Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  She stood over Zappata’s prone body, braced like a prizefighter awaiting the payback that would surely follow when this man found his feet again. With one quick glance at Riker, she warned him away. Sergeant Bell smiled, and there were nods of approval all around the room. Markowitz’s daughter would not look to her partner or anyone else to finish off Zappata. By Mallory’s stance, he could even guess which knee she planned to smash into the fireman’s testicles.

  The man at her feet was conscious, but he would not or could not move. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling with an idiot gape of wide eyes and slack mouth.

  The clerk stopped typing. The uniforms were stealing glances at Mallory, the bomb at the center of the room. A telephone rang to jangle nerve endings, and then another phone went off. Papers shuffled, typing and conversation resumed. Officers walked to and fro, some stepping over Zappata’s body on the way to the door -life went on.

  Once the squad room door was closed and Jack Coffey was facing Mallory, she missed her opportunity to say, I told you so, but the sentiment was clear when she turned her back on him and walked down the hall toward the incident room.

  Sergeant Bell opened the stairwell door and leaned in, asking, ‘Hey, Lieutenant? You still wanna question Zappata?’

  ‘No, just roll him out on the sidewalk.’ Coffey planned to follow the lead of ten uniforms and the desk sergeant, to say that he had been looking elsewhere when the fireman tripped. A blue wall of cops was securely closed around Mallory. Not that Coffey worried about consequences. What were the odds that Zappata would file a police brutality suit against a girl? Mallory was going to get away with this. The lieutenant watched her disappear through the door at the end of the hall.

  ‘Maybe you noticed.’ Riker slumped down in a chair. ‘Your favorite suspect has a glass jaw.’ He pulled out a cigarette. ‘Now Sparrow was a big girl, and real good in a street fight – better than Mallory. There’s no way that twerp could’ve taken her down.’

  ‘Even with a razor in his hand?’

  ‘You think he’d know what to do with it? I don’t. We’re looking for somebody a lot scarier than Zappata.’

  Riker stood before the back wall of the incident room and cleared a space for a photograph from Natalie Homer’s actress portfolio. The hangings had finally been merged into one case. He pinned the woman’s smiling face to the cork alongside the effigy made of clothes. Now they hung together, Natalie and the scarecrow, mother and child.

  Detective Janos pinned a note near the newspaper account of a stabbed actress. ‘I talked to Stella Small’s agent and the doctor who treated her razor cut. They both say the assault happened on a crowded street. Now that works with what you got from Lieutenant Loman. All the hassling went on in crowded places.’

  ‘That pattern won’t hold up for Sparrow, not the week before the hanging.’ Riker walked over to the next wall and pulled a statement down, then handed it to Janos. ‘That’s the interview with the director of the play. Sparrow told him she was between day jobs, and she spent four days learning the lines of the play before she auditioned. Well, that just impressed the shit out of him. That’s why he gave her the part. And there were no open auditions the week before she died, so she wasn’t commuting on the subway at rush hour.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Janos, ‘but you know this whole town is one wall-to-wall crowd.’

  When the big man had left the room, Riker turned back to the wall and the job of merging the paperwork of all the cases. Janos was right. New York City was one big swarming -

  ‘Crowds of hookers,’ said Mallory.

  He jumped in his skin. She was standing right behind him.

  ‘If you see one hooker,’ she said, ‘you see eight or nine.’

  Riker shook his head. ‘No, Daisy said Sparrow was out of the life. Maybe the scarecrow marked her while she was – ’

  ‘Sparrow was still working the streets.’

  ‘And how do you know that, Mallory? Were you stalking her again?’ Only someone who knew her well would see the sign of damage in her face, her frozen stance. And now Riker added his words to the list of things he wished he had never said.

  Years ago, Sparrow had told him about being covertly followed and catching the young cop in the act from time to time. Mallory had the bizarre idea that she could shadow people unnoticed, that she could walk down any street, enter any room, without attracting stares. At Riker’s last meeting with Sparrow, the prostitute had turned to her own gaunt reflection in a store window, then covered her eyes with a bone-thin hand and said, ‘I know why Kathy’s following me. The kid thinks I’m dying – and she wants to watch.’ Two years had passed since then, and he should have known that Mallory had not stalked Sparrow recently, for she had not recognized the crime-scene address or the surgically altered face. He had wounded her for no good reason.

  Her voice was mechanical when she said, ‘I found the plastic surgeon. He does a lot of work on battered women. Sparrow’s new face wasn’t free, but he gave her an installment plan. That’s where all her money went. She was still turning tricks to pay for the operations and chemical peels. So Daisy lied to you. What a surprise, huh?’

  ‘But you don’t know – ’

  ‘Yes, I do. Those payments weren’t cheap, and hooking was the only trade Sparrow ever had. That and one pathetic acting gig. She never had a pimp, so she always hung with other whores, lots of them. Safety in numbers – in the crowd. Then you’ve got the summer conventions, the boat shows, car shows. Lots of men – hooker heaven – crowds.’

  ‘All right,’ said Riker. ‘I’ll find her hangout whores.’ Even in a coma, Sparrow still had the magic to string him along, and the price of being blindsided was very high. ‘I’ll chase down Tall Sally and talk to Daisy again.’ If one of them could point him to a likely street corner, he would do a raid. He would wait until it was too late for arraignments and bail. Most prostitutes were junkies who would shop their own mothers before they would spend eighteen hours in lockup.

  Deluthe pulled the new reports from the wall on Riker’s instructions to copy updated material for Charles Butler. He was careful to keep his distance from Mallory, and she had almost forgotten he was in the incident room, until she found another mistake – his.

  She stared at the front page of a newspaper pinned to the wall. The actress in the photo was a blond stabbing victim. Deluthe’s initials appeared on a brief companion note in longhand, a few lines for the actress’s name, her address and the words publicity stunt. But that would not square with the dripping blood reported in the article. ‘Where’s the follow-up interview for Stella Small?’

  Deluthe looked up from the Xerox machine. ‘I never got to talk to her. But I left a message on her answering machine.’

  Mallory searched the wall for other paperwork. ‘Where’s the statement from the midtown precinct?’

  ‘A police aide was supposed to fax it from the – ’

  ‘This article mentions an ambulance. Where’s the attending physician’s report?’ She turned to look at him. It was obvious that he had no answers. Still, she would not follow her first inclination, which involved a bit of violence. Mallory never lost control of her temper. The incident with the fireman did not count, not in her scheme of denial. She had not struck Zappata in anger. That blow had been the simple expedient of getting Riker through the day without a suspension. Yes, Riker was the one with the bad temper, or so she decided, founded on absolutely no proof of this defect in his character. And she, of course, had reined in her own temper, safely gauging her punch to harm no more than the fireman’s ego. She had hardly tapped him. Though Mallory had created this version of events only moments ago, she found no flaws in it.

  The whiteshield detective stood beside her, nonchalantly gazing at the photograph of a recently assaulted blond actress, who lived in the East Village. Could this woman have more precisely fit the profile of the next murder victim?

  Deluthe had his excuses ready now. ‘I was going to call the actress again
. But I had to put it off. Sergeant Riker – ’

  ‘That was a mistake.’ Mallory’s words all carried the same weight, and she kept her eyes on the board when she spoke to him. ‘Don’t phone her. Go to her apartment. Get a statement.’

  Still he lingered, and then she said, ‘Now, Deluthe. Before she dies.’

  Mallory followed in the wake of the running rookie, though at a slower pace. Her feet were dragging, and she was feeling other effects of lost sleep. She pulled out a cell phone and placed a call to the police station with jurisdiction on the actress’s assault.

  Ten minutes after making contact with a midtown sergeant, she was sitting in the squad room. Her head rested on the back of her chair, and her eyes closed as she waited for the man to locate paperwork on Stella Small’s stabbing. Finally, he returned to the phone, saying, ‘Sorry, Detective. I found the statement, but it won’t help. Our police aide, Forelli – she’s been doing creative writing on the job again.’

  One hand tightened around the phone, but Mallory’s voice was calm when she said, ‘Read it to me.’

  ‘All right. „Professional bimbo collides with camera. Damn every tall blonde ever born.“ You see the problem?’

  Mallory’s face was devoid of expression as she studied her right hand. The pain had ebbed away since decking Zappata. She flexed her fingers, then curled them tight, and her fist crashed down on the desk, bringing on fresh hurt and restored focus. And then, so that clarity would last a while longer, she smashed her fist into the wood a second time – crazy naked pain.

  CHAPTER 16

  A fence of iron bars protected a tiny courtyard and the red door to Stella Small’s apartment building. Mallory stood outside the gate and pushed the intercom buttons. When none of the residents responded, she pulled a small velvet wallet from the back pocket of her jeans, then unfolded it and perused her collection of lock picks. At the age often, she had stolen this set from her mentor Tall Sally, then lost it for a time – the rest of her childhood. The velvet wallet had turned up in the safety deposit box of the late Louis Markowitz. Sentimental man, he had not been able to throw away baby’s first toys.

  Before she had made her selection of tools to work the fence lock, Ronald Deluthe came through the red door and crossed the small courtyard to open the gate. ‘There was nobody home,’ he said, ‘so I left my card under her door.’

  ‘How do you know she’s not home?’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ he said, ‘there’s nobody in there. I checked.’

  Mallory pocketed the velvet wallet, though she did not believe that he would recognize burglar tools. ‘You checked. And how did you do that?’

  ‘Well, I banged on the door. No answer. I couldn’t hear anybody moving around inside. It didn’t sound like – ’

  ‘What does a hanging woman sound like, Deluthe?’

  ‘Right.’ He walked back to the red door and unlocked it.

  ‘Where did you get that key?’

  ‘The management company down the street.’ Deluthe held the door open for her, then slipped past her to lead the way up the stairs to the second floor. ‘They wouldn’t give me a key to her apartment – not without a warrant.’ He stopped at the door to 2B. ‘This is it. You’re sure it’s legal to go in there?’

  ‘Yes, if we believe she’s dying.’ Mallory did not appreciate having to repeat a lesson that he should have learned at the police academy. Deluthe had obviously not excelled in academics. So far, in every way, the son-in-law of the deputy commissioner was a mediocre candidate for the NYPD Detective Bureau.

  He motioned for her to move away from the door. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

  Yeah, right.

  Mallory stood to one side, arms folded.

  Apparently, Deluthe had learned nothing on the subject of locked doors either. Putting all his might behind his right foot, he kicked the door dead center, and, of course, the locks held. There was not even a dent on the heavy metal surface. Mallory decided that some lessons should be learned the hard way, and so she waited patiently as he made a second attempt to break his foot, then asked, ‘Are you done?’

  It was gratifying to see him limp as he backed away from the door. She pulled out the velvet wallet, selected two pieces of metal and worked close to the door, blocking Deluthe’s view. First she opened the top lock, the one reputed to be pick-proof.

  He edged around to one side of her, trying to see. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m using a bobby pin,’ said Mallory, who owned no hair pins. ‘I always carry one for emergencies.’ And now she was done.

  Like most New Yorkers, Stella Small had not bothered with the other two locks. The knob turned easily, and the door opened on to a room of cheap furniture and cheaper clothes strewn about amid the general clutter of dirty dishes and an unmade bed. A couch cushion lay on the floor, half covering a copy of Backstage.

  ‘Looks like she’s been robbed,’ said Deluthe.

  Mallory shook her head. She recognized Riker’s modus operandi in this mess. ‘Stella was only looking for something to wear.’ In Riker’s case, he would have been hunting for the wardrobe item with the fewest stains and cigarette burns.

  ‘No corpse hanging from the ceiling.’ Deluthe looked up at the light fixture and smiled. ‘I told you she wasn’t home.’ A pale blue garment lay in a heap on the floor – in plain sight, yet he did not find this at all interesting.

  ‘That woman you guys were chasing,’ said Mallory. ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘A light blue suit,’ said Deluthe. And now he noticed the material on the floor. Sheepish, he picked up the blue blazer and unfolded it to display an X on the back.

  ‘Stella Small is the next victim,’ Mallory said, believing that this needed to be spelled out for him. She took the suit jacket from his hands and checked the label of a very respectable designer. The lines were good and so was the material. She walked among the piles of clothing and hangers on the floor. With an eye for what was out of date, she could tell that most or all of the wardrobe was secondhand. Yet there was an innate sense of style in a few good pieces of vintage clothing. The ruined blue suit was the best of the lot. Though Mallory’s blazers were all tailor made, she pronounced this one excellent. A cash receipt in the pocket bore out her suspicion of a discount house, a liquidator of unsold designer stock.

  A pile of unopened letters lay on a table near the door. The loose stack was labeled with a yellow Post-it that bore the words hate mail – all bills and none of them paid. Mallory opened the table drawer and hunted among the contents till she found a checkbook. All the actress had listed in the register were check recipients – no amounts, no running balance, and none of the checkbook entries were for credit card companies. So the woman was flat broke and would not be doing any more shopping today.

  Mallory turned to the window on the street. It cost money just to walk out the door in this town. The impoverished actress would probably be home soon. ‘Deluthe, stay here and wait for Stella. I don’t care if it takes all day – all night. You got that?’

  Given his choice of interview rooms, Riker had selected the lockup, the smallest space in Special Crimes Unit. The walls were brownish yellow, and it had taken years of cigarette smoke and the projectile vomit of junkies to produce this special patina. Half the room was taken up by a flimsy coop of chain-link steel and wood. The door of this cage stood open, as an invitation and a threat to the tallest platinum blonde in New York City.

  The transsexual sat on a metal folding chair and knocked knees on the underside of the table. ‘Where have you been, man? I’ve got a date tonight.’

  Riker closed the door behind him – slowly – and glanced at his watch. ‘This shouldn’t take long, Sal. Tell you what. If you’re in a rush, we can do it tomorrow. Suppose I have a police car pick you up at the store on your lunch hour?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Now that’s a favor and a half. No thanks.’ Tall Sally was staring at the clock on the wall and fidgeting with brassiere straps and flyaway str
ands of hair. ‘I already talked to that other cop. The blonde with the Armani sunglasses.’ And now, the ex-prostitute, ex-male, ex-thief forgot the ladylike facade. ‘Armani. Tell me that bitch ain’t on the take.’

  ‘I know what you told that detective.’ Riker dropped an old folder on the table. ‘And I know you lied.’ He sat down and put his feet up on the table in the posture of a man who had all the time in the world. ‘Let’s talk about Sparrow. Or, if you like, we can talk about old times.’ Riker turned the folder around so that Sal could read the name of the subject in capital letters, frankie delight. ‘It’s been fifteen years, but his murder is still an open case, and I can put you on the scene.’

  Score.

  The transsexual was backing up while sitting in a chair, all four metal legs scraping the floor. ‘I had nothing to do with it! Frankie was seriously crazy. Must’ve been a hundred whores lined up to kill that little bastard.’

  ‘You’re probably wondering how I know you were with him the night he died.’ Now that Tall Sally had decamped from the male gender and joined the ladies, Riker was the only man alive who knew that Frankie Delight was the corpse found in the ashes of a fire. ‘There’s no statute of limitations, Sal. Murder never goes away.’

  ‘If Sparrow says I’m the one that knifed him, she’s a liar.’

  Frankie Delight, known to the medical examiner as John Doe, had indeed been killed with a knife. Sal was reaffirming a long-held belief that criminals as a class were stupid to the bone.

  ‘Now that’s another problem,’ said Riker. ‘Sparrow got stabbed the same night Frankie died.’ He opened the folder and scanned the four sheets of paperwork necessary to requisition an electric pencil-sharpener. ‘Here’s a statement from the ambulance driver. He was heading for the scene when he saw a seven-foot-tall blonde hightailing it down the street.’ That was actually true. However, fifteen years ago, Riker had been the only one to hear that statement, and he had never written it down. ‘So, Sal, can you – ’