Confidential?” Mallory was outraged—genuinely this time—as Charles dragged her by the arm, and they moved inexorably down the hall to the elevator. “You don’t have patients!” she yelled. “No practice! You can’t claim protected status!”
“Yes, I can.” Unperturbed, he pushed the button to bring the elevator. He was so calm, as if forcibly dragging women around were an everyday thing with him. He would not release her arm while he waited for the elevator doors to open. “Nedda’s my patient,” he said. “Anything she tells me is in confidence.”
“You’re making this up,” said Mallory. “You don’t treat people. That’s not your line of work.”
“It is today.” His head lifted to watch the lights of the elevator. “I think it might be my true calling. Who knows?”
“No, it’s just a stunt. You’re holding out on me—obstructing justice.”
“Well, that’s too bad.”
Something had gone very wrong with her day. Charles was turning against her, and Nedda Winter was responsible for this. Yes, it was Nedda’s fault, and he would see that once she had time to explain, to make up some new lie that he could believe in.
Mallory’s anger shut down, as if a switch had been thrown, a circuit closed. Charles’s hand was lightly covering hers, enclosing it in warmth. His grip tightened as he pulled her into the elevator with him, and she did not mind this. Human contact, flesh to flesh, was so rare in her life. She did nothing to encourage it, but when it came her way, her eyes closed to the slits of a purring cat. The elevator hummed with mechanical clicks and whirrs—her own song of the machine.
And the doors opened too soon.
He pulled her along toward the street door, maybe heading for a quiet café down the block. They would talk, and he—
“Next time you drop by the office,” he said, “you might give me a call first. I can’t have you running into my patient in the hallway.” He let go of her hand, opened the door and put her out in the street—like a cat.
The door slammed.
She looked upward at the sky, and her lips parted with nothing to say. A car pulled up behind her and Riker derailed her thoughts of abandonment.
“Hey, Mallory!”
She turned to see a police cruiser with a uniform behind the wheel and her partner at the rear window, grinning, saying, “It’s a raid, kid. You wanna come?” He opened the door in invitation, then waved a folded sheet of paper. “I got a warrant for the Winter family trust—all the documents we can carry.”
Behind the cruiser were a police van and two more vehicles driven by uniforms. The cherry lights were all spinning, engines revving up to tell her that it was time to take this road show uptown; they had lawyers to menace, files to pillage, a mess to make, real carnage—what a party.
Nedda was standing at the stove, adjusting the gas flame, when Charles walked into the kitchen, lured there by the aroma of Colombian coffee.
“You know,” he said, “you and I might be the only people in town who know how to brew coffee in a percolator.”
“I’ve never made it any other way.”
And with those words, this woman, thirty years his senior, had won his heart. He had not lied to Mallory. Nedda would be his patient, and every fear of subsequent damage to himself was put aside. She had inspired him to be a braver man—a better one. And so he picked up their cups and led her back to the library. Over the next hour, her eyes brimmed with tears, and he felt the anguish. He also took over her sense of isolation, and her great fear of being alone. And when she told him of her plan to find a place of her own, he could not bear the idea. He was drowning in Nedda’s loneliness.
Tell me how you got that warrant,” Mallory demanded. “I went to three judges, and they stopped short of spitting on me.”
“You didn’t pick the right one, kid.” And, fortunately, Riker was not a graduate of the Kathy Mallory Charm School. He turned to watch the cityscape flying by his window, then looked back to see his own personal caravan cutting through traffic and ignoring red lights. “I’ve been saving this judge for a rainy day. He used to be a civil-rights attorney. Loves the poor, hates the rich. God bless his liberal, left-wing ass.”
No, I don’t think so, said the look on her face—smart kid—there had to be more to it than that.
“This judge,” said Riker, “he’s a real old fart. Should’ve retired years ago. He remembers when this town was turned upside down looking for Red Winter, and he’s been waiting fifty-eight years for the end of that story.”
“You told him who Nedda was?” Unspoken were the words You idiot.
Riker let this slide, still flush with the win of his warrant. He had pulled off the perfect marriage of Mallory’s love for money motives and his own bone-deep distrust of lawyers.
“Yeah, I told him everything—laid it all out, but don’t worry. This judge hates reporters more than cops. Now go back to the other day at the Harvard Club. You told Sheldon Smyth his daughter’s life was on the line, and he still wouldn’t give you a look at those trust documents. That was cold. Lawyers are almost human when it comes to their kids, but not old Sheldon. So today I got him smashed in his own backyard. Turns out he’s a flyweight drinker. I sort of accused his law firm of embezzlement. Now that should’ve pissed him off, right? But no. Drunk as he is, he says to me, ‘No warrant, no documents.’ And that’s when I know he’s got something to hide.”
Mallory’s eyes rolled up, searching the skies outside her window for winged pigs, flights of angels and other miracles. “And the judge thought that was enough for a warrant?”
“No. Can I finish my story now? So I’m in the judge’s chambers when he phones Sheldon Smyth. Figures it’s just a misunderstanding. Maybe we can settle this without a warrant. Well, the lawyer’s still drunk when he takes the judge’s call. His Honor never gets out a word about the trust fund. Something on Smyth’s end of the phone pissed him off. The judge says to him, ‘Suck your what?’ And that was enough for a warrant.”
I recommend more rest,” said Charles. “A nap in the middle of the day is the world’s most underrated pleasure.”
“You’re right. I haven’t had much sleep lately.” Nedda lifted the pan so he could admire the golden brown texture of her omelet. “And tonight I plan to have it out with Cleo and Lionel.”
“Why the rush?”
“It’s time—long past time.” She turned off the stove burner and carried her masterpiece to the kitchen table. “And I’ll have a better chance with them if we’re not sharing the same roof.”
Ah, back to her plan for apartment hunting—one of the most stressful activities in New York City. Nedda would fail to thrive in any solitary existence, for profound depression would surely follow such a move.
“Well, fortunately, I own this apartment building.” He pulled down plates from the cupboard and laid them out on the kitchen table. “And I have a vacant apartment. I think you’d like it here. But take my guest room for a few days. If things work out well with Cleo and Lionel, you may not need a place of your own.”
When they were seated, Charles agreed that, yes, steak sauce was an interesting accent for the omelet. And Nedda asked if he had forgiven Bitty for that little shrine in her bedroom. “My favorite is the shot of your birthday party. You must’ve made quite an impression on her that day.”
“Yes and no,” said Charles. “Bitty would’ve been ten when that picture was taken. She has obvious issues with self-esteem. So she picked the one person she might approach without fear of ridicule, someone so foolish in her eyes that she could be certain I wouldn’t reject her. Then, so as not to risk this certainty, she never even spoke to me that day. If she had, I would’ve remembered her.”
“Do you mind another theory? You were taller than all the other children in that picture. And even then you had the body of a young god. I think my niece latched onto the idea of you as a protector. And then, on the worst night of her life, you showed up. That must have been quite magical for Bitty. I saw
you talking to her. It did her a world of good—your kindness. You were her hero that night. And this morning, you were mine.”
Before therapist and patient could complete this colossal blunder of trading places, Charles picked up his napkin and laid it on the table as his white flag.
Bitty Smyth had retired to her room. Hours had passed by since she had spoken to her aunt on the phone. The cockatiel entertained her by walking about in circles and reciting his entire vocabulary.
Rags only knew one word. “What?”
The bird had learned this from her. She rarely slept through the night, always rising at some point, sitting up in bed to say that word with each sound that roused her from sleep.
She knelt down beside the cage on the floor and filled the bird’s water cup. After pouring him some fresh seed, she realized that she was also hungry. Sensing no one at home anymore, Bitty ventured out to forage for food. She made her way down the stairs, creaking in all the places that made her believe the staircase was always only minutes from falling down.
The front door opened. Bitty grabbed the rail and held it white-knuckle tight.
Oh, it was only the housekeeper with her grocery bags. What was her name? There had been so many of them, none of them lasting for more than a week or so. The new hire tapped in the code to disable the security alarm, then proceeded across the wide front room.
Bitty called down her late lunch order. “And could you bring it upstairs?”
The woman scowled at this with good reason. It was a chore and a half just to climb to the second floor, and she had already made this trip too many times in one day.
Of late, Bitty had developed a backbone, and now she insisted that a meal be delivered to her room. She had no plans to be caught downstairs when her mother and uncle came home.
Retreating to her room, she passed the time with the old family albums retrieved from storage in the north attic. The bird clawed his way up the weave of the bedspread to join her in examining the photographs, tasting the pages and tearing off the corners. Bitty absently stroked the comb of yellow feathers, and Rags’s tiny eyes soon closed in sleep.
The photography had ended the year of the massacre. In the yearly portraits of the Winters and their brood, all the children were gathered on Nedda’s side of the photograph. Cleo clung to her eldest sister, and Lionel played with her hair. The others were seated at Nedda’s feet.
A loud knock on the door awakened the bird with a start. “What?” Rags flapped his useless wings and dropped off the edge of the bed, hitting the floor with a dull thud. “What?”
Bitty rose to answer the heavy-handed knocking. This could only be the resentful housekeeper with her lunch. Upon opening the door, she was faced with her worst fear for the evening. Her mother pushed past her to enter the room.
“Why is Nedda staying with Dr. Butler? Tell me,” Cleo demanded. “What happened at that police station?”
“Don’t be difficult,” said Uncle Lionel, as he also entered into the bedroom uninvited.
“Aunt Nedda thought you didn’t want her here.”
Uncle Lionel was not surprised by this. “Did Neddy say why?”
“No, but she’ll be back around dinnertime.”
“I know that,” said Lionel, holding up a folded piece of paper. “The housekeeper took a message from her. She asked if we could both stay at home this evening. She wants to talk to us. Do you know what this is about?”
Behind her uncle’s back, the bird was climbing up the lace curtain, his claws leaving holes and tatters in his wake. He gained a perch on the curtain rod, then spread his wings, stepped off into thin air—and dropped like a stone. Bitty watched the stunned creature stumble about in a circle. Lame for decades, old Rags persisted in the idea that he could fly.
Well, this was fun.
Riker counted eight men and women, the partners of this venerable law firm, and they were almost gasping for breath. The air was not so rarified on the lower floor of their holdings. In this nether region, accountants and clerks were caged alongside a storage area for files that dated back a hundred and twenty years. Riker doubted that the attorneys had ever visited this land of the underpaid, though it was only three flights below their penthouse offices.
The firm was obviously a family business, for he could see traces of Sheldon Smyth among the assembled faces, a replicated nose or chin, a pair of snake eyes here and there. Their ages ranged from the twenties to the sixties, and yet they had lined up like children in a fire drill, all eyes on the drill instructor.
His partner had quickly adjusted all of their attitudes, and Mallory had done this without the necessity of shooting one of them as an example to the rest. They listened to her very attentively as she recited the parameters of the warrant. Two of the lawyers seemed on the verge of projectile vomit. Paul Smyth, son of Sheldon, went pale when Mallory said, “The seizure of documents covers every file even remotely connected to the Winter family trust. That includes the firm’s financials.” She tossed this last phrase off as an afterthought, leaving them all with the impression that it was true, and she was not expecting any arguments.
Riker held his breath for a moment, then realized that she was going to get away with this. Amazing. These people all held their own copies of exactly the same warrant.
The two detectives watched in silence while the storage room was gutted by uniformed officers carrying cartons, stacking them in the waiting freight elevator and returning for more. Not satisfied with this staggering plunder of hard copy, Mallory slipped her own disc into the firm’s computer, startling the partners anew, saying, “This is federal software. It’s coded to pick up only transactions for the Winter family. Everything else is disregarded as inviolate material.”
Riker knew she was lying, but the eldest lawyer, no doubt left behind by the age of computers, was actually nodding, as if he had heard of this magical, mythical software of hers. The others, perhaps a little more savvy, were hemorrhaging as she copied their entire database. This was a major gamble. Riker knew one elderly judge who would have a heart attack if Mallory’s fairy tale on the financials ever got back to him.
And now Sheldon Smyth had arrived. His white head poked out of an elevator, uncertain of his bearings in this strange new world of badly dressed underlings. The knot of his tie was crooked, and he weaved a bit as he sauntered out, puffing up his chest in a prelude to voicing something lawyerly.
Riker put up one hand to ward off Mallory, then picked up the warrant and flashed it. Faster than he could fire off a bullet, this had the effect of deflating the old man, who bent at the waist and plopped down in the nearest chair.
“It’s all going to come out.” Mallory’s eyes were cast down to the computer keyboard as she spoke to the old man. “If you want to cut a deal, now’s the time.” She raised her face and graced Sheldon Smyth with a smile designed to make him wet his pants. “I know what you did.”
It was not the petulant housekeeper, but Bitty’s mother who fetched the tray of food upstairs. “Here, eat something. We’ll discuss your aunt later on.”
Bitty had lost all interest in food, but her mother prodded her and stood over her until the plate was cleaned and the teacup emptied.
“I’m going to call your father. Sheldon will know what to do.”
Before the food could march back up Bitty’s throat, her mother lifted the tray and opened the door. “Lionel? Coming?”
Of course he was. Brother and sister went everywhere together. They were like twins joined by a shared brain. Uncle Lionel walked toward the door, then paused a moment to turn and stare at his niece. It was that look he usually gave to her mother while they were silently communing. He shook his head, unable to read Bitty’s thoughts. No, his niece was from some other planet.
Bitty called it Earth.
Outside the raised window sash, a siren was growing in volume. Rags rushed out of his cage, running across the floor and screaming in concert with the fire engine, believing it to be a giant bird
coming to mate with him and bear him away, to change his life and set him free.
Her bird was in love with a big red truck.
The siren faded off down the street. Rags fell silent. He walked back into his cage, tail dragging behind him. He tucked his head under one wing and squatted in a huddle of fluffed feathers. This was a sign of deep depression in Birdworld and Bitty’s world as well. She curled into a ball.
8
CHARLES BUTLER CRACKED THE DOOR TO HIS APARTment and watched the heavy foot traffic of policemen marching down the hall, their arms laden with boxes. Last in line, Riker set down his own carton to say “Hello,” and, “Sorry about the commotion. We got the trust documents.”
“So I see.”
“But we couldn’t cart them back to Special Crimes,” said Riker. “The boss would’ve freaked.”
Mallory walked by with a carton. She never turned her head in their direction, and Charles gave no indication that he had even seen her. He nodded his good-bye to Riker, then closed the door—and locked it. Riker heard the sound of a second deadbolt, and then a chain guard falling into place. And Mallory heard this, too. She turned back to the door, as if the sound of three locks might be a message just for her.
Trouble? Oh, absolutely.
Riker would never have believed that Charles Butler had the willpower to hold a grudge for six minutes, and that would be a feud with a total stranger. With Mallory, the poor bastard had no shot at all.
Until today.
The uniformed officers were making their escape to the elevator when Riker carried the last of the haul into Mallory’s private office at the back of Butler and Company. He set it down at her feet, saying, “What are the odds Charles is gonna give us a hand with this? You got another speed reader in your pocket?”
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