Carol O’Connell - Killing Critics

“Not what you’re thinking, Blakely. It wasn’t a payoff. And why doesn’t it surprise me that you don’t know the details? What do you know about what’s going on with your own department?”

“I know he backed off the-”

“Markowitz didn’t care how you bought your job. He didn’t have any hard evidence, but I didn’t know that then. He ran a bluff on me, and it worked. But it was never about money. He only wanted that freak who was killing all the winos, and you wouldn’t give him the manpower to do the job. So he and I, we did a trade. I put a small army on the street for three days and three nights. One of my boys delivered the freak to Special Crimes, and without a scratch on him. A nice clean job, and the deal was done.”

“He might not have had any evidence then, but the kid has something now.”

“So? She won’t use it. Her old man made a deal, and his kid will honor it.”

“Mallory doesn’t have a sense of honor. She’s a loose cannon. I know her.”

“ She’s a loose cannon? I think you’re confused, Blakely. Look at you. You’re sweating like a pig. You’re a man on the edge of a heart attack. You come to me to put out your fires? You have no control over your own people, and you know why? They don’t fear you.”

“It’s more than the bodega connection. She’s going back into the Oren Watt case.”

“What’s that to me?”

“Senator Berman collected the ghoul art. He’s one of the-”

“The senator? That clown is going down in the next election. You might owe him something, I don’t. I’m cutting my losses on him.” He began to cough again. “I’m thinking of getting out of politics. It’s not like the old days. If you want to buy a politician, you have to outbid all those special interest groups. There’s so many of them. They grow like cancer. This town is going down-hill, you know that? It’s one big flea market of souls for sale.”

The old Mafia don turned his head sharply, to stare out the window, and what he saw made him angry. Then the anger resolved itself into a sigh of resignation. “Blakely, do you ever think about retirement? No? Perhaps you should. You see that?” He pointed one palsied finger at the window.

Across the street a young Hispanic, walking at a leisurely pace, led an entourage of men all decked out in fur coats, though the day was mild. The sun glinted off the gold jewelry at the young men’s throats and the diamonds at their ears.

“Crazy bastards,” said the old man in disgust. “They shouldn’t be here, not today. But they’ve got no sense of fear, you know? That’s what makes them dangerous. Now watch our people, see what they do.”

Two well-dressed young men in dark suits stood at attention, faces swiveling slowly, tracking the walking men. Now they were in motion, moving in concert toward the troop of furs and jewels. The furs smiled at the suits, flashing every tooth of white mixed with crowns of gold.

The old man turned back to Blakely. “If I don’t call the boys off, the razors and the guns come out. I don’t like a bloodbath in my neighborhood. The one up front, the Dominican punk, knows that. He’s counting on it. He’s just playin‘ with us, you see? But he doesn’t know I’m dying. So-not today-but one day soon, I won’t call my boys back.”

Rolling down the window, he barked a short burst of commands to the men in suits and gave the fur men the finger as he closed the window again. The men in suits retreated to stand at attention beside their respective limousines. The smiling parade of fur coats and insulting hand gestures passed by, unmolested.

“The Dominican is your future, Blakely. He’s dangerous because he’s crazy and stupid and hot. If he thinks you’re crossing him, the razor comes out and your nose is gone. Or maybe he’ll take an ear, and then he’ll make you kiss his shoe. And you will do that. After I’m dead, you will sleep in a bath of sweat every night that’s left to you. If you can’t handle a little girl, what chance do you have against the Dominican?”

“I can get a handle on this case.”

“No, you can’t. Let Senator Berman go down. It’s going to happen anyway, and I want him to go down for something that isn’t tied to me. In fact, I like this a lot. He’ll be turned out of the Senate, but he won’t do jail time, so he won’t be looking to make any deals with the feds. And don’t interfere with Jack Coffey. You’re too clumsy, too obvious. It’ll come back on me, so I’m telling you to let him alone. Mallory did a deal with you, and it’s in my best interests that you honor it.”

“Coffey disobeyed a direct order. The son of a bitch gave me attitude, and then he worked around me.”

“So? Markowitz’s kid did a lot worse. She made you eat shit. But maybe she’ll save you from the punk in the fur coat. Maybe you’ll become her dog instead. Damn Markowitz had all the luck. Mallory should have been my kid.”

“I can’t let her get away with this.”

“Well, you’re right about that. Never let your people muscle you. But you’ve got enough dirty cops to do any job you want. You only ask me to handle it so it won’t come back on you. Well, if you wanted to go behind my back, I suppose you could get one of these Young Turks to do it.” He gestured to the man who stood outside the car. “These boys have no respect for the old ways. They’re punks, no style, no honor, not one good brain in the pack. Yeah, one of them might do the job for you, maybe figuring I’d never find out. They’d be wrong about that. I don’t miss much. If one of them tried to touch Markowitz’s kid, it’d blow up in your face and mine. I’d have to get you for that.”

“I need your-”

“If you can’t control Mallory, then maybe I bought the wrong man for the job. I’ll give you my advice, and then you and I will have no more conversation on this business. We will never speak of it again. Is that understood?”

Blakely nodded and the old man continued. “Fear works. Remember, you can’t touch her. All you can do now is teach her to fear you. But to pull that off, you’ll have to become a better man than she is.”

Long after Heller had gone, she sat in the center of the floor with crime-scene photographs and diagrams spread on the dust. Now she cleansed the room in her mind’s eye. She painted the walls white and waxed the floors to a high shine. After looking around at her imaginary handiwork, she began the slow work of willing the room into a bloodbath, just as it was on the killing night.

She looked down at the diagram of the crime scene, which exactly placed the spot where axe slices had been found in the floor. This is where the artist had been cut to pieces half an hour after he was dead.

She took out a gold pocket watch and opened it. She depressed the stem to check the stopwatch function. In the facing circle of gold was the inscription of her own name, just Mallory, which followed the generations of names back to Markowitz’s grandfather.

She imagined Peter Ariel lying on the floor and set the watch to Slope’s estimate for his time of death. Another half hour must pass before the first postmortem cut.

What was going on? What was the killer doing, saying?-conversation? Was there more than one person in the room?

Mallory stood up and began to pace back and forth between her mental re-creations of the artist’s body and the sculpture of iron rods and a rusted, crushed car. She went to the back room where the hanging wire was kept and brought the imaginary spools back to the gallery.

She looked down at the watch and allowed a few minutes more for the time the killer might have taken to remove his clothes and pile them away from the mess of the makeshift abattoir. Only minutes had passed. What was the killer doing with the time?