The Man Who Lied To Women

by Carol O’Connell

  ‘Not really. Max had some brilliant illusions, but his specialty was defying death. It was Malakhai who could really make things move through the air, and nothing as clumsy as a flying pencil. He was the greatest illusionist who ever lived.’

  ‘Malakhai? The debunker?’

  ‘Well, debunking the paranormal frauds came later in life, after he retired from the stage. Before you were born, Malakhai did an act with his dead wife… You seem skeptical. No, really. She was his assistant.’

  ‘His dead assistant?’

  ‘Oh yes, it was only after she died that she went into the magic act with Malakhai. When she was alive, she was a composer and a musician.’

  ‘What did he do, have her stuffed?’

  ‘No, she never appeared to the audience in the flesh. It was always understood that she was there, and yet not there – dead but not entirely gone, if you follow me. Well, after the audience got comfortable with the idea that she was not only invisible but dead, things began to float through the air as she handed him one thing and another.’

  ‘He’d fit in nicely with our family of the flying pencils. So that’s why Malakhai got into parapsychology?’

  ‘Oh, no. He’s the sworn enemy of parapsychologists. Every time they think they’ve discovered paranormal ability, he drops by to blow them out of the water and expose another scam.’

  ‘Are you thinking of calling him in for this one?’

  ‘For flying pencils? Hardly. And it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to disturb him. Malakhai’s in his seventies now. He and Louisa are living in quiet seclusion.’

  ‘Louisa?’

  ‘That’s his dead wife. If you cared less for computers and more for classical music, you would know her name. Louisa’s Concerto was her only composition, but it was brilliant. No classical collection is complete without it. The concerto was played during every performance. Oh, it was no act on the stage. Perhaps I should have mentioned that. No, Malakhai lived with her, talked with her, slept with her. He only created the flying-object illusions in the act so the audience could see her too.’

  ‘And this guy, this loon, debunks the paranormal?’

  ‘Yes, as madmen go, he’s quite functional. He always owned to the fact that he created his own madness. He knew there was no supernatural aspect to Louisa.’

  ‘Yeah, right. How did he get so crazy?’

  ‘Well, Louisa died very young. She wrote this splendid concerto, and then she died. He’d known her since she was a child, and he couldn’t quite let her go – so he reconstructed her.’

  ‘Again please?’

  ‘He recreated her from memory, from intimate knowledge of her. It’s been done before, but the practice has been limited to remote Asian monasteries. The documented succubi created by monks were fashioned of pure imagination. Malakhai’s creation was based on a living woman – that was one difference. He knew Louisa so well. He knew what her response would be in every given situation. Then he constructed a faithful model of her. And after a while, he could not only hold conversations with her, but see her and touch her. It was a feat of immense concentration. You see, it has to be fanatically faithful to the living woman, to react in the same – ’

  ‘But it’s a trick.’

  ‘An illusion, a great illusion, and of course, delusion, but it was a piece of art as masterful as Plato’s Dialogues. And a lot of us do it to some small extent. Don’t you sometimes wonder what Markowitz would do or say in certain situations?’

  She turned her face to the window, and he mentally slapped himself silly for crossing the line into her personal feelings, for he was one of the few who believed she might possess them.

  ‘Another distinction between Malakhai and the monks was that they called up their illusions and sent them away. Louisa was Malakhai’s constant companion. She still is.’

  Mallory turned back to him, and he watched the busy-work of her good brain through the static distraction of her eyes.

  ‘But this Malakhai – he’s definitely crazy, right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, definitely. But it takes quite a good brain to go quite that crazy. When you consider the amount of concentration necessary to maintain a three-dimensional delusion – ’

  ‘And when he talked with her, she answered the way she did when she was alive, even if the question was new?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Perversely, truth and logic were the glue of the delusion. She couldn’t respond in any way that was untrue to the living woman.’

  ‘Could you do it? Could you have a conversation with a dead woman?’

  ‘Malakhai and Louisa grew up together. What she would say, in any given situation, was predictable to him. He knew her mind, her most private thoughts. I don’t know anyone that well.’

  Certainly not you, Mallory.

  ‘Would you have to be crazy to create a thing like that?’

  ‘You would have to possess, at the very least, the insanity that goes with falling in love. A woman once told me that people in love were certifiable. I believe that. Malakhai reached across all the zones of reason to bring Louisa back. Now that’s the kind of love insanity is made of. He may be insane, but he’s also brilliant and rather charming. Whenever I stayed with Cousin Max, Malakhai and Louisa would come to dinner.’

  ‘Did the dead woman have a good appetite?’

  ‘As a child, I was never sure. There was always magic going on at Max’s house. They would set a plate for her and pour the wine, and during the course of the evening, the plate and glass would be emptied. The food and wine was probably spirited away in moments of distraction, I knew that, but part of me always believed in Louisa.’

  ‘Did you ever try the three-dimensional illusion?’

  ‘Delusion. No. Why would I? Why would anyone want to cross over that border?’

  Except for love.

  She was reaching down into the canvas bag, and then he noted the hesitation of a second thought as her hand pulled back empty. Now she turned to him. ‘I wish I had Amanda Bosch back for just five minutes.’

  ‘The lady by the lake, I presume.’

  ‘Yes, I think I’ve got a motive,’ she said, bending again to dip into the bag. She pulled a manuscript out and sat down behind the desk, riffling through the pages, extracting one paper-clipped section.

  ‘I pulled this off Bosch’s computer. By the log-on time, this is the last file she ever updated. She’s been working on this book for almost a year. It’s a novel, but I don’t think it’s all fiction.’

  ‘Art is lies that tell the truth. Who said that?’

  ‘You’re the one with the computer-bank memory.’

  ‘Eidetic memory, and it doesn’t work like a computer. I can’t cross-index things the way you do with your machines.’

  ‘Here, cut to page 254 of chapter seven. Go to the last paragraph. Remember, she updated this the day she died.’

  He looked down at the page and read: He was leaving again, going through the litany of each thing he had to do, all more pressi – YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Charles. ‘It’s not a part of the text. More like an emotional outburst at the keyboard.’

  ‘Right. I caught that as I was printing out the file. I only had time to scan pages here and there, checking for file damage. It’s almost seven hundred pages. I’m pretty sure my perp is in there in detail, but you’re the only human I know who can read at the speed of light. I just don’t have the time. Could you take a look at it and make notes on the parts that ring true?’

  ‘Of course.’ Charles seemed only to be glancing at the pages of the manuscript as he turned the sheets one after the other, yet he was reading every word and catching Mallory in a lie. He had noted the redness of her eyes, and now he found the reason for it in the indents of thumb and forefinger which marked the base of each page she had read before him. After a few minutes’ cursory reading, he looked up at her.

  ‘I wonder what his lie was. She’s characterized
him as a married man from the onset. So that can’t be it.’

  ‘It won’t be in the manuscript. I’m guessing she caught him in a recent lie.’

  ‘That’s an interesting possibility. You think he might have been cheating on the woman he was cheating with?’

  ‘That wasn’t it. I think the only use she had for this man was getting pregnant. But then she aborted the baby. I’ve got a problem with a lie as a murder motive, but it’s all I’ve got. Amanda Bosch was a professional researcher. She might have done a background check on him. It’s a reasonable assumption since he’s the father of her baby. So she caught him out in a lie.’

  ‘Well, that won’t narrow the field by much. There are as many categories of lies as there are people.’

  ‘Too bad your old friend Malakhai can’t reconstruct Amanda and ask her what the lie was. If I don’t wrap this up fast, the perp will get away with her murder. When you finish with the manuscript, just leave it in my office.’

  ‘All right, but I wouldn’t count on this too much if I were you. I don’t think a writer draws on life to a greater extent than an actor does when he fleshes out a role. The actor doesn’t act his life, and I suspect, even when a writer does an autobiography, he doesn’t write his life.’

  ‘And this last bit of type – the LIAR lines you call an emotional outburst? Who is she screaming at if not the character in the book?’

  ‘All right, I’ll read it with that in mind.’

  ‘Are you going to the poker game tomorrow night?’

  ‘Of course.’ The poker game was the highlight of his week. He had inherited his chair in the game from Inspector Louis Markowitz, and with that chair came three friends. Each new friend was something precious to him, as though in the gathering of people he could make up for a life of isolation in academia and think tanks. ‘If I didn’t show up for the game, they’d expect me to send them a check for the usual losses. That’s only fair, I suppose. I wouldn’t want them to suffer financial damage by my absence.’

  ‘Charles, one day I’ll sit down with you and teach you how to beat those guys at poker.’

  But that would not be today. She was ticking off items in a notebook, and even at half the room’s distance, he could see a great many unchecked items yet to go. He turned to the window and looked down to the street two floors below. ‘Actually, Rabbi Kaplan says my consistent losses speak well of me.’

  ‘Did he tell you why?’

  ‘What? And ruin his reputation – spoil the good name of Kaplan the Cryptic? No, I think I’m supposed to work it out.’ His eyes were still on the street below, following the progress of a familiar figure in a shapeless winter coat. He turned to face her. ‘All right, you know, don’t you?’

  ‘The rabbi was complimenting your honesty, Charles. Poker is a liar’s game. Tomorrow night, I want you to get something off Slope and Duffy.’ And now she made a check by one more item which must have been himself. ‘I gave both of them shopping lists, things I need to get without going through Coffey or Riker.’

  ‘You know, Mallory, there are other police officers on the force besides yourself. They tend to think of themselves as members of a team.’

  ‘Yeah, Riker has the same idea.’ There was an edge to her voice, more impatience than anger. ‘He thinks he’s my coach.’

  Here, Charles would have liked to have said something in Riker’s defense, for he liked the man very much, but there were perils to giving even the appearance of choosing any side but hers. In all their conversations, he seemed always to be seeking safe ground with her. ‘Why don’t you come to the game with me? Rabbi Kaplan speaks highly of you as a born card shark.’

  ‘I can’t. I was barred from the game when I was thirteen.’

  A key was turning in the lock, and as the door opened, the hose of a vacuum cleaner preceded the small dark head of Mrs Ortega.

  This precluded Charles asking any personal questions like What in God’s name did you do to those people to get barred from the poker game?

  Mrs Ortega stopped suddenly, eyeing the cat, perhaps with a view to skinning it and making a purse of the pelt. In her oft-expressed view as a professional cleaning woman, the only good fur shedder was a dead one. The cat rubbed up against Mallory’s jeans, and now that Mrs Ortega associated the cat with Mallory, she looked at the younger woman with surprise and something less than her former respect for a fellow believer from the Church of Immaculate Housekeeping.

  Mallory handed the woman a twenty dollar bill, with the silent understanding that she knew the cat fur would make extra work. Mrs Ortega pocketed the bill and cast a kinder eye on the cat.

  The buzzer went off, loud and irritating. Mallory put up her hand to stop Charles on his way to the door.

  ‘Okay, who is it?’

  ‘Riker,’ he said, without the usual split second of hesitation.

  He opened the door, and there stood Riker in all his slovenly glory. Mallory’s jaw jutted out. Charles could see she wasn’t buying this. No way could he have known who was on the other side of the door. She too could recognize the polite light buzzer style of Henrietta Ramsharan of the third floor, and the sharp raps of the musician on the first floor. But Riker had no style in any sense of that word, not in any aspect of his life.

  ‘Hi, Charles,’ said Riker. He nodded to Mallory, and made an exaggerated bow to Mrs Ortega, who screwed up her face and walked into the next room muttering something which might have been ‘damn cops’.

  ‘You called Charles to tell him you were coming and when,’ said Mallory to Riker. Then she looked at Charles for confirmation, not believing for a moment that he could’ve known by any other means.

  Charles smiled and shook his head. There were limits to what he could discern from knocks, but in truth, Riker had never called him; he had seen the sergeant’s arrival from the window. And now he had his first breakthrough in the art of poker as he decided not to enlighten her. His mind was racing on to new hopes of being the big winner of tomorrow’s game as Riker was settling into the deep padding of the couch.

  Riker pulled a crumple of papers from the inside pocket of his overcoat and spread them out on his lap in an attempt to smooth out the damage. The first page was a map of the park with yellow lines drawn in two areas. He looked up at Mallory, who was still glaring at Charles.

  ‘Heller pinpointed the exact site where Amanda fell. The guy’s a genius. He took soil samples down to the Department of Agriculture. The dirt in the wound was full of microscopic critters that won’t live in the shadow areas of the wooded patch where we found Amanda.’ Riker dangled a cigarette from his lip and fished his pockets for a match. ‘Heller says he’s gonna write a monograph and give you half the credit, Mallory. So, you ready to take a look at the crime scene now?’

  ‘What for?’ She picked up the sheet with the yellow markings. ‘I can read a map.’

  ‘Hey, Mallory, I’m just along for the ride, okay? But most of us like to swing by the crime scene, maybe take a look at the place where the victim died.’

  ‘Waste of time. I read the report. Forensic’s been over the ground and probably ten or twelve cops with big feet. What am I gonna see?’

  ‘You never know, kid.’ A match sparked in his hand; the flame died in a cloud of exhaled smoke.

  ‘Don’t call me kid.’

  Mrs Ortega returned to the front room and was plugging in the vacuum cleaner. Riker smiled at the woman.

  ‘You know, Mrs Ortega, we got a suspect here you’d really appreciate. All we know about the bastard is that he lives in a luxury condo, and he can clean an apartment like a pro.’

  ‘Then he wasn’t born no rich kid.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Rich kids aren’t raised right. You can tell if they earn their money or get it the easy way. Mallory knows from clean.’ She turned to Charles. ‘Now your mother never let your feet touch the ground. You had live-in help when you were growing up. How do I know that? You don’t know what steel wool is, or what it’s for. I can
always tell when you clean up after a meal in the office kitchen, and when it’s Mallory. Mallory was raised right.’

  ‘But this man who was raised right is a killer,’ said Charles in a somewhat defensive tone.

  ‘So? You think Mallory carries a gun for ballast in the wind?’ Mrs Ortega leaned on the vacuum hose and wagged her finger at Charles. ‘You can always tell the rich kids born with money. If the husband or the wife splits, they go off their feed for a week. You can tell how upset they are by the stock of booze and pills. But if the cleaning woman leaves them, their whole world falls apart. They go back to living like animals. So chances are your guy wasn’t born with money.’

  Mallory was nodding as the woman said this. Mallory deferred to Mrs Ortega in all things regarding cleaning solvents and the chemistry of stains. Mrs Ortega might be the only human Mallory ever deferred to.

  ‘You can tell a lot about a person’s character from the way they clean and what they keep,’ said Mrs Ortega, waxing on in a rare philosophic mode.

  ‘You know,’ said Riker, turning to Charles, ‘I asked Mrs Ortega to clean my apartment about a year ago. She made the sign of the evil eye and turned her back on me. Now I figure I’m lucky she never saw it.’ A gray log of ashes fell from his cigarette and crumbled down the front of his suit as his arms shrugged out of his overcoat.

  ‘I don’t have to see your apartment, Riker.’ Mrs Ortega cast an appraising eye over his rumpled suit and scuffed shoes. ‘You’ve got at least three bags of garbage piling up in the kitchen. The sheets haven’t been changed in a month, and there are beer bottles under the bed. There might be two clean dishes in the cupboard. You’re real comfortable with spiders, and you’re seeing a woman tonight.’

  Three heads turned to Mrs Ortega.

  ‘How did you know about the woman?’ asked Riker.

  ‘This morning you used a can of cheap spot remover. I can see the powder rings around the stains from here. You don’t usually get that fancy.’

  Mallory nodded her respects to Mrs Ortega and headed for the door to her private office. ‘I have to pack my equipment. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’