He awoke to a pair of staring eyes, tiny and red.
The angel was gone, the rat was not. The beast was only a foot away from his face. He waved his hand lethargically, but the rat did not move. Andrew felt weaker today than yesterday. Would he be able to fend off the rat when it came for him in earnest?
A loaf of bread lay a few inches from his hand. The angel must have left it for him. He was reaching out for it when he heard a beeping noise. He looked up to see the cellular phone on the table by the chair. She must have left that for him, too. But why?
He picked up the phone and extended the antenna. “Hello?”
“Is Mallory there?” asked the brisk voice of a man in a hurry.
“The Archangel Mallory?”
“The what?”
Now the man recited a telephone number, and Andrew confirmed that this was the same number printed on the phone. “But she’s not here now. Can I take a message?”
“Yeah, my name is Coffey. Tell the little angel to get lost for a few days. Tell her our negotiations have hit a snag. The chief is sending uniforms to pick her up. He wants her now.”
Father Brenner was not wearing his priest’s collar. He had spent the morning working in his garden, and he was still dressed for a day in the soil and the sunlight, wearing a flannel work shirt and a pair of old trousers. He passed through the cordon guard of nurses and receptionists without the protection of a priest’s vestments to elicit their best behavior. Today, he felt very much a man like any other, and perversely, he believed that he was getting away with something. For one guilty moment, he wondered if he hadn’t left his proper dress at home for the sheer pleasure of getting a rise out of Sister Ursula.
The old woman was one of perhaps forty people seated in the lounge area, yet he picked her out of the crowd immediately. He fixed on her dark, angry eyes before there was time to register the white wimple which hid all but her face from the eyes of fellow earth people, most of whom she doomed to the low-rent echelons of hell. She was dressed all in white, as she was on the day she had been wedded in the church. She looked very much the elderly bride of Christ in her flowing robe and slippers.
Robe and slippers?
Perhaps he had gotten his days mixed up. He was getting to that age. But he could have sworn that today was the day they had agreed upon to pick her up at the hospital and drive her back to the rectory in Manhattan for a proper dinner and a long visit with her only tie to the world, himself.
“You’re not dressed,” said the priest as he sat down beside her.
“And neither are you.” Her appraising gaze wandered over his person and found him wanting. In most respects she was solidly entrenched in the old ways, but she had never kept to the custody of the eyes. She looked at him squarely, all disapproval.
“You came early this time,” she said. “You’ve never done that before.” And there was an implication that he should not do that again. Ursula was death on punctuality. “We have to wait until the proper time before some young puppy will give me my clothes.”
Only a few minutes into a polite conversation about weather, flower gardens and hell, said young puppy in nurse’s garb arrived by Ursula’s chair and led the old woman off to change her clothes. He supposed this was a reasonable precaution in such an institution. It wouldn’t do to have the inmates wandering out the door, unescorted and dressed for the unsuspecting world.
A few minutes later, Ursula was back, striding down the hall, moving very fast for a nun in full regalia. She was no modern woman of the church, no short skirt and lipstick fashion sister, but a dress-code nun, a great black warship at full sail. Her heavy crucifix swayed from side to side as she closed in on him.
Father Brenner tried to see her from the point of view of a small child. He closed his eyes against that vision.
When they were in the car and heading toward the city skyline, Ursula broke her stoic silence. “Tell me more about Kathy’s extraordinary new habit of stealing candles from the church. What do you suppose she’s up to this time?”
Father Brenner winced. He should have known better than to tell her, but under the circumstances, the theft of candles was the only cheerful note he had to offer the elderly nun, all that he was not prevented from repeating. And surely Kathy was safe from Ursula now. All the children were safe.
Though he had never liked this woman, she was continuity to him, a last tie to the old days. He suspected she would live to speculate on whether or not his immortal soul had been admitted above or below.
“I’m glad to see you looking so well,” he told her in all sincerity.
“Thank you, Father. Now, about Kathy.”
“I was rather pleased that she remembered where the candles were kept. Sorry I can’t enlighten you further, Sister Ursula, but she didn’t stop to chat.”
“How many times do you think she’s done this?”
Perhaps Sister Ursula’s true vocation was police work. Interrogation had always been her forte.
“She’s only stolen candles once that I’m aware of, but the candles have gone missing several days in a row. So it would seem she is coming to church on a regular basis. I thought that might make you happy.”
“She can buy votive candles in any supermarket or bodega for a few dollars. Doesn’t it make you wonder why she steals them from the church? Don’t you wonder what dark things she might be doing with them?”
This had been a grave mistake, he could see that now. Ursula had something new to fixate on, to draw out into long strings of conspiracy. Why had it taken him so many years to rechristen her eccentricity as madness?
“Well, I’m pretty confident that she’s not selling the candles on the black market.”
The nun glared at him, to let him know his levity was not appreciated. “I know she’s doing something we would not approve of. She’s certainly not burning those candles to the glory of God.”
The priest sighed. Ursula was a compulsive soul who would harbor dark suspicions of any parishioner who had not died the minute after baptism. She had been this way even in her young days.
No, now that he thought of it, she had never been young. Even when her face was fresh and unlined, she had been dry as a stick, humorless and without mercy, condemning children to hell in her mind for the sins of youth and beauty, knowing to what use they would put those attributes in adult life.
Kathy Mallory had been the supreme target, wild of spirit, possessing grace in the body and uncommon intelligence. But the little girl’s worst crime had been her lovely face. In Ursula’s mind, such a child should have been hidden from the world, so as not to create temptation in every man who encountered her.
This beautiful child had brought home the truth that Ursula was quite insane. Among all the generations of children passing through the school, only Kathy Mallory had struck back.
“Stealing candles from a church. Well, I’m not surprised. Once a thief, always a thief,” said Ursula. “I always wanted to catch her red-handed.”
“Well, you broke up the floating poker game. That was something.”
“But even under the threat of everlasting damnation, the other children wouldn’t give her up. It was never a clean win. She was only a child, yet she was the most worthy adversary I ever had.”
Sister Ursula’s devotion to God was beyond the pale, and she could not have told a lie under torture. Young Kathy had been a gifted liar, an amoral character, a thief, a sinner only Nietzsche could love. Her simple creed in those days had been the child’s code of honor: Thou shall not rat on anybody.
And yet, on the last day of the world, when the earth gave up all its mysteries and all questions were answered, it would probably not surprise him to learn that God loved Kathy Mallory best-because she had not ratted on the nun.
The child had taken her revenge, cradling a broken wrist in her good hand as she kicked the nun’s leg out from under her and brought the screaming Ursula to ground. Then Kathy had stalked off, never to break her silence, never to give in to the Markowitzes’ questioning or his own. She had been utterly satisfied with her revenge, and in the child’s mind, the affair was settled.
Kathy’s old enemy now sat beside him, an aged monster at the end of her ruthless quest to suck the spirit from generations of children, an overzealous vampire in the service of God.
“Thank you, Father, for bringing me this new information about Kathy.”
“What are friends for?”
This was not friendship, of course, for he suspected Ursula did not like him, and proximity to madness had always made him nervous. Whatever their relationship was, it would continue until one of them gave up the ghost.
It is penance.
He nodded at this new insight.
When Mallory was certain there were no stakeout vehicles near her condominium, she stepped into the street, heading for the front door. A long black limousine stopped in front of her, a window rolled down and a familiar face nodded her back to the curb. She waited on the sidewalk as the car pulled up. A door opened and she slid into the rear seat beside the aged Mafia don.
He smiled at her, displaying red, receding gums and broken, crooked teeth with wide gaps between them. She knew his type. He would take great pride in having all his own teeth, however rotted they might be. He was probably unaware that it gave him the look of an old dog who could no longer chew.
He turned to face her. His breath reeked. “I hope those offshore account numbers were of some use to you.”
She nodded.
He leaned over to speak more intimately. “Mallory, have you ever thought of getting into another line of work?”
“No. I like being a cop. I’m good at it.”
“You take after Markowitz.” He reached out one gnarly hand to touch hers. She balled her hand into a fist to warn him off. He did pull back, but he also smiled, as if he found her gesture of violence exquisitely charming.
“I suppose you learned a lot from your father.”
She nodded again. “So the sooner you retire, old man, the better.”
His cracked lips spread wide over the yellow teeth, and his frail body shook when he laughed. The laughter turned into a barking cough. He reached out to the bar recessed into the back seat of the limo. Where the booze should be, there was a water pitcher and a portable pharmacy of medication. He fiddled with a plastic mask attached to a small bottle of oxygen. He clasped it over his face and inhaled deeply.
Enjoying the good life, old man?
Mallory glanced at her watch while she waited out the dregs of the coughing spasm. “I haven’t got all day,” she said. “What do you want?”
He removed the mask. “I came to warn you.” His every breath was a ragged piece of work. He held up one hand to call for a time-out. In another minute, he was himself again. “Blakely tried to hire one of my boys to whack you. I put a stop on that.”
“How comforting.” She touched the glass partition that separated the driver from his employer. “Bulletproof glass?”
“Yes, and soundproof-very private. I conduct all my business in this car, so my driver checks it for bugging devices every morning.”
She could only see the dark hair of the man behind the wheel. He stared straight ahead. “And who checks the driver?”
“He’s family-my nephew’s youngest boy. Satisfied? Now listen to me, Mallory. Don’t underestimate Blakely. He’s scared now-not thinking straight. Next, he’ll lean on one of his own people to do the job. He’s gone underground. It may take me awhile to find him. But I can give you a good bodyguard-”
“I don’t want your bodyguard. And you don’t touch Blakely-you got that? You can’t kill all your mistakes, old man. Blakely is being threatened with tax evasion, not mob connections. There won’t be any investigation. I keep my bargains-you better keep yours.”
The driver’s head turned slightly to find her reflection in his rearview mirror. He looked away quickly, as though she had caught him at something.
Now what was that about?
“I want you to take the bodyguard.” The old don’s voice was insistent, but not so confident anymore. “I’m going to give you a man I would trust with my own life.”
“So you’re still worried that it’s all going to come back on you.” And if she didn’t live through the night, it would. Buying Blakely had been a bad mistake, and the payoff trail to a senator had left the old Mafia don vulnerable. It was only a matter of time before his own people realized what a liability he was.
She caught the eyes of the young driver in the rearview mirror. Was this man suddenly worried too?
“Cops don’t need bodyguards.” Her eyes traveled over the car’s lush appointments, looking for the thing that didn’t belong here.
“Cops don’t usually have gunmen after them,” said the don, as though explaining elementary facts of life to a small child.
“Yeah, they do-every time they hit the street.” Her eyes were fixed on an irregular upholstery stud near the glass partition. She leaned closer. The black stud was not leather but plastic, and it had three machine-made holes. She pulled it from the plush leather. It came out easily, only anchored by a pin. She blew a shrill whistle into the small plastic transmitter.
On the other side of the glass wall, the driver put one hand to the ear where the receiver must be hidden. There was real pain in the mirror reflection of his eyes.
The old man looked from the driver to the eavesdropping device in Mallory’s hand. Eyes rounded with shock, he knew he had been betrayed, yet he tried to deny it with the slow shake of his head.
Mallory knew everything in the don’s mind: This could not be happening, not to him, not at the hands of his own family.
“Soundproof? Bugproof? Don’t you wonder who your driver reports to?” Mallory touched the button to lower the glass partition. “Let’s ask him.”
The man at the wheel was turning around, one hand fumbling in his coat where the holster would be. She was already pointing her revolver at the driver’s face-and the bulletproof glass was sliding down.
The driver left the car at a dead run. Across the street, Frank the doorman was averting his eyes from the running man with the gun in his hand. Frank was a good New Yorker. What he did not see, he could not witness to in court at the cost of a day’s pay.
When the running gunman was out of sight, Mallory holstered her revolver and turned back to the old don. “Was that one of your hotshot bodyguards?”
Angry now, the don reached for the car phone. “That punk is a dead man.”
Mallory grabbed his wrist. It took very little effort to restrain him. “Who are you going to call? Another bodyguard? One of your nephew’s kids?” She sat quietly for all the time it took him to grasp this simple thing-he was the dead man.
She opened the door and stepped out of the car. “Might be smarter to call a cab and head for the airport.” She closed the door slowly, saying, “Don’t light in any one place for too long. You know the drill, old man.”
Mallory crossed the street to the condominium. Frank the doorman was smiling as he held the door open. “Two cops came by, miss.” He followed her into the lobby. “They showed me their badges and told me to let them into your apartment.” He pushed the button to fetch her an elevator. “But they didn’t have a warrant, so I told them to go screw themselves into the ground. I hope I did the right thing.”
She put two twenty-dollar bills into his coat pocket to tell him he had done exactly the right thing.
The elevator doors opened, and she looked up to the mirror mounted high on the back wall. It gave her a compressed view of an empty interior. When she stepped off the elevator at her floor, she had her revolver out of the holster. The gun preceded her into the apartment. After checking all the rooms and closets, she sat down on the couch and rifled her tote bag for the cellular phone.
It was gone. But where-
She checked her watch again. Now she reached over to the standard telephone on the end table and dialed Father Brenner’s number.
Where is the damn cellular?
While she talked to the priest, she searched the drawer of the table-a futile activity. Mrs. Ortega, world’s foremost cleaning woman, had put the apartment back in order after the robbery. So what were the odds that a single item would be out of place? Where had she lost the damn cellular phone?
She finished her instructions to Father Brenner. “I want you to say a mass for her.”
“Consider it done, Kathy. What was your mother’s name?”
“You don’t need her name. When you talk about her, just say she was a woman who was brutally murdered. And leave me out of it.”
She glanced at the messages accumulated on her answering machine.
“Kathy?”
“That’s all you get. It’s enough, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’ll say the mass tomorrow.”
“No, do it tonight, I need it tonight.”
“All right, tonight it is. So you’re not looking for spiritual comfort for yourself?”
“No. You can save that routine for the believers, the suckers.”
“Are you still lighting the candles, Kathy?”
Mallory hung up the phone.
She emptied the tote bag on the coffee table, and spread the files and notebooks-not here. The last time she had seen the cellular phone it was in this bag, wasn’t it? No, wait. She remembered sliding it into the pocket of her blazer last night. She reached out for the desk phone, ignored the pulsing light of the messages waiting, and pushed the buttons for the number of her cellular phone.
“Hello?”
The voice was Andrew’s. So she had left it behind on the roof. “Hello, Andrew. How are you?”
“Oh, Mallory. I was hoping you might call. Shall I give you your messages?”
“Sure.”
“You have one from Jack Coffey. He says the chief’s boys are after you with orders to bring you in. Oh, and J. L. Quinn called and asked for you. But he didn’t leave a message.”
“Did Quinn say anything?”
“Well, we did have a lovely chat. But there’s no message. He said he’d probably catch up with you later in the day.”
“Thank you, Andrew.”
Picking up a spare phone from her office was next on her list of things to do. It was shaping up to be a busy day. She pulled out her notebook and ticked off what she would need from her apartment.
The doorman called on the house phone to announce J. L. Quinn. She should tell Frank to turn the man away. Time was precious, and she had already stayed here too long. What could Quinn want now? Perhaps his long chat with Andrew had raised a few questions.
“Send him up, Frank.”
When she admitted Quinn to her apartment, he was wearing his courtesy smile. She was learning to categorize his facial expressions, discovering small variations in the mask. He casually examined the surroundings, as if he were looking for something.
She remained standing and folded her arms to let him know he would not be staying long. When he turned to face her, his smile was unaltered, but his eyebrows were raised, and she knew he was going to apologize.
“Sorry to drop by without calling first, but if you recall, the only number you gave me was for the cellular phone, and it seems that Andrew Bliss has that.”
He glanced at the long leather couch, probably waiting for an invitation to sit down. She ignored the subtlety.
“So, Quinn, I understand you had a long talk with Andrew.”
“Yes, he told me he made a confession to a green-eyed angel. I was surprised you hadn’t arrested him.”
“Andrew’s idea of confession is my idea of a rambling drunk. I think we got as far as the sins of puberty. What do you want, Quinn?”
He was staring at the walls, bare but for the single clock, a piece of minimal design with dots in place of numerals. The furnishings of her apartment were expensive, and stark. There should be nothing here to give away any shading of her personality. But by the faint nod of his head, she knew these environs were what he had expected to find; that much was in his face when he turned back to her.
“Mallory, I wonder if you’d have dinner with me tomorrow night. And perhaps the theater.”
She turned away from him and covertly scanned her front room as though for the first time. What did Quinn see in this place? Perhaps it was what he did not see: no personal items to connect her to another human being, no dust, nothing out of place, and no wall hanging to indicate an interest in anything but time. The large clock dominated the space. The furniture was arranged in precision symmetry.
And now she understood.
This extreme order had not created the intended false front of a guarded personality-the real effect was all too personal, next to naked exposure. It was an effort to shake off the feeling of violation.
“I’m free tomorrow,” she said. “Would you like to do something a little more exciting than dinner and the theater?”
“Name it and it’s yours.” One splayed hand indicated that his offer included the whole earth. “Anything.”
“A fencing match.”
His smile was back, but only for a moment. “So Charles told you about the scar.” He walked over to the couch and ran his hand over the back of it, approving the quality of the leather, and perhaps wondering how she had managed it on a cop’s salary. “A fencing match. Well, that does sound more diverting.”
She sat down in a chair and gestured to the couch. “Do you still keep your hand in? You have a membership at a fencing club?”
“Yes, on both counts.” He settled into the plush leather cushions and crossed his legs. “What’s your background, Mallory?”
“One semester of fencing classes at school, but I think I can take you.”
It was predictable that he would not smile at this. He would never be rude enough to suggest that she was blowing smoke.
“The agility of youth goes a long way, but it won’t take you all the way. Don’t count on an easy win.”
“I can beat you. I’m willing to place a bet on it.”
He shook his head. “I won’t do money with you.”
“Not money. I was thinking along the lines of anything I want, against anything you want.”
“Those are outrageously high stakes, Mallory. I won’t take advantage of you. No bet.”
How predictable.
“You shouldn’t be afraid to bet-unless you’re afraid to lose.” She looked at the clock. She must leave soon.
“You can’t possibly win, not with your limited experience. It’s not a fair wager.”
“I’m not worried. If you do win, I know you’ll pick a forfeit I can easily make.” She had to do this quickly.
“You know that for a fact?”
I know you.
“It’s your character, Quinn. Charles tells me you’re the quintessential gentleman-I know the breed.”
“You’re right. I would never ask a forfeit you couldn’t afford. So I’ll concede that you know me very well.” He stood up and turned to face the clock. “But no one knows very much about you, Mallory-not even the people who knew you best.”
He moved to the window and spoke to the glass. “Your origins are a complete mystery. You wouldn’t give the necessary information to the Markowitzes so they could formalize your adoption. Child Welfare made an exhaustive search, but they could never trace your family. Juvenile Hall records show two brief incarcerations at ages eight and nine, but no success in learning your right name. And they were never able to hold on to you for more than a few days each time. There’s a note in a folder with your photograph. It says, ‘Brilliant child.’ ”
He turned around to see what effect his words had on her. He seemed pleased with the result. “My own investigators are very thorough. They’re the best in the world, and they have no idea where you came from. Suppose your forfeit was to tell me everything I wanted to know about you, your history, everything. Could you afford that?”
She had underestimated him.
“I keep them in here.” Charles stood aside to let her pass through the door. Mallory had never been in his bedroom before. She did not seem overly excited by the seventeenth-century dower chest at the end of his hand-carved bedstead. She probably thought if she had seen one precious antique, she had seen them all. What captured her attention was the glass case mounted on the wall over the chest. It contained a pair of crossed swords.
“Charles, they’re wonderful. These are nothing like the sabers we used at school.”
“You trained with a blunt saber, right?” He opened the closet and took out a long brown leather bag and unzipped it. He carefully lifted out a pair of swords. Holding one in his right hand, he sliced the air with its tapered rod. “Now this is what you’ll be using with Quinn. It’s a competition saber. It’s wired so you can be scored on a machine that-”
She wasn’t listening. She put one knee on the carved chest and reached up to the case, looking to him for permission. He nodded. She opened the case and removed one saber from the rack. She eased off the chest and stood at the center of the large room, hefting the sword in her right hand. Now, with utter disregard for the weight of the steel and its sharp edge, she easily slung the handle through the air from one hand to the other. She held the edge up to examine it. She smiled to say, Now this is a weapon.
“This has a really wicked point.” She touched the sharp edge of the blade. “It could use some sharpening, but not bad.”
“Well, it’s the real thing. It’s much heavier than what you’re accustomed to.”
“No, it’s about the same.”
What? Oh, of course. She was comparing the weight of the sword to the weight of her gun.
“The pair was an heirloom of the Quinn family. Jamie made me a present of them after I’d scarred him. It was an outrageous gesture. They’re very old and quite valuable. I think he gave them to me because he was afraid that the accident might put me off the idea of fencing.”
“He is a gentleman, isn’t he?”
“To the nth degree. He’s also the finest swordsman I’ve ever met.”
“But you scarred him.”
“That was an embarrassment, not a victory.” Oh, wait. That wasn’t properly translated into Malloryspeak. “It was a pure accident, a fluke.” He held up the competition saber. “This is a very good blade. You’ll need a mask-I’ve got that. Now the fencing jacket. I have an old one that might fit you. And the vest, the body wire- the club will have those items, no need to buy them.”
She kept her eyes to the sword in her hand. “I wish we could fence with these.”
“Not a chance. He’d never agree to that. These are not sporting weapons. He wouldn’t risk hurting you. You know, you can’t beat him, Mallory.”
“I have to beat him. The stakes are very high.”
“I know this man. He won’t hold you to the bet. I’m sure he didn’t want to make it in the first place.”
“I have to win.”
“I don’t think you understand what it means to be an Olympic champion. You don’t respect your opponents, and that will cost you.”
He took the cavalry sword from her hand and replaced it with the competition saber. Next, he handed her a white fencing jacket he had worn as a child, albeit a rather large child. “See if this fits.”
When she had zipped up the jacket and fastened the high collar, only the wide shoulders were outsized.
He reached up to the top shelf of the closet and pulled out two white helmets with dark steel mesh. “Put this on.” He threw her one mask. She caught it easily and put it on, slipping the strap over the back of her head, and settling her chin into the screen cage. He didn’t like the sight of her in the mask. It made her face a near-black oval, and gave her the appearance of an unfinished machine, an imitation of a human without a face.
He pushed the few pieces of obstructing furniture to the wall and moved to the center of the wide room. She gracefully followed him into the en garde position, feet placed at right angles with space between them, her body straight and evenly balanced between her heels.
She did not wait for the courtesy of the saluting swords. With no warning, she lunged, arm and sword extended for the thrust to his midsection. Her speed was astonishing, but he easily parried the thrust and sent her blade away from his body.
“If you’re counting on the element of surprise to beat him, you will lose in that first move, and you’ll have nothing left. Strategy is everything, and it’s intricate.”
He lunged and feinted the sword to her left, then quickly described a half circle in the air to make a strike to her right side. She parried, but badly and too late. One hour later, he could not fool her with that maneuver, but she had made very few strikes and lost every bout.
He ended the last round by removing his mask and saluting her. She followed his every move, bringing the hilt of her sword to her lips, blade pointing straight up, and then down.
He settled into a chair by the wall. She sat on his bed.
“You need a strategy to win, Mallory. But you haven’t the experience to formulate one. Every move you can make will be predictable to him. Experience and skill are everything. Your reaction time will be twenty-five years younger, but that won’t save you. You’re very fast, but he’ll destroy that edge by always being moves ahead of you.”
She seemed skeptical of this.
He sighed. “It’s rather like a chess match. Now aren’t you sorry you wouldn’t let me teach you that game?” Apparently she was not. She only stared at the tip of the sword.
He stood up and crossed the room. Gently, he lowered the point of her blade to get her attention away from it. “Every time you angle your saber, you telegraph the move you’ll make, and he’s there before you. You see?” No, she didn’t. She saw nothing but the sword in her hand.
“Mallory, you can’t beat me, and I can’t beat him. You are nothing if not logical. So, you can see that this is a lost cause.”
Riker looked up as she walked into her office with a leather bag slung over one shoulder. It was shaped like a basketball with a rifle barrel.
“What’s in the bag, Mallory?”
“A sword and a mask.”
“You’re joining the opposition? A thief with a sword? I like it.”
“It’s for the fencing match with Quinn. But, yeah, I might be crossing sides for a while. Coffey says Blakely’s after me. It looks like he’s going to put up a fight.”
“It figures. That stupid bastard doesn’t know how to lie down and die right.”
“I need a place where Blakely wouldn’t think of looking for me. A hotel is a bad idea, and I can’t stay with Charles again. I don’t want him involved if this all goes bad on me.”
“Well, I’m taking the graveyard shift with Andrew tonight. You can use my place. No one would ever suspect you of hiding out in a smelly ashtray. But the decor might put you off.”
“Decor? You mean the spiderwebs in every corner, the garbage piling up in the kitchen, and the forty-two mostly empty pizza cartons? That decor?”
“Yeah.”
“As I recall, it was only the plastic Jesus night-light I really hated. Very tacky. You can kiss that thing goodbye. Thanks, Riker.”
“You’ll need a way in.”
“You mean a key?”
“Sorry. Sometimes I forget who I’m talking to.” And now he grabbed her hand and pressed the key into her palm. “Use it. And where are you going now?”
“You know where I’m going.”
The main room of the East Village gallery was a blaze of television lights. The script girl was making him wild. She questioned every little thing. She found fault with every item in his story as she was working out the motions of a murder. “Mr. Watt,” she said, “I just have one more question. How could it have happened that way if you-”
“I don’t know!” yelled Oren Watt.
The script girl backed away, eyes a little more open now, perhaps suddenly remembering that this was the Monster of Manhattan who was screaming at her.
“Get out of my face! I don’t know!” He pushed the girl out of his way, and she left the lobby at a run. The director called for a break, and the crew members withdrew to the far side of the long room to light up cigarettes and squat in conversational groups. Only the cop remained with Oren.
He blamed his loss of temper on Detective Mallory. She had a gift for getting on his nerves.
“That’s the trouble with lies, Oren. They only look good on paper. They never work out in real time and space. Now would you like to tell me how Senator Berman fits into this murder?”
“I don’t know.”
Mallory stood beside him, edging closer, saying, “My father used to say we all know more than we know we know.”
What was good enough for the script girl might be good enough for the cop. He grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back to the wall. She gave him no resistance, but she showed no fear either. And now she was even smiling at him. He had always been comfortable in the sure knowledge of his own sanity. It crossed his mind that she might be the crazy one.
“Oren, aren’t you going to tell them about the Outsider Artist scam? Big names, big scandal for the evening news. It might boost the ratings if you nail Senator Berman.”
Enough! Bitch!
He put one flat palm against the wall close to her head. “Now listen, honey-”
He heard the click of metal before he saw the handcuff dangle from his wrist. In the next moment, he was being spun round and knocked off balance. His cheek was pressed to the hardwood floor when he heard another click of the cuffs, and his left hand was prisoner to the right.
All the following moments were barely comprehensible to him. He was on his feet, being hustled toward the square of daylight in the distance. As he rushed his body forward, she kept him off balance. He was staring at the floor now and fearing that he would fall on his face. Then he was out on the sidewalk, and she was pushing down on the top of his head, forcibly seating him in the rear of a small tan car. In another minute, they were rolling, speeding through the streets, ignoring stop signs and lights, barely avoiding a collision with a bus.
He was sweating profusely when the car pulled to a curb in SoHo. She pulled him out of the car and escorted him in a quick shuffle through a door and into an elevator, then down a hallway and into a room luxuriously decorated for another century. They passed down a short hallway and into another room of computers, modern furniture and a familiar face he had not seen in years. What was this cop’s name?
“Hi, Riker,” she said, answering his question.
Riker seemed stunned.
“I want my lawyer,” said Oren Watt.
“Up to you, Oren,” said Mallory, pushing him roughly into a chair. “But if we call your lawyer, then we have to go down to the precinct and go through all the damn paperwork, pressing charges for an assault on a police officer.”
“I did not assault you!”
“You’ve been away a long time, haven’t you, Oren? Eleven years? It’s a new world. There’s a huge political base out there that says I get to lock you up just for calling me honey. Yeah, the assault charge will stick. Four people saw me identify myself as a police officer while the cameras were still rolling. And there are a few old charges I could make stick.”
“The statute of limitations was over-”
“Is that what you were counting on, you idiot?” She brought her face close to his. “Murder never goes away. You didn’t do it, but you’re tied to it. You might need police protection, so play nice.”
“Protection?”
“The whole scam is coming apart now, Oren. Koozeman and Starr are both dead, and I think you’ll be the next man down. Want to come in out of the cold?” She leaned down to forage in a cardboard carton. When she stood up again, she had an axe in her hand. “Last chance, Oren.”
“This is insane!”
“Isn’t it? A bit like a bad acid trip through Wonderland.” She slammed the axe down on the table with great force. Oren Watt stiffened. “Well, come on, little Alice, it’s time for the unconfession. No? I wonder if the killer will use an axe again? The last murder had a little more creativity. Koozeman died eating the artwork. He was a greedy bastard, wasn’t he? Everything he saw was food, animate, inanimate. Now you sell drawings of body parts. Yeah, I think the killer will use the axe for you. It’s so fitting, isn’t it?”
“I’d go to jail if I told you anything. You said obstruction of-”
“Ease up, Mallory.” Now Riker spoke to him in a rational voice, almost kind. “This is the way it works, sir. The last one to cooperate loses immunity and takes the fall.”
“Seven years in a cell, Oren,” said Mallory. “Or maybe I could arrange to have you shipped back to the funny farm for three more months of unrestricted television privileges if you cooperate. But that shrink of yours is definitely doing time for this. If you don’t recant that confession, I’m going after him. Then you know what happens? He throws you to the district attorney as a bribe. If he rolls over on you, he gets immunity from prosecution. He walks, and you do the hard time by yourself.”
“That’s enough, Mallory. Stop badgering him,” said Riker. “You really want to think it over, sir. But don’t talk to your doctor. She’s right about him, you know. He will give you up in a heartbeat. He couldn’t care less what happens to you. He’s a profiteer first. I’m not sure he ever was a doctor. I don’t trust any of those bastards.”
“You’re both nuts.”
She leaned down, her eyes level with his. “High praise from you, Oren, considering your mental history. Markowitz asked you if you had any trophies from the kill, maybe a body part. What did you tell him?”
“I don’t remember. I was high, I was jazzed. I swear I don’t remember what we talked about.”
“I’ll give you one more chance. You tell me what piece of the body was missing. If you guess right this time, I’ll leave you alone.”
“Her heart.”
“Too poetic. You lose.”
Now she left her seat to walk around the table and stand behind his chair. “Let’s try an experiment, shall we?” She pulled the chair out from under him, tumbling him to the floor.
“Mallory!” The other cop was leaving his chair, moving toward her.
She gave Riker a look to say, Back off or you’re next.
Oren watched her walk around the side of the desk, and now she was advancing on him, hands clenched into fists. He managed to right his body to a sitting position. Working legs and rear end like an inchworm, he scooted back to the far corner of the room, tucking in his head to protect it from the rain of blows that was surely coming. She pursued him on cat’s feet, slow and quiet. One hand came from behind her back, the hand that held the axe. That hand was rising now, and he was crying.
The other cop came up behind her and took the axe away. Riker pinned one of her arms behind her back and dragged her from the room and into the outer office. The door was slightly ajar. Oren watched the other cop slam Mallory’s body up against the wall as he yelled at her.
“I can’t trust you anymore, Mallory!” Riker reached inside her blazer and took the gun. “You know, you were right. Watt didn’t do it.” He slapped her face. “But you’ve snapped, kid. You’re a loose cannon now.”
Suddenly, it was Riker’s turn to be surprised. He was being lifted bodily off the ground, and then he was flying toward the couch, landing there in a tangle of arms and legs. He looked up to see Charles advancing on him in slow deliberate steps, as Mallory moved quickly in the other direction to shut the door to her office.
Charles’s mouth was set in a grim tight line of anger, an expression Riker had never seen on the gentle giant’s face before. He knew that at any moment, this large man he dearly loved could take his head off with one blow, and by his face, Charles meant to do just that. Riker still held Mallory’s revolver in his hand, and Charles didn’t like the gun at all, not in this proximity to Mallory, and he showed no fear of it.
“Stay back, Charles.” But Charles was still coming. Now Mallory had moved between them.
“Charles,” she hissed, “stay out of it! Back off.”
He did stop, but his face showed no signs of abating anger, and he was not backing off. So Mallory only held the giant on a string for the moment.
Riker untangled his legs and placed them squarely on the floor. “The game is called good cop, bad cop, Charles.”
He could almost see the mechanics of Charles’s beautiful brain rapidly processing this information, realizing what he had done, and changing his mood from rage to unbearable sadness. Charles turned and slowly walked back to his own office, pulling the door closed behind him.
“It’s time,” said Mallory, motioning Riker toward the door.
He entered Mallory’s office alone. Oren Watt was still shivering on the floor. Riker crossed the room to kneel down beside the man, and this made Watt drive his body deeper into the corner.
“Oren, I’m sorry about this. Look here,” said Riker in his normal, amiable tone of voice. “Whatever happens, I want you to know that I really did try to get the gun away from her. She kicked me in the balls.”
“She’s coming back? And that big guy? Him too?”
“Yeah, ‘fraid so. You know, she never levels with me. I really got no idea what she wants from you.”
“She wants to know who killed the artist and the dancer. And she wants to know why, but I don’t know, I swear I don’t know.”
“So you never killed anyone.”
“No, I never did. She already knows that. Ask her. But I don’t know who did kill them. And I don’t know anything about Dean Starr’s murder or Koozeman’s. It’s the truth, I swear it.”
“I’ll tell you what, Oren. If you help me, I’ll help you. And when she comes back, I promise I won’t let her hurt you. Deal?”
“What do you want?”
“You met a woman at the mental institution. She was very attractive, fortyish, short black hair and large blue eyes, very white skin.” He held up the photo Mallory had manipulated on her computer.
“Yeah, I remember her. She was my friend.”
“Suppose I told you she was a famous artist under an assumed name. Who would she remind you of?”
“Oh, shit, there are thousands of people in the famous-artist category. Who can keep track?”
“You remember when she left the hospital?”
“Yeah. It was the day they took her last dollar. She was worse off when she left, and I don’t mean the money. When she first came, she was very strong. I wondered what she was doing there. She never said. So she came in larger than life, and left when she was small. It was sad.”
“She was your friend.”
“My only friend.”
“You were close.”
“I miss her. I think about her all the time.”
“Do you know where she might have gone?”
“No. I wish I did.”
“Okay, you were very close to her. You confided everything to her. You told her something about the murders. What was it?”
“I told her the truth. All I did that night was deliver the pizza and the drugs.”
“You never heard from her again?”
“Oh, she keeps in touch. Sometimes she calls me, but she never leaves a number. I don’t know where she is, and that’s the truth.”
“Did you give her the connection between Koozeman and the murders?”
“What? You’re not gonna hang anything on me. I didn’t-” And now Watt’s eyes were showing entirely too much white.
Mallory was standing in the doorway. Riker got to his feet, dusted his pants and walked toward the door.
“Hey, Riker,” said Watt, voice straining, breaking. “We had a deal.”
“I lied,” said Riker, closing the door behind him and leaving Oren Watt to Mallory.
He walked to the door of Charles’s office and knocked.
“Come in.” Charles was slumped behind his desk, staring down at the blotter. “You’ll never forgive me, will you?”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Charles. I’m really glad you tossed me around. Ah, you think I’m kidding?” He sat on a corner of the desk. His smile was wasted. Charles would not meet his eyes. “I used to worry about the kid. I mean, suppose something happened to me?‘’ Something like his rainy day bullet, which would not wait forever. ”Now I don’t have to worry anymore. I know you’ll always be there for her.“
Riker put out his hand, but Charles only stared at it.
“You’re just gonna leave it hanging out there in the air that way?”
Charles grasped Riker’s hand, but his face was a long way from coming to terms with what he had done, and what he had planned to do.
“Snap out of it, Charles. You’re breaking my heart here. I don’t need that kind of crap from you. I got Mallory for that.”
“Oren, I already know how scum like you happen to be on such friendly terms with a senator. He buys your work. That bastard is one of the ghouls, the crime scavengers.”
Oren Watt had recovered a bit of his emotional stability now. Mallory had trained him like a rat. As long as he answered the questions, she kept her distance.
“No, that’s not exactly right. He’s not a collector, he’s only in it for the money, the turnover profit. He’s part of the start-up market. He makes the initial investment.”
“Then he makes his profits in the secondary market after he and his friends drive the price up.”
“Right.”
“So it’s a cartel?”
“Nothing that sophisticated. He’s just an individual buyer. He bought Peter Ariel’s work, too. And then he made big bucks after the murder.”
“Could Berman have had anything to do with the murders?”
“That ass? Oh, give me a break. No. Let’s just say the money he made on Peter Ariel whetted his appetite for crime art. He also bought John Wayne Gacy’s work. He held it until after the execution, and then he made a bundle. And there are eight or ten minor mass murderers who paint. Berman buys ghoul art by the carload and makes a huge profit on volume. He gets it from prisons and mental institutions. It’s just business. He unloads it as fast as he can.”
“He used Koozeman to broker all the deals quietly, right?”
“Lots of people went through Koozeman.”
“I found your shrink’s name in Koozeman’s computer,” she lied. “It looks like they started doing business about twelve years ago.”
Oren Watt was nodding his head. All she’d been able to turn up were code names and dates. Blakely probably had the Rosetta stone to break that code. If so, it was burned by now.
“So Koozeman had a lock on the sickness market? He was the one who did the deal with the shrink for your confession, right?”
“Yeah, he snagged me outside the gallery the night of the murder-right after the cops let me go. He told me to go to his apartment building, and he put me into a cab. That night, we all met at Koozeman’s place. I signed an agent contract with the shrink, and the shrink did a contract with Koozeman. Koozeman had the lists of people who would pay the moon for art connected to high-profile crimes. No one seemed to care that I couldn’t draw.”
“Koozeman and the shrink I can almost understand. But it’s a funny business for a senator, making profits on murdered taxpayers. So Senator Berman must have gone nuts when there was another murder in one of Koozeman’s galleries.”
“He went through the roof. He thought it would all come out if Koozeman was investigated. Lucky the senator has powerful friends in the same funny business.”
“You mean the lieutenant governor?” The ex-mayor of New York.
“Sure. Why do you think that little bastard’s so in love with the damn death penalty? Every time one of those murderers dies, the price of their work goes up.”
Father Brenner would give Kathy Mallory a worthy performance. He was still doing penance for the sins which could not be put to Ursula, for she was truly insane, and therefore blameless. The sins of blindness were his own. What he had prepared was a small miracle, given the time he’d been allotted to pull it off. And throughout the day, Ursula had been invaluable in putting the fear of God into lapsed Catholics, none of whom wished to be on the bad side of a mad nun on a mission.
This was to be his finest mass. The music would be Mozart’s Requiem, for this was the piece which the precocious young student orchestra had been rehearsing when the priest made his begging call to the music school. A former student, a somewhat lax and guilty parishioner, was now the director of that school. Father Brenner had been refused with a hail of excuses from scheduling problems to personal problems. He had been told it was quite impossible on such short notice. Sister Ursula had then taken the phone, and the school’s director learned, once again, that it was a dreadful mistake to get between Ursula and God’s work.
And so, the holy stage was now set with the well-scrubbed faces of music students. And he had packed many pews with their proud parents. It was a good turnout for the death of a woman whose name would mean nothing to any of them.
The young musicians’ feet shuffled and tapped with stage fright as they held fast to their bassoons and bass horns, strings and trumpets, trombones and timpani. Father Brenner had pulled out all the stops for this most special occasion. The chorus would be sung by every gifted voice of choirs past and present whom the beleaguered choirmaster had been able to corral into service.
Both choirmaster and conductor had told him it was insane to attempt the chorus without a proper rehearsal with the orchestra. The priest had counseled faith, and counted on good memory, for the Requiem Mass was not new to any of them.
A parishioner who owned a mortuary had been leaned on to provide the flowers which graced the altar, a profusion of lilies and orchids borrowed for a few hours from the viewing room of the uptown funeral parlor. Actually, since some bereaved family had paid for those flowers, this might be considered a theft of sorts. But that was almost fitting, considering who he had in his front pew, the thief of candles.
He was touched that Kathy had brought a recording device, which sat on the space beside her. So she wanted to preserve her mother’s mass. He was confident that both Helen and the birth mother would have been proud to see how far their child had come in her spiritual growth.
He remembered the day twelve-year-old Kathy had stolen the communion wine from the school chapel and made herself sick on it. That day she had sat in his office, drinking strong tea and memorizing lines of scripture, preferring that to the alternative of his calling Markowitz at work to tell him his child could not hold her liquor.
That was the day he had noticed the fresh bruise on the side of her face, and not asked where she had gotten it. There had been other days and other bruises-more blindness. Helen Markowitz had asked her about the bruises, and then written a note asking that Kathy be more closely supervised during rough sports. He had found the note curious at the time, for there were no rough sports at the academy. More blindness.
Now the electric lights of the cathedral were switched off, and a score of candles flared up in the hands of the altar boys. The white flowers took on an eerie glow as the priest announced that this was a mass for a woman who had been brutally murdered-the very words Kathy had requested. He never mentioned that this woman had a beautiful child-as he had been requested to leave her out of it. But because he had known this woman’s child, he was able to summon up a passion he thought was lost to him.
He looked back at Kathy. How young she seemed, how little changed. The last time he saw her as a student, she had been carried into his office in the arms of the janitor who had found her at the bottom of the cellar stairs. She was unconscious as the janitor gently laid her slight body down on the couch. But she had rallied long enough to do some damage before the ambulance came for her. And the last time Sister Ursula ever saw Kathy Mallory’s face, the old woman was lying on the floor holding on to a freshly fractured leg and screaming in pain. That had also been the last time the priest ever saw Kathy smile. At the time, he had been startled, for the girl’s smile had a touch of evil to it. And in that same moment, he realized that it was Ursula’s own smile thrown back at her. And then the blindness was ended.
Ah, but hadn’t he always suspected?
The young music students took up their instruments, and the music blended with the voices of the chorus, building from the delicate sweet notes of a soloist, and swelling to the full accompaniment, rising, surging with beauty and power. Above the altar, a statue of Christ hung on a cross of gold and gazed down on the bouquets at His feet. In the flickering play of candlelight, lilies and orchids seemed to move to the genius music of Mozart, an illusory resurrection of cut flowers. A spate of “Ah”s came from the pews as the music rolled through the church to its conclusion.
Applause broke out like sudden gunfire. This was wholly inappropriate behavior for the mass, but Father Brenner never noticed, never saw the rows of clapping hands and the rapturous faces. He looked only to Kathy as the sound of applause thundered all around them.
She nodded to him, and in that simple gesture, she managed to convey that a debt had been paid.
He hoped she would stay to talk with him awhile, but instead she unplugged the microphone from her recording device and left the pew. Apparently, she had more pressing business elsewhere. She moved quickly toward the door, and he wondered if he would ever see her again. Would there be no more calls in the dead of night?
She slowed her steps at the altar of Saint Jude and pocketed a few candles in passing.
Mallory opened the door to Riker’s apartment, and flicked on the wall switch. An overhead light illuminated the whole ungodly mess. It was much worse than she had remembered. Cockroaches fled to the dark cover of the take-out cartons and into the mouths of discarded beer bottles. The crumbs embedded in the rug under her feet gave new meaning to the cliché of a floor you could eat off of. Some of the grazing roaches seemed too bloated to run very fast. There was no single uncontaminated place to set down her duffel bag.
With the risk of a hotel room in mind, she walked to the telephone on the far wall. Her hand hovered over it for a moment, hesitating to touch the receiver, which bore every fingerprint from the day it had been installed.
A half hour later, she was back from the corner bodega with a bag of supplies-cleaning solvents for window glass and mirrors, for porcelain fixtures and metal fixtures, linoleum and wood. She set the bag on the kitchen countertop and pulled out a roll of paper towels, a new sponge for the mop, a pair of plastic gloves, and an aerosol can with a label that promised to kill even saddle-worthy mutations of roaches.
Her face was grim as she gathered up her arsenal. Cleaning house was not something she usually objected to. Her own condominium was spotless, dustless, without blemish of any kind, and she was near fanatical in keeping it that way. On the Saturday mornings of her childhood, she had helped Helen in the ritual of cleaning. But Helen, the world’s champion homemaker, had always begun with a perfectly clean house.
It was late when Mallory returned from the laundromat. She put down the bag of clean towels and sheets, what must be several months’ worth of them. Leaning back against the door, she brushed a damp tendril of curls from her face. She was tired, but if she sat down, she would lose momentum.
She dragged her bucket and mop to the bathroom, the last room to clean. And there she was confronted by the plastic Jesus glowing in the dark. She pulled the night-light out of its electrical socket and tossed it into the hamper, where she would not have to look at it.
A white-haired man stood alone in the plaza. Behind him, the door of the wooden fencing lay in splintered pieces. He made one slow circuit of the plaza, beholding the ghostly white tarpaulins covering every bench, blanketing the fountain, and extending in a pale virus up the walls of the building facade.
This was Gregor Gilette, whose work one critic had described as almost like a song. Critics had always floundered for the adjectives. They wanted very much to call him classical, and every instinct sought this word. It was the classic lines of nature which made the inhabitants of Gilette’s buildings feel so perfectly in accord with their environs, in the same way that classical music kept to the rhythm of the human heart. His work never recalled the classic forms of European architecture, but the motion of the river, majestic heights that eagles might inhabit, and the feminine elements of a graceful nude. This was Gilette.
He had been elated when he finally received the portfolio of photographs. The plaza was about life, and it was good that there had been people to fill all the spaces he had lovingly created for them, as though they had not been strangers to him, but invited guests. Such was his feeling for all his creations. But this building was most special. He would end his career at the height of his powers with this, his greatest piece of art.
He also approved of Jamie Quinn, who had visited his house tonight. Had he been planning ever to create another work, he might have stolen a line of elegance from Jamie’s face and another from the body and then incorporated the man into something of marble. Only marble would suit the critic’s cool, smooth, graceful exterior. There were no cracks or seams through which the uninvited might intrude on him.
An hour ago, Gilette had listened as his brother-in-law explained the purpose for his visit, as he described the Public Works Committee’s choice of art for the plaza. Gilette had listened, but he had not believed. What kind of an animal would do such a thing?
Emma Sue Hollaran. A dumb, slow-witted animal, Jamie Quinn had gently explained. The artist was Gillian, the vandal.
Gilette had come to the plaza to see for himself. Heavily veined hands reached out for the first tarpaulin and ripped it from the mooring pins with ferocity, and then the next and the next, until the floor of the plaza was covered with the white canvas. He stood by the fountain at the center of the plaza, taking it all in. And now he believed.
A fifteen-year-old boy, with the aimless walk of a vagrant, was making his way down the sidewalk, past the wooden fencing, adjusting the straps of his knapsack as he walked. The sack was heavy with the weight of his best pair of jeans and all the rest of his possessions.
When he came to the small pile of boards on the sidewalk, he turned to see the splintered opening in the fence. He stepped lightly over the remnants of the wooden door and slipped quietly through the hole, wondering if this might be a good place to spend the night, perhaps to sleep through until morning without the rude awakening of a cop kicking him in the side to move him along. He was sick, flesh hanging on his bones, and he could not afford another injury. It took so long to heal now.
Once he was through the fence, his eyes became accustomed to the poor light leaking through the hole, and the pale light of the moon overhead. He moved cautiously under the high marble arch and into the plaza.
Someone else was there ahead of him. It was an old man with a bowed back. The boy held his breath as the old man settled wearily to a bench that had been cracked and smeared with paint.
Now the boy’s gaze traveled up the length of the walls to see the crude paintings of muggers and subway trains, and the big red blob in the center of it. Painted across the stone face of the building were the words “Welcome to the Big Apple.”
The fountain was also smeared with paint and gouged with something that had left tracks of rust in the wounds. The vandal had gone too far. A delicate arm of the fountain had been broken off and lay in the water like a severed limb.
Again, the boy read the writing on the wall. “The Big Apple.” That was what his mother called New York City, the Big Apple. And what he saw in this wreckage was so New York. It was his mother’s building one block from a soup kitchen. It was the dark man on the corner who sang, “Come kiddy come. I got crack and I got smoke, and come kiddy come kiddy come.” It was the flowers that his mother could never put in the first-floor window box without seeing them broken-stalked and stolen by the day’s end.
He could not get out of this town fast enough.
The old man was rising unsteadily to his feet. The boy, sensing some remainder of authority here, melted back into the dark of the broken ash trees as the old man quit the plaza.
The boy walked over to the pile of rubble and old paint cans at the base of the wall. He knelt down and selected a can of red. He made a tentative squirt in the air, and then he froze.
A shadow loomed on the wall alongside his own, and it was growing larger.
He looked up to see the face of an old woman. She never spoke to him, but only extended her hand to the paint can. She wanted it and there was a look in her eyes that said, Don ‘t fool with me, boy, just give it to me.
He had seen that look so many times. Now it was a reflex action to surrender whatever he had in his hands. He gave her the can of spray paint and stepped back.
She turned away from him and pressed the nozzle close to the ruined wall. She walked along the stone facade, writing in a giant scrawl of red paint, “Apple, Apple, in the river, all you do is make me shiver.”
The boy read the line and said, “Amen.”
Gregor Gilette left the after-hours bar with a weaving walk and wandered down the street, hearing nothing, seeing only the pavement before his shoes, until he passed by another man who was walking in the opposite direction. The other man had ragged clothes draped on a stick-figure body. His arms made wide circular motions in the air, arm over arm, swimming to Fifty-seventh Street.
This was madness Gregor felt more comfortable with. His mind did not stray back to the wreckage of the plaza, for that was dangerous ground tonight.
Now he thought to look for a cab, but the street was deserted and it had begun to rain. He stared at the open mouth of the subway. He and Sabra had come a long way since the days when they rode the underground, unable to afford a taxi during the young years of the struggle to make it here.
He descended into the darkness beyond the shattered bulb intended to light his way. He bought a subway token from the man behind the glass of the booth and barely registered the fact that the cost of his token had gone up 500 percent. He passed through the turnstile to stand on the platform and wait through the dregs of night ending, a drunk slowly sobering, waiting for the train which takes its own time.
An announcement was being made on the public address system.
Even a native New Yorker could not actually understand the individual words that came out of the subway speakers, but he knew the words would only be a variation on the same theme: Your train will never come, so go away now.
Two stragglers on Gregor’s side of the tracks took this message to heart and exited through the turnstiles. The platform on the other side of the tracks had also emptied. One overhead bulb spread a pool of light on the far platform, creating the illusion of an abandoned stage.
Gregor was stubborn. He would stay. He would wait to see if the announcer lied. In the old days, half the time they lied.
He shrugged against the post and sluggishly meditated on the upside-downness of drinking through the nights and sleeping through the days, eking light and warmth from electric bulbs. He pushed cigarette stubs and wrappers with the toe of his shoe, looking for friendly omens in the dirt tracks and the trash.
He stared over the side of the platform at the tracks below. A small brown shape scurried between the rails. Gregor remembered Sabra’s old game of making a wish on the first rat of the evening. His footing was a bit unsure; tipsy still, he moved back to sag against the tiled wall.
He was not alone anymore. Someone spoke to him. Sabra’s voice? A hoarse, hollered whisper, calling his name. From where?
There-across the tracks, waiting for the train that goes the other way. She was peeking at him from behind a post, coming out now, walking into the pool of light. Her wide eyes were smiling and not. Then, a grotesque, clown-face smile split her face.
But it was not Sabra-only an old hag, almost spectral in her long rags. One hand clutched a tin and the other held on to the handle of a wire cart.
A train passed between them on the middle rails. He stared through the lighted square windows of the cars. There were no passengers. It was a ghost train, traveling empty to some maintenance depot. It passed on, and he could see the woman once more. Poor, pathetic, broken thing. How could he have taken her for Sabra?
His northbound train was approaching. He could hear it in the tunnel. He could see the light growing larger. There was a little moment of terror before the train pulled in and blocked her from sight. The woman’s mouth opened wide and round. The brakes of the approaching train screamed. Her arm shot up like a referee of the game. And then she was lost from sight again, the entire platform blotted out by the tons of screaming, steaming metal.
He boarded his train, tired and shaken sober. He never looked back through the windows of the car, but as the train picked up speed, he wondered if she looked for him in these quick squares of light.
The cellular telephone rang. Andrew opened his eyes to the dark canopy of raincoats. When at last he had the phone in his hand, he said, “Hello?”
“This mass is for a woman who was brutally murdered,” said a man’s voice. In the litany that followed, Andrew realized it was a priest saying mass for the dead dancer.
Mozart and a ghost choir spilled out of the magical telephone and filled his senses. Moving along on his knees, he crawled out from the cover of his canopy and looked up to the ceiling of the sky with its faint sprinkling of stars. Mozart’s Requiem filled a cathedral of his mind’s making. Hooded monks paraded past his eyes, candles became torches, and there was blood on the altar and blood on the floor, a river of it winding and washing through the belly of the church, churning beneath his feet.
Aubry crawled down the aisle under the falling axe. Her heart still beating with seconds of life. Everything was pulsating red. The exposed organs beat out their independent lives and deaths as they failed her, each one in turn.
He reached out his hand to her too late. Her face was gone to dark sockets and a death’s-head grin. He knelt on broken glass in shock beyond pain. And there was a new fear in his eyes, which were blurring with tears, as he stared up at the final horror of the night-the stars. In a suicide of heaven, the stars were going out.
And now, all the brighter lights of New York City also failed him as he pitched forward in a faint.