Carol O’Connell - Crime School

After Charles had bid Riker good night at the elevator, he saw a crack of light under the door to Butler and Company. Mallory? He had not seen her face since early June. And now he forced himself to walk, not run, as he entered the office and passed through the lighted reception area, then moved quickly down a narrow hall, pulled along by the dim glow from Mallory’s room – where the machines lived.

He paused at the open doorway, staring at the back of his business partner. She sat before a computer workstation, one of three. Most of her personal office was lost in shadow, a sharp contrast to the halo, a silhouette of burnished gold made by lamplight threading through her hair.

What could he say to her? He doubted that she would regret or even recall their missed dinner date, for she was in holy communion with her machines and oblivious to human disappointment.

Years ago, he had written a rather poetic monograph on her gifted applications of computer science. Over the course of his career, he had evaluated many wizards who could force electronics to do remarkable things. But she was a creature apart, employing an artist’s sensibility similar to a composer of music. She merged with the technology, fashioning effect by thought, blending the psyches of musician and mathematician to write original notes for electronic bells and whistles.

During his study of her, Charles had indulged in a fanciful, albeit unpublishable, notion that Nature had planned ahead for this new century, that some long-sleeping gene had awakened when she was made. Later, after learning more about her childhood, his vision had altered and darkened, for Mallory had been hammered into what she was – the perfect receptacle for something cold and alien. And her intimacy with machinery chilled him.

Once, he had been ambivalent about computers. Now he saw them as perverted soldiers that blurred the demarcation line between her fingertips and the keyboards. He had sought to dilute their influence with offerings of fine art and the soft edges of antiquarian objects. Mallory had fought back, encroaching on the office kitchen with ugly technology that he could not abide. Then she had invaded his personal residence, staging a surprise attack to reconfigure his stereo system. Stunned, he had been assaulted from all sides by musical perfection via enemy components that removed the necessity of human hands for turning the knobs and fine-tuning the song. The sheer beauty of it had seduced him for a time. But now, seeing her like this, he was back in combat mode, dreaming new schemes to disconnect her computers, to unplug them all – and Mallory too.

It was a good fight.

She never looked up as Charles approached. He stood beside her chair and stared at the monitor. Her only task tonight was the harmless typing of text. All that angst for nothing. Bracketed question marks pocked the glowing screen. A battered notebook lay on the metal surface of her workstation. It was open to a page of faded coffee stains and lines of blue ink from an old-fashioned fountain pen. Charles could even describe that pen; Louis Markowitz had willed it to him. For the second time in one night, he was staring at a sample of an old friend’s handwriting. Mallory was deciphering her foster father’s shorthand scribbles between the clearly written words, duct tape and rope.

She raised her face to his, and they exchanged grins of hello. Their technology wars had caused no hard feelings between them. They still smiled and waved at one another across the great divide.

Riker watched the sidewalks roll by the passenger window of Mallory’s tan sedan. The landscape kept changing on him. Early memories of beatniks in funereal black gave way to colorful flower children, hippies with love beads, and bless the girls with diaphragm earrings who had bedded every boy with a guitar.

Rock ‘n’ roll. Salad days.

Nose rings were the next new thing in another parade of fearless children with hair every color of the chemical neon rainbow. Girded in tattoos and vintage corsets with cruel metal spikes for nipples, they had flung themselves into the badlands of the East Village.

This morning, he saw a girl in a white polo shirt and jeans still creased from the store hanger. Another yuppie strolled by in a similar uniform. One day, while Riker’s back was turned, the kids had all gone shopping at The Gap.

He turned to his partner behind the wheel. ‘Maybe I should do the interview with Tall Sally.’ He might as well have added the words, just to be safe. It was not the size of the ex-convict that worried him, but Sal’s history with Sparrow when Kathy Mallory was a child. ‘It’s not that you can’t handle it – ’

The car stopped before the light turned red. No warning! Not fair! She hit the brakes hard and slammed him toward the dashboard. His teeth were saved by a seatbelt, but it was a near thing. ‘So that’s a definite no,’ said Riker.

After the silent wait for a green light, the car moved on, and Mallory lowered her dark glasses. ‘You think I should do the old woman instead?’

Enough said. According to a police report, the elderly witness was very fragile in mind and body. Mallory might want to take her out for a drive.

The detectives pulled up to the curb in front of the crime scene. Riker stepped out of the car and watched it drive off, passing only one other moving vehicle. Sparrow’s street had a tranquil character in the early morning light. There were flower boxes on some of the window ledges, a sign of gentrification, law and order, though last night’s mob had made off with all the blooms, and now the headless stalks were turning brown.

The detective on loan from Lieutenant Loman was hovering near the front steps of the apartment building. All dressed up in a suit and shiny new shoes, the youngster shifted his weight from foot to foot, suspecting that he was in trouble – and he was.

Riker’s gaze traveled over the smoke-stained bricks, then down to the yellow crime-scene tape lying on the sidewalk. It had been pulled aside so a man in coveralls could board up the broken window. A familiar uniformed officer stood guard over Sparrow’s basement apartment. Riker smiled. ‘Hey, Waller. Go grab some food. I’m gonna be here awhile.’ He nodded toward the workman and the young detective. ‘I’ll make sure they don’t run off with anything.’

After the patrolman had crossed the street and passed out of earshot, Riker turned to face the worried young cop in the dark suit. The new man was in that whiteshield limbo between a uniform’s silver badge and a detective’s gold. And he was too young to have been promoted without a father-in-law at Number One Police Plaza. His sole distinguishing feature was bleached hair that went beyond blond; it was yellow, the color of a baby duck.

And Riker christened him accordingly.

Department politics dictated that he handle Duck Boy with great care, and so he held up the young detective’s report and crumpled it into a tight ball, saying, ‘This sucks.’ Riker was not usually that fancy with his critiques. The wadded-up paper should have made words unnecessary, but he was feeling expansive this morning. He looked toward the window of a first-floor apartment directly across the street, then squinted to make out a woman’s head piled high with white hair.

How he loved old ladies, the watchers of the world.

He opened the crumpled ball of paper, Duck Boy’s idea of an interview, and read the closing words aloud, ‘ „Religious fanatic. Ramblings of senility.“ That’s it? What the hell kind of a witness statement is this? When I send you back to Lieutenant Loman, he’s gonna think I didn’t raise you right.’

Officer Waller had returned with his breakfast in a brown deli bag, and now Riker crossed the street with Duck Boy following close behind, and they climbed a short flight of stairs leading up to the front door of a narrow building.