Mallory's Oracle (24 page)

“And that night, the night he really died, that was the last time Edith ever left the house?”

“What?”

“She was there. You didn't know?”

“No, I didn't. She told you that?”

“No, she never mentioned it. I found her picture in the old newspaper archives.”

She noticed a disturbing distraction in his eyes, but only for a moment.

“You think it's time to let me help you now?” He smiled at her. “I do understand why you have to do this. I don't like it. I worry about you. But I do understand. You don't have to do this alone anymore.”

“You think I'm making a mess of this, don't you? Maybe I'm not as smart as Markowitz—”

“I'm an expert in that area. Your intelligence isn't in question. However, you might want to give some thought to the way you use it. Your strong point is gathering and analyzing data. True, you're a great shot, but that's called marksmanship. It doesn't put you in the same club with a street cop who shoots on the run. Do what you do best. Work the data, and leave the surveillance and the undercover work to the department.”

“The department? Coffey thinks Markowitz botched it. He thinks the old man was sucker punched. I can't let go of the idea that Markowitz worked the whole thing out. He had to be following the suspect.”

“Louis is dead. If you try to do this his way, you'll die too. You can see the logic in that. Follow his steps and you fall in the same hole. You don't know who he was following that day. You found a link to the suspects. Maybe he found another one. Who knows?”

“The Shadow knows.”

“Pardon? We're not talking about
the
Shadow? The old radio—”

“It was Markowitz's all-time favorite.”

“My parents loved that program.”

“All right, I'm going back to collecting data. Will you do me a favor?”

“You hardly needed to ask.”

“I need you to cozy up to Henry Cathery. He plays chess in the park seven days a week. Get him into a game.”

“If you like, but why?”

“Because you play chess and I don't.”

“No, I meant why me? I'm hardly cut out for undercover work.”

“And that's why you're so perfect. Who would suspect you? Cathery's smart. He'd see through me in a minute. You're smarter.”

“How did he make it to the top of your list so suddenly? I thought he was ruled out. The papers said he had an alibi.”

“Never believe what you read in the papers. He's not at the top of the list, but he's pretty damn close. He's in the park every day for hours at a time. People are so used to seeing him there, they just don't see him anymore. He's a fixture, like one of the shrubs or the benches. He was probably in the park while his grandmother was being murdered.”

“Well, I'm sure my key to the park wouldn't work anymore. You want me to rattle the gates and ask if he'll invite me in? You don't think he might suspect I've come to interview him?”

“Whoa. Back up. What key?”

“I have one of the original keys. It's an antique. I'll show you.”

He left the office, and a moment later, she could hear him working his key in the door across the hall. He returned to her with a velvet jeweler's box in one hand. He opened it to display a gleaming golden key nested in black satin.

“The first keys, from the last century, were all made of gold. My cousin Max gave me this one for a birthday present when I was a child.”

“How did old Cousin Max happen to have a key to Gramercy Park?”

“Oh, there was always at least one Butler in Gramercy Park for a hundred years or so. Max changed his name from Butler to Candle when he left home, or rather, when his parents threw him out. After Max became a semirespectable headliner, he was reinstated in my uncle's will and inherited the house.”

“He lived in Gramercy Park?”

“He and Edith only lived there for five years or so. They got a wonderful price for the house, enough to buy this building and make a few investments. It's been thirty years since she lived in Gramercy, but I'm surprised she never mentioned it.”

“She's always surprising me,” said Mallory. But this neatly explained Edith's ties to two old women in Gramercy Park.

“Well, I'm sure the lock's been changed many times since this key was in use. Sorry.”

“Here, you can use my key.” She pulled a key from the pocket of her jacket.

“Would I want to know where you got that?”

“Charles, you get more like Markowitz every day. I picked it up in Gaynor's apartment. He'll never miss it. He never goes to the park.”

“Did Gaynor notice you picking it up?”

“Charles, who's the best thief you know?”

“You're the only thief I know.”

When Edith Candle leaned back in her chair, alone in the dim window light of a fading day, she could see the whole universe spinning out from her room, stars revolving outward in galactic swirls and spinning in again. She saw how each thing set every other thing in motion. And what was once random now flowed with the predictability of a string of notes to familiar music. She saw the perfect order.

She took stock of Redwing. ‘What do you make of her?' Kathy had asked. Edith had responded with a string of words: fearless, arrogant, charming, deceptive, cool under pressure, and wholly alien. But Kathy should have known Redwing best.

The old woman closed her eyes and gave herself over to Morpheus, god of dreams, and to the little death that was sleep.

Hours later, she was walking unsteady down the hall to bed. She was suddenly very tired, passing by the open door to the kitchen and the crude letters on the wall above the stove, paying them no attention, eyes already closing to sleep again before she opened the door on her bedroom and left the red garish message at her back.

 

Margot sank down at the foot of a stone lion who guarded the entrance to the public library. So many hours had passed since she left the bank, but she could feel the soreness in the bones of her legs from the hard pounding on the sidewalk. She was out of shape. When had she last been to dancing practice? Could she be that far gone in only a few days?

That little bastard of a banker had probably called the cops and told them she had pulled a knife on him. Well, that would pick their ears up. Suppose they went to her apartment and saw all the damn knives?

No, he wouldn't call. He'd been a jerk to jump the alarm. And he wouldn't risk the possibility that she might be who she said she was. Henry would know how to fix this. He'd at least be good for a loan to tide her over. But he hadn't answered the phone in the dozen times she'd called his apartment. Damn Henry, who sometimes left his phone off the hook for days at a time. What a miserable twit he was, a bastard, her only friend, her confessor, and sometimes God to her.

She would go back to the apartment in the early-morning hours, maybe break a window. Yeah, when there was less chance of being seen. The cops avoided her neighborhood at the dangerous hours. She picked another paper cup up from the sidewalk and jingled her last pennies for the late-working stragglers until the coins swelled into a subway fare.

She rode uptown and down, wondering about the time but having lost the sense of it. She had no idea what hour it might be. She leaned over to read a passenger's watch. Twenty to ten? Could she have been riding that long? The pain in her gut said it was so. How long with no food? She stared into the faces of the other passengers until their eyes met hers and their glances crashed and then fell away from her eyes, which had gone to a sleep-starved glaze.

Days ago she had believed she would never ride the subway again. She drifted into the light sleep of the longtime subway rider.

The train slowed to a stop. The bell sounded and another passenger got on. She jerked awake and lifted her head to look at the boarding passenger. She came hideously awake. It was him. Of course it was. It was the same train, the same time of night.

The man was not so tall as she remembered him, nor so broad at the shoulders, but then, he had become almost mythic over the past two years, growing with each nightmare. She had forgotten how very human he was, with his acne scars and his runny, large brown eyes. Was his knife also smaller than she remembered it? The knife, the knife dancing up to her eye, then ripping down her face. Perhaps he had come back for her to cut her on the other side and make her twisted smile symmetrical.

She drew her legs up to her chest and closed into a ball. The passengers on either side of her got up and moved to the far ends of the car when she began to whimper and rock, face drawn into her chest, hidden behind her knees. Her eyes darted from side to side, watching her abandonment in the ever increasing circle of alone. ‘You're on your own,' said this new seating arrangement.

The train was slowing. She might make it to the door before she was hurt too badly. And then what? Would he catch up to her and drag her by the hair again, ripping handfuls from her head? There would be no cop on the platform. There hadn't been one the first time.

The train stopped. She bolted for the door. It was still closed as he came up behind her. She banged her fists on the metal until it parted, sliding back into the walls of the car. She ran through the opening, colliding with another man on the platform who was boarding. The man of the dancing knife walked past her, glancing in her direction, looking through her and then gone.

He didn't know her.

How was that possible? He was on rape-and-cut terms with her, how could he not remember her?

He was climbing the stairs. She followed after him, up and out of the subway. How could he not remember her? She followed him down the street. When he entered the office building on Seventh Avenue, she watched through the glass door as he showed his pass to the security guard. So he worked the ten-to-six shift. She moved back away from the doors and crossed the street, melding in with the darkness and the trash at the curb, hearing the rats but not fearing them, settling in to keep company with vermin.

 

Warm rectangles of light shone from the windows of the house. Television voices emanated from within, and Mallory could smell twice-blooming roses by the porch railing. It was a living memory of the Markowitz house when people lived there—when they lived. Before she could ring the bell, the door opened and she was staring into Helen's smiling eyes. This older woman must be Brenda's mother. She was a less exact copy of Helen, only rounding out at the hips now the way Helen had rounded into middle age.

“Sergeant Mallory?”

“Yes,” she said, relieved that it was not Helen's voice. She dug into her back pocket for the shield.

Mrs. Mancusi didn't wait for the identification. “Please come in,” she said, standing to one side of the wide-open door.

“I'm sorry to bother you so late in the evening.” She followed Mrs. Mancusi into the wide living room. It was arranged for comfort in the grouping of massive furniture and hassocks. A folded-back newspaper lay discarded by the recliner chair. Dinner smells had not yet evaporated. The interrupted carving of a Halloween pumpkin lay on the table, knife and seeds, pulp and one triangular eye cut from the orange fruit.

“You're not bothering me at all, Sergeant. Brenda called to say she's running a bit late, but she'll be home in a few minutes. I only wish my husband was here. It's his late night at the clinic.” She picked up a ball of yarn and a bit of knitting from the seat of the recliner. “Sit here, Sergeant. It's the most comfortable chair.” Mrs. Mancusi sat down on the couch opposite the recliner. “You must be tired working these late hours. That chair leans back. Put your feet up if you like. I know what you need, a snack. Can I get you something? Coffee? I have half a pie in the kitchen.”

“Thank you, no.” This woman might not have Helen's voice, but her conversation was very Helen-like, all comfort and sympathy and a belief in the healing powers of pie.

“We'd like to help you all we can. Louis Markowitz was a lovely man. I cried when I heard the dead man was Louis.”

“You knew him well?”

“For a few months. We had him to dinner every two weeks or so. Brenda's known him much longer, of course. He was the one who talked her into coming back to us. She was only sixteen when she ran away.”

“When he came to dinner, I don't suppose he ever discussed his work with you? It would be natural for you to be curious about a high-profile case.”

“Louis never talked about business—well, police work.”

“What did he talk about?”