  She seemed skeptical of this.

  He sighed. “It’s rather like a chess match. Now aren’t you sorry you wouldn’t let me teach you that game?” Apparently she was not. She only stared at the tip of the sword.

  He stood up and crossed the room. Gently, he lowered the point of her blade to get her attention away from it. “Every time you angle your saber, you telegraph the move you’ll make, and he’s there before you. You see?” No, she didn’t. She saw nothing but the sword in her hand.

  “Mallory, you can’t beat me, and I can’t beat him. You are nothing if not logical. So, you can see that this is a lost cause.”

  Riker looked up as she walked into her office with a leather bag slung over one shoulder. It was shaped
like a basketball with a rifle barrel.

  “What’s in the bag, Mallory?”

  “A sword and a mask.”

  “You’re joining the opposition? A thief with a sword? I like it.”

  “It’s for the fencing match with Quinn. But, yeah, I might be crossing sides for a while. Coffey says Blakely’s after me. It looks like he’s going to put up a fight.”

  “It figures. That stupid bastard doesn’t know how to lie down and die right.”

  “I need a place where Blakely wouldn’t think of looking for me. A hotel is a bad idea, and I can’t stay with Charles again. I don’t want him involved if this all goes bad on me.”

  “Well, I’m taking the graveyard shift with Andrew tonight. You can use my place. No one would ever suspect you of hiding out in a smelly ashtray. But the decor might put you off.”

  “Decor? You mean the spiderwebs in every corner, the garbage piling up in the kitchen, and the forty-two mostly empty pizza cartons? That decor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As I recall, it was only the plastic Jesus night-light I really hated. Very tacky. You can kiss that thing goodbye. Thanks, Riker.”

  “You’ll need a way in.”

  “You mean a key?”

  “Sorry. Sometimes I forget who I’m talking to.” And now he grabbed her hand and pressed the key into her palm. “Use it. And where are you going now?”

  “You know where I’m going.”

  The main room of the East Village gallery was a blaze of television lights. The script girl was making him wild. She questioned every little thing. She found fault with every item in his story as she was working out the motions of a murder. “Mr. Watt,” she said, “I just have one more question. How could it have happened that way if you—”

  “I don’t know!” yelled Oren Watt.

  The script girl backed away, eyes a little more open now, perhaps suddenly remembering that this was the Monster of Manhattan who was screaming at her.

  “Get out of my face! I don’t know!” He pushed the girl out of his way, and she left the lobby at a run. The director called for a break, and the crew members withdrew to the far side of the long room to light up cigarettes and squat in conversational groups. Only the cop remained with Oren.

  He blamed his loss of temper on Detective Mallory. She had a gift for getting on his nerves.

  “That’s the trouble with lies, Oren. They only look good on paper. They never work out in real time and space. Now would you like to tell me how Senator Berman fits into this murder?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mallory stood beside him, edging closer, saying, “My father used to say we all know more than we know we know.”

  What was good enough for the script girl might be good enough for the cop. He grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back to the wall. She gave him no resistance, but she showed no fear either. And now she was even smiling at him. He had always been comfortable in the sure knowledge of his own sanity. It crossed his mind that she might be the crazy one.

  “Oren, aren’t you going to tell them about the Outsider Artist scam? Big names, big scandal for the evening news. It might boost the ratings if you nail Senator Berman.”

  Enough! Bitch!

  He put one flat palm against the wall close to her head. “Now listen, honey—”

  He heard the click of metal before he saw the handcuff dangle from his wrist. In the next moment, he was being spun round and knocked off balance. His cheek was pressed to the hardwood floor when he heard another click of the cuffs, and his left hand was prisoner to the right.

  All the following moments were barely comprehensible to him. He was on his feet, being hustled toward the square of daylight in the distance. As he rushed his body forward, she kept him off balance. He was staring at the floor now and fearing that he would fall on his face. Then he was out on the sidewalk, and she was pushing down on the top of his head, forcibly seating him in the rear of a small tan car. In another minute, they were rolling, speeding through the streets, ignoring stop signs and lights, barely avoiding a collision with a bus.

  He was sweating profusely when the car pulled to a curb in SoHo. She pulled him out of the car and escorted him in a quick shuffle through a door and into an elevator, then down a hallway and into a room luxuriously decorated for another century. They passed down a short hallway and into another room of computers, modern furniture and a familiar face he had not seen in years. What was this cop’s name?

  “Hi, Riker,” she said, answering his question.

  Riker seemed stunned.

  “I want my lawyer,” said Oren Watt.

  “Up to you, Oren,” said Mallory, pushing him roughly into a chair. “But if we call your lawyer, then we have to go down to the precinct and go through all the damn paperwork, pressing charges for an assault on a police officer.”

  “I did not assault you!”

  “You’ve been away a long time, haven’t you, Oren? Eleven years? It’s a new world. There’s a huge political base out there that says I get to lock you up just for calling me honey. Yeah, the assault charge will stick. Four people saw me identify myself as a police officer while the cameras were still rolling. And there are a few old charges I could make stick.”

  “The statute of limitations was over—”

  “Is that what you were counting on, you idiot?” She brought her face close to his. “Murder never goes away. You didn’t do it, but you’re tied to it. You might need police protection, so play nice.”

  “Protection?”

  “The whole scam is coming apart now, Oren. Koozeman and Starr are both dead, and I think you’ll be the next man down. Want to come in out of the cold?” She leaned down to forage in a cardboard carton. When she stood up again, she had an axe in her hand. “Last chance, Oren.”

  “This is insane!”

  “Isn’t it? A bit like a bad acid trip through Wonder-land.” She slammed the axe down on the table with great force. Oren Watt stiffened. “Well, come on, little Alice, it’s time for the unconfession. No? I wonder if the killer will use an axe again? The last murder had a little more creativity. Koozeman died eating the artwork. He was a greedy bastard, wasn’t he? Everything he saw was food, animate, inanimate. Now you sell drawings of body parts. Yeah, I think the killer will use the axe for you. It’s so fitting, isn’t it?”

  “I’d go to jail if I told you anything. You said obstruction of—”

  “Ease up, Mallory.” Now Riker spoke to him in a rational voice, almost kind. “This is the way it works, sir. The last one to cooperate loses immunity and takes the fall.”

  “Seven years in a cell, Oren,” said Mallory. “Or maybe I could arrange to have you shipped back to the funny farm for three more months of unrestricted television privileges if you cooperate. But that shrink of yours is definitely doing time for this. If you don’t recant that confession, I’m going after him. Then you know what happens? He throws you to the district attorney as a bribe. If he rolls over on you, he gets immunity from prosecution. He walks, and you do the hard time by yourself.”

  “That’s enough, Mallory. Stop badgering him,” said Riker. “You really want to think it over, sir. But don’t talk to your doctor. She’s right about him, you know. He will give you up in a heartbeat. He couldn’t care less what happens to you. He’s a profiteer first. I’m not sure he ever was a doctor. I don’t trust any of those bastards.”

  “You’re both nuts.”

  She leaned down, her eyes level with his. “High praise from you, Oren, considering your mental history. Markowitz asked you if you had any trophies from the kill, maybe a body part. What did you tell him?”

  “I don’t remember. I was high, I was jazzed. I swear I don’t remember what we talked about.”

  “I’ll give you one more chance. You tell me what piece of the body was missing. If you guess right this time, I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Her heart.”

  “Too poetic. You lose.”

  Now she
left her seat to walk around the table and stand behind his chair. “Let’s try an experiment, shall we?” She pulled the chair out from under him, tumbling him to the floor.

  “Mallory!” The other cop was leaving his chair, moving toward her.

  She gave Riker a look to say, Back off or you’re next. Oren watched her walk around the side of the desk, and now she was advancing on him, hands clenched into fists. He managed to right his body to a sitting position. Working legs and rear end like an inchworm, he scooted back to the far corner of the room, tucking in his head to protect it from the rain of blows that was surely coming. She pursued him on cat’s feet, slow and quiet. One hand came from behind her back, the hand that held the axe. That hand was rising now, and he was crying.

  The other cop came up behind her and took the axe away. Riker pinned one of her arms behind her back and dragged her from the room and into the outer office. The door was slightly ajar. Oren watched the other cop slam Mallory’s body up against the wall as he yelled at her.

  “I can’t trust you anymore, Mallory!” Riker reached inside her blazer and took the gun. “You know, you were right. Watt didn’t do it.” He slapped her face. “But you’ve snapped, kid. You’re a loose cannon now.”

  Suddenly, it was Riker’s turn to be surprised. He was being lifted bodily off the ground, and then he was flying toward the couch, landing there in a tangle of arms and legs. He looked up to see Charles advancing on him in slow deliberate steps, as Mallory moved quickly in the other direction to shut the door to her office.

  Charles’s mouth was set in a grim tight line of anger, an expression Riker had never seen on the gentle giant’s face before. He knew that at any moment, this large man he dearly loved could take his head off with one blow, and by his face, Charles meant to do just that. Riker still held Mallory’s revolver in his hand, and Charles didn’t like the gun at all, not in this proximity to Mallory, and he showed no fear of it.

  “Stay back, Charles.” But Charles was still coming. Now Mallory had moved between them.