Carol O'Connell: Mallory's Oracle

"He never told me."

"But he knew."

"He said the only way he'd get that freak, that thing, was to catch it in the act. This one was too clever, smarter than Louis himself, so he told me, and maybe even smarter than you."

"Why did Markowitz tell all this to you and not me?"

"Oh, you know how parents are. They start to get independent of their children. Then they think they know it all, never need advice, never call the kids anymore. Like it would break an arm to pick up a phone. And you kids, you give them the best years of your lives, the cute years. This is how they pay you back, they take all the horrors of life and keep them from you."

"There's more. Give, Rabbi. Why would he do the tail himself? Why not send detectives or uniforms to do the surveillance?"

"This one scared him, Kathy. This was not an ordinary human. This was a freak from the night-side of the mind. How could he send in one of his beautiful young boys or girls?"

"Not good enough, Rabbi."

Her reflection elongated in the bright metal of the morgue locker, twisting in ugly distortions as she moved her head. He looked away.

"Did you know Louis was a dancing fool?"

"Rabbi."

"Patience, Kathy. He loved to dance. But there were no dancing Jews in his family. Very conservative they were, very pious, but not so much fun as you might think. So Louis would sneak out with the Irish kids, and they'd go dancing. One night, when we were young – when we were two other people, almost brand-new – Louis took me with him to a nightclub. As memories go, it's right up there with the night my first child was born."

"Oh, how he could dance, Kathy. The other kids made a ring around him and his partner. They clapped, they screamed. All of us who watched on, we stamped our feet and rocked our bodies like one gigantic, throbbing animal, and we made the building move with our rocking, and the band went on and on and faster and faster. And when the music did stop, the animal with two hundred mouths screamed out in this terrible, beautiful agony…"

"We took the subway back to Brooklyn as the sun was coming up. I wept. Louis didn't understand. He thought this night would be such fun for me."

And now she was hearing him, not shutting him out anymore, only waiting, hanging on the end of the story.

"Louis was always on the heavy side, but such grace you won't find in a woman, and so light on his feet. I remember that lightness best. Boys who were all bones made more noise with their feet than Louis. He was born to dance. He was a natural. And some say he was born to be a policeman. He could sneak up behind a criminal with his good brain and – "

"Okay, I get it. A cop with less finesse would have made too much noise."

"And Louis made almost no noise at all. And still, he died. Please, Kathy, you leave it to someone else to find out who this lunatic is."

"I think I know who it is… now."

"Then give him to the department, Kathy. Let them handle it."

"Markowitz thought the perp was so smart. Well, that dirtbag made a big mistake his last time out."

"What are you going to do, Kathy?"

"I'm gonna do it by the book. Markowitz would've liked that. My gift."

Rabbi Kaplan pulled his jacket close about his body. He was colder than he had ever been.

His body was well made, and his tailored, dark gray suit was faultless. But the shaggy brown hair was the length of three forgotten appointments with his barber, and his comical face was at odds with the day as he moved in slow procession across the grass with the others. Charles Butler was in pain, and the worse he felt, the more comical he looked. His protruding eyes, over-large in the white spaces and small in the blue colored bits, seemed slightly zany, and his nose might perch a New York City pigeon. He was a caricature of sadness when the few drops of rain found him alone among the mourners and splashed his face and made a hash of his real tears. At six-four, he towered a full head above the rest of them. No place to hide. There he was, the clown at the funeral.

Mallory walked just ahead of him. She might have been walking alone. It seemed accidental that she was surrounded by a throng of sad people on a common mission. He didn't find it odd that there was no sheltering arm around her shoulders, no one to take her own arm and give her support.

Charles quickened his step, and when he came abreast of her, she turned her face up to his. Her eyes were not the portals poets spoke of. They were cool green and gave away nothing. He put one arm around her. Two uniformed police officers walked alongside of them, openly marveling that he would risk that and that she did not shake him off.

Kathleen she was in all their private conversations, and Mallory she was in the public areas of NYPD. What to call her at the funeral of Louis Markowitz? She was his inheritance, and he was wondering just how he was going to explain that. He hoped the letter in his pocket might help.

Mallory put down the coffee cup and opened her letter. It began with a list of the deceased's regrets: Louis Markowitz regretted that his wife Helen had died before completing the job of housebreaking Kathy. He regretted being forced to address her as Mallory when she joined the police department. He regretted not being able to teach Kathy that it was not nice to raid other people's computers, and that he had made such good use of all her thievery and not set a better example for her.

And now the list of what he did not regret: there were no regrets about arresting her at the age often, eleven or twelve (they could never be sure about her age). He didn't regret handing the wild child over to gentle Helen Markowitz who startled young Kathy speechless and kick-less with a hug and an outpouring of undeserved and unconditional love. He did not regret that Kathy grew up to be a beauty with an intelligence that sometimes frightened him.

She had made Helen's last years an unreasonable joy without boundaries. And so, he could live and die with the fact that she still had the soul of a thief. And he was glad that she had made a friend in Charles Butler who was as decent a man as God ever made, and would she please not take shameful advantage of him, but go to him if she were in trouble, if she needed help, or in the unlikely event that she needed a little human warmth. And in his postscript, he mentioned that he had loved her.

She folded her letter and looked up at the man with the sad foolish smile. Charles Butler sat on the other side of the room, quietly staring into his coffee cup.

She supposed he was waiting for her to cry.

He would wait for ever.

Commissioner Beale sat down on the couch. He noted that it was a masculine thing, all dark leather and blending well with the other furnishings, massive and solid. The only feminine touch he could find in Sergeant Mallory's front room was the perfect order which men found so difficult to create, and he could find no personal effects at all. He might well be sitting in a showroom display for an upscale furniture store – entirely too upscale in his opinion. And the apartment was too large for her salary. It always worried him to see an officer living beyond means, better dressed than himself, or driving a better car. The police commissioner scratched a mental note on his accountant's soul.

Sergeant Mallory returned with a tray which could only be silver, and on it was a good grade of sherry and fine crystal glasses. He made more notes.

She was smiling. So much for Harry Blakely's comment that he would have to dynamite her office before she would take compassionate leave. She had taken it rather well.

"I think we might make this an indefinite leave, Sergeant."

He did respect Blakely's advice on keeping her out of it until the case was broken, and the Chief was promising results within a few weeks. Mallory was not replaceable, Blakely had counseled, "So don't antagonize her. Tell her it's policy." And policy it was. Doctors did not practise on members of their families; this was no different. She had seen the wisdom of policy. She had deferred to him in everything. He liked that. He liked it a lot.