Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

Out on the avenue, she had her choice of discarded paper cups. She selected one and primed it with three pennies and jingled them for the tourists.

An old woman stopped and kept Margot standing in the cold wind as she dipped a thick-veined claw into her large purse and, with maddening slowness, groped around its interior, finally extracting a change purse. Margot shifted from one foot to the other as the old woman worked the clasp with arthritic fingers, at last, wincing out a single dime and chiming it into the paper cup.

Margot stared at the dime which kept company with the three pennies at the bottom of her cup. A scream of outrage exploded from her mouth with force enough to push the old woman back two steps to the brick wall littered with playbills and ads and graffiti. Margot screamed at her, yelling obscenities, shrieking 'Bitch, bitch, bitch' in an angry chant. She followed after the old woman, who had turned and was hurrying away with all the speed of veined and brittle legs. The woman gathered her thin coat closer about her throat, as if it might be protection from the young lunatic who was dancing alongside her, sometimes leaping in the air and screaming vile words which had the effect of physical punches and outright terror.

The old woman tried to run, and her bones failed her, legs falling out from under her. She heard a snap of bone when she hit the hard cement, which hates old bones and breaks them when it can. The old woman never felt the jagged edge of the broken beer bottle until she looked down and saw the blood gushing from the split in her flesh. A small noise came from her dry lips, a crack in the voice, a squeal of fear, more from the sight of her own blood than the pain. The old woman was crawling now, dragging her body along the sidewalk as the lunatic with the dirty matted hair danced around her, ranting on and on. stomping and leaping, frightening the wide-eyed pedestrians who passed her quickly by, pretending not to see, not to hear, not to feel.

The old woman ceased her inching escape. She lay still in the body and quiet. Tears streamed from her eyes as her life leaked out through the jagged red hole in her leg.

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."