Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

By now Charles’s body would be spread across the face of the target, his ankles bound by leg irons and his wrists in NYPD manacles. The lazy tongs were lowering through the trapdoor beyond her reach. The ticking was louder. No – that was a trick of her mind; panic was magnifying the noise.

She heard the audience’s collective gasp. The first arrow had flown, and Charles was yelling, „Wait! Something’s gone wrong!“ Max Candle’s famous lines.

Or had Charles just discovered that his cuff key didn’t work? The front rows were filled with magicians and Charles’s poker cronies. They all knew the trademark words; not one of them would help him. And the two police officers would prevent any good Samaritans from climbing onto the stage.

The audience gasped again. Had he avoided the second arrow to the leg? He was still screaming for someone to help him. She had twenty seconds to get to the crossbow.

How did Malakhai get out? His exit had to be at the ground level, yet he had not used the side door. She climbed down the ladder and stood before the rear wall, pressing on the slats around the center panel. Charles was screaming. Another arrow had flown, and she started as though it had hit her.

Easy, now. Don’t panic, don’t – And now her fingers found the pressure lock, a give in the wooden slat. The door opened to the bright lights of the stage. She was out and running, looking up as she flew around the platform. Charles’s eyes were wide with fear, but in his face, tragedy passed for comedy. He was still bound by leg irons and both hands were cuffed to the iron post rings. Only one pedestal was ticking now. His right hand balled into a fist and lunged forward, ripping the loop from the post, where she had weakened it. His hand came away with a splintered section of wood.

Mallory’s eyes fixed on the crossbow that was going to kill him. She flew toward it, almost there. Charles was almost dead. Her hands closed on the crossbow – too late. The string released before she could unseat it from the pedestal.

Charles screamed in pain.

She turned to see the arrow buried in his chest as he rolled away from the target and stopped struggling. He was not holding an arrow in place this time. He sank down, dangling by one manacle, eyes closed.

And Mallory’s whole world took on the dreamer’s quality of walking underwater. Sound was dulled, and her movements were slow. She was unaware that she still held the pistol grip of the crossbow. The uniforms were racing up the stairs. Dr. Slope had left his wife and child in the front row and he was climbing over the edge of the stage. Now he was also running past her on the staircase. All the rest of the world was moving faster. Her legs were so heavy. Each step was a great effort. Her hands were frozen, wrapped tight around the grip of the crossbow pistol.

It was another replay of Oliver’s final act – different actors. The policemen lowered Charles to the floor of the platform stage, handling him gently, as if he were not beyond pain. Edward Slope knelt beside the body, pressing one hand to Charles’s throat, desperate to find a pulse that wasn’t there.

Mallory reached the top step and looked down on the corpse. No magic here. This was the very real death of Charles Butler.

Dr. Slope stood up and turned to the audience. In a loud voice, he announced, „Well, that’s showbiz.“

What?

The audience was clapping and cheering as Charles stood up to take his bow. He pulled the arrow out of his chest. The shirt was torn where he had ripped a button free, and she could see a flash of the chain-mail vest and the tube that had held the arrow.

Her hand unconsciously opened and dropped the crossbow to the floor.

Edward Slope leaned close to her ear. „I’ve been rehearsing that line all day.“

Mallory slapped the doctor’s face so hard, she left the red imprint of her hand on his flesh.

Everyone laughed but Edward Slope. He was shaking his head, eyes saying, Sorry, so sorry. „Mallory, I thought you knew. I thought you were part of the act.“

The splintered piece of the broken post was dangling from the manacle on Charles’s wrist. And now she saw the peg in the wood. She looked up at the post to find the peg’s receiving hole in the damaged section. So Malakhai was right; Oliver had made his own replica too well, missing this one feature.

A damn breakaway post.

It left just enough maneuvering room to avoid the final shot. So Charles had pulled the arrow from the target and fitted it into the tube in his chest.

„That’s it?“ She was outraged. The audience was ecstatic. Her voice was still being amplified by Charles’s microphone, and her angry face was magnified by the video screen on the wall. „That’s all?“

Charles turned to her with his loony smile. And now the laughter masked his words for everyone but Mallory. „Well, you couldn’t figure it out.“ He raised his hand to dangle the wood in front of her. „Malakhai was putting you on. The handcuffs were never supposed to open. That was Oliver’s mistake.“

She heard Robin Duffy’s voice calling out to her from the first row, where he stood with the rabbi and Mrs. Kaplan. She turned to look down at Robin’s adoring face as he said, „Kathy, you were wonderful.“

Mallory turned on the uniformed officers standing at the side of the small stage. She yelled, „Give me agunl“

The audience roared, and so did the men in uniform. She tried to take a gun from Harris’s holster. He laughed and held it high in the air. She turned to Patrolman Briant. In the spirit of a playground game of keep-away, he also held his gun out of her reach.

This was humiliation on a scale she had never known before, yet she resisted the urge to kick Officer Briant’s testicles across the room; not a good idea in front of three thousand witnesses, almost as serious as shooting a sick rat.

Mallory bent down to the floor to pick up the crossbow pistol. This sent the audience into helpless shakes and quakes of laughter. And their screams of hilarity increased with every arrow she pulled from the target.

Well, Malakhai had not lied to her. The crossbows had all fired arrows, and Charles had not escaped from the handcuffs.

Mallory gave the driver the address for Nick Prado’s performance in the theater district. The cabby was nodding, driving slowly and not paying any attention to the street. He was fixated on the rearview mirror, eyes wide open and showing entirely too much of the whites as he watched her loading arrows into the crossbow magazine.

Perhaps the cabby was lamenting the fact that his car had no bulletproof glass between him and his passenger, a fool’s economy measure in New York City. And oddly enough, by this lack of protection, Mallory pegged him as the cautious type, only picking up the safe passengers – nuns, Girl Scouts and upscale theater patrons. Who knew a crossbow would turn up on a fare from Carnegie Hall?

Her next theory was that the driver might be carrying a pistol. People who owned guns traveled in a false bubble of security, always believing the weapon would be at hand when trouble happened. It never was. Lots of dead cabbies had carried guns.

The last arrow fell into the crossbow magazine. Mallory leaned forward. „Give me your cell phone!“

The driver plucked the phone off the dashboard and threw it back over his shoulder, not wanting any contact with her. Mallory dialed Riker’s number and counted two rings.

Riker, answer me.

Why had Malakhai waited so long? There had been other chances to kill Nick Prado.

She looked at her watch. It was nearly time for the hangman finale. Prado would be stoned on sedatives to get him through an act on a high narrow stage. He would make an easy, slow-moving target.