Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

He made note of her game point – a fast shot to a vital organ. His hand rested over his heart as he rallied with, „You think I believe you’re twisted? I never did.“

Was that entirely true? Well, no, but he had not intended to lie – not that time. Some of his counterpoints were pure acts of self-defense, words pulled quickly to fend her off. „I’ve known you since you were ten years old and – “

„Eleven.“

„Ten. You lied a year onto your age. Don’t deny it.“ Here he stopped to compliment himself on this maneuver, insisting upon honesty on the one hand, while the other hand was busy obfuscating the truth. „Helen Markowitz’s judgment carries more weight with me than yours.“

She was somewhat subdued by this. Invoking Helen’s name still had some stopping power, but it would not last long. He needed a hook of words to hold his ground with her. „I remember the night when Louis brought you home to Helen.“ As if he might have forgotten a child felon in manacles, a tiny hellmouth of obscenities. „Do you remember your room, the way it looked that first time Helen put you to bed?“

She nodded. „It used to be the guest room.“

„Yes, that’s what they called it. They bought that house ten years before you came to live with them. And for all those years, Helen changed the sheets in the guest room once a week without fail. But whenever there was a houseguest, she always made up a bed on the fold-out couch downstairs. A little odd, don’t you think?“

Yes, he could see that she thought so. „Ten years before you arrived, there was a baby’s crib in that room. Louis disposed of it before Helen came home from the hospital – without the child.“

Other than replacing the crib with a bed, over the ensuing decade, the bedroom had remained unchanged. The wallpaper stripes had never faded, but stayed true to the primary hues of a child’s coloring book. A soft woven rug invited the soles of small bare feet, and the bed quilt was a cheerful patchwork of folk-art animals. The entire room had the look of a crafty trap that Helen Markowitz had set to catch a loose child on the fly. For ten years, that gentle woman had never uttered one soft word about her dead baby, lost before it was even born.

For ten years, the room screamed.

„Helen had been waiting for you such a long time. You completed her life, Kathy. She thought you were perfect in every way – not at all twisted.“

And because of its blind spot, a giant gaping maw of a lacuna where heinous crimes were overlooked, motherlove was both imperfect and perfectly wonderful.

„Not by any word or act have I ever contradicted Helen – and you know that, Kathy.“

And thus he completed a neat escape by the artful framing of words, but at what personal cost? He knew what she was – though her foster mother had vehemently denied it. Helen Markowitz had torn up the child’s early psychiatric evaluation, putting great anger into the shredding of paper, strongly objecting to the word sociopath in connection to a little girl whose life had barely begun.

Rabbi Kaplan wanted to go on believing that Kathy Mallory did not know what she was. So long as she remained in ignorance of the truth, this ruthless, amoral child could exist in a state of innocent grace. Sometimes he believed that truth was not a shining thing, but a weapon of great destruction. At other times, he wondered if he had merely become a proficient deceiver, an uncommon liar.

In the moments of heavy silence between them, he scrutinized her face, looking there for signs of redemption – hers or his own? He could not say. Their wordplay was done, and he was bleeding only a little – as usual.

He ran his hand over the surface of the butcher block. „I didn’t thank you for this. It’s beautiful.“ He looked up, gratified to see the faint smile on her face. „Your meeting with Mr. Halpern is arranged for tomorrow. But it might be a waste of time. He wasn’t in Paris during the occupation.“

„I know those two have some history together.“ She picked up her tools and tossed them into her knapsack. „Last night, that old man was crying after he talked to Malakhai.“

She had what she came for, and now she was turning to leave.

Not so fast.

„Kathy, you will not interrogate Mr. Halpern.“ This was the tone of the teacher. He was not yet finished with the Promethean labor of Kathy Mallory’s moral instruction. „Mr. Halpern is a good storyteller. You will listen to him without interruption. He’ll tell you what he’s willing to talk about. Whatever causes him pain will be left out. When he’s done, you’ll leave with whatever he gave you – and no more.“

„I see you’ve been busy this morning.“ Charles put the useless key back in his pocket and trained the flashlight beam on a metal box bolted to the accordion walls. The chains were gone, and the partition had been closed to a thin crack of electric light from the other side. A number pad on the new lock required a code to open the door latch. „Were you planning to give me the combination?“

Mallory touched four buttons on the pad. A green light blinked at the top of the box, followed by a click of metal. „It’s a good lock. Malakhai won’t be able to open it.“

Charles spread the wood sections apart. They moved silently on recently oiled tracks, and the hinges no longer creaked. „But I don’t mind if Malakhai comes and goes when he likes. I think – “

„It’s charming, right.“ And now she added trespassers to the list of decrepit furniture and malfunctioning electrical wiring that he found so endearing.

Charles walked around the dragon screen, pulling the new crossbow strings from a paper bag. He stopped to stare at the area in front of the platform. „Mallory, have you been cleaning?“

The debris of last night’s drinking and magic was gone. Empty bottles and broken bowstrings had been thrown out with the trash, and she had swept the floor at the base of the platform. But even without dust tracks, she could see evidence of Malakhai’s return visit. While she was busy with Riker and the rabbi, Malakhai’s search had expanded to the boxes and trunks on the first row of shelves. So he had found no difficulty in getting past the new lock. And now she must rethink cliches about the generation that could not program VCRs.

Charles was hunched over the toolbox. „Have you been following the news today?“ He pulled out a can of machine oil. „The reporters are taking another look at Oliver’s death.“ Screwdriver in hand, he walked over to the crossbow he had mounted on the pedestal yesterday. „I didn’t know his nephew had a juvenile arrest record. What did he do? Shoplifting? Something like that?“

„I’ll ask Riker.“ Mallory smiled. Lieutenant Coffey would suspect her of the press leak, but he would never prove it. And the brass at Number One Police Plaza would stay on Coffey’s back until he found the nephew – no matter how much it strained the budget. She had doubled the manpower on a homicide case that did not officially exist.

„I saw the mayor’s press conference this afternoon.“ Charles pulled the crossbow pistol from its slot in the pedestal. „A reporter asked about the murder in the park, and the mayor was livid – pounding on the podium. He said Central Park is the safest precinct in New York City. Said it three times.“

„He always does that,“ said Mallory. „Every time we find a dead body in the park.“

Charles unscrewed the metal plate that covered the firing apparatus. „Then Central Park isn’t the safest precinct in Manhattan?“

„Well, yeah, it is. The crime stats are lower. But the park is the only uninhabited precinct.“