Carol O’Connell - Killing Critics

“No, not really,” said Charles. “Just a nodding acquaintance. These were people I ran into at weddings and funerals. I’m usually excused from christenings and graduations. I did see Aubry at the gallery shows. Sabra rarely attended her own openings, but Aubry and her father never missed one.”

Mallory was flipping through a notebook, checking off items. Now she hovered over Charles and dropped a card on the desk in front of him. “I made a hair appointment for you.”

“Pardon?”

“You need a haircut. My stylist will take you this afternoon. That’s your appointment card.”

“But this salon-”

“I know. They only do women. But I leave large tips. They’ll do you. So we have a date, Charles?”

“For the ball? Oh, yes.”

Oh, God, yes and absolutely.

Since his teenage years, it had been his fantasy to walk into a grand ballroom with a beautiful woman on his arm. In earlier fantasies of childhood, he had seen himself in the bedtime story of Pinocchio, the long-nosed puppet who ached to become a real boy. Now, in his fortieth year, as he looked across the room at young Mallory, he realized he had grown up into Cyrano, another poor hapless longnose who fell in love and found it to be a bleak place where he lived by himself.

And what of Mallory’s perceptions of this strange onesided romance? He wondered if she didn’t see him as a large and friendly, slightly shaggy dog in a three-piece suit.

As if in answer to his innermost thoughts and fears, she patted him on the head and told him to get out of her chair.

He had only closed his eyes for a moment, and then he had fallen into a deep sleep. In the next moment, his head exploded.

“ANDREW!” screamed the voice from hell.

Emma Sue?

Oh, no. She had her own bullhorn. If there really was a God in New York City, how did He coexist with Emma Sue Hollaran? The woman’s normal speaking voice had the unholy pitch of a cat set on fire. Now she was electrified, insanely amplified. And for the first time in years, he was not fortified to withstand it. This time, he was sober and all soft underbelly.

Brain asloshing, moving slowly, minding the pain, he crept to the short wall at the edge of the roof.

“GOOD MORNING, ANDREW!”

His body jerked back, the involuntary motion of a man whose head has been struck by a grenade. He ventured a second glance over the side. Another woman was taking the bullhorn away from Emma Sue.

Oh, thank you, thank you, whoever you are.

She must be from the haute couture police, for Emma Sue was dressed in the most awful rag. It had to be some wardrobe relic from the days when she was allowed to dress herself without his advice. Well, if this alone did not demonstrate his indispensability. The dress was a bright pink billboard plastered on her meaty frame, advertising choice cuts of bovine flesh, thick flanks and overhanging rump. And what was she doing here? He had only wanted her to handle a simple press release.

He picked up his bullhorn and aimed at her like a gun. Oh, would that it were a gun. “Emma Sue, go inside and have someone dress you. Now, before someone sees you.”

She was going inside. And he knew it would be a while before she dared come back. Wasn’t he brilliant? Oh, she must be seething. How secure was the roof door?

“Mr. Bliss,” said the more civil woman now in possession of the bullhorn. “I’m Harriet Marcan. Women’s Wear !”

“Call me Andrew. What may I do for you?”

“I’d like to interview you, Andrew. May I come up?”

“Not possible, I’m afraid. The stairs are torn away from one door and the other is barricaded. You simply can’t get here from there.” Annie had joined the reporter on the sidewalk. “But of course,” he continued, “I have no objection to the interview.”

“It’s a bit awkward, isn’t it?” With one hand, Ms. Marcan tossed off the flyaway gesture of You’re kidding, right ?

“I can fix that,” said Andrew. “Annie, have an armchair and a table brought down from Furniture on the fifth floor. And arrange a champagne brunch for our Ms. Marcan.”

Across champagne glasses and through dueling bullhorns, Andrew explained his modus operandi to the reporter from Women’s Wear . Fashion terrorism was the only way. She could see that, couldn’t she? For terrorism was horribly effective, wasn’t it? And who could fail to notice, in a daily perusal of the Times , that it worked best when there was a base of genuine and justifiable outrage. The world might not approve the methodology, but they did sit up and pay attention. And they became, against their collective will, aware of wrongs done.

So now there was a homeland for the beautiful people. Nothing fancy, just the one square block of Bloomingdale’s. And tomorrow? The entire island of Manhattan.

“Sorry, I’m digressing. Terrorism will out. You’ll see.”

J. L. Quinn followed her through the door with a few minutes’ distance between them. When he entered the Koozeman Gallery, it took him another minute to locate Detective Mallory among the bustle of art handlers, a tour group and the television crew.

Mallory stood by the entrance of the main gallery, removing the yellow strips of tape which had marked the crime scene. The television crew poured into this room as the last tape was stripped away, and she stood aside.

Oren Watt, confessed murderer in a dark suit, was leading the parade of cameras, women with clipboards and men with sound equipment and lights. The flesh of Watt’s head shone through the stubble of close-cropped brown hair. His dark glasses only concealed small, ordinary eyes, and could not begin to disguise him. His most prominent feature was an overlarge mouth, which made a long, thin-lipped line across the lower face, as if someone had drawn it there, and drawn it badly. The small ears were another odd feature, only half finished in their details. Perhaps his mother had pushed him out of the womb before her work was quite done. Watt’s child-size pug nose fit well with this theory.

When the trample of feet had come to rest in this room, Oren Watt was approving the placement of his artwork. The rather bad drawing of a dismembered foot was held to the wall at different levels and locations by a young woman in the art handler’s uniform of black jersey and jeans. The confessed murderer shook his head and waved the drawing farther along the wall and higher. The art handler was quick to follow his instructions, for this was the Monster of Manhattan, wasn’t it? The gallery worker was so young-Oren Watt had probably been the bogeyman of her childhood nightmares.

Mallory was the only one in the room who seemed bored by Watt. Quinn watched her as she turned her back on the Monster of Manhattan, and walked along the opposite wall, where the drawings were lined up awaiting the hanging process. Her face gave Quinn no clue to her thoughts as she scanned the artwork. Perhaps she was wondering which of the body parts belonged to his niece, the dancer, and which to Peter Ariel, the young artist who had died with Aubry. The sketches were all so badly drawn, there was no gender differentiation.

The sidewalk tour gathered at the entrance to the room. Two of the party snapped photographs. None of them needed their tour guide to tell them this was Oren Watt. One man nudged another to whisper that Watt was even uglier than his television image. The entire tour group stared at the strange-looking man as though he were a zoo specimen, and by Quinn’s lights, this was close to the truth.

Quinn kept track of Mallory as she wandered out of the main gallery and into a smaller room where the real art was hung. He followed her, wondering what he might say to make this meeting seem accidental.