‘It isn’t nonsense, Charles. I have the data – ’
‘The Russian or the Chinese? Never mind. I’m not terribly impressed with either. Those experiments have never been duplicated to my satisfaction. I’m not buying it. Why don’t you fob the case off on Malakhai?’
‘Malakhai, the debunker? I thought he was dead.’
‘No, he’s in retirement now, but I don’t think a small boy will cause him any undue exertion. He won’t charge you much for fifteen minutes’ work.’ Charles turned to Mallory. ‘Malakhai is an old friend of the family. He toured Europe with Cousin Max when he was a practicing magician. This was all a bit before your time.’
‘Charles, I’m not concerned about the expense,’ said Effrim.
‘Good, not that he needs the money. Shall I call him?’
‘Absolutely not. Every case he ever worked on became a sideshow. What we want here is discretion. We’re talking about a little boy, a very troubled little boy.’
‘Are we?’ Charles rose on the balls of bis feet, smiling pleasantly. ‘I thought you were sucking up to the boy’s father because he controls a grant committee. It is that time of year, isn’t it, when the think tank passes the hat? I only deal with legitimate gifts, measurable gifts.’
‘Levitating objects? That’s not a gift?’ Effrim’s eyes rounded in mock incredulity that Charles would not see things his way. But then, Charles saw Effrim’s every expression as a mockery of honest sentiment.
‘Effrim, you know the boy is a fraud. He’s not levitating anything. And it’s no good appealing to Mallory. She’s not overly sentimental about small children, little old ladies or dogs. Nor does she believe that inanimate objects can fly without a physical activator. And the proper term is psychokinesis?’
‘Well, you would know the technical jargon better than I,’ said Effrim, waving his hand in the expansive gesture of concession. ‘I stand corrected. Thank you.’
‘And if the boy levitates food, it’s called a food fight.’
‘Thank you, Charles.’
Now Charles watched the mechanics of Effrim’s small smile, the downcast eyes, the aggrieved sigh for those who were not yet enlightened, and he knew his old friend was regrouping for another assault.
‘This child has been through a terrible emotional ordeal,’ said Effrim in the tone of Brothers and, sisters, let us pray. ‘His mother died when he was only nine years old. And fourteen months later, his first stepmother died.’
‘No good, Effrim. Psychokinesis is not my field.’
Effrim rolled his eyes up in the manner of the insipid-saint school of fourteenth-century painting. ‘Your field is discovering new gifts and finding applications for them, is it not? This child is in the gifted category in other areas, you know. His IQ is somewhere between yours and mine. And there’s some urgency to this. His new stepmother is badly frightened. It seems he’s been applying his gift in a rather terrifying way.’
One long and slender arm, led by five red fingernails, stretched across the back of the couch as Mallory was roused from lethargy. ‘So, the new stepmother is the target?’
Charles watched Effrim mentally stepping back to reappraise Mallory as a possible ally, estimating the location of her buttons, what pressure to push them with, and which buttons to avoid. This was Effrim’s special gift, his art.
‘I do hope not,’ said Effrim with exquisite insincerity. ‘He’s been moving sharp objects around.’
Charles filled Mallory’s empty glass with dry sherry. A look passed between them, and in that look, a small conversation took place in which he begged her not to encourage Effrim.
He next offered the decanter to his good friend of many years, whom he would not trust with the silver. ‘Effrim, if you believe the boy is in trauma, wouldn’t it be better to refer him to a psychiatrist?’
‘Probably not,’ said Mallory, answering for Effrim. ‘How many shrinks fall into the genius category? If it’s fraud and the boy is that bright, he could put it by the average peabrain.’
Charles looked her way, his smile dipping down on one side to say, I begged you not to do that.
She was avoiding his eyes and further ocular conversation. He found it interesting that she would take Effrim’s part when she was so suspicious of the man. She’d had a good instinct there.
‘How did the mother and first stepmother die?’ she asked Effrim.
So it was only the body count that interested Mallory. He should have guessed that. She was bored with the partnership. When her suspension was over, he would lose her to Special Crimes Section. He had nothing to offer her, no dead bodies, no puzzles quite so interesting as murder.
Effrim was looking into his glass, reading his next line in the sherry. ‘It was tragic, really tragic. The boy’s natural mother died of a heart attack. Odd because she was so young at the time, only twenty-eight.’ He looked up to gauge the effect of the hook on Mallory, but her face was devoid of emotional cues. He stared into her eyes for too long and became unsettled by them. Turning back to his glass, he spoke to the sherry. ‘And then his first stepmother committed suicide… She didn’t leave a note.’
Mallory lifted her chin slightly. Her eyes were all the way open now.
Charles stared at the ceiling. Oh, good job, Effrim.
‘That’s quite a run of bad luck in one family,’ said Charles.
‘Only for the women,’ said Mallory. ‘We’ll take it.’
She didn’t look to Charles for confirmation, not that he minded. It might keep her from cutting the cord of Mallory and Butler, Ltd for a while, but the break was inevitable. NYPD was unlikely to allow her to moonlight any longer. There must be limits to what she could get away with.
Effrim was edging toward the door.
Right, Effrim. Best to hit and run.
‘I’ll send over a check for the retainer,’ Effrim said. And then for his most stunning trick, the wide Cheshire smile lingered on after the door was closed behind him.
Mallory was rising off the couch, running shoes lighting on the floor at the edge of the carpet. ‘I’ll chase down the life insurance angle.’
‘Ah, just a minute, Mallory. We were asked to evaluate the psychokinetic activity, not the family history.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Right. Lunch?’
‘There’s nothing in the office fridge.’
No, there wouldn’t be, now that he thought of it. She had trusted him with a shopping list. He had used the back of it to jot down two telephone numbers, and used the whole of it to mark his place in a book, but he had forgotten to use any part of it for shopping. ‘Let’s go to my place.’
They walked across the hall and into the apartment that was his residence. Here, an eagle-eyed Mrs Ortega saw to the contents of the refrigerator out of pity for the shopping-disabled Charles. Today the cleaning woman had left a note on the refrigerator door, attached by a magnet. It was a diagram of the kitchen showing all the war zones where she had set traps for the mouse. He felt sorry for the rodent, so great was his confidence in Mrs Ortega.
Mallory was ensconced at the kitchen table. The kitchen was his favorite room. The walls were lined with racks of spices and agents for tenderizing flesh, and instruments for torturing vegetables, slicing, dicing and boiling them in oil. He was now in the process of covering the table with refrigerator finds. Mallory was picking over plastic containers, packages of meat and no less than five colors of cheese, and putting together original creations of sandwich mania. On his final trip back from the refrigerator, he offered her a new discovery in pickle labels.
‘You were happier in Special Crimes, weren’t you?’
‘When Markowitz was alive,’ she said, opening the jar and sniffing, then approving the contents with a nod. ‘Working with Coffey isn’t quite the same. If I go back, I’ll be stuck in the computer room forever. He was really pissed off the last time I saw his face. He’ll never let me out in the field again.’
‘I thought this suspen
sion was just a formality.’
‘It is. When you shoot a perp, you’re relieved of duty while the Civilian Review Board investigates the case.’
‘But you didn’t kill the mugger, and he did beat and rob that old man.’
‘Coffey’s got a different way of looking at things.’
‘So you don’t want to dissolve the partnership?’
‘No, it never occurred to me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t go back to Special Crimes when my suspension is over.’ And now she checked her watch and reached up to turn on the small television set on the kitchen counter. It was time for the news, and she did like to keep up on the city’s death rate.
‘But there are department regulations against moonlighting, aren’t there?’
‘Yes, there are.’ And what of it, said her eyebrows on the way up.
The news show was reporting the daily carnage with a video window on the Death Clock of Times Square. As the statistics of the dead were read by the newscaster, the numbers on the giant public bulletin board changed before an audience of a thousand cars and pedestrians, and the millions more who preferred to view cheap spectacle on television.
‘I hate that thing,’ she said, watching the change of electronic digits which kept the national score of death by guns.
‘The Death Clock? But, Mallory, I thought you of all people would appreciate computerized death. It makes homicide so neat and efficient.’
She said nothing. Her face shut him out, resolving itself into a cold mask. This was his only clue that he had erred. Why did he persist in the belief that he might ever learn to anticipate her? Who knew what went on inside of Mallory? And how could he not go on wondering?
Charles was staring at the television set, but his mind had strolled across the hall to the office where she stored her computer toys. Of course, keeping the partnership had its practical aspects. Here she had freedom from the supervision of anyone who might recognize her equipment as the electronic equivalent of burglary tools.
‘This word just in,’ said the news broadcaster, calling Charles back to the kitchen and the moment. Now he was looking at Mallory’s face on the television screen.
‘We have a bulletin,’ the broadcaster was saying. ‘A police officer has been murdered in Central Park. The victim is Sergeant Kathleen Mallory, daughter of the deceased Inspector Louis Markowitz who gave his own life in the line of duty. Details of the murder are being withheld pending further investigation.’
Charles looked across the table at the living, solid, three-dimensional Mallory as though he needed to verify her existence, needed to be sure his eyes were not in error before he could doubt the veracity of television. Suppose she had not been with him when he heard the news?
They watched in silence. Much channel changing told them other news programs were also carrying the story.
And now the phone was ringing in concert with the doorbell. The first of the condolence calls, he supposed. Mallory went off to answer the door as he picked up the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Charles, this is Riker. Don’t you ever pick up the messages on your answering machine?’
‘Riker, is this about the report on Mallory’s death?’
‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘I’m calling from the Medical Examiner’s Office. We’ve been trying to track down Mallory all day. Is she there? Could you put the little corpse on the phone?’
Mallory walked back into the kitchen, followed by Dr Henrietta Ramsharan of apartment 3A. Henrietta’s dark hair fell soft and loose around the shoulders of her denim shirt. She wore her after-hours faded jeans and the confusion of the eyes which came from having the door opened by a dead person.
Lieutenant Jack Coffey was sitting at his own desk, but the desk was in Inspector Markowitz’s office. Though Louis Markowitz was dead, the old man would always be in command of the Special Crimes Section, and this would always be his office. Jack Coffey counted himself lucky that the paychecks were made out to himself. But just now, he was thinking of Markowitz’s daughter, Kathleen Mallory.
Palanski’s report was sitting on his desk, replete with the crime-site preliminary faxed over from the West Side precinct. The fax photos were dark, but the light hair shone through the grainy shadows, and he could make out the outline of the slender body in the familiar jeans, running shoes and blazer. He only waited on the positive identification from a friend of the family to complete the report.
No doubt Sergeant Riker would pull the pin after this one. Markowitz’s death had hit the man hard. Mallory’s death would be too much.
Coffey turned off the lamp and braced his hands on the desk, as though a man of thirty-six needed this solid crutch to rise to a stand. He stared at the bulletin board on the back wall of the office and wondered if a little water on his face might make him feel less dead.
Who could get so close to her that the bastard could hit her that way? No one. It could not be.
But the evidence was sitting on his desk in black and white, and her pretty face was all over the television on every channel. And when he found the cop who leaked it to the media, one head was gonna roll.
Ah, Mallory.
If he could have her back for a few minutes, he would risk the sarcasm and the look that would neatly snip his balls for caring if she lived or died. Sucker, her eyes would say. He could almost see her standing there. He even imagined that he could smell her perfume. It was time to go home where the bottle was. He turned.
‘Oh, Christ!’
He grabbed at the door frame and missed, too slow with shock to fall immediately and catching himself on the second pass at something solid, which was the chair. His stomach shot up and then slammed back to where it belonged.
Mallory stood in the doorway. Her gold hair was back-lit by the office lights beyond the door, and coming up behind her was a fluorescent, washed out Riker.
‘I know,’ said Mallory. ‘You thought it was me in the morgue.’
‘Well, Mallory,’ said Riker, ‘he did and he didn’t. The lieutenant heard you were dead, but he knew you’d be back after sundown.’
Riker ambled into the office behind Mallory and tossed his report on the desk. One beverage and two different types of food stains graced the front page.
Coffey was staring at the report and looking for his voice as she sat down in the chair by his desk and stretched out the long legs that went on forever. Riker dragged another chair up to the desk, pulled out his notebook and leaned over to flick on the lamp. On the rear wall, Mallory was casting the reassuring shadow of a living woman.
Coffey lowered himself into his chair. He was fighting down the gut flutters, one hand resting on his stomach, as though he could kill the internal butterflies by smothering them this way. ‘The corpse was wearing a brown cashmere blazer that was tailored for you, Mallory.’
Riker looked at his notebook and nodded to her. ‘That was confirmed by your tailor on 42nd Street. According to Palanski’s report, you’re the guy’s most memorable customer.’
‘Can you explain the blazer?’ Ease up, Coffey told himself. She was not a suspect. Softening out of the interrogation mode, he added, ‘It’s the only lead we have.’
‘You’ll find Riker’s cigarette burn on the left sleeve,’ she said, and not softly at all. ‘I got rid of it.’
‘You trashed it?’
‘No. I gave it to Anna Kaplan, Rabbi Kaplan’s wife. She collects clothing for the homeless.’
He looked down at Riker’s report, reading through the orange sauce stains and one stain that damn well better not be beer. ‘According to the ME’s report, this is the body of a well-nourished female in her mid-twenties. No indication that she was homeless, no head lice, no bedbugs.’
He left out the feeding frenzy of maggots and beetles that would help to determine the time of death in the scavenging cycle of insects.
‘So?’ Mallory shrugged. ‘Talk to Palanski. See what else he botched besides the ID on the corpse. What have we got so far?’
Her question was well within the purview of a crimes analyst. He needed her back. How to get through this without antagonizing her. without falling into the inevitable round of one-upmanship which she always won. He scanned the lines of Riker’s report.
‘We know she had an abortion within ten days of death. The first wound was a frontal assault to the head. He was facing her. That could mean it was personal, someone she knew. Outside of that, we’ve got nothing,’ said Coffey. ‘No witness, no weapon.’
‘It was raining yesterday morning,’ said Riker, tapping the early homicide report on the corner of Coffey’s desk. ‘The rain would have washed away any physical evidence. If Heller couldn’t dig it up, it wasn’t there. The weapon could have been a rock, and that rock is at the bottom of the lake if the perp has half a brain. And that’s assuming she was killed in the park. We know the body was moved after death.’
‘We don’t have an officer involvement,’ said Coffey. ‘If you’ve got nothing more to add to this report, I’m bouncing it back to the West Side squad tonight.’
Mallory sat well back in her chair, eyes half-closed, looking nearly harmless. ‘With no prints, it’ll take them a month to ID that body – maybe longer or never. It’ll be a low priority case. So, if the park was only a dump site, they’ll never find the kill site. They’re gonna blow it.’
‘I suppose you could do it better and faster?’ And yes, he could see that was exactly what she thought.
‘You want me to?’
‘I want you to go back to your damn computer room.’
‘I’m still on suspension, and I’m considering a better offer.’
Mallory rose from her chair, and in the next instant, he was looking at the back of her as she walked out of the room.
‘You know she’s right,’ said Riker, leaning over in his chair, checking the door to be sure she was gone out of earshot. ‘The West Side dicks will lose it. The perp’s gonna get away with the murder.’
‘It happens. Nothing I can do about it.’
The Man Who Lied To Women Page 2