The Man Who Lied To Women

by Carol O’Connell

  He thudded down to the floor and padded after her as she searched behind each door. She stopped awhile by the bathroom door. He rubbed his head against one of her bare feet, which did not love him back but pushed him away. Her hand depressed the latch on the door. She pressed on it again and again.

  She looked down at him and whispered, ‘Are you that smart?’ which he, more or less correctly, interpreted as ‘Good boy,’ and he began to purr.

  Now he was being picked up in her arms, luxuriating in the warmth of her skin. And then, he was falling toward the tiles of the bathroom floor. The light went out, the door slammed, and he sat alone in the dark, wondering what he had done wrong this time.

  Mallory, the consummate liar, had barred herself from the poker game for the damage of a lie. How perverse and convoluted was her code of what passed for honor.

  Charles had learned to lie and betray in one night. Oh wouldn’t Mallory be proud of how far he’d come, how low he’d sunk.

  No, no she wouldn’t. One did not do such damage to people in Mallory’s orbit. But she would never know what he had done. Even if he was in the confession mode, he was bound by Slope to keep silent. A lie of omission.

  As Riker had once explained to him, her history belonged to her alone. She would hate this intrusion, this conspiracy of knowledge. Slope would never discuss this evening with Riker. The lies and betrayal would go unnoticed. And so there were more lies by omission.

  He didn’t have the luxury of barring himself from the poker game. Questions would be asked, she would ferret out the answers, more damage would be done. Once a week, he would be reminded of his crimes, sitting across a card table from Edward Slope.

  And he could not confess to Riker either, not without the web spreading. He only wished he were a practicing Catholic so he could confess to someone.

  The pattern of his web had become too intricate. Sleep was lost in the tangle of the weave. But finally, sleep did come for him, all in visions of a little girl running in the dark, pursued by things which were darker still and might be spiders. And when she slipped in the blood of his dreams, he snapped awake.

  His mind flooded with music to kill the images and thoughts created by a night of lies, and now his penance was in the room with him. He shut his eyes and tried to end the music. But he could hear the light steps of Amanda’s feet all around his bed.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it,’ said Amanda. ‘She was able to pretend sleep while another child was being murdered.’

  No, please, I don’t want to think about that.

  ‘Oh, Charles, you’ll never stop thinking about that. It wasn’t the reaction you’d expect from a small child, was it?’

  Since when was Mallory predictable?

  He kept his eyes closed, in hopes of minimizing the damage to his mind. He didn’t know how to send her away. Perhaps the delusion would pale without the reinforcement of sight.

  But no. She continued to pace, footsteps growing heavier, waiting on her answer as a solid woman would do.

  Addressing his words to the ceiling, he said, ‘It wasn’t Mallory’s mother who was killed in the film. You were wrong about that angle.’

  ‘Was I?’ Amanda’s pacing stopped for a moment. ‘She never moved the entire time a child was being tortured. She played dead.’

  ‘She might only have been paralyzed with fear. There are no facts to support – ’

  ‘Logic and facts have failed you, Charles. You had a qualified medical examiner as a witness to the film. She was playing dead. Where did she learn that? Maybe she’d had some practice witnessing another bloody murder. Maybe that’s what happened to her mother, and to Justin’s mother.’

  He rolled over to face her, this woman who was not there, yet he kept his eyes closed. ‘Amanda, this is ludicrous. Justin’s mother died of a heart attack. That’s a fact. Now the aspect of child abuse makes more sense. That’s what Mallory would see in the boy. She would recognize the signs of an abused child. Even Mallory could not divine a murder through the boy’s eyes.’

  Strains of the concerto meandered through his brain. He recited the Greek alphabet in a whisper. The music fled; Amanda remained to pace the floor around his bed. Her footsteps were heavier now. He opened his eyes to faint moonlight and the stronger light of street lamps pouring through his bedroom window. He turned his face to the opposite wall, where his ultimate nightmare was moving across the wallpaper. Amanda had learned to cast a shadow.

  CHAPTER 7

  26 December

  She had been unsuccessful in her efforts to bully the maid. Perhaps it was true that Betty Hyde was not at home this morning. And neither was Eric Franz answering his telephone. But the judge was in, and so was Harry Kipling.

  She picked up the plastic evidence bag and held it up to the camera to visually record the chain of evidence written on the seal, and then the breaking of the seal. She pulled out the cap gun and set it down on the table in the front room.

  Back in the den, she ran a test of the camera equipment which had just made her visual record of the evidence. On her way to the front door, four gilded wall mirrors caught the swift passing reflection of her T-shirt, shoulder holster and jeans. She was pulling on the new brown cashmere blazer, a twin to the garment Amanda Bosch had been wearing when she died. The tailor had reproduced it exactly. Not that most people would appreciate the detailing.

  She had been tempted to re-create the cigarette burn on the sleeve, but the ghost of Helen Markowitz wouldn’t let her do it. And Helen would have been the first to comment on the bulge the gun made in the line of the blazer. Mallory stopped at the mirror in the foyer, checking the giveaway bulk with a critical eye.

  She called the cat to her, and it came. She snapped her fingers, and the cat made a leap into her arms and nuzzled her neck. She looked back to the mirror. No, it wouldn’t do. The squirming cat wouldn’t hide the bulge of the gun unless she killed it first and pinned it on like a furry corsage.

  She dropped the animal on the floor at her feet, shrugged off her blazer and removed the shoulder holster. She slid the gun into the drawer of the small table beneath the mirror. Putting the coat on again, she snapped her fingers for the cat.

  With no self-respect, no pride, Nose jumped back into her arms.

  She made her way down the hall, wondering that doors didn’t open to inquire about the racket of purring. She stopped at the door to Judge Heart’s apartment and knocked. It was a repeat of last night; the chain had apparently been replaced. The door only opened a crack. The judge was staring at her.

  ‘I want to see your wife,’ said Mallory.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I could be discreet or not. Up to you. I want to see that she’s all right. I want to see her NOW!’

  The door closed to the sound of the newly installed chain slipping off the latch. Now the door was opening, and the judge was calling out, ‘Pansy! Pansy!’

  Pansy Heart entered the room. Her face showed only the damage of the previous night and no fresh marks.

  ‘Just checking,’ Mallory said, turning to go. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at the judge. ‘I know what you did, and I’m going to get you for it.’

  Judge Heart’s face was in rage shades of red as the door slammed.

  When she knocked on the next door, one flight up, the Kipling boy opened it. There was no leer on the boy’s face this time. He stepped back to make room for Mallory, and she walked in. Harry Kipling was seated at the table. He looked at the cat and rose quickly to his feet, but not quickly enough.

  A Springer spaniel was bounding across the carpet and heading for the cat, jaws wide and joy in his eyes.

  The apartment was still, with no current of air or sound to indicate an animate being, not even a cat. Then, the quiet of no-one-home was broken by a pair of feet crossing the foyer and dragging a shadow along by the heels.

  The intrusion was short-lived, for the revolver lay in the first drawer opened. The gun metal gleamed for the moments between the
drawer and the dark of a bag. Stepping softly, the thief quit the apartment.

  When Mallory slammed the door behind her, the Kipling boy was yelling, ‘Look what she did to my dog!’

  Mallory returned by way of the stairwell. The door to the Rosens’ apartment was open. Could she have been that stupid?

  This time, the cat didn’t cry when she dropped him. He was even prepared for the fall. Nose had grown accustomed to this game of holding and dropping. He padded away, yawning.

  She opened the drawer of the table by the door.

  The drawer was empty; her Smith & Wesson revolver was gone.

  Nothing else had been disturbed. The cap gun lay on the table where she had placed it.

  What now? She couldn’t call in for backup and admit she’d lost the gun. Neither Coffey nor Riker would let her live that one down. A rookie would not have lost her gun.

  A crash came from the direction of the bedroom.

  She passed through the kitchen and slipped a wine bottle into her hand. Now she entered the bedroom. The cat was standing over the remains of a broken lamp. There was no mystery to the breakage. A fringe of the lamp shade was tangled in the cat’s paw.

  But there was still the problem of the gun.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Charles from the bedroom. ‘I’m in a big hurry, Charles. Go to the center drawer in my desk and get the old Long Colt. And bring the box of ammo with it. You’ll have to turn off the…’ She lowered the phone at the sound that may or may not have been the cat. Now she set the receiver back on its cradle to stifle Charles’s loud repeated ‘Hello?’ coming from the mouthpiece.

  She left the bedroom, quickly, silently gliding down the short hallway to the den. She flipped the array of switches for the cameras, backup tapes and audio.

  She entered the front room to find the cat crawling under the couch and Harry Kipling standing in the center of the room. The cap gun was lying on the coffee table.

  How much time would it take Charles to get to her with the real gun?

  ‘You left your door open,’ said Kipling. ‘That was careless.’

  She had meant to make his access easy, but she had planned to have a gun in her hand when he came through the door. It was an odd moment to be thinking of Riker’s I-told-you-so grin. Too late for backup, and Charles was miles from here.

  The cameras were rolling.

  There was time to wonder if Coffey would catch her in this screw-up, or if she could lie her way out of it.

  Max Candle’s knife lay on a shelf of the bookcase behind Kipling. Had he seen it? Originally, she had planned to steer him to it, so he would have a weapon in his hands in the event the cameras should catch her blowing away a taxpayer. But that plan had been contingent on having a gun in her own hand. And where was he hiding her gun?

  Kipling was still staring at the cap gun on the table.

  ‘You recognize it, Harry? It’s the same toy gun you used to teach the cat to dance. Now Nose only has to see a gun and he dances. Was it the noise of the caps? Did you fire that toy close to his head to make him dance?’

  And now the cat began to snore.

  Charles was closing the door to his apartment. So that was it? I’m in a hurry! Bring me a gun! How many weapons did she need all at once? She had a rather large gun and a sharp knife in her possession now. But who was he to question Mallory, he who kept company with a dead woman.

  He was crossing the hall to the offices of Mallory and Butler, Ltd, wondering which of all the stupid things he had said had made her the most angry. He had accused her of lack of logic, and of underestimation of…

  Oh, fool.

  She had questioned him about a blind man. Not too quick to underestimate that suspect, was she? And now she was gathering more weapons. No lack of caution there. Where was his own logic?

  Perhaps he had gotten everything wrong, genius that he was. What had possessed him to take Coffey’s side in this? At the time it had made some sense, but now? Maybe Coffey had only feared she was too fixed in her knowledge of the suspect. Riker had been right to caution him. He should have shown her more respect. He must not let her down now.

  He unlocked the door to Mallory’s private office and strode quickly to her desk. The center drawer was locked.

  Now that was a snag. He had no keys for drawers. Mallory must assume that everyone was as gifted as she in the art of breaking and entering. He picked up the letter opener he had given her. It was the only object in the room not manufactured in the current decade. In fact, it dated back to another century. He hesitated only for a moment, hefting the irreplaceable piece in his hand. Then he inserted it into the space above the drawer and used force to pry the metal open.

  An ear-splitting squeal was the first warning, followed by a cascade of bells, giant bells, gongs in hellish amplification. This must be Mallory’s idea of accommodating his aversion to high technology. She had wired the office for an alarm, and in place of an annoying beep or siren, she had worked in his recordings of church bells. And now he was inside the bell tower, inside the bells themselves.

  He put up his hands to cover his ears. He would altogether lose his ears if he stayed much longer. He could turn it off, but there was not time enough to hunt the wiring from the drawer before serious damage was done to him. And the speakers might be anywhere in the myriad of electronic equipment. There could be no direction to sound when one’s head was itself the clapper of a monster bell.

  He opened the wooden case nested in the center drawer, and there was Markowitz’s old.38 Long Colt, gleaming with Mallory’s good housekeeping, which extended into the barrels of antique guns. He picked up the revolver and the ammunition box and ran for the door. The peal of the church bells from hell followed him down the stairs and into the street, where every window had a head sticking out of it.

  He put out his hand to flag down a cab, silently begging forgiveness from the neighbors.

  Kipling walked back to the front door and locked it. ‘I don’t think we want to be disturbed right now.’

  What would Charles do when he met with a locked door? He had the size to kick it in, but he would not know how.

  ‘How did you get on to it?’ Harry Kipling lowered himself to a straight-back chair and motioned her to another.

  She remained standing.

  He leaned back in the chair, lifting its front feet off the rug and rocking on the two back legs, staring absently into space. His face was drawn, dramatic in the hollows below the high cheekbones where afternoon shadows followed the contours. He seemed tired, at the point of giving in or giving up. ‘What mistake did I make?’

  ‘You made a lot of them,’ said Mallory. They had been tap dancing for ten minutes now. Where was the gun? It could be hidden in his belt at the small of the back. He had not yet looked directly at the knife with the crest of Max Candle.

  ‘How much do you want?’ Kipling smiled. ‘This is a simple case of extortion, am I right?’

  ‘What’s it worth to you, Harry?’

  ‘What’s my marriage worth? Call my wife’s accountant. I don’t have all day for this. How much do you want to keep it quiet?’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Desperation. If you want the sordid details, you’re not getting them. Just tell me how much money you want.’

  ‘I’ll get back to you.’

  She would not allow her eyes to travel back to the knife, to give it away. But she knew she could have it in her hand in a heartbeat if she only had the advantage of position. The chair and the rocking Kipling blocked the way.

  Moving in slow silence, she angled around Kipling, who was holding the cap gun in his hand, examining it as a curiosity. She could see him in profile now. There was no gun concealed in the small of his back. He was dressed in a polo shirt and close-fitting slacks. There was no place on his person to conceal a large weapon.

  So where was her damn gun?

  ‘So I had a relationship with Amanda Bosch – now how much do you want? How much
not to tell my wife?’

  ‘Well, there’s a bit more to it than just the relationship with Amanda.’

  ‘You’ve only got me on one woman. If you believed there were others, you would have said so before now. I’m not going to pay the moon for this. Now how much do you want?’

  ‘Did I mention that I knew Amanda? I know you lied to her, and she caught you on it.’

  ‘But there were so many lies.’ By the way he smiled, he seemed to take some pride in that.

  ‘I’m talking about the lie that made her abort her baby. Does that narrow it down for you?’

  ‘That particular lie isn’t worth any cash to me. I don’t think you did know her. I think you’re a crooked cop. The news said you were a cop, and the daughter of a cop. Was your father crooked too? Does it run in the family?’

  ‘Let’s say I learned a lot from my old man. If I never knew Amanda, how do I know what tipped her off to the lie, what made her snap?’

  She had not been a world-class poker player for nothing. Helen always wanted her to have a fine education, and now the weekly poker games of childhood were paying off.

  ‘Amanda was sitting on a bench outside the building on the day before she died, the day before she called you on the big lie. She never went up to the door, she just watched. It was a busy day for the doorman. People were coming and going, tenants, kids, dogs. Then she saw – ’

  ‘Let’s not get too dramatic, shall we? She saw Peter and she knew he wasn’t adopted. You know, until then, I always thought it was a blessing that he looked like me and not Angel.’

  Still holding the cap gun in the palm of his hand, Kipling stood up and crossed over to the bookcase. He leaned against the shelf where Max Candle’s knife was sitting. He was only inches from it.

  ‘So it is a shakedown. If you know her, you know she was only using me for genetic material. She didn’t ask me if I wanted to make another brat, did she?’