Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

Ghost calls.

Did she know how much they affected his sleep, his dreams? He suspected that she only called to hear the sound of his voice, a response to her silent inquiry about his health – What? Not dead yet? Click.

Actually, she always slammed down the receiver – still angry after all this time.

Now he took pills to make him sleep, and yet he always woke up tired. So there were more pills to get him through the days.

This morning he had found an envelope on the table by his bed. It contained receipts for his own funeral expenses. Mallory had selected a pauper’s plot, an apt metaphor for a man with no more friends. He had recognized her perfume in the air. Fortunately, he had not opened his eyes to catch her there.

He had not quite recovered from her last covert visit to his bedroom. That night, he had awakened to find her sitting close to his prone body, her green eyes glittering, so intense. All the fanged and clawed predators stared at their living, writhing meals in that same manner. A moment later, the lights had gone out, and Mallory had vanished. And that time, she had not charged her plane tickets to his credit card.

Had she really been there? Had he imagined her perfume this morning?

Perhaps his houseboy had taken the envelope from the hand of a common messenger, then left it on the bedside table while his employer lay sleeping.

Nick would never ask.

He looked at his watch. By now Malakhai must be lying deep in the earth of France, asleep beneath the City of Light. Goodnight, old friend. My regards to Louisa.

The reporters would not come until just before dawn. He stared at his own image floating in the night-dark glass, and over one reflected shoulder, he searched the room behind his back.

On one of her visits to Chicago, Mallory had suddenly appeared behind him in the mirror of a shopwindow, where he had paused awhile to admire himself. She had not spoken to him that day. He had stared at her reflection in stunned silence, only watching her hands curl into talons, rising slowly, as if she meant to rake his back – or push him through the glass. He had closed his eyes for a quiet moment of terror – and then she was gone. He had not turned his head to watch her disappear into the crowded Chicago street. His eyes had been fixed on the shop mirror, looking at himself with new clarity of vision and cruel daylight – seeing lines in his flesh never noticed before, veins in the whites of his eyes and broken capillaries beneath the paper-thin skin. The boy from Faustine’s wasn’t there anymore. Nor could he find his handsome young self anywhere in this sky-high mansion of many mirrors.

He had continued to look for Mallory in every crowd. Such a pretty face, but so cold and crazy.

Now he turned back to his first love, his own reflection in the penthouse window glass.

When beauty dies – what then?

Hours passed as he watched the sky lighten. Then the telephone rang on the table beside him – and that would be Mallory. Apparently, she had taken no time for sightseeing in Paris. He picked up the receiver and listened to the expected silence at the other end of the line.

Still checking for a pulse, my dear?

He only heard the background sounds of traffic on a busy street. Was she calling from a cell phone or a pay phone? Finally he spoke into the void, „No, Mallory, I’m not dead yet.“

He heard the receiver crash down on its cradle at the other end of the wire and recognized her phone-slamming style.

Nick ran to the front door and checked each one of the five locks – just on the off chance that she had come back for another visit. Three of the locks were new and guaranteed pick-proof, but he suspected that she had already gotten past two of them on previous occasions. He also toyed with the idea that she tapped his phones, though none of the security experts had found any trace of electronic bugs. But they had also failed to catch her phone calls.

Nick sauntered back to the front room, opened the terrace door and stepped outside. It was a rare calm night for a town called the Windy City. He walked toward the retaining wall and looked over the edge. Even through a fog of drugs and booze, he could still feel the vertigo, the sensation of falling while standing still, the irresistible pull of the earth so far below.

It had taken him a month only to approach this ledge. And now that he had hit on exactly the right dosage of sedatives and bourbon, he was free to look down at the insect life on the pavement, tiny people straggling along the sidewalk in the predawn hours, leaving night-shift jobs or rolling out of after-hours bars. From this distance, he could not distinguish between hookers and newsboys.

He turned to look over his shoulder.

She wasn’t there.

Mallory had been right – her job was the hardest one. And he had given her credit for that. The memoirs of the great Nick Prado lay on his coffee table. Within those pages, Mallory was mentioned as a corroborating footnote for three perfect murders. He had gone on at length about his greatness – so the world would fully appreciate how hard the young detective’s job had been – and why she had failed.

The manuscript was neatly packaged in an envelope addressed to a prominent literary agent. His cover letter detailed the reasons for his upcoming publicity stunt – to kick off the book auction of the century. He had included a press package. The glossy black-and-white photographs had all been taken when he was young and beautiful. He had spent hours selecting the best of them and burning every lesser image in his fireplace. All his imperfections were gone now. In his favorite portrait, he was only nineteen years old, and this one lay on top of the envelope so the reporters would have a picture to run with his obituary.

He looked down at the street again. Almost dawn. He had selected this hour in deference to the cameras. The sky would be light enough for a backdrop, but not too bright.

Timing is everything.

All the daily papers and local TV stations had been alerted in time for the morning news. The first reporter and cameraman had arrived on the street far below. Nick put on his glasses, the better to see one of the tiny ants emerge from a toy van with his video equipment. The headlights of another van were pulling up to the curb. And more of them were coming to the party in private cars. When he had counted one crew for each news channel, and a smattering of more ants to represent radio and the print media, he removed his eyeglasses.

He was never photographed with bifocals.

So they had all turned out, and right on time. Nick had not disappointed them once in all his years as the king of hype. He had promised them a stunt to rival the great Max Candle.

The terrace ledge was broad enough for a larger, wider man to walk with ease around the entire building, but from the street it would appear more dangerous. Back east in New York, Mallory would see him on television, for this act would certainly go national, maybe international with live coverage by satellite. Television executives would salivate over him. His show would crank up the figures for advertising sales beyond their wet dreams of profit. Throughout the hours of his ordeal, broadcast journalists would speculate on the reasons for his protracted stroll in the clouds, and not if he would jump, but when. They would probably put the cause to outstanding warrants for his arrest and his prospects of dying in prison.

Thank you, Mallory.

As he formed this thought, he turned around to look over his shoulder again. Satisfied that he was alone and none of his locks were undone, Nick climbed onto the ledge, still holding on to the belief that this was his own idea.