Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  How had they recognized her?

  As a little girl, she had not seen the obvious answer in her own intense green eyes and a face that was painfully beautiful – unforgettable. The homeless child had passed by a hundred mirrors in this department store, but failed to notice her own reflection in any of them. It had been a shock to discover that sales clerks could see her.

  One day, the child had attempted to solve this old puzzle, deciding that unwashed clothing had made her stand out from the crowd. She had taken more care with her wardrobe, donning freshly stolen jeans before setting out for Herald Square. Her dirty hair had been swept up under a baseball cap, the better to blend with cleaner shoppers. And the little girl had added one more touch to her disguise, a pair of wildly expensive designer sunglasses with real gold frames – which no one in that middle-class throng could possibly afford.

  And then she had felt truly invisible.

  Fifteen years later, Detective Mallory had upgraded to even more expensive sunglasses, and the sales people had also changed.

  She scanned the unfamiliar faces as she passed the counters, hunting a clerk who was seven-feet tall with long platinum-blond hair. Apparently, staid old Macy’s had relaxed the hiring policy. Or perhaps Tall Sally had convinced them that a job in their store was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream – and this was true. She found the transvestite working behind a cosmetics counter. Of course. Now Sal could steal all the makeup in the world, and without the assistance of small children. Voice jacked up to a high falsetto, the sales clerk said, ‘May I help you, miss?’

  Don’t you know me, Sal?

  No, there was no sign of recognition in the heavily painted gray eyes. Mallory held up her gold shield and ID. ‘This is about Sparrow.’

  ‘Put that away.’ Tall Sally’s voice dropped into a deeper, more masculine register. ‘Why’re you guys hassling me? I see my parole officer every damn week.’

  Mallory lowered her badge. ‘Does Macy’s know about your rapsheet?… No?’ What a surprise. Sal had lied on the job application, failing to mention convictions for grand theft and corrupting the morals of minor children. Mallory laid her leather folder on the counter, keeping the badge in plain sight. Sal’s eyes were riveted to the detective’s gold shield, regarding it as a bomb. ‘Sparrow used to work with you. Does that help?’

  ‘It’s a big store, honey. What department did she work in? Can’t say I recall the name.’

  What about me, Sal? Remember running out on me?

  Aloud, Mallory said, ‘You and Sparrow were booked for prostitution in the same raids. You both gave the same street corner as your employment address. Don’t even try to jerk me around.’

  ‘Well, back in those days, I knew a lot of whores. You can’t expect me to remember every – ’

  ‘Does Macy’s personnel director know that you’re a man?’

  ‘I’m the real deal, Detective.’ Sal thrust out a chest of formidable breasts. ‘In all my parts, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Sex change?’

  Tall Sally nodded.

  The parole officer had not mentioned this, and Mallory knew the thief had been incarcerated in an all-male facility. The surgery must have been recent. ‘Expensive operation. You didn’t get that kind of money working in a prison laundry. Doing your own stealing these days? Or do you still use little kids?’

  ‘I had some money saved.’

  In other words, Sal had stolen a lot of money. But Mallory had a vivid memory of Sal holding a set of lock picks just beyond the reach of a child and making threats, saying, ‘Kid, if you get caught, forget my name, or I’ll mess you up real bad.’ Ten-year-old Kathy Mallory had snatched Sal’s picks, then walked up to a delivery truck and opened the rear doors in record time. The student had surpassed the master.

  Remember leaving me behind?

  As always, the drag queen had been standing a safe distance away while Kathy had done the robbery alone, a little girl with puny arms struggling to unload VCRs into a grocery cart. At the first sight of a police car, Tall Sally had climbed into a station wagon, obeying all the laws and traffic lights while driving away and abandoning the child.

  Two uniformed officers had seen Kathy standing just inside the open doors of the delivery truck – nowhere to hide, no way to run. The small thief had walked to the edge of the truckbed, raised one thin white hand and waved at the policemen. Big smile. Grinning, they had waved back, and their car had rolled on by.

  All these years later, Tall Sally did not recognize the child all grown up and still holding a grudge.

  ‘So it’s just a coincidence,’ said Mallory. ‘You get a vagina installed about the same time Sparrow gets a new nose.’

  ‘That junkie whore got her nose fixed?’ Tall Sally’s voice had shifted back to fluttery high notes, for this was girl talk. ‘So tell me, how’s it look?’

  And now Mallory could believe that the two prostitutes had no recent history. Tall Sally had always been an inept liar, embroidering details to death and advertising every falsehood – but not this time. There was no exaggerated protest. Sal had never seen Sparrow’s new face.

  Along Avenue A, half-naked men with jackhammers ripped up the street, choking the air with particles and shaking the pavement in front of the bookshop. Riker had the taste of dust in his mouth as he stood before the display window and perused the titles of worn paperbacks. This morning, he planned to be the first customer.

  John Warwick was walking toward him now, thin and wasted, moving slowly, doing his old man’s shuffle. He bowed his white head, unwilling to meet the eyes of passing pedestrians. And now he paused at the door to his shop.

  ‘Hey, John. Remember me?’

  The bookseller turned his face to the window and spoke to the detective’s reflection in the glass. ‘Riker. What’s it been, fourteen, fifteen years?’

  ‘Sounds right. I came about that old western you tracked down for Lou Markowitz.’

  The bookseller drew back, as if he feared that Riker would strike him. ‘It’s not for sale. You can’t have it. It belongs to the girl.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Riker lied. ‘And you know that. Markowitz told you – ’

  ‘No.’ Warwick shook his head. After fifteen years, he still believed that a ten-year-old Kathy had merely been lost. How close to the truth he had come. And he had sussed out his truth aided only by his paranoid distrust of police.

  ‘So you still have the western?’ This was impossible, for Riker had found that book in Sparrow’s apartment, but evidently Warwick had lost track of the shop’s inventory.

  ‘Of course I have it. You think I’d give it to anyone but her?’

  ‘It’s over, John. The kid’s never coming back.’ And now he posed a question disguised as frustration. ‘When was the last time you heard anyone ask for that book?’

  ‘Every day for the past two weeks.’ Warwick winced. ‘This woman – a tall devil with blond hair.’

  Close, but Riker knew that the man was not describing Mallory.

  ‘Sparrow,’ said Warwick. ‘That was her name. She wrote it down on a piece of paper – her phone number too. I threw it away.’

  ‘But before this woman came along? Nothing, right? Not a whisper in fifteen years. Doesn’t that tell you – ’

  ‘The child is alive,’ said Warwick. ‘You couldn’t catch her. No one could.’ His thin arms were rising as if to defend himself from a blow. ‘And you can’t have her book.’

  Riker wondered how he would phrase questions about Sparrow. He needed a time line for the last days of her life, but he could not interrogate this man in the name of the law. Given Warwick’s psychiatric history, that would mean knocking at the door of a very scary closet. ‘John? Can we sit down and talk about this? Just for a few minutes. Then I’ll go away.’

  Warwick pulled out a gray linen handkerchief. He removed his glasses and made a show of cleaning them while casting about for something to say. ‘Markowitz put me through a lot of trouble tracking down that n
ovel. He told me to – ’

  ‘She’s dead. She can’t come back for the book.’

  ‘You can’t have it!’ Warwick shouted, then shrank into himself, hunching his shoulders and furtively looking from side to side, as if he believed those loud words had come from someone else. He continued in a hoarse whisper, ‘Because she might come back.’

  John Warwick was a member of Lou Markowitz’s choir. He would never give up his vigil, but the threat this posed to Kathy Mallory was very small. Riker was satisfied that this man had never known her name. In the worst possible case, the bookseller might meet her on the street one day and recognize the remarkable green eyes. Or was he still waiting for a ten-year-old child?

  Riker stepped back to reappraise this fragile little person, who had always teetered on the edge of sanity. The threat of any authority figure terrified John Warwick. Yet he was making a stand against the police, though he trembled to do it. And this was bravery in any man’s philosophy.

  Please. Don’t make me do this the hard way.

  The detective sat down on an iron bench in front of the store. Now that he no longer loomed over Warwick, the smaller man relaxed. ‘I can’t make you talk to me,’ said Riker. ‘And I can’t go away until you do.’ He would not risk another cop canvassing this street and stumbling on to a connection between Sparrow and a green-eyed child who loved westerns. He looked down at the sidewalk and whispered, ‘Please.’

  Shaking his head, Warwick unlocked the door to his shop and shuffled inside. Two minutes later, he was out on the street again, eyes wild and close to tears. ‘She stole it! Yesterday that book was on the shelf behind my register, and now it’s gone. That woman stole it when my back was turned.’

  Playing the public servant, Riker pulled out his notebook to take down a citizen’s statement on a theft. ‘You said her name was Sparrow? So she was in your store yesterday.’

  ‘And every day for two weeks. Yesterday she was the last customer. It was just a few minutes before I closed the store. So I know she’s the one who stole it. You write that down.’

  Riker glanced at the hours posted in the shop window. Poor Sparrow. She had wanted the book so badly, but there had been no time to read it before she was mutilated and hung.

  CHAPTER 4

  The sunlit room was racked with gleaming copper-bottom pots, more spices than the stores carried and every cooking utensil known to God and Cordon Bleu – and even here, antiques prevailed. Charles Butler lit a flame under an old-fashioned percolator. He was dressed in yesterday’s shirt and jeans, and his eyes were sore from working through the night on Mallory’s account, though he would never get credit for mending her present, a waterlogged paperback western. Riker had never understood this man’s one-sided infatuation with her. Charles was hardly a virgin in the area of abnormal psychology, and he must know what she was.

  The detective sat at the kitchen table and opened the restored book to the page with the inscription. Apart from Lou Markowitz’s lost signature, there was no sign of damage, and he toyed with the idea of actually giving it to Mallory. ‘Good as new. It’s magic’

  ‘The paper was very brittle.’ Charles set the table with coffee cups and forks. ‘I had to treat it with a matte polymer so the pages wouldn’t crumble. Of course, that would’ve destroyed the value of a rare book. So I did some research first.’

  Apparently, this was not a joke. Riker glanced at the stack of volumes on the kitchen table, all reference materials of an avid book collector. Among the titles he found, The Role of the Western in American Literature. ‘The book is worthless, right?’

  ‘Yes, sorry.’ Charles laid the old receipt from Warwick’s Used Books on the table alongside the paperback. ‘I can’t imagine why Louis paid so much money for it.’

  ‘I told you they were hard to find. It took a while to track this one down.’

  ‘Ah, he hired a book tracer. I use one from time to time. Well, that explains it.’ Charles leaned down and pointed to the faded date on the receipt. ‘Wasn’t that the year Louis took Mallory into foster care?’

  Riker felt queer and cold, the sensation of a misstep on a ladder. There were no regrets over stealing the book; he would risk his badge to do it again. No, his great mistake was made in that sentimental moment when he had decided not to destroy it. The second error was bringing the book to the man who loved Mallory. ‘Hey, I really appreciate all the time you – ’

  ‘It’s not like I had something better to do.’ Charles set two plates of pie on the table, then turned down the flame on the stovetop. ‘I don’t think I care for summer vacations. Oh, I almost forgot. I found a list of Jake Swain’s work. Did you know he wrote eleven other books?’

  ‘Yeah, I knew that.’ Riker wondered how much of the truth he could tell before the whole mess came unraveling.

  His host poured coffee into the cups, then sat down on the other side of the table. ‘Interesting that Louis would go to so much trouble.’ His tone was merely conversational and curious, not suspicious – not yet. ‘If he hired a tracer, he must’ve wanted it very badly.’

  Of course, this would be confusing. Charles and the late Louis Markowitz had shared a reading list of more respectable authors. Perhaps he was hoping that this bad novel was some inside joke between Mallory and her foster father.

  ‘No tracer,’ said Riker. ‘The bookshop owner found it for him.’ He sipped his coffee and tasted bile rising in his throat.

  ‘So – how did you know about Swain’s other books? They’re very obscure. Did Louis mention them?’

  ‘Yeah, Lou read ‘em all.’ Riker knew he would not be believed, though he was telling the truth.

  Charles was incredulous. ‘Why would he read books – like – that!’ His gigantic vocabulary had failed him. He could find no better euphemism for god-awful crap.

  Riker jabbed at the pie with his fork. ‘Because it’s great literature?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s quite it. May I?’ Charles reached for the western, then opened it to a page near the end. ‘In the last chapter, there’s a rather strange gunfight.’

  There was no need of the book to refresh his memory. Charles could read as fast as most people turned pages, and he retained everything in eidetic memory. Yet he kept the small conventions of normalcy – always trying to pass for a less gifted man, less of a freak. Riker wondered if this was partly his own fault. Perhaps he should stop referring to the brilliant clients of Butler and Company as Martians. He sometimes forgot that this man hailed from that same far planet.

  ‘Here it is.’ Charles looked up from the page. ‘First, a gun shoots a red flame like a blowtorch. Then the crowd lets out a cheer. Oh, and the mayor has a few words to say. And then, at the other end of Main Street, an aging dance-hall girl faints when she actually hears the sound of the bullet entering the opponent’s body.’ He looked up at his guest. ‘Now, given all the action and conversation between firing the shot and hitting the target, I estimate that the bullet took six minutes to travel down the street.’ He closed the book, pronouncing it ‘Wildly implausible.’

  Riker gave him a slow grin. ‘You only say that ‘cause you never saw Lou on the firing range. A man could wait around all day for one of his bullets to hit a target.’ He sipped his coffee, stalling for time, hunting for words that would not sound like lies. ‘There were usually two gunfights in every book.’ And now he remembered the name of the gunslinger. ‘Now I never read this particular book, but I’m guessing that last shoot-out was between Sheriff Peety and the Wichita Kid.’ He shook his head slowly in mock sadness. ‘So that’s how it ends.’

  ‘You read them, too?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe half of ‘em.’ And he had read the books under duress. Lou Markowitz had wanted a second opinion, for he had never understood why a ten-year-old girl could be so attached to the trashy westerns.

  Charles was still skeptical, crediting the detective with better taste in reading material if not suits and ties. And though it would not occur to him to ca
ll a friend on a he, he clearly required more proof.

  ‘In the first book,’ said Riker, ‘Sheriff Peety watches this little boy grow up in a sleepy burg called Franktown, Kansas. The kid and his mother rode in one day on the Wichita stagecoach.’ More of the story was coming back to him now, and his appetite had returned. ‘Well, the kid follows the sheriff around like a little shadow. In fact, Peety was the one who started calling him the Wichita Kid. It made the boy sound like a gunslinger. Just a joke, see? But the boy loved that name. It really made him strut.’

  By the time the Wichita Kid had obtained his first six-shooter, ‘a rusty old gun he bought for a dollar,’ Riker was done with his pie. ‘It was the kid’s birthday. He’d just turned fifteen. And that morning, the sheriff wakes up to gunfire. So he comes runnin’ out to the street.’ The detective looked down at the floor and made Charles see a body there. The stranger in Franktown was an unarmed cowboy lying on his back in the blood and the dust.

  ‘His unblinking eyes stared into the sun.’ Riker surprised himself with this hokey line quoted verbatim. ‘And guess who’s standing over the body?’ His hand formed an imaginary gun, and he blew smoke from one finger. ‘Looks real bad for the Wichita Kid.’

  The situation worsened when the boy stole a horse and rode out of town. In the next chapter, the lawman was saddling a black stallion. ‘He’s riding out after the kid.’ And Riker had finished his coffee. ‘Sheriff Peety can hardly see. He’s got tears in his eyes. He loves the boy. But Wichita killed a man, and he’s gotta hang for that. At the end of the story, the sheriff runs the kid off a canyon wall. It’s a long drop, hundreds of feet to the bottom of that canyon. But Peety’s still tracking the boy in the book after that one.’

  ‘So it’s episodic. A series with the same characters.’