Carol O’Connell - The Man Who Lied To Women

All three heads turned in the same direction when they heard the crash of glass in the next room. Robert Riccalo looked at his son, who scrunched down in the chair. Sally Riccalo was rigid as a board, sitting ramrod straight at the edge of the couch cushion, eyes fixed in the direction of the noise, her long thin nose pointing to it like a compass for things that went bump in the night.

Robert Riccalo was first into the dining room. Pieces of blue glass lay on the marble tiles. Four of the longest shards were lined up in a row pointing toward the room he had just left. Now he turned quickly at the sound coming from his wife, who stood behind him. It was from deep inside of her, a squeak that escaped. Her eyes fixed on the bits of broken glass.

Justin was last to enter the room as the first shard of glass was inching along the floor toward Sally Riccalo. She stood there paralyzed, unmoving. Now she broke formation and pointed at Justin. ‘It’s him, he’s doing this to me. He’s trying to kill me! It’s him!’ Her finger pointed at the boy, and Robert Riccalo turned to his son, thunder brewing in his eyes.

Justin fled the dining room and ran down the hall to his own room. He turned the lock and strained to move furniture across the door.

‘Justin.’ his father bellowed. ‘Justin.’ The yelling was› coming closer. ‘Justin!’ Almost at the door now. The doorknob moved as the lock was tried. He listened to the large man turning on his heel, footsteps fading off to get the key. Then Robert Riccalo was back and fitting a key into the lock.

Justin backed up to the far wall as the door cracked against the dresser and that heavy piece of furniture was being moved slowly, relentlessly out of his father’s way.

It was the five-year-old who caught her attention when he yelled in anger, ‘I want to see the body!’ and now Mallory wanted to see it too. She walked toward the group of pedestrians clotting the sidewalk in front of the next building. The boy kicked the leg of a woman who held him by one arm. The woman was of a different color, and by her uniform, a different piece of the planet earth, one closer to the ground than the highrise strata where the child dwelled.

‘I will not go inside!’ said the child, balling his tiny fists.

Now she noticed the long black coat of outstanding tailoring, even by Mallory’s standards. It was draped on the man who was pushing at the body with the tip of his umbrella.

‘Is he dead?’ asked the woman next to him, drawing back. ‘Is that why he smells?’

‘No,’ said another woman. ‘They all smell like that.’

Mallory pushed through the small group to see the umbrella successfully rolling the stiff body of a man. The eyes were closed as if in sleep, and there was no trauma to the grimy face, no trace of insult at the prodding umbrella, for he was dead. The bottle by his side, the spill of vomit, and the ragged clothing told his story. He had crawled into the bushes late at night and frozen to death, too far gone with booze to seek better shelter. Or perhaps he had choked to death in the vomit. The third shift doorman, whose job in life was to drive off the poor, had probably been sleeping on duty or reading his paper when the man had taken refuge from last night’s snow beneath the slim cover of a bush.

The child was looking up at Mallory, having ferreted out some authority in her. ‘Is the doorman gonna call the road kill wagon, like he did for the dog?’

‘What dog?’

In the glee of a really great conspiracy, the boy said, ‘I saw a dog murdered. It happened right there.’ He was pointing to the curb. ‘I was upstairs – ’

‘How far upstairs?’

The nanny stepped forward. ‘He lives on the tenth floor. He keeps going on about the dog, but I don’t know if he could have seen – ’

‘I did too see it! And I wasn’t on the tenth floor. She just says that so my parents won’t find out I was unsupervised,’ said the child, giving care to this last word, which was obviously a newly acquired tool to blackmail the nanny. That would explain why the nanny wouldn’t fight back. The kid had something on her.

‘I was standing in the hall on the third floor,’ he said. ‘I looked down, and the man was murdering the dog.’

‘How?’

‘He strangled it. The dog pulled on the leash, and I guess he didn’t like that. He lifted the dog up by the choke chain. He lifted it right off the ground, and the dog was kicking and kicking. And then it stopped moving. It was dead. He kicked the body into the street. I wanted to go see the body, but the doorman wouldn’t let me. He said he was waiting for the road kill truck.’

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t know.’

Mallory looked to the nanny now. ‘When did it happen?’

The nanny shrugged. ‘It never happened. He makes these things up.’

‘I don’t, I don’t!’ said the boy, with another well-placed kick to the woman’s leg.

‘Maybe I should talk to the doorman or his parents,’ said Mallory.

‘It was on the nineteenth,’ said the nanny, with instant recall. ‘The day it rained.’

But neither doorman nor boy had been able to describe the dog. And Mallory knew the world would be a better place without the clutter of eyewitnesses.

The door was open. Mallory shifted the bag of groceries to one hip and pulled out her gun. With the gun concealed by the bag, she pressed through the door and into the apartment.

The concierge was standing in the front room when she came through the foyer. Now all of the room was exposed and she could see Angel Kipling opening the closet door.

‘Looking for something?’

The concierge spun around.

‘Oh, Miss Mallory, pardon the intrusion, but Mrs Kipling was sure she heard a scream coming from this apartment.’

‘It must have been the cat,’ said Angel. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Had to be. You always keep him locked up in there?’

‘It’s a big bathroom. I don’t want him shedding on the Rosens’ furniture.’

When the concierge had excused himself and closed the door behind him, the woman turned on Mallory.

‘We got your message.’

‘What message?’

‘Don’t be cute. I saw the setup in there.’ Kipling nodded to the door of the den, which was wide open. ‘Most of us only have the one computer. All the harassment comes over the computer. It explains a lot. So what do you want? How much?’

‘To keep quiet?’ Too good to be true. Pity the cameras weren’t rolling, but whatever Angel gave her couldn’t be used against the husband. ‘I’d rather deal with your husband.’

‘You’re dealing with him. I’m the husband in this relationship.’

Advancing on Mallory, Angel Kipling opened her mouth to say more, but then she either lost her words or thought better of them. The woman backed up in the way of the cat when Mallory’s glare said, Enough. Kipling stiff-walked to the door and slammed it behind her.

Mallory walked into the kitchen and set down the grocery bag. She laid the gun alongside it on the counter and put the perishables in the refrigerator. The phone rang. She let it. She put the butter away, and closed the door on the second ring. She walked into the front room in her own time with no hurried motions. The cat was pawing at the glass on the aquarium, maddened by the swim of fish, unable to get at them.

‘I know just how you feel,’ said Mallory. On the fourth ring, she picked up the receiver. ‘Mallory.’

‘It’s me, Justin. It wasn’t me that made the pencil fly.’

‘What?’

‘It wasn’t me. Will you help me?’

‘You know the conditions. When you’re ready to tell me the truth, I’ll help you.’

She heard the child’s sudden intake of breath, and then the connection was broken abruptly.