Carol O’Connell: The Man Who Lied To Women

Kipling was still staring at the cap gun on the table.

‘You recognize it, Harry? It’s the same toy gun you used to teach the cat to dance. Now Nose only has to see a gun and he dances. Was it the noise of the caps? Did you fire that toy close to his head to make him dance?’

And now the cat began to snore.

Charles was closing the door to his apartment. So that was it? I’m in a hurry! Bring me a gun! How many weapons did she need all at once? She had a rather large gun and a sharp knife in her possession now. But who was he to question Mallory, he who kept company with a dead woman.

He was crossing the hall to the offices of Mallory and Butler, Ltd, wondering which of all the stupid things he had said had made her the most angry. He had accused her of lack of logic, and of underestimation of…

Oh, fool.

She had questioned him about a blind man. Not too quick to underestimate that suspect, was she? And now she was gathering more weapons. No lack of caution there. Where was his own logic?

Perhaps he had gotten everything wrong, genius that he was. What had possessed him to take Coffey’s side in this? At the time it had made some sense, but now? Maybe Coffey had only feared she was too fixed in her knowledge of the suspect. Riker had been right to caution him. He should have shown her more respect. He must not let her down now.

He unlocked the door to Mallory’s private office and strode quickly to her desk. The center drawer was locked.

Now that was a snag. He had no keys for drawers. Mallory must assume that everyone was as gifted as she in the art of breaking and entering. He picked up the letter opener he had given her. It was the only object in the room not manufactured in the current decade. In fact, it dated back to another century. He hesitated only for a moment, hefting the irreplaceable piece in his hand. Then he inserted it into the space above the drawer and used force to pry the metal open.

An ear-splitting squeal was the first warning, followed by a cascade of bells, giant bells, gongs in hellish amplification. This must be Mallory’s idea of accommodating his aversion to high technology. She had wired the office for an alarm, and in place of an annoying beep or siren, she had worked in his recordings of church bells. And now he was inside the bell tower, inside the bells themselves.

He put up his hands to cover his ears. He would altogether lose his ears if he stayed much longer. He could turn it off, but there was not time enough to hunt the wiring from the drawer before serious damage was done to him. And the speakers might be anywhere in the myriad of electronic equipment. There could be no direction to sound when one’s head was itself the clapper of a monster bell.

He opened the wooden case nested in the center drawer, and there was Markowitz’s old.38 Long Colt, gleaming with Mallory’s good housekeeping, which extended into the barrels of antique guns. He picked up the revolver and the ammunition box and ran for the door. The peal of the church bells from hell followed him down the stairs and into the street, where every window had a head sticking out of it.

He put out his hand to flag down a cab, silently begging forgiveness from the neighbors.

Kipling walked back to the front door and locked it. ‘I don’t think we want to be disturbed right now.’

What would Charles do when he met with a locked door? He had the size to kick it in, but he would not know how.

‘How did you get on to it?’ Harry Kipling lowered himself to a straight-back chair and motioned her to another.

She remained standing.

He leaned back in the chair, lifting its front feet off the rug and rocking on the two back legs, staring absently into space. His face was drawn, dramatic in the hollows below the high cheekbones where afternoon shadows followed the contours. He seemed tired, at the point of giving in or giving up. ‘What mistake did I make?’

‘You made a lot of them,’ said Mallory. They had been tap dancing for ten minutes now. Where was the gun? It could be hidden in his belt at the small of the back. He had not yet looked directly at the knife with the crest of Max Candle.

‘How much do you want?’ Kipling smiled. ‘This is a simple case of extortion, am I right?’

‘What’s it worth to you, Harry?’

‘What’s my marriage worth? Call my wife’s accountant. I don’t have all day for this. How much do you want to keep it quiet?’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘Desperation. If you want the sordid details, you’re not getting them. Just tell me how much money you want.’

‘I’ll get back to you.’

She would not allow her eyes to travel back to the knife, to give it away. But she knew she could have it in her hand in a heartbeat if she only had the advantage of position. The chair and the rocking Kipling blocked the way.

Moving in slow silence, she angled around Kipling, who was holding the cap gun in his hand, examining it as a curiosity. She could see him in profile now. There was no gun concealed in the small of his back. He was dressed in a polo shirt and close-fitting slacks. There was no place on his person to conceal a large weapon.

So where was her damn gun?

‘So I had a relationship with Amanda Bosch – now how much do you want? How much not to tell my wife?’

‘Well, there’s a bit more to it than just the relationship with Amanda.’

‘You’ve only got me on one woman. If you believed there were others, you would have said so before now. I’m not going to pay the moon for this. Now how much do you want?’

‘Did I mention that I knew Amanda? I know you lied to her, and she caught you on it.’

‘But there were so many lies.’ By the way he smiled, he seemed to take some pride in that.

‘I’m talking about the lie that made her abort her baby. Does that narrow it down for you?’

‘That particular lie isn’t worth any cash to me. I don’t think you did know her. I think you’re a crooked cop. The news said you were a cop, and the daughter of a cop. Was your father crooked too? Does it run in the family?’

‘Let’s say I learned a lot from my old man. If I never knew Amanda, how do I know what tipped her off to the lie, what made her snap?’

She had not been a world-class poker player for nothing. Helen always wanted her to have a fine education, and now the weekly poker games of childhood were paying off.

‘Amanda was sitting on a bench outside the building on the day before she died, the day before she called you on the big lie. She never went up to the door, she just watched. It was a busy day for the doorman. People were coming and going, tenants, kids, dogs. Then she saw – ’

‘Let’s not get too dramatic, shall we? She saw Peter and she knew he wasn’t adopted. You know, until then, I always thought it was a blessing that he looked like me and not Angel.’

Still holding the cap gun in the palm of his hand, Kipling stood up and crossed over to the bookcase. He leaned against the shelf where Max Candle’s knife was sitting. He was only inches from it.

‘So it is a shakedown. If you know her, you know she was only using me for genetic material. She didn’t ask me if I wanted to make another brat, did she?’

‘She didn’t know that she could make one. It was a miracle pregnancy according to her doctor. So then you lied to her.’

‘Yes. I told her the genetic stew was botched. What of it? I told her it would be a monster, that all my children would be monsters – things growing on their outsides that really should be on the insides, missing their little eyes and little hands, little things like that. So what? That’s not a crime. A cop wouldn’t have any interest in that. This is a shakedown. Now how much do you want to make this nasty little business go away?’