Crime School

by Carol O’Connell

  ‘Frankie Delight?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Riker wondered what else Charles had pieced together with the help of the Hooker Book Salon. ‘Frankie was gonna double-cross Sparrow. So he would’ve been the first one to draw a knife.’

  ‘The one that made that huge scar in Sparrow’s side?’

  Riker nodded. ‘And she won that fight, but she left her knife behind. I’ve got a witness who saw it buried in Frankie Delight’s dead body. An ambulance picked up Sparrow three blocks away.’

  ‘And Kathy?’

  ‘She saw the whole thing. Another whore can place the kid in Sparrow’s hospital room the next day – one real tired little girl. And that’s when Kathy was sent back to the crime scene to get the murder weapon.’ This was the picture Riker wanted out of his head – that child pulling a knife from a corpse.

  ‘Lou and me, we’re in the car when we hear a call on the radio. A dispatcher’s sending all available units to investigate a puddle of blood on Avenue B. We would’ve blown it off, but then another call placed a little blond girl at the same address – following a blood trail into an empty building. We got there just in time to see the flames. That’s when Kathy came out the front door. One look at us and she runs back inside – back into the fire.’

  ‘But that’s not – ’

  ‘Not normal? No, you wouldn’t expect a kid to do that. But she was carrying a knife with Sparrow’s initial on the hilt and probably a good set of prints. If the kid was caught near Frankie’s body with the murder weapon, her favorite whore would go to jail.’

  ‘So she ran into a burning building, knowing she could die?’

  ‘Naw, we never figured that – not for a second. This kid had a world-class survival instinct. Lou figured she was heading for the roof, maybe counting on a fire escape.’

  ‘Could Kathy have staged her own death?’

  ‘That was one theory, and she was that smart. But there was no fire escape. That morning, the owner sold the iron for scrap. We tried to follow her into the building. Then the first explosion blew out the boards on the downstairs windows. Cans of kerosene and paint thinner were goin’ off like bombs. And now, there’s no way in, no way out.’ He recalled the open doorway as a wall of fire. Flames had boiled out of the ground-floor windows like the tail burners of a rocket. ‘I thought the building was gonna take off and fly away. The back door was boarded up. The firemen didn’t even try to break it down. All they could do was contain the blaze to one building.’

  Riker slapped his hand on the bar. ‘Bang, bang, bang! All the accelerants were blowing up in sympathetic explosions – all the way up to the top of the building. Then the roof went up in a ball of fire, and we knew the kid was dead… Well, I did.’ It had taken more than Armageddon to convince Lou Markowitz.

  ‘The fire marshal showed us the kid’s shoes – proof that she made it up to the roof. They were still laced, blown off her feet in the final blast. One shoe was clean, thrown clear. The other one burnt black. The arson team figured she was at the center of the last explosion, and they didn’t expect to find her in one piece.’

  ‘So Kathy was presumed dead?’

  ‘Well, they didn’t know her name. All they had was one of her books, half fried… and her shoes. Later, a snitch tied the western and the kid to Sparrow. Two cops showed up in Sparrow’s hospital room and told her that Kathy was dead.’

  ‘Except that she wasn’t.’ Charles ticked off the points on his fingers. ‘Boarded windows, no back door, no fire escape, no neighboring roof. How did she escape?’

  ‘Kathy wouldn’t tell. She never will. She knows it still drives me crazy. Damn kid never misses an opportunity to get even.’

  ‘With a concussion,’ said Charles, ‘she might not remember.’

  ‘But that won’t explain how she got off the roof alive. Who knows? Maybe she flew. That was Sparrow’s favorite theory.’

  ‘I like it. If a shoe can be thrown clear, why not a little girl? With something soft like garbage bags on another roof – ’

  ‘No, Charles, we checked. No soft landing. And remember, this building was an island – twenty feet to the next roof. We caught Kathy that same night – no cuts, no bruises, not a mark on her. If you think about it long enough, it’ll give you a headache.’

  ‘All right.’ Charles covered his eyes with one hand. ‘You thought she was dead, but that was the night you found her -which suggests that you were still looking for her.’

  ‘Right.’ Riker slapped the mahogany. ‘We were in this same bar, me and Lou.’ He looked up at the television set mounted on the wall. ‘Watching TV. The lead story was a little girl with green eyes who loved westerns. The kid was famous for two minutes on the news.’ And she would have gotten more air time if a city garbage strike had not stolen her thunder.

  ‘Suddenly the place gets real quiet. I turn to the door, and there’s Sparrow. Well, this is a cop bar, and she’s lookin’ every inch a hooker. Just begging for a twisted arm and a short flight through the front door. I tried to get rid of her. Junkies are always messing with your head, and Lou was in a bad way. I didn’t think he could take anymore. But now I see the blood leaking through her clothes and a hospital bracelet on her wrist.’

  ‘And that’s when you guessed she’d killed the drug dealer?’

  ‘No, they hadn’t even found his bones yet. It was the next day when they brought him in tagged for a John Doe. The autopsy turned up a thigh bone chipped twice by a blade. Dr Slope figured the knife cut an artery and it bled out. He even diagrammed the angle of the strike. That put Sparrow on her knees when she sank her knife into Frankie Delight. And it fit with the wound in Sparrow’s side. The shock would’ve brought her down.’

  ‘But Kathy was charged with the murder.’

  ‘Charles, you’re gettin’ ahead of the story. So we’re in the bar with Sparrow, and we wanna take her back to the hospital. But the whore won’t go. She’s sweatin’ and she’s got the shakes real bad. Lou figures she’s strung out from withdrawal pains. So he empties out his damn wallet. It was maybe eighty dollars, a fortune to a sick junkie. And he slides the money down the bar. Now Sparrow says, „Her name is Kathy, and I’m tellin’ you that kid is unnatural. She could be alive.“ And Lou says, „No, Sparrow – only if you believe in Superman comic books. Kathy was just a little girl… She didn’t fly away… She died.“‘

  Riker held up his glass and stared at the last drops of liquid gold. ‘There’s not much difference between me and a junkie. As long as I got my booze, I’m an okay guy. But take it away from me?’ He shook his head. ‘Much as I like you, Charles, I’d slit your throat for the next drink. With Sparrow it was heroin. Well, she’s too bloody to work the street. No money to score her next needle. She’s dope-sick, dying for a fix, but she pushes Lou’s money back across the bar and says, „You gotta find the kid. She might be hurt.’„

  ‘So she knew Kathy was alive.’

  ‘No, she didn’t. That’s the kicker. Sparrow was going on faith. And that’s what the whore was buying when she gave the money back. She had to make Lou believe in Kathy, too. Because the kid might be out there alone in the dark, maybe hurt real bad.’

  Riker drained his glass. ‘That night, Sparrow was more of a man than I was. Well, she’s got our attention. She says this drag queen commissioned the kid to steal parts off a Jaguar. Sparrow only found out ‘cause Kathy had to ask what a Jag was before she could rob one. Now this happened way before the dicks tell Sparrow the kid is dead. She’s still in the hospital and thinkin’ ahead to her next needle. She tells Kathy about this rich yuppie who trolls East Village clubs and whores every weekend. And he’s got a Jag. Well, it’s Saturday night. I’m three sheets to the wind when Lou grabs my arm. And off we go with Sparrow.’

  Three fools with absolute faith in comic-book heroes.

  Riker could still see Lou Markowitz driving through the wet streets at a crawl of ten miles an hour, haunting every place where they had ever seen Kathy, chased her and lost her. It wa
s insane to believe that the child had escaped from that fire. Yet they drove on through drizzling rain. ‘We knew she was dead, but we couldn’t stop looking for her. How crazy was that?’

  As if it were happening all over again, Riker watched his old friend tune the car radio. Rock ‘n’ roll did not suit him that night. Lou picked a station that played bluesy music from an earlier era. There were pauses between the sad notes and phrases, like a conversation with the sorry man behind the wheel. ‘And then we found the Jag. Lou pulls over to the curb and cuts the lights.’

  The three of them listened to a sweet ripple of ivory keys tapering off in the low notes. Three pairs of eyes were trained on the sports car parked across the street. Piano chords dropped into spaces of silence, like footsteps of a child. And then, as if Duke Ellington had orchestrated the moment – along came Kathy. The golden head was bobbing and dodging behind the garbage cans. Out on the open street now, barefooting down the pavement, homing in on the Jaguar’s trademark hood ornament.

  Baby needs new shoes.

  In and out of the lamplight, her small wet face glistened through the rain and the smoky gray cover of steam hissing up through a subway grate. The child was coming closer. Sparrow sank low in the back seat. Lou Markowitz and Riker slumped down behind the dashboard and watched, fascinated, as a little girl worked bits of metal in a lock. No crude coat hangers or broken windows for this kid. She opened the door with the finesse of a pro.

  Once the child was inside the Jaguar, the two policemen left their vehicle, moving quickly, silently. It was a fight not to laugh out loud – or cry. When Markowitz bent down to the open door of the Jaguar, the little girl was sitting on the front seat, calmly dismantling the dashboard toys, tape deck and radio, using Sparrow’s knife as a screwdriver. Lou leaned in close, saying, ‘Hey, kid, whatcha doin’?’

  The little girl smelled of sulfur and smoke; that should have been a warning. How indignant she was, and so angry, pointing her knife and yelling, ‘Back off, old man, or I’ll cut you.’

  Lou’s right hand flashed out, and startled, Kathy looked down to see that her tiny fist was empty.

  ‘So then, Lou says to the kid, „Pretty fast moves for a fat man, huh, Kathy?“ He pulled her out of the car, but she got away from him. Ran straight into Sparrow’s arms. And then, what happened next – well, the kid never saw that coming. It was brutal. The whore drags Kathy back to Lou, and she’s saying, „Baby, if you don’t go with the man, how am I gonna get paid?“ ‘

  ‘So she did accept the – ’

  ‘Not one dime. At the end of the day, that whore showed a lotta class.’ The detective lifted his glass in a salute, not noticing that it was empty, for he was still looking at Kathy’s face, the confusion in her eyes. Her world was collapsing all around her, above and beneath her. ‘The kid’s survival was geared on running. Sparrow made sure she had no one to run to – no one who cared.’

  And that was the moment when the little girl died, her bones going to liquid as she was sliding to the ground, trying to save herself by grabbing Sparrow’s skirt, then collapsing and crying at the whore’s feet. ‘Kathy risked her life – and this was her payback. Sparrow just walked away. No goodbye, nothin’.’ Riker looked down at his glass for a moment. ‘So Kathy thinks she’s been sold for money, right? That’s all she’s worth to the whore, another damn needle – and still she tried to run after Sparrow.’

  ‘Because she loved her?’

  ‘Because that whore was all she had.’ Riker could hear the small needy voice crying, begging Sparrow to come back, please, please. So much pain – the child’s and his own. Oh, the panic in Kathy’s eyes when Sparrow turned a corner and disappeared.

  ‘And then the kid went wild. All the guns and knives came out. I mean that literally. She drew on us with a damn pellet gun. God, how she hated Lou. He’d run her ragged, took everything away from her – first her books and then her whore.’

  ‘Well, that explains the early animosity,’ said Charles. ‘Why she never called him anything but Markowitz.’

  ‘Yeah, she blamed him for turning Sparrow against her. He spent years paying for that. So did I. That brat never forgets, never forgives.’ Riker pushed his glass to the edge of the bar. ‘So now we’re headin’ for Brooklyn. I’m in the back seat, and the kid’s up front with Lou.’ He recalled every detail of that drive, the smell of rain-washed air, the suburban lawns Uttered with bicycles and tricycles. The car radio was cranked up all the way, breaking the peace in a rock ‘n’ roll celebration. Dogs barked to the high notes, and the lights of fireflies winked in sync with the beat of a golden oldie by Buddy Holly.

  And a feral child was manacled to the dashboard. Kathy was a hellmouth of obscenities, a small storm of energy fighting against her chains, though she must have known she could never break them.

  ‘Now it gets a little spooky.’ And the music had changed to the Rolling Stones. ‘But it helps if you know that Lou’s wife could hear lost children crying on other planets.’ The old green sedan pulled up to the curb in front of the house, where Helen Markowitz was framed in a square of yellow light – waiting. Suddenly, she was drawn away from the window and moving toward the front door with a sense of great urgency.

  The car and the music should have reassured her that nothing was wrong. Bad news was so seldom announced by loud rock ‘n’ roll. And Lou’s wife could not have seen the baby thief in the dark of the car, nor heard one small angry voice above a chorus of wailing rockers, steel guitars and drums. Yet Helen was clearly on a mission when she burst through the front door, flew down the porch steps and ran across the wet grass.

  The little girl was screaming death threats at the top of her tiny lungs while Lou Markowitz grinned broadly and foolishly. His life was complete. His wife was busy ripping the passenger door off its hinges, and Kathy was almost home.

  CHAPTER 25

  The long summer fever was over. The heat was dying off in cool wet gusts of air and rain. The two men stepped out on to the sidewalk and stood beneath the awning.

  ‘Louis must have told Mallory about the murder charge,’ said Charles. ‘When she joined the police department, he would’ve – ’

  ‘Yeah.’ Riker was on the lookout for a cab to carry him home. ‘He told her that much. Now she thinks it was Sparrow who pinned the murder on her. Lou couldn’t set her straight. She would’ve wondered why he didn’t make a case against the whore.’

  Charles kept silent for a moment and listened to the steady rain. ‘Mallory will never have any peace.’

  ‘Neither will you… Me either.’

  Disregarding Riker’s plans to take a cab, Charles opened the door of his Mercedes and guided him into the passenger seat, then politely looked the other way while the man wrestled with a drunk’s problem of fastening a safety belt.

  Charles started the engine, then pulled into traffic. ‘Did Sparrow tell you she was defending Kathy when she got stabbed?’

  ‘No, we couldn’t ask her anything about that night. Guilty knowledge. If you know about a murder, then you’re part of the crime. But it wasn’t hard to work out. Frankie Delight was outmatched, a real flyweight. But good as Sparrow was in a street fight, she was never the aggressor. She would’ve kicked off her high heels and run when that knife came out. But she’s got the kid with her, and little legs can’t run as fast as a barefoot whore. So we figured Frankie stabbed her while she was shielding Kathy. I know he made the first cut, ‘cause the whore was on her knees when she put her shiv in his leg.’

  Charles vividly recalled the photograph of Sparrow’s scar. He could see it now – not a slit, but a gaping hole dug into her side. Yet she had found the strength to drive a knife through a man’s clothing and muscle.

  Riker read his mind and said, ‘Sparrow’s knife was razor sharp, and she got damn lucky when she hit that artery.’

  Charles nodded absently, listening to the rain on the roof. ‘Mallory’s at the hospital now, isn’t she? That’s why you didn’t go. She wouldn’t a
llow it.’

  His friend wore a look of surprise, perhaps wondering what he might have said to give that away. One hand on the armrest, he tapped his fingers to the beat of the windshield wipers.

  ‘So,’ said Charles, ‘you’re planning to let her bludgeon a dying woman? Oh, not with her fists – but you know what’s going on in that hospital room. You know.’

  ‘I can’t tell her the truth. And neither can you. I had to pick a memory she could believe in. I’m gonna let her hold on to Lou.’

  So she would never discover that Louis had ripped out her ten-year-old heart with a conspiracy of lies. ‘And she goes on hating Sparrow until it’s too late?’

  ‘It won’t be long now.’ Riker rolled down the window and sent his cigarette flying into the rain.

  Charles sensed a door closing here, and he picked up the thread of the previous conversation. ‘Lucky the wound was in Frankie’s thigh. I suppose that made it easy to blame a child.’

  ‘You make it sound like we framed the kid.’ Riker almost smiled. ‘It wasn’t even our case. Two other detectives closed out the paperwork. The death was self-defense, but connected to felony arson. Sparrow would’ve gone to prison.’

  ‘So you kept silent, and Kathy took the blame.’

  ‘Well, the kid was guilty on the arson charge. Kathy decided to get rid of all the evidence. She soaked the body with kerosene. Very thorough. All the medical examiner had to work with was some charcoaled meat and bone. So a nameless, dead kid took the blame for everything.’ Riker yawned. ‘Case closed.’ And then his eyes closed.

  Twenty minutes passed in silence before Charles pulled up to the curb at Riker’s address. Rather than disturb his sleep, Charles gathered the man into his arms, then carried him through the door and up the stairs to the apartment. He laid the detective down on an unmade bed, then removed the revolver and put it away in a drawer. After slipping the shoes from Riker’s feet, Charles followed the last of Mallory’s instructions. He entered the bathroom and flicked on the switch for a plastic Jesus night-light.