The Man Who Lied To Women

by Carol O’Connell

  ‘But she wouldn’t play poker again,’ said the rabbi. ‘Kathy barred herself from the game. It was her version of penance.’

  ‘You credit her too much. She’s a heartless little monster. She corrupts every – ’ Edward was interrupted by the loud jangle of the telephone.

  Robin answered it and handed the receiver to Edward. When the doctor put down the phone, he turned to Charles. ‘My wife says Kathy left a message on our answering machine. She’ll pick up the folder herself.’

  ‘Kathy’s coming here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Eight-thirty.’

  ‘It’s five past that now,’ said Charles. ‘Odd, she’s never late by even one minute.’

  ‘Oh, God, the lights!’ said Robin. ‘Kathy doesn’t know about the lights.’

  And she was never, never late. They turned in concert to the window. Mallory’s small tan car was parked at the curb.

  It was Edward Slope, her greatest detractor, who flew out the door, without his coat, to fetch her. He was down the flagstone path before the others could rise from the table.

  Now three men congregated in the open doorway, unmindful of the chill night air. Charles stared at the back of the man running across the street.

  Later it would hurt him to remember this small event with such great clarity. But there was a crystalline quality to a cold winter night. Even from the distance of a road’s width, no detail was lost to him, not the line of her cheek, nor the lamplight on her hair, nor the terrible stillness, the eerie quiet only broken by the footfalls of the doctor. There was Mallory, alone on a small field of new snow. But for the frost of her breath on the air, she was a statue in blue jeans, standing in the yard of the old house across the street. She was staring in the window at the Christmas tree and the menorah. And now her face turned upward as a window came to life on the second floor where Louis’s den was.

  Slope came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was low, near a whisper. She never moved nor spoke to him, but only stared at the second-floor window, so entranced was she by the light.

  An ex-partner was like an ex-wife, even if the partner had been a man – which Peggy was not, most definitely not.

  He missed her sorely since her early retirement via a bullet in the lung. He missed her, though he saw her at least once a week, as though a night in the bar were a sacrament.

  Riker’s eyes were on Peggy as she left him to run her white rag over the wet ring on the mahogany and pocket the change left by the last customer.

  Age had hardly touched her, but only because she fought it off. Her hair was dyed a honey blonde to cover the gray, and her figure was only a little fuller at the hip and thigh. In the dim light and from the distance of the other end of the bar, she had changed not at all.

  Oh, all those years ago when she was young, and he was younger, when he was still sober most of the day, when Peggy packed a gun and a shield. Now that was a time.

  The matron draped on the stool next to his might be the only civilian in the bar tonight. The woman had that soft look, and she was staring at him with the disapproving eye of a taxpayer. Even in peripheral vision, the civilian was annoying him with her waving arms. The woman was making a damn point of waving the smoke away from her, and she had to reach into Riker’s own personal piece of the bar to do that.

  ‘Did you know that secondhand smoke kills non-smokers?’

  ‘Good,’ said Riker.

  The woman picked up her purse and moved to the other end of the bar, and Peggy came back to him with a broad smile and a fresh beer.

  ‘So where were we, Riker?’

  ‘The early warning signs.’

  ‘Right, the early warning is in the money area. That would be a natural for Mallory. Have her check the credit card accounts for favourite bars and restaurants. A gym membership is a good giveaway. They like to keep in shape for the new one. Is the guy buying his own underwear? Something with a little flash? That’s another one.’

  ‘If there’s so many signals, how come the wives don’t catch on?’

  ‘They do. The husbands aren’t too quick to spot a cheating wife, but the wives always know what the husbands are doing. Even when they come in here and tell me that for years they had no idea. They knew what was going on – they knew from the beginning. It’s the blind spot that won’t let them acknowledge it. That damn blind spot. They’re staring straight at it, they can describe everything around it, but they don’t see it.’

  ‘Ah, Peggy. I can’t buy – ’

  ‘They rationalize it away. The amount of rationalization these women do is in direct proportion to what they’ve got to lose. With no kids and no mortgage, a woman can be pretty cynical about a cheating husband. With eight kids, she will sit down with the man and help him work out the lies she can believe in.’

  Riker pulled out his notebook. A silver ornament on a chain was entangled in the spiral. It freed itself and dropped to the bar. Peggy picked it up. ‘So what’s with the Star of David? You’re an Episcopalian.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m an alcoholic.’

  ‘Ah, Riker, you’re dreaming those social-climbing dreams again. If you want to be an alcoholic you have to go to meetings.’ She handed him the six-pointed star.

  ‘Okay, I’m a drunk with aspirations.’ He stared at the star in his hand. ‘Lou Markowitz used to carry this around with him. Mallory thought I might like to have it.’

  ‘You sentimental slob.’

  ‘That’s what Mallory calls me, but she doesn’t think I’m sentimental.’ His pen hovered over the notebook. ‘Okay, markers for the runaround husband. Suppose he’s not a regular cheat, suppose it’s a first-time fling?’

  ‘He’ll start changing his habits. Maybe he walks the dog without being asked four times. Or he takes up a new sport for two – like tennis. Look for out-of-town trips that don’t match up with his job description, late hours at the office as a change in routine.’

  ‘Is he a good liar?’

  ‘Oh, they all think they’re great liars, but the wives have probably caught them in more lies than they can remember. It’s a pity you can’t just ask the wives. And a pity that most of them wouldn’t tell you.’

  In Riker’s notebook, it said only DOGWALKING.

  ‘So, Riker, you think Mallory’s right about the perp? He panicked and ran?’

  ‘I think she underestimates him. She thinks the guy is a wimp who’d run if a mouse screamed.’

  He liked it when they screamed. But he loved it when they howled.

  Bitches. All women were bitches.

  Did she think he would not recognize her as an enemy? How transparent and stupid she was.

  He stood in the shower and let his hatred of her wash over him with the water. She was the enemy. He stepped from the shower, and water pooled at his feet as he rubbed a clear place on the glass. He stared at the mirror until his eyes seemed to float independent of his flesh.

  What intelligence lay therein, what quickness of thought, thoughts running to the color red. But that insect in the background of his reflection crawling on the tiles, it marred his serenity. Better step on it quick. He did, and each time he did this, his enemy screamed and died. He beat her face in as he beat his pillow and then wondered why he could not sleep. When sleep did come, his dreams were all of death, angry death. Now the cancer of hatred was all, waking and sleeping. He was complete and invincible.

  Mere humans had never proved a match for cancer. There was no cure.

  With one long red fingernail, Mallory tapped the wad of papers which had traveled from Edward Slope’s hand to Charles and thence to her. She stared into the troubled face of a young investigator from the Medical Examiner’s Office. The man would not meet her eyes. His hands were worming around his coffee cup which had grown cold. A waitress was standing near them. Mallory waved her away.

  ‘Slope doesn’t figure you’re dirty, but I do. I know how much you have in your bank. I know every
transaction in your stock portfolio, and I know your salary.’

  ‘Your old man never ratted on anybody.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He just transferred them to hell. Most of them quit. They decided they’d rather live than do hard time in death precincts. I know that because I did the computer work for him. And what I did to them, I can do to you – and more. I can send you to a worse hell than early retirement on a partial pension.’

  Ease up, Kathy, a memory of Markowitz cautioned her. If you scare them too much on tke first go-round, they go for a lawyer. You don’t want that.

  She sat back in her chair. ‘I just wanted to give you a little something to think about over the holidays – give you a little time to go over your notes on the Coventry Arms visit. Merry Christmas. I’ll get back to you real soon.’

  Nice touch, kid, said the memory of Markowitz which would not go to that part of the mind reserved for the dead.

  Pansy Heart lay in her bed, watching him rise and walk back into the bathroom. She was imagining, for a few moments of quiet horror, that her husband crawled along on eight legs.

  She was quiet for all the bathroom noises and the sheet rustling and the click of the bedside light switch. She sighed in the dark and wondered if he heard. And then she felt she could breathe again, breathe but not sleep. Not till she heard his own regular breathing and knew he would not wake until morning. And even so, she lay awake until the exhaustion of fear overtook her in the dark.

  Angel Kipling looked up as Harry walked into the kitchen.

  His face was still dazed from sleep. He hovered in the doorway as though debating whether this was safe ground or battle ground. Between coming and going, she nailed him with the first shot.

  ‘So what have you done now, Harry?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Harry Kipling, opening the refrigerator and pulling out the leftover chicken from dinner.

  She stared into his smiling face, and she wanted to hit him with a closed fist.

  Pansy woke with a blow to her head. It was not a sharp blow but glancing. In the dim light of the bedroom, she saw the fist flying in the air, and her hand moved out to fend it off. It fell back to Emery’s side. She turned on the bedside lamp, and the pearls of night sweats glistened in the light. The longish hair was an aureole of gray spreading on the pillow around a face of eyes-closed anguish.

  ‘Emery, wake up!’

  The brown eyes snapped open and looked into hers. She detected a wince, and she shrank back as if from an unkind word. He had trained her in that behavior, much the same as the dog had been trained. And what had he done to the dog? And why did he have to lie about it? What had he done?

  ‘Having a nightmare, Emery?’

  Were you dreaming of Rosie or your mother?

  ‘Yes, a nightmare. I look in this hole and it’s alive with maggots, and I’m going into it. It’s all coming undone. Who’s doing this to me?’

  If Pansy had believed in ghosts, she might have had an answer for that. It was the face of Emery’s mother she saw in the mirror across the room, and it was her own face.

  The bouncer and the bartender each had the frowzy redhead by one flabby arm, and even so, she was giving them trouble as they led her out the door. The two large men had loud, hollered words with the woman on the sidewalk and out of Betty Hyde’s earshot.

  Hyde looked around her, noting the rodent droppings on the floor. Definitely not an A rating from the Board of Health.

  Reminders of her less accomplished relatives were on the faces of every drunk at the bar. Her glass had lipstick stains from the previous customer. The slatternly waitress had actually seemed amused when she complained, but a dollar bill had bribed the girl back to the table with a clean glass, and Hyde had slugged back the whole shot. With enough whiskey, anything could be borne.

  She leaned forward as she spoke to the younger woman who sat on the other side of the small table.

  ‘Mallory, how do you find these places?’

  Of course, she understood the logic. No one from the Coventry Arms was likely to wander in, not without their own private security. The bulge under Mallory’s coat could only be a gun. Now that was comforting.

  ‘Tell me more about Eric Franz,’ said Mallory.

  ‘Anything specific?’ And what did Eric have in common with a judge and a gigolo?

  ‘Are you sure he’s blind?’

  ‘Dead sure,’ said Betty Hyde.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘If the blindness was fraud – the wife didn’t know. How does a man keep a thing like that from his wife?’

  ‘Maybe she did know.’

  ‘No, Mallory. Annie believed he was blind.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Well, I did tell you his wife had an interesting sense of humor… for a bitch. She used to flirt with men in front of him. Nothing spoken – only the rubbing up, the nuzzling. What Annie did with other men were the sort of things Eric couldn’t see or hear. It was quite a show – the two of them in public. And there were other jokes at his expense, the faces she made, the obscene gestures. It was the darkest humor. You couldn’t look away. You couldn’t tell her to stop. You were a prisoner to every exhibition.’

  ‘Why did she hate him so much?’

  ‘Because he loved her so much – too much. If only he’d been rude to her occasionally, it might have gone a long way toward improving the marriage. She was that type.’

  ‘And his type? He was a doormat?’

  ‘A nice guy. But you’re right. She had nothing but contempt for him in all the time I knew them.’

  ‘Is that why they never had children?’

  ‘You know, there was a time when I could’ve sworn Annie was pregnant. She had that certain aura of impending motherhood. That special glow that comes from vomiting every morning. But then, when I saw her again, she was her old self – drop-dead gorgeous and frighteningly awake.’

  ‘You think she got rid of it?’

  ‘Abortion? Yes, I do, but there’s no way to confirm it. I pride myself in being a hardcase, but I can’t ask a blind man if his wife aborted their only child. Well, I could if it had the makings of a good story. Does it?’

  ‘Did you tell Eric I was a cop before I joined the consulting firm?’

  ‘No, dear. I only told him you might be interested in any little tidbits about the judge. But it was all over the news. Every channel said you were a dead cop.’

  ‘A fireman was killed on Monday. Do you remember the news story?’

  ‘Yes, he died saving an old man. It was a long story.’

  ‘What was the fireman’s name?’

  ‘I don’t remember… Oh, I see. Yesterday’s news – who remembers the details, the names and faces? But you, my dear, have a memorable face.’

  ‘And Eric Franz is blind.’

  When she returned home, she hung up her clothes in the closet as Helen had taught her to do. The cat had already sensed her presence and was pounding its hello on the bathroom door with the soft thuds of paws. She pressed the play button on her answering machine, and went into the kitchen to open a can of tuna for her star witness.

  It was Riker’s voice on the machine.

  ‘Mallory, do any of the suspects have a dog?’

  Charles dimmed the lights of the front room and settled back on the couch, long legs splayed out in front of him. An early Christmas present from Mallory lay in the midst of its green velvet wrapping paper.

  He was staring down at yet another of Mallory’s attempts to lure him into the current century. He had a remarkable record collection and the finest turntable money could buy, but he was a dinosaur in her eyes. It was not the music which counted with her, but the technology. Every old thing be damned, technology ruled.

  He picked up her gift, the portable CD player. Did she really expect him to go about the streets wired up to the age of electronics?

  How perverse was their gift giving. He gave her jewels in antique settings, which she never wore. She gave him expensiv
e high-technology, which collected dust between visits from Mrs Ortega.

  He pushed the button to open the top of the machine, just on the off chance she’d had the plastic cover inscribed with a sentimental message. He gave the same odds that two moons might appear in the sky tonight. A disk lay in the machine, ready to play at a touch. It was only a mild shock that it should be Louisa’s Concerto.

  Could she have known about the ruined record in the basement? Probably not. More than likely, she had noticed the concerto was not included in his record collection after he had made a point of saying it was a popular recording for any classical music buff.

  Earphones grew out of the small dark box in his hand. But he didn’t actually need the earphones, did he? The concerto was locked in his memory now and running through his conscious mind.

  What had happened this afternoon had stunned him in the way cattle are stunned with a bat before they go into the slaughterhouse blades. He understood how it had happened. The music had always been a trigger in his childhood fantasies of Louisa. Now the concerto was keyed to his eidetic recreation of Amanda. She was archived in his freakish memory, and she would probably live there forever.

  He didn’t want to touch on this again. The fear was real. It was no ghost story this, but something threatening to his mind.

  Mallory would not be frightened so. And what exactly was he frightened of? It was only an illusion, wasn’t it? Something he had made with a child’s memory of a magic act and nothing more, a mere holograph of remembering. Malakhai’s magical insanity had been a gift of sorts, and that was his field, wasn’t it, exploring gifts. Furthermore, he had actually found a practical application for the old magician’s delusion. If Amanda was true to life, if he was faithful to her in creation, she might be able to tell him something useful to Mallory’s investigation. If Mallory could face bullets, he could face Amanda. It was not so insane. A mere conversation in the mind.

  Memory led him back through the setup for the act. He was a child again. The conductor’s baton was rising as the concert hall quieted to heart-stopped silence. The concerto had begun. The inner music fled the confines of his braincase and rose around him in a wall of sound which opened on to bleak corridors filled with the scent of roses. The lull of music was the warning of the great dark hole which sprawled out before him. In that magic silence where the listeners placed the phantom notes rather than endure the emptiness, there he heard a woman keening, wailing for a death, softer now and coming toward him into the light.