The Man Who Lied To Women

by Carol O’Connell

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just need her off the street for a couple of days. Oh, and I need a Polaroid of the kid. Can you manage that for me?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But what happens to the child when the three days are up?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got enough problems right now.’

  ‘Kathy, sometimes I think you’re growing into a real human being, and then you exasperate me this way. You got her this far, that’s good. But after the detox – what then? You can’t just dump off a little girl like she was a sack of potatoes.’

  ‘Doris does all the cooking in your house – that’s her job, right?’

  ‘What?’

  Mallory’s hands went to her hips. Her words had a cautioning edge. ‘If you’d ever tried to prepare a meal, you’d know what an art form it really is, making every dish come out at the same time.’ Her voice was on the rise now, and angry. ‘Well, I’m cooking! I’ve got six dishes going at six different speeds, and they all have to be done at exactly the same time or the whole thing falls apart on me.’ One long fingernail jabbed at his chest. ‘You go do your own damn job! Get off my back!’

  And the cook with a gun walked through the lobby and out the front door.

  Today Mallory had only one message for each of her suspects. She blocked out the bulletin board they would access on their screens and tapped in the code to call up the dummy board. It displayed only one sentence repeated over and over again: I HAVE A WITNESS. And that was no lie if cats counted.

  Though the hallway was generous in width, Pansy Heart pressed her body to the wall as her husband walked by. His face was red, his eyes hard, and he walked heavy on his feet, sending one fist to the wall a scant few inches from where she stood. In the room he had left, the computer screen was blank once more. What had been the message this time?

  A door slammed at the other end of the hall. She jumped as though she had trod on a live wire. She gripped the edge of the hall table, feeling empty and airy inside, believing that she might fly upward without this solid anchor of oak. Her heart was knocking on the wall of her chest.

  It was natural to be thinking of her mother-in-law on that last day of the old woman’s life, in that moment when the organs were shutting down one by one. There had been an inner knowledge of impending death in the ancient eyes. Only minutes before, terror had lived in that deeply lined face. Then the lines had smoothed out, and in the eyes was, not peace, but triumph. And then her mother-in-law had died – escaped.

  Angel Kipling paced up and down the carpet before her husband Harry. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what this is about.’ She held up the printout from the computer. A single sentence repeated one hundred times across the sheet. ‘A witness to what? What have you done?’ Her voice was in the whining mode and threatened to climb into a scream.

  Harry Kipling was buttoning his shirt in front of the mirror. Now he sought out her reflection behind his own. ‘It’s not addressed to me, is it?’

  Angel’s lip was curling as he turned around to face her in the flesh. She placed her hands on her wide hips, and her robe fell open to display the ponderous breasts sagging against the thick body. His eyes dropped to the opening in the robe, and he quickly turned away from her. She winced as though she had been slapped.

  As he left the full-length mirror to examine his tie rack, Angel stood alone in the glass, staring at her reflection. She had not yet put on the armature of make-up, and her hair was wild with snarls.

  She closed the robe quickly and addressed her husband in a smaller voice this time. ‘It’s not another bank card scam, is it, Harry? You’re not having trouble living on your allowance money, are you?’

  It had cost her a fortune to clean up after his last foray into creative banking, that or face the scandal and the stockholders. And she had never believed the stolen money was gone, spent. Was he amassing capital for a getaway? No, he would never leave her. He would never stray far from the source of unlimited wealth.

  He ignored her and continued the business of tying his tie, an odd and useless preoccupation for a man who had no occupation, no business to conduct. And now she forgot that she was ugliest in the morning, most vulnerable without her magic make-up.

  ‘Answer me, you prick. You don’t want me to cut off your allowance again, do you?’

  ‘Angel, I have no idea what’s going on. It’s probably a prank. Some kid in the building.’

  ‘It’s another bank swindle, isn’t it? I thought I made it very clear what would happen if you tried this one more time. You won’t like being poor again, Harry.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  She pulled a crumple of computer paper from her robe pocket and thrust it at him.

  ‘This was faxed yesterday. It’s an application for a credit card, and the form is addressed to you.’

  ‘I haven’t applied for any credit cards.’

  ‘Read it!’

  He accepted the ball of paper and made a small production out of smoothing it over the surface of the bedside table.

  Under the heading of pertinent information it read: First, tell us why you did it. Please print or type your confession in the space provided.

  He picked up the sheet of paper, bringing it close to his eyes, examining the logo of the credit card company, which appeared at the top of the page.

  The next line read: Does your wife know what you did? If so, we have provided additional space for her comments.

  Now he stared at the short list of questions:

  1. Why did you lie?

  2. Would you do it again if we gave you the chance? He lowered the page and then looked up as Angel paced back and forth across the rug with barely contained fury.

  ‘And now this message on the building bulletin board!’ The words exploded from her mouth. ‘What does it mean?’ She looked down at the most recent message, clutched in her hand. ‘ “I have a witness.” A witness to what? Talk to me, Harry, or I’ll cut off your allowance, and then I’ll cut off your balls!’

  Eric Franz was slow to answer his door. Betty Hyde could hear him walking toward the foyer, a shuffle of hard soles on marble. When the door did open, he was looking over her shoulder, as though just missing her with his eyes. A sheet of paper was wadded in his hand. His face was a mask. The room behind him was dark but for the constant glow of the computer’s ever-open eye.

  ‘If she knew you were digging into her past, it could end your friendship,’ said Rabbi David Kaplan.

  ‘I only want the connection between the boy and Mailory,’ said Charles Butler, The rabbi’s den was a place where books lived. They were not kept to the shelves, but quietly gathered in stacks on every surface of the room, perched in groups of agreeable subjects. A single leather-bound volume lay open on the desk, patiently awaiting the rabbi’s return to the interrupted business of scholarship.

  ‘Perhaps the connection between them is only a simple commonality,’ said the rabbi.

  ‘The difference in their backgrounds doesn’t leave room for much in common.’

  ‘All children have a commonality in innocence.’

  ‘I wouldn’t describe either of them as innocent. The boy talks like a forty-year-old man. And Mallory… is Mallory.’

  ‘Perhaps they share the innocence of good and evil.’

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard the word innocence so connected with evil.’

  ‘Take Helen’s view of Kathy. Helen could see nothing bad in the child. Helen always said no one had ever explained the rules to Kathy, and she was close to the truth. These concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, heaven and hell, what is that to a child on the street, living by wit and theft? When she first came to live with Louis and Helen, her behavior sometimes bordered on that of feral children raised apart from humans.’

  ‘What about the natural mother? Is it possible she abused her child? Perhaps that would explain a lot of the damage.’

  ‘Charles, I know nothing about the natural mother. Kat
hy has never once spoken about this woman.’

  ‘Suppose you had to speculate on her parents. Just based on what you know of her, what would you say?’

  ‘We assumed Kathy had been on the street for three or four years before Markowitz arrested her. She was a ten-year-old thief. She tried to lie her way to twelve, and Markowitz let her get away with eleven – but she stole that year.

  ‘Now we know she’d never been to a formal school. Helen had her evaluated at the Learning Center. But someone had taught her to read and write at a very early age. She also had an astonishing natural aptitude for mathematics. That was why Helen and Louis spent more than they could afford on private schools. They were afraid her gifts would wither in the public school system with one teacher to every fifty children.’

  The rabbi went to the shelf and took a box from among the books. From it he withdrew papers. ‘This is a sample of Kathy’s handwriting at ten. It’s not the hand of a child. Someone took great care with her, and very early on.

  ‘And then Helen evaluated her religious education. One day we took her with us to meet with Father Barry at the parish in the neighborhood. It was that time of year when we joined together to feed and clothe the poor. When Kathy saw the crucifix above the altar, she automatically made the sign of the cross. Helen took this as an omen, and she gave the Christians equal time in Kathy’s spiritual guidance. So someone had taught the child to make the sign of the cross.

  ‘From only this, I may deduce that someone spent an enormous amount of time with her. She was not unwanted or ignored, not considered a burden to her mother, but the focus of attention. And that person enabled Kathy to love Helen at first sight. I like to believe she must have been rather like Helen Markowitz, this special someone. Can you see this woman abusing her child? Or allowing anyone else to do it? I can not. This woman I know nothing about, I remember her in my prayers.’

  ‘May I take that to mean you think the woman is dead?’

  ‘What else could separate such a woman from her child?’

  ‘I’m going to bring down the judge.’

  She thought that might make his little eyes spin around.

  Mallory stared at the ME investigator across the same table in the same coffee house where she had first hooked him. She had left him just enough time to let his own imagination do all the work for her, and then she had reeled him back in. That was the old man’s style, and it had worked well.

  Tkank you, Markowitz.

  ‘Heller lives for his work, and there’s none better. If he knew you were walking evidence out of the crime scenes, he’d hunt you down and put a bullet in you. So you walk the evidence. You give it to a cop, and you’re one person removed from the crime of blackmail.’

  ‘You’ve got nothin’ solid, Mallory. If you did – ‘

  ‘I’ve got reports on three suicides with no notes left behind. That’s what tipped me. You were the ME investigator on all three scenes. Who did the notes implicate? What embarrassing details were in them? Suicides just love to unload before they cross over. I imagine you’ve carted out other souvenirs, maybe a few photographs of married men? Love letters? What else? In the case of the judge’s mother, you obstructed a homicide investigation. You kept quiet about evidence of murder. Palanski showed up because you called him in. You had to. No way you could hand him the old lady’s body. So now I’ve got the two of you in the same room of a dirty operation. But this time you covered up a murder.’

  ‘No, it was battery maybe, but not homicide. And the battery wasn’t all that recent. She had a split lip, but it had healed some. Maybe it was a day old. And there was a bruise on the side of her face, but it was at least two days old, and that didn’t kill her either. Her own doctor was there. You can ask him. She did die of natural causes.’

  ‘But the marks would’ve been embarrassing to the judge, right? So Palanski shows up, and he takes over and works the judge. Am I right?’

  The ME investigator would not meet her eyes. She looked down to the paper napkin in his hands. He was shredding it to moist confetti. He opened his mouth to speak, but she dared not give him time to say he wanted a lawyer. She slammed her open hand down on the table, and his mouth closed as he jumped in his chair, nerves shot to hell.

  ‘Your biggest problem is that your partner is stupid. He buys stock, bearer bonds, and the idiot thinks nobody can trace them because the deals are cash. Every cash transaction is logged just like the credit transactions. All his financial activity is on computer. Did you know that Palanski’s been cheating you on the cuts?’ No, she could see he hadn’t known.

  ‘The way you handled your cut of the payoffs was only a little brighter.’ She thumbed through the sheaf of papers on the table till she found the one she wanted. She set this in front of him. ‘This is a record of all the cash deposits you made into your mother’s bank account. But you have power of attorney on that account, so you’re tied up by computer transactions too. Your mother’s entire legal income is Social Security, and yet she has this fantastic bank account. Still, Internal Affairs would never have tipped to that. Oh, but that fool Palanski.’

  ‘You won’t get anything on him without me testifying on the payoff.’

  ‘I won’t hurt you. A deal is a deal. I’m going to let you rat on yourself and Palanski. You know the drill. The first one to turn state’s evidence gets immunity.’

  Nose was paroled from the bathroom for the evening. He purred around Mallory’s legs as she put the bullets into the speedloader for her revolver.

  She faced the foyer mirror and thought of visual cues. She looked down at the cat and closed her long and narrow eyes to suspicious slits. Nose began to dance. The cue for the dancing, what was it? A muffled noise called her eyes up to the ceiling. The sounds upstairs were unmistakable. Plush carpet and thick insulation could not block out the scream. Now furniture was being turned over. Feet pounded into the front room above her head. She followed the sounds, eyes to the ceiling. She stopped by the phone in the living room.

  She tapped keys on the building computer and scrolled through the list of tenants until she had Betty Hyde’s number. More furniture was moving. A dial tone. Another scream.

  ‘Hyde residence,’ said a foreign voice. ‘Put Hyde on the phone. Tell her it’s Mallory and it’s urgent.’

  Telephone pressed between shoulder and ear, she opened the closet door and pulled out the heavy sheepskin jacket to hide the bulge of the gun. The jacket was bulky enough to interfere with action, but she was not ready to show her hand or her gun in public, for this was the visual cue to call the lawyer. She was slipping into the sleeves of the coat when Betty Hyde came to the phone. ‘Mallory, darling, I thought you’d never call.’

  ‘Meet me at Judge Heart’s apartment. I’ll be there before you. Stay back, all right? Stay the hell out of my way.’

  She took the stairs three at a time. She noted the three locks as she neared the door. Most people only used one lock until they were in for the night. It was early yet. The main lock was the flimsiest. But the thick door was too formidable to break down. She banged on the door with her fist and pressed the buzzer. ‘Open up!’ Now there was dead silence within. And maybe a dead woman?

  She banged on the door again. ‘Open up or I’ll call the police!’ Magic words for the man in the public eye.

  She heard heavy footsteps on the tiles of the foyer beyond the door, and then the sound of the lock being undone, the latch chain being slipped into its notch. The door opened a crack, and she was looking into the cold eyes of Judge Heart just above the length of gold chain which bound the door to its frame.

  She smiled politely, stepped back and kicked the door at the center, breaking the latch chain and knocking the man off balance. She pushed past him and entered the apartment.

  Pansy Heart was in the corner of the front room, trying desperately to crawl into the pattern of the rug and disappear. Her nose was bleeding, her lip was split and the side of her face was already beginning to swell.

>   Behind her, the judge was screaming, ‘You have no right!’

  Mallory turned on him. ‘I’m taking her out of here. Don’t give me any trouble.’

  His face had gone to purple rage as he advanced on her. With a quick, sure kick, she put her foot into his groin and watched his skin drain of color as his eyes bulged out with surprise and pain. He slipped down to one knee. Pansy Heart was crying softly. Mallory pulled the woman up and walked her toward the door, one arm supporting the smaller woman about the tiny waist.

  Betty Hyde stood in the doorway. Her eyes were fixed on Pansy Heart’s ruined face, and her mouth was suppressing a smile.

  ‘I’ll take care of her,’ she said, putting her arms around the crying woman as Mallory stepped back. ‘Come with me, Pansy. You need a doctor, dear.’

  The judge was getting to his feet. He was clumsy and slow about it as both hands were clutching his groin. Mallory tucked a foot under his unbending legs and tripped him, sending his face into the corner of a heavy oak table and giving him his own bloody nose.

  Pansy Heart looked back at her husband as though awaiting further orders. Then she yielded to the gentle force of Betty Hyde, who was propelling her through the door and into the hall.

  The gossip columnist was on her way to an interview with this battered woman, and nothing but a joint act of Congress and God would have stopped her. Mallory wondered if she had done the judge a favor by preventing him from getting between Hyde and his wife.

  Mallory set a tray of teapot and cups down on the table, and then she let her eyes roam the generous front room of Betty Hyde’s apartment. It was a copy of the Rosens’ only in the architecture. The decorator had been a pro. She knew Charles would have appreciated the American and British antiques masterfully woven with the modern pieces. The front room was open and airy, without bric-a-brac. It was gracious living without souvenir or sentiment or any heart to it at all. Mallory approved.

  The judge’s wife was sitting in an early-American rocking chair, holding a cold compress to her swelling face. Betty Hyde sat on a footstool and gently pushed on the armrest of Pansy’s chair, rocking, lulling the crying woman. Entangling her gaze with Pansy’s, Hyde crooned soft words, smiling, eyes gleaming, playing the good nurse.