Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

After the man with the knife had done his work on Margot, the old woman had come to the hospital to visit her, but only the one time. Samantha had begged Margot to cover her face, to hide the scar, it was so upsetting. Then, fear filled them both, and every night. It was their only commonality after the rape. One woke up screaming with the fear of being alone. And twenty blocks south, the other woke with visions of the knife dancing up to her eyes and then down to her cheek, severing the nerve which had previously allowed her to smile on that side of her face.

She stared at the wall until it lightened with the dawn, and then she scooped clothes up from the pile on the floor which was nearest the bed. As she dressed, she missed the match of buttons on her vest and never noticed. There was no food in the house. She would go shopping at the supermarket when they gave her the advance money. She would ask for all of it in cash, small bills. She would buy the whole world and meat, red meat, and a jelly roll.

The banker wished he had an office with a door he could close. The unpartitioned interior of the bank had all the privacy and the proportions of two stacked ballrooms. The expansive balcony, where his desk was situated, was entirely too public today. People were staring at the oddly dressed young woman seated opposite him. She had a disconcerting smirk on her face, and on one cheek was the crescent moon of a fading scar. Her clothes were dirty, and she was nodding off in her chair and catching herself awake.

"Miss Siddon," said the bank officer, "I have to wait on the executor's instructions before releasing any funds. There's no way around that. And as to the advance, you haven't been able to answer a single personal question about your cousin. If you can't even give me her middle name – "

"We didn't talk much."

"Perhaps if you spoke with her law firm."

"They keep saying they'll get back to me. But no one ever calls."

"Have your own attorney look into it."

"I don't have one, and you know it. Look, I need money, and I need it today. What good does a million dollars do me if I starve to death, huh? Can you answer me that?"

It had to be a scam, he knew, and not very original. He'd heard similar requests. This… person must be an avid reader of obituaries. But how embarrassing if she did turn out to be the heir to the Siddon trust. One couldn't be too careful. "Do you have some form of identification? A driver's license?"

"I don't drive."

"What sort of identification do you use when you write checks to merchants?"

"I don't write checks. I don't have a damn checking account."

Now, that had to be a lie. He knew for a fact that everyone on the planet had a checking account. "I can hardly give you money if you can't properly identify yourself. You can see that."

And yes, she could see that apparently, for she was rising out of the chair, dragging her body up to a stand. The long dress hung on her bones. The floppy brocade vest could not hide the thinness of her arms and face. Did she never eat? he wondered.

She was moving slowly towards the grand staircase leading down to the main floor. It had crossed his mind to give the creature some change from his own pocket, but he had thought better of it. Such a gesture might have led to a scene.

While he watched Margot Siddon's slow progress down the wide steps, he had a few spare minutes to remember he had once played lead guitar in a Sixties rock band. In his wife of twenty-five years, he could find traces of the hippy girl who had sung with the band and starved with the band. But who was this unmusical man who had just given the bum's rush to a woman who was certainly hungry?

He toyed with a paper clip as Margot Siddon turned at the base of the marble steps and moved across the wide expanse of gilded, wasted space, heading for the door. When she slipped and fell to the marble floor, he dropped his paper clip and dropped his eyes.

Riker kept a good distance from the glass wall of the office. He checked the exits for a fast retreat should Commissioner Beale look his way and call him in to be shot alongside Coffey. The gray little man was waving a newspaper in Coffey's face. Riker knew the headline by heart: Invisible Man Eludes NYPD .

When the case was eight weeks' old, when Markowitz was only dead forty-eight hours, it was Chief of Detectives Blakely who had told Beale the case might break at any moment. Six weeks had gone by and now Blakely rested his flabby haunch on the desk, smoked his cigar and left Coffey to fend for himself.

Coffey was standing and looking down on Beale. Riker could have told him that Blakely's was the best position. Sitting on his ass, Blakely didn't tower over the commissioner. Coffey was entirely too tall to be a good political animal in Beale's regime. And no one had taught Coffey the ingratiating smile, the prelude to bending over and begging to be kicked. The man just stood there, rock-solid, and in that moment, Riker came near to liking him.

Two uniformed officers joined Riker by the water-cooler, feigning thirst and watching the show.

Maybe it was time to show support for Coffey, to take his side against the commissioner. Yeah, it was time. Riker pulled out his wallet and said to the uniformed officers, "I got five dollars says Coffey's still standing when the commissioner leaves."

Margot Siddon plucked a paper cup from a trash can and held it up to a man with a tear in his sweatshirt who clinked in a dime and a quarter. Twenty minutes later, she was pushing change through a slot and asking a clerk for a subway token. She fell asleep on the train and missed her stop.

After a fifteen-block walk from the subway to her apartment, she stood outside her door with the sick realization that she had no keys. They must have rolled out of her pocket when she slid to the floor of the bank's lobby. She banged on the door of the empty apartment, crying against the wood, sinking to the hallway tiles. Her birth certificate was in there, somewhere in that pile of rubbish, and she could not get at it. She kicked the door with all the strength she had left.

Wait. The mailbox.

Her mail would identify her by name and address. But her box key was on the same lost ring with her apartment key. She pulled a switchblade knife from her pocket and danced down the steps to the mailboxes. She prized the box open, and pulled out one piece of junk mail and a utility bill.

Mallory squinted. Strong morning light poured through the long bank of tall windows, illuminating each cigarette burn on the red velvet couch. At each end of the couch sat unacquainted women who were well past a certain age, yet both sported rouge and lipstick to do a fire engine proud. An old man stood at the receptionist's desk slowly counting out dollar bills pulled from a plastic money clip which bore a dry cleaner's logo. The receptionist nodded, rippling four chins each time a dollar was plumped down on the desk in front of her.

The courtly Mr Estaban was bending low to insert a videotape into the VCR. Mallory stared at a gray quarter-inch on each side of the part in his hair, all that was not dulled with black dye.

"We tape all the students," he was saying, "every two weeks, so they can see their improvement. Usually, we erase them, but not this one. No, this one is a keeper. He was a wonderful dancer, a natural." Hunched over the machine and with his nose an inch from the screen, Mr Estaban watched the test numbers flash by on the monitor in advance of the film. "One moment and you will see."

And she did see. There was gray-haired, overweight Markowitz and a slender young dancing partner some distance from the camera. The young woman in the red dress and dancing slippers was her own age or younger, familiar and not. As the oddly matched couple danced closer to the camera, Mallory sucked in her breath.