Mallory's Oracle

CHAPTER 8

With food enough and sleep enough, Margot was focussed once again. In her mind, she replayed the image of the knife disappearing into his ribs in a quick thrust of the blade, she watched again as he slid to the concrete of the subway platform, gasping like an air-drowned fish, blood bubbling up from his mouth. She had stared at his eyes for a very long time. He was the one. There could have been no other eyes like those.

She would have to do something about the knife, all the knives. She wouldn't miss them any. She didn't need them anymore. How many knives did she own? She collected all the knives from the kitchen and bundled them in a towel and carried them out the door as if they had been babies. And they had been, but no more.

Riker was comfortably settled into a chair by the bulletin board in Mallory's den. He drained another beer. An empty coffee cup and a plate with the remains of Mallory's more wholesome breakfast were on the table by her computer. It would not have surprised him if she had pulled her bed into the den so she could sleep with the board as well as eat with it.

"Has Charles ever seen the board?"

She shook her head as she attached the last print-out to the cork. It dangled by a single push pin.

He wondered what Charles would think if he could see her pinning up notes and printouts in a sloppy, unMallory way. Maybe Charles would know what to do with this aspect of Mallory which was dissembling, push pin by push pin.

She went to the small refrigerator, a recent addition to the den, and pulled out a bottle of beer. "Now, what have you got on Redwing?" She popped off the cap and slipped the cold bottle into his hand to replace the empty one which had disappeared without his noticing.

"Okay." He looked down at his open notebook. "She has three arrests for extortion and fraud. The charges were dropped in each case."

"I've got that already."

Of course she did. She could break into the NYPD computer system in her sleep.

"I want the personal notes of the cops who busted her. The computer file won't tell me why the charges were dropped."

"They were dropped for lack of cooperation from the complainants. You know how hard it is to prosecute this kind of fraud even when the victims do cooperate."

"Any earlier records under another alias? Maybe a little violence on her record? Assault charges?"

"No, but she's a big lady. I'd bet even money she could take you." He slugged back his beer in a long thirsty draught.

"No address yet?"

"Still working on it. It's no good backtracking any of the cabs. They all pick her up in different locations and most of them are gypsy cabs, no logs." Riker looked down at his magical, bottomless beer bottle.

"So, now that Coffey has the seance connection, he must be really hot on conspiracy theories again."

"Oh yeah, he is. He's taking a real strong interest in Redwing. It's got to tie in with one of her scams, right?"

"Does Coffey understand that none of these women are going to be cheated by a small-time con artist?"

"I don't know. I think he sees every old lady in the image of his grandmother."

"What else have you got?"

"You're gonna love this. Here." He handed her a typewritten note. It was still enclosed in an evidence bag.

"Oh Jesus. Just when you think you've seen it all, somebody comes up with a new angle for a protection racket. Where did you get it?"

"One of the old ladies gave it to us during the interview. Fabia Penworth. Course she passed it around to all her friends before we ever saw it. We had to fingerprint the whole pack of them for elimination prints."

"And she was just delighted with the letter, right?"

"Yeah. Go figure. So now Coffey's off on this theory that all the old ladies who went down got death threats like that one, and either they didn't pay their own ransoms, or they were killed right after the pay-offs."

"And the old ladies back that up?"

"Nope. This is the first letter they've seen, any of them."

"Then it didn't go down that way. You tell something to one of them, and you tell it to all of them. If there were other letters they'd all know about it. Coffey's met them. What does he use for brains?"

"Hey, Kathy, ease up. Coffey didn't grow up with the old man, but he's learning. That guy don't sleep so good at night, he wants to catch this perp so bad. It's not like he's dragging his feet."

"If he knew you were feeding me – "

"Okay, that tears it. And just what do you use for brains, kid? Of course he knows. He always knew. What I don't know is if he figured he couldn't cut you out, or he shouldn't. And if you don't mind a little constructive criticism – and even if you do – Coffey's not half green enough to make the mistakes you've made. Your kiddy days in the department computer room don't count for squat. You got zero time in undercover work, nothing in surveillance. You figured the team in Gramercy Park didn't spot you 'cause you parked in the right place? Gimme a break, you brat. You just figured you were smarter, and maybe you are, but they got you on film. If they got you, the perp probably spotted you, too. In fact, I think we can count on that. You underestimate everybody, Kathy. That'll get you killed. And Coffey shows a damn sight more respect for the old man. He figures if the perp was smart enough to kill Markowitz, he's gonna play his troops close to the vest. He can't spare one man, but he's got two of them in that Gramercy apartment, every day, dawn to dusk – one to watch the other's back. And then he's still got time to worry about you."

"And you're my babysitter."

Oh, kiss a dead rat. He was only confirming what she already suspected. He'd been had. That was in her face, though he had to give her points for not gloating. He threw up his hands and spilled more beer in the same motion.

She turned away from him. She'd heard what she wanted to hear. He'd run his mouth nicely at ninety miles an hour, given her information, thanks, but he could stuff the rest. He stared down at his bottle. How many beers had she slipped into his hand today?

"Maybe you overestimate Redwing," she said.

"No I don't. You're right about her being small-time, little fish. When she does go for gold, she screws it up. It's a history with her. But she's smart enough to beat the charges and mean enough to do you some damage. You don't want to get too close to her."

"So she does have an assault on her rap sheet."

So much for his idea of not disclosing information on Redwing.

"You stay the hell away from Redwing."

"I know you've got a new address on her. Give it to me."

"No way." There were limits. Kathy had done a number on him, a first-class mugging, but he couldn't give her everything. How many beers had he had? And did he just tell her that he had the address?

"Kid, you just never listen. Coffey's covering for you. You make a bad mistake and he goes down with you. You don't want to screw up the way Markowitz did. Nobody goes near her without a backup. Two of the arresting cops let me read their personal notes on Redwing. The charges were dropped in one case because the complainant disappeared. Another one died of a heart attack. In the case officer's opinion, the guy was scared to death."

He stared at her mask of a face in profile as she went back into the details of the bulletin board and was lost in there. He had been wrong. She did know how to listen and how to bait. Hadn't she listened as he told her the feed worked both ways, that he'd been holding out on her and shadowing her? All he had left was Redwing's address. Markowitz's daughter had the makings of a great cop.

"I was just trying to help you out, Riker. If your team is waiting for her to come back to the hole on Hudson Street, you're in the wrong neighborhood. She only uses that place because it has an underground access to a building on the next street. That's how she loses the surveillance team."

He lifted his bottle to the light and stared at it. If he put the mouth of it to his ear like a conch shell, would he hear Markowitz laughing at him?

Edith was making the kitchen noises of preparing lunch for Charles. He stood at the center of the carpet, turning slowly, sensing that something was out of place, but not knowing what it might be. The farther back he had to reach into the archives of his photographic memory, the more flaws he was likely to find.

The address had changed since he was a child, but not the character of the rooms. Edith and Max had recreated the interior architecture of the old house in Gramercy Park. The windows had been redone and the walls covered with matching wood panels and wallpaper. Upon his first and final childhood visit to this Soho address, at the age of nine, he had helped them to match the lesser details of each room with the photographs of his remarkable memory. They had given him this game to play during the week he had lived with them while his parents were at the other end of the world attending a conference. He had not stopped until each piece of antique furniture, each bit of bric-a-brac, photograph and painting was set in its accustomed place.

Ten years had passed between that visit and the next. As a boy of nineteen, he had noticed one change immediately. She had taken the portrait of Max off the wall of the front room and replaced it with a good hunting print. But for that one change, Edith had kept to the original integrity of the rooms. The same museum-worthy figurines, silver dishes and ashtrays appeared on table surfaces. The same clutter of photographs and candles sat on the mantelpiece. Doilies graced the tables, and antimacassars protected the brocade of the chairs. The telephone was circa 1910. The late twentieth century was hidden away in a back room where Edith kept her computer.

He walked down the hall and entered the room which, in smaller proportions, replicated the library of the Gramercy Park house. He had not had occasion to be in this room since he was a small boy. Later visits with Edith, in his adult years, had always been confined to tea and sandwiches in the front room. But this library was the room he had loved best. The shelves were filled with tomes on magic. Most of the volumes were collectors' items, some dating back two centuries. The fireplace with the ornate mantelpiece held the memories of Max's repertoire of ghost stories told on chill nights with marshmal-lows to toast on the fire, making white stringy goo on long sticks while Max terrified him and then made him laugh.

Charles stared at the mantelpiece. Something did not square with the child's memory. He picked up a photograph and admired the ornate silver frame. It was a good match to the other two frames which kept it company. None of them were here when he was a boy. And now he realized another oddity. The only picture of Cousin Max in the entire apartment was this newsprint photo which accompanied his obituary. No, on closer inspection, it was not an obituary. It was an article on Edith Candle, the famed medium who had predicted her husband's death.

This must be the same article Mallory had seen. According to the text, neighbors had confirmed the death prediction from the appearance of writing scrawled on the walls of the couple's Soho apartment.

The next newsprint photo, encased in a similar frame, was a portrait of a destroyed child. Large eyes, desolate and bewildered, peered out of a face not quite sixteen years old. This was the account of a boy's suicide. Edith's name appeared throughout the text. In the third companion frame was the posed and professionally photographed engagement portrait of a happy young woman. According to the article below the photograph, she had died in violence on the eve of her wedding.

"Charles?"

Edith was standing in the doorway, holding onto a tray of teapot and cups, condiments, sandwiches and silverware.

He took the heavy tray from her hands. "Let's have lunch in here, shall we? You know, I haven't been in this room since I was a boy. Has Kathleen ever been back here?" He set the tray down on the octagonal game table surrounded by leather armchairs.

"Yes, I believe I gave her a complete tour of the apartment."

He noted the slight distraction in her eyes and an agitation to her movements as she sat down at the table and began to pour out the tea. "What's troubling you, Edith?"

"It's Kathy. I'm very worried about that child."

"She's no child, and she's frighteningly capable."

"I don't believe she understands what she's up against. I can feel the evil, Charles. I can put out my fingers and feel it."

He looked to the photographs on the mantel. "I expect you've had these feelings before."

"I have. And the sad thing is, I was never able to avert tragedy. Perhaps it's true that destiny is writ and cannot be undone."

He walked over to the mantel and picked up the photo of the young suicide. "A case in point?"

She looked up see what he was holding, eyes refocussing through the thick lenses, and then she looked quickly away, back to the business of pouring, a task she took exaggerated pains with. Finally done with the ritual of one lump or two, she said, "That boy's been on my conscience for years. It was a terrible tragedy. Max and I were doing a head act then. We were on the tent-show circuit in the Midwest. Oh, that was a time. A different town every night, pitching the tent in hayfields and empty lots."

She reached out for the silver frame, and Charles put it into her hand.

"It was this boy who brought out my true gift. I had the sense of him close by, I could feel him. That night I took off my blindfold and looked hard at the boy. I foresaw his death. He was unkempt, he hung his head, hiding something. "You must tell the police what you have done," I told him. I thought if he confessed, he might be spared. The boy ran out. Later, a missing little girl was found in a shallow grave in the lot behind his shack. Later still, the boy was found hanged in his jail cell."

"Was there any warning about the boy's death? Automatic writing? Anything like that?"

"No, that came later, much later."

"And it's happened again? Recently? What did Martin see written on the walls?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes. Her gnarled hands worked in her lap as she examined a lace doily with keen interest. "I didn't want him to see it. You know how sensitive Martin is. I was trying to clean it off when he walked into the kitchen. I hadn't even heard the front door open."

He could only imagine what patience it must have taken for her to build a relationship with Martin.

"The writing, what did it say?"

"It said, "Blood on the walls and in the halls, rivers and oceans of blood"."

The thrift-store clerk was working alone. His co-workers were having an affair on the lunch hour, and he was being a good sport. Pity they weren't here now, because John and Peter would never believe this. He hardly believed it himself. The learning-disabled shoplifter had covertly deposited a load of silverware in the box for utensils.

She was moving quickly to the door with her empty towel, and then, as though she had just remembered something, she spun around on her heel and returned to the box. She picked up a knife and polished it with her towel, and then another, and another. Now she was lifting the box and setting it on the floor. She sat down beside it and spilled all the utensils out on the threadbare carpet. A middle-aged woman with iron-gray hair and the attitude of an amateur social worker was standing over the girl, speaking to her in soft words that did not carry across the room. The girl in the dirty and torn red dress only stared at the knife in front of her eyes, blind and deaf to everything else, concentrating on her work, polishing each piece of silverware. No, he realized now, it was not each piece. The girl seemed to favor the knives. She began to hum to herself as she polished them with her dirty towel.

The iron-gray woman walked up to his counter, and together, in tense but companionable silence, they watched the girl working away at each blade, polishing and polishing.

The woman turned to him with fire alarms in her eyes and in her voice. "Shouldn't you call someone?"

"No reason. She's not violent."

"Seriously, you don't think that's crazy?"

"This is New York City, lady. Crazy isn't good enough.

If she wants a room in Bellevue Hospital, she's gotta kill somebody to get it."

Charles set the photograph back on the mantelpiece. In the time it took to cross the small room, he had come to a few alarming conclusions about these photographs, and now he turned his mind back to the main event.

Redwing had strong powers, by Edith's estimation, and she was also dangerous, reeking of Santeria, that mix of Catholic rites and voodoo, sympathetic magic and animal sacrifice. Now he multiplied the dangers to Mallory.

"Actually, Martin saw the second writ," Edith was saying on the periphery of his hearing. "Herbert saw the first one. Well, the first prediction in years, and I don't remember making it. The words that Herbert saw were "Death is close by time and space"."

"Have you spoken to Herbert recently?"

"Not for a few days, no. He was quite concerned about poor Martin."

"Poor Martin?"

"Well, Martin is a bit touched, isn't he." It was not a question. She made the spinning motion of finger to temple to indicate that Martin's mind might have stripped a few gears. And he found that odd, because Martin was not the least bit insane. Henrietta, a practising psychiatrist had never used that word. Sensitive, she called him, and fragile, but not insane.

Martin had designed a life to complement his art. True, he had organized his private world within extraordinary parameters. Like Henry Cathery, he had opted for simplicity, even striking the noise of color from his surroundings, keeping to the hush of white, the better to listen. Martin would be sensitive to every nuance against the pure white background of his life.

Charles suspected Henrietta kept a protective watch on Martin for a reason other than impending breakdown. Might Henrietta be watching over Martin in the way a miner kept one eye to the canary's cage suspended from the rafters at the lower levels of the earth? When the fragile canary gasped and fluttered and struck its weak wings against the bars of its cage, the miner would know the air had gone foul, and Henrietta would know that Edith was active again.

Edith's gifts did not extend to following the rush of an intellect that worked in microseconds. And as he picked her brains for the critical details, she mistook it all for polite conversation. Leaving his sandwich and tea untouched, he bid her goodbye and took his hurried leave.

Mallory cut the ignition and her lights while the car was still in motion. She pulled silently to the curb. "This is the building Redwing calls home this week." Leaning across Riker, she looked out the passenger-side window. "Keep an eye on the television screen in that first-floor apartment." Riker stared into the lighted rectangle of the tenement building and the interior poverty which made a burglar gate on the window a bad investment. An old black-and-white television set was sitting on a card table. The wall behind it was a mosaic of cracks and peeling paint. A battered-to-stuffings easy chair sat to one side of the television, and all that showed above the chair's back was a balding head and tufts of dingy white hair.

Mallory was lifting her laptop computer out of its case. "Tell me when the TV's picture breaks up."

Riker noted that Mallory had added a few new toys to her car. The antenna on the front fender was not made for ordinary radio reception. And he now recognized the black phone-set in her left hand as telephone-company equipment. "No you don't, kid. You're not doing a phone tap without a warrant."

"No, I'm not. I won't hear one human voice. I'm going to pull an electronic scramble out of the air and reassemble it on my computer. Cite me the federal code for that one." Riker turned back to the apartment window, the better to avoid witnessing. "So what happens when the TV's picture breaks up?"

"The old man sitting in front of the set will get up and start banging on it."

Riker nudged her arm. The set's screen was gone to zigzags and lost vertical hold. The old man got up from his easy chair and began pounding on the set. There was no anger in the pounder's face, but Riker thought the old man might be crying.

The screen on Mallory's laptop came to life.

"We're in. The wiring in this building is the pits. Redwing doesn't know her computer busts up the old man's reception, and the old man doesn't know what a computer is. Look at the set."

Riker turned back to the window. The television set's reception had returned to normal. The old man walked back to his chair.

"There," said Mallory. "Now you got me on unlicensed TV repair."

How many times had she done this trick?

"I want you to promise me you won't come back here again. You can't just go into surveillance work without training." How could he explain to Mallory that she could never do covert surveillance, even with the training, because she had glorious blonde hair and a face that tended to linger in memory, for years or a lifetime. "You never put in the time wet-nursing sources – pimps and junkies, thieves and dealers, prostitutes – all the eyes and ears you need on the street just to get through a day on the job. A beat cop has more to work with than you do."

"Yeah, right. What about all the SEC documents from Markowitz's side of the bulletin board? All the background checks? He got that from me, not from any of your damn street people. And who gave you the seance connection? I didn't have to pressure a pimp or roll a sick junkie to get any of it."

True, Mallory was the best source Markowitz had ever had.

"Coffey can't use the stock-market material," he said. "If he calls the SEC into this too early, we'll all be up to our tails in feds. He won't let go of Lou's murder, not to them. He wants to keep it in the family, you know?"

"I know."

"But you and I need an understanding about Redwing. You could get killed pulling a stunt like this – "

"I'm not a rookie – "

"When it comes to fieldwork, you are. Markowitz screwed up, that's a fact. And you're following him into the same hole, running a surveillance with no backup."

He was talking to the air. She was staring at the screen of her computer. "So what kind of setup does Redwing have? Is she stealing money by computer hacking?"

"She wouldn't know how. Redwing is an adequate technician. She can run a computer program, but she could never design one. The past few days I've watched her scanning message centers. She's waiting for something. I'm guessing they use different message centers every time she talks to whoever's running the scam. That gives me at least one player above Redwing's level."

He looked down at the screen of her laptop computer. "Okay, what're we looking at?"

"The same thing Redwing's looking at. It's an electronic bulletin-board system. Anyone in the world with a telephone can log on and leave a message. The one she's lifting off the board is in code. Kid's stuff. I'll break it down in another minute."

Riker looked back to the old man's window. Whatever Redwing was into, it didn't pay well. Not that the interior of one apartment was a sure indication of a bad neighborhood. And it wasn't the rats dancing on the garbage-can lid; he'd seen them uptown and down. But the condoms on the sidewalk told him it was a hooker block. The next block over might be straight middle-class working stiffs. That was New York. Turn any corner and the atmosphere changed. On the next street over, a storefront window displayed toys; on this block it was adult books and peepshows.

"I like this," said Mallory. "I like it a lot. She's not picking up background checks on victims. She's gathering stock information on mergers and takeovers. If this is non-public, if it doesn't tally with SEC filings, it's insider trading."

"Mallory, can you break this into simple English? I'm not a stocks-and-bonds kinda guy. I guess you didn't know that."

"Your niece works for a law firm, right?"

"Gloria, yeah. She's a paralegal."

"Let's say Gloria is working up the contract for a merger between two companies. She has a little lead time before the paperwork on the merger is filed with the SEC. Now she knows the stock will go up in value the minute the merger is made public. Suppose Gloria gives that information to a friend before it goes public? The friend makes a fortune on stock purchases and gives your niece a cut of the profits. The original stockholders are cheated because they've sold their shares to Gloria's friend, and sold them for a song. The feds really hate that."

"It's like a rigged horse-race?"

"You got it. You see these numbers and letters?" She pointed to the first column of type on the screen. "These are stocks. I'm guessing they're identified by current market quotations. I'll have to check the paper when we get back. The numbers following the stock IDs are purchase orders. It doesn't fit with any seance scam. She's into something too big for any one person. A medium-size bank couldn't handle these transactions."

"Suppose we get a warrant to pick up her computer?"

"No good without a direct link to the player who feeds her the information. She has a legal loophole. This bulletin board qualifies as public access, same as printing stock information in a newspaper. Now that's smart, very smart, and not Redwing's idea. You're looking for somebody with a brain, access to trading activity and organizational skills."

"Coffey's gonna love this."

"Yeah, right. Tell him it's a gift from the rookie. So, what have you got for me?"

"Kid, I gave you my wad," he said, and that was the truth. She turned away from him, not believing in him anymore.

Margot held the switchblade in her hand as she listened to the phone ringing endlessly, twenty, thirty times. She knew how to wait. He would answer. The switchblade had been cleaned for the tenth time and the blade gleamed, throwing its light on the walls. No answer. She continued to wait. It was what she did best. She had waited years for the man with the dancing knife. She looked down at the blade as it caught the light in a sliver of metal.

She had decided to keep the switchblade. The blood had been boiled away on the stove. It was safe. She would keep it. It might bring her luck. It hadn't been so lucky when it tumbled to the desk in the bank, but that was before she killed the bogeyman. Maybe she'd take it back to the bank. What was she going to do about the bank? Henry would know.

The phone continued to ring.

Maybe Henry would let her use his lawyer to get the advance money. Maybe she would just go back with the knife in her pocket. She was luckier today. A tourist had put a dollar bill in her cup and now there was enough in the cup for a slice of pizza and a subway token. It had amazed her how easily money could be had when one looked as she did and smelled as she did.

Thirty minutes later, she rounded the corner to Avenue C in that section of the East Village called Alphabet City. It was also called the war zone. This was where the law was not. And so it startled her to see a cop on the sidewalk talking to another cop in the car parked in front of her building.

So, the banker had turned her in. Bastard. She would get the little twit for that.

She turned around and headed back to the subway, picking a cup from a trash can as she walked along the sidewalk. Don't run, she told herself, running is a dead give-away. She panhandled her way down the street in the security that no one, cop or civilian, looked into the face of poverty if they didn't have to.

The VCR was set to loop endlessly, and so, Markowitz danced through the night. Mallory fell asleep to the lullabies of the Fifties, and he rock'n'rolled into her dreams. The dancing detective held Mallory in his arms. She was unconscious, and he was trying desperately to wake her. The dream ended with the dip. He bowed her body down until she lay upon the floor at the base of the cork wall. He was yelling at her. What was he saying? Why couldn't she understand?

She woke, lifting her head from the desk, eyes slowly adjusting to the images on the video. Markowitz danced off with young Helen, twirling away from the camera's eye, leaving Mallory alone in the dark. Her hands slowly rose above her head, curled into fists and came back to the desk as hammers.

Why had they left her all alone?