"The Man Who Lied To Women" - читать интересную книгу автора (O’Connell Carol)

CHAPTER 3

Riker made his way up the stairs of the animal hospital and into a wide waiting room the size of an auditorium. A pet shop smell mingled with odors of cleaning solvents, and a cacophony of barks and chirps emanated from every row of seats. Pet owners crooned to their jiggling, meowing, howling carrier boxes. Others clutched leashes, holding back dogs who would rather be elsewhere. The human noises were choruses of ‘poor baby’ and all its variations. These people, perhaps a hundred of them, were serious animal lovers.

So what was Mallory doing here?

Despite the crowding to standing room only, Mallory had half a row to herself. The cat sat on her lap and tried to lick her face. She stared down at the animal. With perfect understanding and the desire to go on living, the cat ceased its attempted licking and curled up on the legs of Mallory’s jeans. One ragged ear was drooping, the point of it all but severed.

The bird people cast their eyes nervously over the cat and hugged their carrier cages. The dog people were holding their leashes with a death grip, more than a little put out that Mallory had not disguised the cat as a box. Rules of etiquette were clearly being violated here, and they were not rules that Helen Markowitz could have imparted to Mallory, for theirs had been a house without pets.

Riker watched her for a minute more. She was detached from the cat, but the cat was very attached to her. He could hear the purring four rows away. Now Mallory’s head turned slowly until she was facing him, staring into his eyes.

A world-class spook that kid was. And he blamed Markowitz for that. There had been a limit to the kind of games one could play with a child who was not a child. The games Markowitz devised for her had developed ricochet vision. And he believed she could feel the rise in temperature when one more live body walked into a room.

She nodded to him. He moved past a dog and a parrot, another dog, a lizard and ten empty seats to sit down beside her.

He looked at the cat, who only looked to Mallory. ‘So you think the department’s gonna pay for the vet’s bill?’

‘Damn right. The cat’s a witness.’

‘Hey, this is Riker you’re talkin’ to.‘

‘The cat knows the perp, and the perp knows the cat.’

‘I think you’re pressing your luck, kid.’

Her eyes said, Don’t call me kid.

‘Coffey’s not too thrilled about the condo switch. Might have been good politics if you’d run the idea past him first.’

‘It’s none of his business where I live.’

‘Well, he had an interesting point. Amanda Bosch was your age, your style. Maybe she was a little shorter, but you’re definitely the perp’s type.’

‘I know that.’

Mallory’s face moved in tandem with the cat’s face. Two pairs of slanting eyes stared at him.

It was too early for a drink.

‘What name are you using?’

‘My own name.’

‘Risky, isn’t it? I only say that because your pretty face has been all over the television as a dead woman and a cop. Odds are he’s seen you. If he hasn’t, somebody’s gonna mention it to him.’

‘Good. Just wait till he sees the cat.’

‘You don’t know who he is. You’ll never see him coming.’

‘I’m not dealing with Professor Moriarty here. He’s a man who knows as much about computers as a secretary, maybe less. He’s a liar who got caught out. And he’s the panicky type.’

She leaned down to the canvas bag at the foot of her chair and extracted a manila file holder. ‘This is the list of tenants and their stats.’

He took the file and opened it, letting out a low whistle as he scanned the names of credit card companies, insurance companies and financial institutions. Well, this would explain the redness in her eyes; she’d been up all night breaking into computer banks. And then she’d probably been wading through that mess of paperwork pulled off Amanda Bosch’s computer – maybe five or six hundred pages she had neglected to mention in the apartment inventory.

How did she get the US Army info? It sometimes took him a week or more to pull personnel files.

‘What’s with the military service records?’

‘Physical stats – height and blood groups.’

‘Mallory, we didn’t find anything to type his blood group.’

‘He doesn’t know that. He drove himself nuts cleaning that place. The things he cleaned. He doesn’t sleep nights wondering what we might have found.’

He was looking at a list of units with more than forty-five names crossed off.

‘What are the cross offs?’

‘Most of them won’t meet the height requirement. And I crossed off all the single men and women. And the married man who made a fortune in software – he’d know you can delete a file, but you can’t erase it. He’d know the files could be restored. Cross off the apartments owned by corporations with three-day turnover – my perp was New York based. Then the vacant apartments are crossed off. What I’ve got left loosely fits the profile.’

‘What about this writer, Eric Franz? He’s single, isn’t he?’ He held up her fax of the vehicular accident stats dated to late November. ‘His wife died more than a month ago.’

‘The affair with Bosch started before that. A year or so – isn’t that what Mrs Farrow told you? And Bosch was more than three months gone with the baby before she aborted.’

A hungry looking sheepdog had made three rows of progress towards Mallory and the cat. His owner, an elderly woman, regained the leash and dug her heels into the linoleum to bring the dog to a choking halt.

‘Got any favorites?’

‘Yeah. I put stars by their names. Four of them don’t keep regular hours. That would leave them free for afternoons with Amanda.’

The sheepdog was gaining ground again, slowly dragging his owner behind him. Riker and Mallory exchanged glances.

‘If you shoot the dog, kid, you better kill the owner, too. If you let the old lady live, she’ll sue the city. Commissioner Beale won’t like that.’

Apparently, the cat had never seen a dog before. Nose was sitting docile on Mallory’s lap, only mildly curious about the large frenzied animal which was coming to eat him.

Riker resumed his reading. Mallory had a question mark by the name of Harry Kipling. A penciled note read: Connection to Kipling Electronics?

That name might give Coffey a few bad moments. High profile suspects were the worst. With any luck, Kipling would prove to be a computer freak, and thus beyond the pale. ‘How did you get a blood type on Kipling? There’s no Army record.’

She looked at him for only a moment, and he understood that this was not something he would want to know. And now it began to dawn on him that local hospital records must be a piece of cake after cracking the US Army computers.

‘Oh shit,’ said Riker. He was staring at two more high profile names on the list. One was a recent appointment to the US Supreme Court, and his Senate hearing was in progress. Another name was that of a prominent TV reporter who now had his own talk show every afternoon. These were two of the four bearing stars in the column.

When he looked up again, the crazed sheepdog had left the floor and was hurtling toward the cat. One of Mallory’s long legs was already curling back to kick the beast into the next world.

The door to Charles’s private office was closed on the low voices of moderate conversation. Mallory set the large canvas bag down on the desk in the front room. The cat stepped out of the bag and rubbed up against her arm as she opened the drawer to check the answering machine for messages.

Charles objected to the sight of modern conveniences among the antiques of another century, and so, she worked around him by hiding them out of sight. He was still unaware of the security system she had installed – she was that good at wiring.

She pushed the cat away and pressed the button to hear Coffey’s voice saying, ‘I want to talk to you the minute you get in. The minute! You got that, Mallory?’

Yeah, right.

A woman’s scream pierced the door to Charles’s private office. The cat flew off the desk.

She was through the door and into the next room with her gun drawn as a man’s voice was saying, ‘Justin, don’t!’

The only woman in the room was taking the quick breaths of hyperventilation. Her eyes bulged and her shoulder blades were nearly even with her ears. Her face was pale and she was shaking violently, all but her hands, which gripped the arms of the chair in the manner of a rocket pilot preparing for a maiden launch.

The man had turned from the boy and was barking at the woman now. ‘For Christ’s sake, Sally, pull it together. It’s only a damn pencil!’

‘It seems to like you, Sally,’ said the boy, who sat between them. ‘Why don’t you just give the pencil a name and take it for long walks in the park?’

‘That’s enough out of you,’ said the man to the boy.

Mallory looked down to the offending pencil lying in the woman’s lap and up to nothing sinister. But the woman was staring at it as though it might be a living snake.

Mallory turned. She had heard the gentle rocking before she saw the vase teetering on the edge of the bookshelf. The vase fell. She shot out one hand to catch it only a few inches above that section of hardwood floor not covered by the Persian rug.

Now the man was yelling at the boy again. ‘Justin, I told you to stop!’

The boy shrank back from the man. He turned to look over his shoulder at the vase in Mallory’s hand, and then at her gun as she replaced it in the shoulder holster. The woman with the fear of pencils was covering her mouth. Only Charles was not agitated. He was calmly watching all of them.

‘I didn’t do it,’ said the boy.

‘He didn’t topple the vase,’ said Charles. ‘Trains pass under this building all day long. The vibrations sometimes move objects around. That vase was very close to the edge.’

Mallory stood behind the small family and stared at Charles with naked incredulity. Hands clasped behind his head, he leaned back in his chair and smiled at her as though seven thousand dollars’ worth of fifth-century crockery had not nearly smashed into worthless shards.

‘The trains didn’t make the pencil fly,’ said the man in even tones which implied that Charles might be only half bright.

‘No, they didn’t. May I introduce my partner, Mallory?’

She walked over to the desk and faced the small family. While Charles made the formal introductions to the Riccalos, she checked out the boy first.

Justin Riccalo’s blond hair was slicked back, and his lips were parted to display two prominent front teeth. The total effect was that of a wet rabbit with freckles. He could only be eleven at the outside. He was a basic nerd in training, wearing the requisite plastic protector in the front pocket of his shirt, all lined with pens and mechanical pencils. His feet were tapping the floor, anxious to be gone, even if it meant leaving the body behind them. Electric-blue eyes danced in a rock’n‘roll of what’s over there, and now what’s over here, and what might be up on the ceiling?

Sally Riccalo, the highstrung brunette, had been introduced as Justin’s stepmother. Mallory could almost hear the tension humming through the woman’s thin body, as though she were wired up to a wall socket. Mrs Riccalo perched on the edge of her chair now, brown eyes wide and pleading, Don’t hurt me, to everyone who looked into them.

The father, Robert Riccalo, was a former military man. That much was in his close-cropped haircut and the squared shoulders. The man was standing at attention while sitting down. He was so large in the torso, he towered over the woman and the boy, but not Charles, to whom towering came naturally and apologetically.

When the boy faced his stepmother, his neck elongated and his eyes gave away some joke he’d told to himself. A nervous giggle was rising up in his mouth. The military man put one heavy hand on the boy’s slender shoulder and caused it to dip with the weight. When Justin looked to his father, his head tucked in like a turtle. And all the while, the blue eyes danced to alternating rhythms of fun and fear.

Now, the boy lifted his face to Mallory’s and a conspiracy of eyes began in silence. I know you, each face said to the other, though she and the boy had never met.

Charles’s eyes rolled back and forth between them, saying, Just a moment. Have I missed something here?

Another appointment was scheduled for the next day, and the small family trooped out, the father leading the charge, woman and boy following behind as his foot soldiers. When the door to the outer office closed behind them, Mallory turned on Charles, hefting the vase in one hand.

‘About those trains.’

‘That’s not the original. It’s a cheap copy. I rigged the vase myself. And it was the trains.’

He walked over to the bookcase and picked up a wooden kitchen match. ‘This primed one edge of the vase toward the natural pull of gravity. Any vibration would have knocked it down. I just wondered what the boy would do.’

‘And?’

‘It startled him with the normal reaction time. Justin has good reflexes. But he denied all blame for the pencil and the vase. That’s odd, you know. He insists he’s not doing anything. That’s not consistent with the profile of the average psychokinetic subject.’

‘And?’

‘Well, it makes the whole thing more interesting. Maybe he’s not the one who’s doing it. There’s a problem with the logic. He didn’t take credit, and yet he didn’t seem frightened by it. Like he’s used to seeing things fly around the house, almost bored by it.’

‘Well, try and work it out before wife number three goes down, okay?’ Mallory bent over the canvas bag on the desk in the front room.

The cat poked its head out from under the desk, whiskers twitching, testing the air for screams and other loud noises. With more assurance, it exited the underside of the desk and looked up at Charles, tilting its head to one side as though the bandaged ear was weighting it that way.

‘Hello,’ said Charles, bending down to pet it. The cat wriggled out from under his hand. It only had eyes for Mallory. It rubbed up against her leg, and she pushed it away.

‘The cat’s a material witness. Now I’ve already been through this with Riker. You laugh and I shoot you, it’s like that.’

‘What happened to the cat’s ear?’

‘I didn’t do it. Can you keep the cat for one night? I’m trading apartments with the Rosens today. I can’t take it back to my place.’

‘Of course.’

Mallory pulled the cat’s litter box out of the canvas bag, and then two tins of fish. ‘His name is Nose. Just keep him out of my office. I don’t want any fur in my computers.’

‘I’ll take him back to my place.’

‘Thanks. So, apart from the flying objects, how did the interview go? You know which one of them is doing it if it’s not the boy?’

‘I don’t know.’

She pulled a file out of the bag.

‘The first Mrs Riccalo died of a heart attack. But now that I’ve seen her husband, I have to wonder how much stress she was under and how much it would have taken to push her over the top. Here’s the hospital file.’

She handed it to him, and he hesitated for that moment when people are trying to decide how dirty an object might be before they touch it. Perhaps he was wrong to believe that every computer printout she gave him might be purloined.

‘You stole it, right?’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘But not this one.’

The second file she handed him had the NYPD stamp on the cover. He scanned the information which detailed the suicide report on the deceased second wife of Robert Riccalo. He flipped through the three-page report. ‘Well, the files list the suicide as a non-suspicious death.’

‘I may change that.’

‘Why?’

‘When you go through the suicide files, you find most jumpers are men. Women are less messy. And there was no note. They usually like to get even with their loved ones on the way out.’

‘Did the first two Mrs Riccalos have anything in common?’

‘They were both professionals and carried the normal amount of life insurance through their employers. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t another policy or two. I’m still working on it. Sally Riccalo is also carrying insurance through the financial house where she works as a systems analyst. According to her resumé, she and Robert Riccalo worked for the same company ten years ago when the first Mrs Riccalo was still alive. Interesting?’

‘We started out with a rather simple problem of flying objects. You don’t think murder is a bit of a stretch this early on? I suppose the insurance beneficiary was – ’

‘Robert Riccalo. He’s also the beneficiary of wife number three.’

‘But isn’t the spouse usually the beneficiary?’

‘Yes, but it’s usually the wife who collects. So now I’ve got one heart attack, one suicide, and wife number three looks like she’s ready to explode. She wouldn’t get that upset over one pencil. What else has been flying her way lately?’

‘Oh, a pair of scissors, some bits of glass.’

‘What’s the father’s take?’

‘Anger, disbelief. Only the stepmother seems to be a believer.’

‘He accused the boy of moving the vase. He sounds like a believer to me.’

‘No. The stepmother is the only believer in the paranormal. Mr Riccalo probably thinks the boy is doing it by trickery.’

‘One of them is. Are you sure it was your pencil that flew at her?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Charles, you’re a disgrace to Max Candle’s memory.’

‘The art of illusion is not genetic. Having a magician in the family tree doesn’t vouch for talent in the rest of the bloodline.’

‘You have a whole damn magic store in the basement. You could make an elephant fly with all that equipment.’

‘Not really. Max had some brilliant illusions, but his specialty was defying death. It was Malakhai who could really make things move through the air, and nothing as clumsy as a flying pencil. He was the greatest illusionist who ever lived.’

‘Malakhai? The debunker?’

‘Well, debunking the paranormal frauds came later in life, after he retired from the stage. Before you were born, Malakhai did an act with his dead wife… You seem skeptical. No, really. She was his assistant.’

‘His dead assistant?’

‘Oh yes, it was only after she died that she went into the magic act with Malakhai. When she was alive, she was a composer and a musician.’

‘What did he do, have her stuffed?’

‘No, she never appeared to the audience in the flesh. It was always understood that she was there, and yet not there – dead but not entirely gone, if you follow me. Well, after the audience got comfortable with the idea that she was not only invisible but dead, things began to float through the air as she handed him one thing and another.’

‘He’d fit in nicely with our family of the flying pencils. So that’s why Malakhai got into parapsychology?’

‘Oh, no. He’s the sworn enemy of parapsychologists. Every time they think they’ve discovered paranormal ability, he drops by to blow them out of the water and expose another scam.’

‘Are you thinking of calling him in for this one?’

‘For flying pencils? Hardly. And it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to disturb him. Malakhai’s in his seventies now. He and Louisa are living in quiet seclusion.’

‘Louisa?’

‘That’s his dead wife. If you cared less for computers and more for classical music, you would know her name. Louisa’s Concerto was her only composition, but it was brilliant. No classical collection is complete without it. The concerto was played during every performance. Oh, it was no act on the stage. Perhaps I should have mentioned that. No, Malakhai lived with her, talked with her, slept with her. He only created the flying-object illusions in the act so the audience could see her too.’

‘And this guy, this loon, debunks the paranormal?’

‘Yes, as madmen go, he’s quite functional. He always owned to the fact that he created his own madness. He knew there was no supernatural aspect to Louisa.’

‘Yeah, right. How did he get so crazy?’

‘Well, Louisa died very young. She wrote this splendid concerto, and then she died. He’d known her since she was a child, and he couldn’t quite let her go – so he reconstructed her.’

‘Again please?’

‘He recreated her from memory, from intimate knowledge of her. It’s been done before, but the practice has been limited to remote Asian monasteries. The documented succubi created by monks were fashioned of pure imagination. Malakhai’s creation was based on a living woman – that was one difference. He knew Louisa so well. He knew what her response would be in every given situation. Then he constructed a faithful model of her. And after a while, he could not only hold conversations with her, but see her and touch her. It was a feat of immense concentration. You see, it has to be fanatically faithful to the living woman, to react in the same – ’

‘But it’s a trick.’

‘An illusion, a great illusion, and of course, delusion, but it was a piece of art as masterful as Plato’s Dialogues. And a lot of us do it to some small extent. Don’t you sometimes wonder what Markowitz would do or say in certain situations?’

She turned her face to the window, and he mentally slapped himself silly for crossing the line into her personal feelings, for he was one of the few who believed she might possess them.

‘Another distinction between Malakhai and the monks was that they called up their illusions and sent them away. Louisa was Malakhai’s constant companion. She still is.’

Mallory turned back to him, and he watched the busy-work of her good brain through the static distraction of her eyes.

‘But this Malakhai – he’s definitely crazy, right?’

‘Oh, yes, definitely. But it takes quite a good brain to go quite that crazy. When you consider the amount of concentration necessary to maintain a three-dimensional delusion – ’

‘And when he talked with her, she answered the way she did when she was alive, even if the question was new?’

‘Oh, yes. Perversely, truth and logic were the glue of the delusion. She couldn’t respond in any way that was untrue to the living woman.’

‘Could you do it? Could you have a conversation with a dead woman?’

‘Malakhai and Louisa grew up together. What she would say, in any given situation, was predictable to him. He knew her mind, her most private thoughts. I don’t know anyone that well.’

Certainly not you, Mallory.

‘Would you have to be crazy to create a thing like that?’

‘You would have to possess, at the very least, the insanity that goes with falling in love. A woman once told me that people in love were certifiable. I believe that. Malakhai reached across all the zones of reason to bring Louisa back. Now that’s the kind of love insanity is made of. He may be insane, but he’s also brilliant and rather charming. Whenever I stayed with Cousin Max, Malakhai and Louisa would come to dinner.’

‘Did the dead woman have a good appetite?’

‘As a child, I was never sure. There was always magic going on at Max’s house. They would set a plate for her and pour the wine, and during the course of the evening, the plate and glass would be emptied. The food and wine was probably spirited away in moments of distraction, I knew that, but part of me always believed in Louisa.’

‘Did you ever try the three-dimensional illusion?’

‘Delusion. No. Why would I? Why would anyone want to cross over that border?’

Except for love.

She was reaching down into the canvas bag, and then he noted the hesitation of a second thought as her hand pulled back empty. Now she turned to him. ‘I wish I had Amanda Bosch back for just five minutes.’

‘The lady by the lake, I presume.’

‘Yes, I think I’ve got a motive,’ she said, bending again to dip into the bag. She pulled a manuscript out and sat down behind the desk, riffling through the pages, extracting one paper-clipped section.

‘I pulled this off Bosch’s computer. By the log-on time, this is the last file she ever updated. She’s been working on this book for almost a year. It’s a novel, but I don’t think it’s all fiction.’

‘Art is lies that tell the truth. Who said that?’

‘You’re the one with the computer-bank memory.’

‘Eidetic memory, and it doesn’t work like a computer. I can’t cross-index things the way you do with your machines.’

‘Here, cut to page 254 of chapter seven. Go to the last paragraph. Remember, she updated this the day she died.’

He looked down at the page and read: He was leaving again, going through the litany of each thing he had to do, all more pressi – YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR.

‘I see what you mean,’ said Charles. ‘It’s not a part of the text. More like an emotional outburst at the keyboard.’

‘Right. I caught that as I was printing out the file. I only had time to scan pages here and there, checking for file damage. It’s almost seven hundred pages. I’m pretty sure my perp is in there in detail, but you’re the only human I know who can read at the speed of light. I just don’t have the time. Could you take a look at it and make notes on the parts that ring true?’

‘Of course.’ Charles seemed only to be glancing at the pages of the manuscript as he turned the sheets one after the other, yet he was reading every word and catching Mallory in a lie. He had noted the redness of her eyes, and now he found the reason for it in the indents of thumb and forefinger which marked the base of each page she had read before him. After a few minutes’ cursory reading, he looked up at her.

‘I wonder what his lie was. She’s characterized him as a married man from the onset. So that can’t be it.’

‘It won’t be in the manuscript. I’m guessing she caught him in a recent lie.’

‘That’s an interesting possibility. You think he might have been cheating on the woman he was cheating with?’

‘That wasn’t it. I think the only use she had for this man was getting pregnant. But then she aborted the baby. I’ve got a problem with a lie as a murder motive, but it’s all I’ve got. Amanda Bosch was a professional researcher. She might have done a background check on him. It’s a reasonable assumption since he’s the father of her baby. So she caught him out in a lie.’

‘Well, that won’t narrow the field by much. There are as many categories of lies as there are people.’

‘Too bad your old friend Malakhai can’t reconstruct Amanda and ask her what the lie was. If I don’t wrap this up fast, the perp will get away with her murder. When you finish with the manuscript, just leave it in my office.’

‘All right, but I wouldn’t count on this too much if I were you. I don’t think a writer draws on life to a greater extent than an actor does when he fleshes out a role. The actor doesn’t act his life, and I suspect, even when a writer does an autobiography, he doesn’t write his life.’

‘And this last bit of type – the LIAR lines you call an emotional outburst? Who is she screaming at if not the character in the book?’

‘All right, I’ll read it with that in mind.’

‘Are you going to the poker game tomorrow night?’

‘Of course.’ The poker game was the highlight of his week. He had inherited his chair in the game from Inspector Louis Markowitz, and with that chair came three friends. Each new friend was something precious to him, as though in the gathering of people he could make up for a life of isolation in academia and think tanks. ‘If I didn’t show up for the game, they’d expect me to send them a check for the usual losses. That’s only fair, I suppose. I wouldn’t want them to suffer financial damage by my absence.’

‘Charles, one day I’ll sit down with you and teach you how to beat those guys at poker.’

But that would not be today. She was ticking off items in a notebook, and even at half the room’s distance, he could see a great many unchecked items yet to go. He turned to the window and looked down to the street two floors below. ‘Actually, Rabbi Kaplan says my consistent losses speak well of me.’

‘Did he tell you why?’

‘What? And ruin his reputation – spoil the good name of Kaplan the Cryptic? No, I think I’m supposed to work it out.’ His eyes were still on the street below, following the progress of a familiar figure in a shapeless winter coat. He turned to face her. ‘All right, you know, don’t you?’

‘The rabbi was complimenting your honesty, Charles. Poker is a liar’s game. Tomorrow night, I want you to get something off Slope and Duffy.’ And now she made a check by one more item which must have been himself. ‘I gave both of them shopping lists, things I need to get without going through Coffey or Riker.’

‘You know, Mallory, there are other police officers on the force besides yourself. They tend to think of themselves as members of a team.’

‘Yeah, Riker has the same idea.’ There was an edge to her voice, more impatience than anger. ‘He thinks he’s my coach.’

Here, Charles would have liked to have said something in Riker’s defense, for he liked the man very much, but there were perils to giving even the appearance of choosing any side but hers. In all their conversations, he seemed always to be seeking safe ground with her. ‘Why don’t you come to the game with me? Rabbi Kaplan speaks highly of you as a born card shark.’

‘I can’t. I was barred from the game when I was thirteen.’

A key was turning in the lock, and as the door opened, the hose of a vacuum cleaner preceded the small dark head of Mrs Ortega.

This precluded Charles asking any personal questions like What in God’s name did you do to those people to get barred from the poker game?

Mrs Ortega stopped suddenly, eyeing the cat, perhaps with a view to skinning it and making a purse of the pelt. In her oft-expressed view as a professional cleaning woman, the only good fur shedder was a dead one. The cat rubbed up against Mallory’s jeans, and now that Mrs Ortega associated the cat with Mallory, she looked at the younger woman with surprise and something less than her former respect for a fellow believer from the Church of Immaculate Housekeeping.

Mallory handed the woman a twenty dollar bill, with the silent understanding that she knew the cat fur would make extra work. Mrs Ortega pocketed the bill and cast a kinder eye on the cat.

The buzzer went off, loud and irritating. Mallory put up her hand to stop Charles on his way to the door.

‘Okay, who is it?’

‘Riker,’ he said, without the usual split second of hesitation.

He opened the door, and there stood Riker in all his slovenly glory. Mallory’s jaw jutted out. Charles could see she wasn’t buying this. No way could he have known who was on the other side of the door. She too could recognize the polite light buzzer style of Henrietta Ramsharan of the third floor, and the sharp raps of the musician on the first floor. But Riker had no style in any sense of that word, not in any aspect of his life.

‘Hi, Charles,’ said Riker. He nodded to Mallory, and made an exaggerated bow to Mrs Ortega, who screwed up her face and walked into the next room muttering something which might have been ‘damn cops’.

‘You called Charles to tell him you were coming and when,’ said Mallory to Riker. Then she looked at Charles for confirmation, not believing for a moment that he could’ve known by any other means.

Charles smiled and shook his head. There were limits to what he could discern from knocks, but in truth, Riker had never called him; he had seen the sergeant’s arrival from the window. And now he had his first breakthrough in the art of poker as he decided not to enlighten her. His mind was racing on to new hopes of being the big winner of tomorrow’s game as Riker was settling into the deep padding of the couch.

Riker pulled a crumple of papers from the inside pocket of his overcoat and spread them out on his lap in an attempt to smooth out the damage. The first page was a map of the park with yellow lines drawn in two areas. He looked up at Mallory, who was still glaring at Charles.

‘Heller pinpointed the exact site where Amanda fell. The guy’s a genius. He took soil samples down to the Department of Agriculture. The dirt in the wound was full of microscopic critters that won’t live in the shadow areas of the wooded patch where we found Amanda.’ Riker dangled a cigarette from his lip and fished his pockets for a match. ‘Heller says he’s gonna write a monograph and give you half the credit, Mallory. So, you ready to take a look at the crime scene now?’

‘What for?’ She picked up the sheet with the yellow markings. ‘I can read a map.’

‘Hey, Mallory, I’m just along for the ride, okay? But most of us like to swing by the crime scene, maybe take a look at the place where the victim died.’

‘Waste of time. I read the report. Forensic’s been over the ground and probably ten or twelve cops with big feet. What am I gonna see?’

‘You never know, kid.’ A match sparked in his hand; the flame died in a cloud of exhaled smoke.

‘Don’t call me kid.’

Mrs Ortega returned to the front room and was plugging in the vacuum cleaner. Riker smiled at the woman.

‘You know, Mrs Ortega, we got a suspect here you’d really appreciate. All we know about the bastard is that he lives in a luxury condo, and he can clean an apartment like a pro.’

‘Then he wasn’t born no rich kid.’

‘Huh?’

‘Rich kids aren’t raised right. You can tell if they earn their money or get it the easy way. Mallory knows from clean.’ She turned to Charles. ‘Now your mother never let your feet touch the ground. You had live-in help when you were growing up. How do I know that? You don’t know what steel wool is, or what it’s for. I can always tell when you clean up after a meal in the office kitchen, and when it’s Mallory. Mallory was raised right.’

‘But this man who was raised right is a killer,’ said Charles in a somewhat defensive tone.

‘So? You think Mallory carries a gun for ballast in the wind?’ Mrs Ortega leaned on the vacuum hose and wagged her finger at Charles. ‘You can always tell the rich kids born with money. If the husband or the wife splits, they go off their feed for a week. You can tell how upset they are by the stock of booze and pills. But if the cleaning woman leaves them, their whole world falls apart. They go back to living like animals. So chances are your guy wasn’t born with money.’

Mallory was nodding as the woman said this. Mallory deferred to Mrs Ortega in all things regarding cleaning solvents and the chemistry of stains. Mrs Ortega might be the only human Mallory ever deferred to.

‘You can tell a lot about a person’s character from the way they clean and what they keep,’ said Mrs Ortega, waxing on in a rare philosophic mode.

‘You know,’ said Riker, turning to Charles, ‘I asked Mrs Ortega to clean my apartment about a year ago. She made the sign of the evil eye and turned her back on me. Now I figure I’m lucky she never saw it.’ A gray log of ashes fell from his cigarette and crumbled down the front of his suit as his arms shrugged out of his overcoat.

‘I don’t have to see your apartment, Riker.’ Mrs Ortega cast an appraising eye over his rumpled suit and scuffed shoes. ‘You’ve got at least three bags of garbage piling up in the kitchen. The sheets haven’t been changed in a month, and there are beer bottles under the bed. There might be two clean dishes in the cupboard. You’re real comfortable with spiders, and you’re seeing a woman tonight.’

Three heads turned to Mrs Ortega.

‘How did you know about the woman?’ asked Riker.

‘This morning you used a can of cheap spot remover. I can see the powder rings around the stains from here. You don’t usually get that fancy.’

Mallory nodded her respects to Mrs Ortega and headed for the door to her private office. ‘I have to pack my equipment. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

‘It’s good to see you again, Sergeant,’ said Charles. ‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?’

‘Is it still morning?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll have a beer.’

The vacuum cleaner was moving slowly toward them, sucking conversation out of the air. When Mrs Ortega shut off the machine and turned to the quieter activity of dusting, Charles handed Riker a cold beer.

‘What Mallory’s doing is rather dangerous, isn’t it? I’m surprised you’re going along with it.’

‘She has to do it this way, Charles. There’s no evidence, no weapon, no witness, no motive. Everyone who can hold a rock has the means. The crime scene is six minutes from the building. Even the doorman has opportunity. You see the problem? If she can’t flush him out and fast, he gets away with murder.’

Charles’s brain was backing up in the conversation. No motive, did he say? Was it possible that Riker had not seen the manuscript that lay on the desk between them? As Riker’s eyes were settling on the ream of paper, some Mallory-guided instinct prompted him to call the man’s attention away from it.

‘You know, Markowitz wouldn’t like this at all. You’ll be close by her all the time, right?’

‘Like I said, Charles, I’m only along for the ride. She doesn’t need me. She’s not a kid any more, and she didn’t need anybody when she was one.’ He slugged back his beer.

‘But Louis always credited Helen with – ’

‘Helen could only see the good in Kathy, even when it wasn’t there. I remember how happy Helen was when Lou started bringing Kathy into work after school – it was the only way he could keep the kid from stealing New York. But Helen was only thinking about the positive role models of police officers.’

‘Apparently, she was right.’

‘And five days a week, the kid was surrounded by off-the-wall murders when other kids were out playing games.’

‘Didn’t Mallory ever play games with other children?’

‘She used to play with Markowitz. Now she plays alone.’

‘What sort of games did she like?’

‘I asked her once when she was maybe thirteen, what was her favorite. “Murder is the best game,” she says. I went all clammy. It was the way she said it. I asked Markowitz if he thought the kid was capable of killing. “Oh, yeah,” says Markowitz, like I’d asked him if Kathy could pitch a curve ball.’

‘That doesn’t tell me why you’re so confident that she can flush the killer out without getting hurt.’

‘If the suspects in this condo weren’t uptown taxpayers with good lawyers, we’d sweat the pack of them. Now when Mallory gets the perp, there won’t be any lawyers around. He’ll be under more stress than he’s ever known. He’ll flap his mouth with cameras rolling. The creeps always talk, even after we read them their rights. They lie, but they talk, they trip themselves up. If we don’t rush this perp, if a lawyer gets to him in time to shut his mouth, we lose him. No evidence, no case. It has to be quick. She has to flush him out fast and trip him up, or he gets away.’

‘But the danger.’

‘The biggest danger is that she stumbles over someone else’s dirty little secrets. You got the same percentage of scum in the Coventry Arms as you do in any tenement building.’

Charles picked up a photograph that had wafted to the floor from Riker’s small pile of papers.

‘Who is this?’

‘Amanda Bosch.’

‘But she looks nothing like Mallory. How did the mistake -?’

‘Well, she was alive when this shot was taken. Even I had to look at the body twice after the bugs had been at her.’

‘Have you notified her family yet?’

‘There’s no family alive to notify. Mallory liked that – less chance of a leak.’

‘What will happen to her?’

‘Her estate, whatever’s in her bank account, will go to the city tax office. The landlady will sell her stuff for back rent or put it out on the street. She’ll get a grave that no one will ever visit. And then she’ll be gone from the face of the earth. Or maybe not. Mallory could make her famous.’

The cat sat down between them, ignoring both of them and picking at the bandage on its ear. Charles was reminded of something Louis Markowitz had said: living with Mallory was like having a wounded animal in the house.

The building had been made to last and so it had, well into the twentieth century, and showed no signs of falling down at the cusp of the twenty-first. Dark wood beams and stucco facing rose for ten stories. The old West Side mansion would fit well with a gothic horror story.

Riker put down the heavy boxes to pant for a moment. Mallory had just slipped the doorman a hundred dollar bill.

The kid has style.

Riker wondered how she was going to bury the money in the department expense account.

As Mallory talked, the doorman smiled continuously, lips parting ever wider until they threatened to escape the margins of his face.

‘I’m expecting Amanda Bosch to drop by. Do you know her on sight?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the doorman, who was called Arthur. ‘Miss Hyde’s friend? Pretty young woman with sad eyes? I know her.’ Now the smile wavered. ‘Is she all right?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘She was acting very strange the last time I saw her.’

‘When was that?’

‘Maybe four or five days ago. She never came to the door. She just sat over there, very quiet, like she was waiting for someone.’ He pointed to the wrought iron bench twelve feet from the entrance. ‘I thought it was a bit odd because Miss Hyde was out of town. I’ve never known Miss Bosch to visit anyone else in this building. Then after a while, Miss Bosch stood up very quickly. She seemed agitated for some reason, and then she ran away. Very odd indeed.’

‘What set her off?’

‘No idea, miss. I was busy then, opening the door, getting a cab for a tenant, people were coming and going.’

‘Do you remember which people?’

‘No, I don’t. Tenants, visitors, children and dogs. Most of the tenants have dogs.’

Riker was picking the cartons up from the sidewalk when Mallory turned her head quickly, eyes fixing on an empty patch of sidewalk across the street. Now what was that about?

He wondered if it was not too early in the game for her to be watching her back. The murderer lived in this building, and only he would make the connection between Mallory and Amanda Bosch. But it was a woman walking fast toward them on this side of the street.

He put the carton down again as a small brunette with nervous moves was looking up at Mallory and asking, ‘Forgive me for following you. Could I speak to you privately for just a moment?’

Mallory nodded to the doorman, who closed the door. The two women moved up the sidewalk and beyond the range of his hearing. The brunette was a tangle of loose wires. Her hands were flying. Mallory said a few words to the woman, and the brunette shook her head, eyes rolling in their sockets like startled marbles. Then the woman clutched her bag to her chest as though to fend off a weapon. She backed off a few steps and hurried down the sidewalk to a waiting cab. Mallory strolled back.

The carton was hoisted into the air once more.

The doorman had shut down his neon smile the moment Mallory turned her back. Now it was blazing again with the dazzle of every tooth exposed, and You’re my new best friend was in his eyes as they passed by him and into the lobby.

The lobby atmosphere was piped in from another century. While Mallory handed a letter to the concierge on the other side of a carved wood desk, Riker looked around at the hanging tapestries and the oil paintings. The elaborately patterned rugs had to be a year’s salary each. Plush green velvet wrapped the couches and chairs in conversational groupings. A woman passed through the lobby, wearing dark glasses on this overcast day to say, I’m a celebrity, and you’re not. A bank of stained-glass windows lined one wall. Patches of crystal and colors of brightness. Beneath the arched center window was a mural of running deer, running blind into the cruel joke of the blank wall adjacent to the painting.

Now the concierge was leading them to the elevator. It belonged in a 1930s black-and-white movie, an iron cage of scrollwork bars on the door, and an interior of gleaming wood with inlaid designs and parquet floor. They were handed into the care of an elevator operator and rode up, watching the floors drop away from them, and each one was different from the last.

The iron door opened on the third floor, and they walked down a hallway lined by soft glowing bulbs that would have been gaslight in the last century. The carpeting on this floor was an oriental pattern, and the walls were papered in money. Riker guessed he knew a good wallpapering job when he saw it. And money sat on a small table in the hallway, a vase holding a fortune in fresh-cut flowers. The scent of roses followed after him as Mallory fit her key in the lock and opened the door to the Rosens’ apartment.

He put the cartons down on the tiled floor of the entryway. ‘Okay, Mallory – the woman downstairs. Now what was that about?’

‘Sally Riccalo. She followed us over from the office. She’s a client with an interesting idea that her stepson wants to stab her with a flying pencil.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Charles’s style. I thought he only handled the academic bullshit. So who’s whacked? Her or the kid?’

‘Too early to tell. She looks scared enough.’

‘What did you say to her?’

‘I told her to get out of town.’

‘And she said?’

‘No.’

He looked around at the Rosens’ front room and wondered how the Rosens were reacting to the Spartan simplicity of Mallory’s apartment. In the front room was a museum of family photos. The family was everywhere, eyes of the children in the eyes of mothers and fathers, grandfathers, and on and on. And there was a toy some child had left behind on the couch. The fish in the large aquarium swam in quick schools of tropical colors. A small sticky palm print lay on the glass alongside the print of what must be the nose of a grandchild or great-grandchild. The only element out of character with this comfortable room of overstuffed furniture and silk flowers was the eye of the computer, lit and looking out through the partially opened doors of an oak cabinet.

While Mallory went exploring, Riker opened the cabinet door wide and peered at the screen. Inside the door was a simple instruction guide for computer illiterates like himself. He pushed a button, and the screen became a slow scrolling information sheet on scheduled maintenance, and now a notice of the tenants’ meeting to be held in the roof-top facility. This last item was tagged with an URGENT BUSINESS label and a request for full attendance at the meeting. More notes scrolled by, mentions of packages held at the lobby desk, and the minutes of the condo board’s last meeting.

The tap on his shoulder made him jump. Mallory stood behind him, smiling Gotcha. The games went on. The old man had taught her that one, too. For a heavyset man, Markowitz had made even less noise than Kathy when he crept up behind her. By the time she was thirteen, the old man could no longer do that. She had surpassed him in the creeping game. Between Markowitz and Mallory, he sometimes wondered who had been the worst influence on whom.

‘I found a room to set up in,’ she said.

He picked up the cartons and followed her into a small library. He settled them on the desk, and she began to unload the computer equipment and the Mini cam, the wiring and the works he couldn’t put a name to. Only the wiretap equipment was recognizable, and he averted his eyes from this, knowing there was no warrant.

Markowitz had not taught her this. Far from it – the old man had remained mechanically inept and computer ignorant until the day he died. The less Markowitz had known about what she was up to with her machines, the more secure he had felt in the NYPD pension plan.

Mallory stepped off the elevator at the penthouse level. She had traveled only a few steps into the room when heads began to turn. She was wearing the black suit she had worn to her father’s funeral. The skirt provided a rare outing for her legs, displaying athletic calves and well-shaped ankles tapering above high heels. A dozen pairs of eyes, male and female, followed after her as she passed through the gathering of perhaps forty tenants.

She paused now and then to admire a few of the art deco pieces scattered about the roof-top facility, and generally disapproved of the clutter of objects on pedestals and sideboards. But every travesty of decorators was forgiven when she lifted her face to the skylight which spanned the whole of the wide room. A waxing moon kept two stars for company. A filmy cloud raced across the glass, gaining on the moon, then killing its light.

‘Death becomes you, my dear,’ said a cultured, dulcet voice.

‘I’ve already heard that one today,’ said Mallory, turning to look down at a woman with black hat and a face that was pushing sixty, not in the wrinkles, but in the pulled-back skin of the too-manyith face-lift. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me how well preserved I am for a corpse.’

The older woman smiled a thin line of crimson lipstick. ‘You’ve got a smart mouth for a dead cop.’ And now the voice betrayed roots in Hell’s Kitchen when gangsters ruled, and the woman went up one notch in Mallory’s estimation.

‘I’m Betty Hyde.’

‘Mallory.’

‘Kathleen Mallory, isn’t it? Formerly of NYPD, currently of the consulting firm Mallory and Butler, Ltd. You’re staying in the Rosens’ apartment for the next ten days while your own condo is being redecorated. They’re old friends of your family, and you have their proxy to vote on the swimming pool in the basement. I have spies everywhere, my dear.’

But Mallory counted only two spies. The concierge knew she had the Rosens’ proxy, and Arthur the doorman had been fed the rest of the story.

‘And you sell gossip,’ Mallory countered. ‘Your column is syndicated in fifty papers around the country. You have a five-minute spot on Channel Two News. You’ve lived here for the past fifteen years. You have a full-size pool table in your apartment, and you change young men the way I change my blue jeans. You should pay your spies better, Miss Hyde. They have no sense of loyalty.’

The woman widened her smile into a brilliant grin.

‘Call me Betty. Everyone does. I like your style, my dear. May I call you Kathy?’

‘No.’

‘Even better. Well, Miss Mallory – ’

‘Just Mallory. Amanda Bosch gave me your name as a reference.’

She handed the woman a card, and Betty Hyde read the words aloud. ‘Discreet investigations? I love it.’

‘Our clients are government departments and universities, mostly research projects and evaluations. Do you have anything nice to say about Bosch? If we hired her services, she’d be working on sensitive material.’

‘I trust her with high-profile information, but I don’t trust anyone with the really good stuff. I do that research myself.’

‘I had the impression she hung out with you from time to time.’

‘Well, she does, or did, rather. She’s cut back on her activities for the past few months. I used to take her to parties. When I go fishing for young men, I need good bait. She attracts men nearly as well as you do.’

‘And in return, you introduced her to the right people?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are any of the right people here tonight? Anyone else who could vouch for her?’

Betty Hyde’s mouth curled up on one side in the attitude of All right, let’s assume I believe this charade. Mallory took stock of that attitude, and parried with a smile to say, Yeah, let’s just assume that.

‘I took Amanda to several gatherings in this very room. I imagine she’s met quite a few of the tenants. I don’t know which ones might have used her research services. Shall I introduce you around? And perhaps later you might accompany me to another party.’

Mallory was looking over the smaller woman’s head, her eyes fixed on the man standing by the long buffet table.

‘I think I recognize Judge Heart from the Senate hearings.’ Mallory nodded toward a tall man, graying at the temples and wearing a well-tailored black suit. He dwarfed the thin woman who stood next to him. Her gray-blonde hair was pulled back in a severe bun at the nape of her neck.

‘Yes, that’s him. And that’s his wife, Pansy. See the invisible strings? She can never get more than three feet away from him.’

Mallory did have the impression that he worked the woman like a puppet. Every utterance from his mouth called the woman’s face up to his with a smile that was too quick, too wide.

Betty Hyde said in a lower voice, ‘When you get closer, tell me if that isn’t a bruise under her make-up.’

‘You’re kidding. I thought he was – ’

‘- riding into the Supreme Court nomination on his women’s rights position? Yes. Amusing, isn’t it? If I could nail him as a wife beater, I’d do it in a hot flash. If you hear anything, it’s worth gold, my dear Mallory. They live in the apartment above yours. Any screaming, the sounds of a woman’s soft body bouncing off the wall – I’d be interested in anything like that.’

Hyde stared up at the younger woman, and her smile became a tight line as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other in the uncomfortable dance of waiting on Mallory. For a professional gossip, that drawn out silence would be like sunlight to a vampire.

‘I’ve already surmised that your condo isn’t being redecorated,’ said Hyde. ‘And Amanda Bosch is not taking on any new clients. If anything, she’s tapering off. I understand it’s a difficult pregnancy.’

Hyde smiled again.

And smiled.

Mallory, from the school of Never Volunteer Anything, continued to stare down at Hyde. Her face gave away nothing.

Hyde stopped smiling, and each woman squared off against the other, making measurements and mental notes, staking out the air between them with wires of tension. Hyde gave in first.

‘Never mind the research projects. You’re a private detective, right? It’s a logical career move for an ex-cop. Am I right?’

Mallory shrugged, and Hyde showed all of her teeth.

‘Now that you’ve moved into the private sector, let me give you a few helpful hints.’ She entwined her arm in Mallory’s and led her back to a corner of relative seclusion where only potted ferns gathered.

‘Mallory, people in your trade carry professional habits into what should be passing for social life. You don’t ask questions – you interrogate. You sound like a cop. Just smile a lot. These people love to talk about themselves. So, you’re working on a case, we’ve established that much. And we can definitely place it in the money set, can’t we? Did Amanda put you on to something? As if I thought you’d tell me. I also know how to protect sources, if you get my meaning.’

‘I think we can do business, Miss Hyde.’

‘Call me Betty.’

‘Over there, by the elevator – isn’t that Moss White, the talk show host?’

‘Yes, and the tan is real. He just got back from a week on location in California.’

‘What day did he come back?’

‘This morning.’

Scratch that one.

‘Which one is Harry Kipling?’

‘That one,’ said Hyde, indicating a good-looking man, black hair, blue eyes and tall. ‘He’s charming, but aside from his looks, he’s not remarkable. His wife is really miles more interesting. There she is. See that woman over there by the bookcase? Angel Kipling is a crime against Nature. All trolls are supposed to be short. She’s as tall as you are.’

‘You mean that middle-aged woman with the bad hair?’

‘I’ve always liked the phrase “a woman of a certain age”.’

‘The tall man with her – who is he?’

‘The blind man? That’s Eric Franz.’

‘He’s blind?’ Scratch that one, too.

‘Yes. Angel took away his dark glasses and the cane because she thought it might make him fit in better with the normal people. He’s terrified of her, so of course he never puts up any resistance. I think we’re all afraid of Angel. She’s one of those people who learned table manners late in life. She asks rude questions like how old are you, how much money do you make, and are those your own teeth. It’s hard on the nerves. A bit like a farting gorilla ripping through your peace of mind once a week or so. You never do get used to it.’

Mallory looked back to Harry Kipling. ‘It’s hard to see her and the husband as a couple.’

‘Because Harry is so ridiculously good-looking? Because Angel looks like she escaped from a hole in a Grimm brothers fairy tale? You might have something there.’

‘Makes you wonder what she has on him.’

‘I like the way your mind works, Mallory. Since you’re digging around anyway, dear, you might want to share with a new friend.’

‘Harry Kipling – is he one of the heirs to Kipling Electronics?’

‘No. Should I be wondering what these men have in common?’

‘What’s his story?’

‘The usual thing. He lives off his wife’s money and fobs himself off as an investment counselor. I doubt that he handles any of Angel’s money. I believe she gives him an allowance. All the charge accounts around town are in her name. Now you have to watch out for Angel. She was misnamed. She’s the heiress to Kipling Electronics. Her father started the company.’

‘And then he named it after his son-in-law?’

‘Harry took Angel’s family name. It was a condition of the prenuptial agreement. If you took more of an interest in gossip, you’d know that.’

‘What’s his real name?’

‘No one ever cared enough to wonder. If you’re thinking he might have an interesting past, I doubt it. Angel’s father would have had him checked out, and even checked behind his ears. Oh, hit the floor, Mallory, here comes the troll. She probably saw you looking at her husband. Did you bring a weapon, dear?’

In fact she had left her gun in the apartment.

Angel Kipling was crossing the floor in a straight line of terrible, sure purpose. As she neared them, Betty Hyde backed up slightly, unconsciously. Mallory didn’t.

The Kipling woman had a poor understanding of personal space. Now her face was entirely too close, and matching Mallory’s eye-level from a height of five-ten, plus high heels.

‘I understand you’re a friend of the Rosens,’ said Angel Kipling. ‘Is it true they keep a baby shark in their apartment?’ She looked down at the older woman. ‘Oh, hello Betty.’

Betty Hyde nodded to Angel and went through the introduction of, not Miss Mallory, but only Mallory.

Mallory could not take her eyes off the hairs extending from Angel Kipling’s upper lip. They were long like a cat’s whiskers, but not symmetrical. The body was a potato attached to toothpick legs and sausages for arms. The crown of her head was an interesting mix of three failed experiments in hair coloring, striping brown at the root into blonde and then black.

A wealthy woman with do-it-yourself hair. Interesting.

‘So tell me, Miss Mallory, what do you think of our building?’

‘Just Mallory.’

‘It’s an historical landmark, you know. Lillian Russel, the old-time actress, kept an apartment here so Diamond Jim Brady could visit her on the sly.’

‘And Dylan Thomas threw up on this rug,’ added Betty Hyde.

Angel Kipling looked down as though there might be a recent stain. She turned back to Mallory. ‘Let me introduce you to my husband.’

The troll put up a hand with one pudgy finger extended as though she were flagging down a taxi or a waiter. From across the room, Harry Kipling’s body assumed the stance of attention and hurried toward her.

‘Do you have children?’ asked Angel Kipling.

‘No, I don’t. Do you?’

‘Oh, there’s Peter, but he’s away most of the year.’ The tall man entered the small circle of women. ‘Harry, this is Miss Mallory. She’s staying in the Rosens’ apartment while they’re out of town. I heard Hattie Rosen was going to the Mayo clinic for cancer. Is that true? Miss Mallory -Kathy, right?’

‘Just Mallory.’ And how did Angel Kipling know her first name? Perhaps Angel’s spies were as well paid as Betty Hyde’s.

Angel Kipling turned to the tall man with the dark hair and the cobalt eyes. ‘I was just telling Kathy about our building.’

Harry Kipling was more than good-looking. His shoulders were broad, giving him the aspect of an athlete – good baby-making material. What was he doing with the troll? If he had married for money, he could have done better.

‘I use your wife’s computer chips,’ said Mallory.

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know a computer chip from a potato chip. Investment is my line.’ His voice had a smoky quality, and it was seductive in the mellow notes.

Betty Hyde took Mallory’s arm and, smiling at the Kiplings, she led her away, saying, ‘You were staring too long at Harry. Don’t turn around. I think you’re his type. Of course, he’s a little old for my tastes. I never touch a man over thirty, and he’s almost forty. No, don’t turn around. I’m watching his wife. She’s drawing a bead on you. If looks were bullets, you’d be on the floor and bleeding from a hole between your pretty eyes.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Harry Kipling, catching up to them, sans Angel, who had gone back to terrorizing the blind man. ‘Didn’t you die on television the other night?’

‘Acting,’ said Mallory.

‘Oh, you’re an actress,’ said Kipling.

‘I thought you were a police officer,’ said Moss White, the talk show host, who had suddenly appeared at Kipling’s side. White was the stuff television executives swooned over. The mouth was full and sensual, and the softness carried into the liquid brown eyes. He was born for television.

‘So you’re an actress,’ said White. ‘God, they didn’t get anything right, did they? I wonder if we could discuss a guest appearance on my television show? It might be good for your career. Just a spot where you tell the viewing audience what it’s like to be declared dead by the media. They thought you were dead when they found you in the park, right?’

She turned slowly to Harry Kipling, who was arranging his features into a piano’s worth of white teeth. His face had a rugged quality that made Moss White seem almost feminine by comparison.

Betty was pulling her away again, and they were drifting across the wide floor toward Judge Emery Heart, the candidate for the Supreme Court nomination.

‘Moss White has an accent,’ said Mallory. ‘England or Australia?’

‘Indiana. He spent six weeks in London, four years ago. He’s been talking that way ever since. Moss is a quick study. I paid a hundred an hour for my accent, and it took me years.’

And now Mallory and Hyde were standing before an austere man who might have stepped out of an ad for middle-aged upscale clothing.

‘Judge Heart, may I present Mallory, the well-known television personality?’

The judge gave off the unmistakable odor of a good politician. The smile was instant, and the brown eyes were intent. ‘Forgive me, I don’t watch very much television, Miss Mallory. What sort of program do you have?’

‘I was only on for five minutes. I played a corpse.’

The smile faltered for a moment while the judge’s appraising eye was reassessing her importance in the scheme of things. Now the smile was back with full force. ‘Well, they say there are no small parts. This is my wife, Pansy.’

Mallory turned to the small, anxious woman at his side. And yes, there definitely were strings that tied her to her husband.

‘Isn’t that right, Pansy?’ the judge prompted. ‘No small parts?’

The woman nodded automatically, stiffly. She smiled too quickly, and the sudden display of teeth was startling in the context of her eyes. And yes, there was a bruise below a heavy layer of make-up.

‘Do you have family with you, Miss Mallory?’ asked Pansy.

‘Just Mallory. No, do you?’

‘Well, Rosie’s been gone for a while – oh, don’t get me started. I cry whenever I think of our little Rosie. She’s such an angel. Emery taught Rosie to shake hands. Didn’t you, dear? Rosie is such a clever little thing, isn’t she, Emery? And she can sit up and beg.’

‘Rosie is a dog,’ said Betty Hyde, after drawing Mallory away with explanations of introductions promised elsewhere.

‘I think I worked that out,’ said Mallory.

‘Now let me introduce you to our resident Pulitzer Prize winner.’ Betty Hyde paused by a bookcase to retrieve a pair of dark glasses and a cane. ‘He’s marvelous with a cane in his hands. I just thought I’d give him a sporting chance to run for it before Angel comes back.’

‘I wonder why he doesn’t deck her.’

‘Unfortunately, Eric was well brought up. I thought you might find him interesting. He’s one of my best sources. People think nothing of what they say in Eric’s presence. They seem to lump all handicaps into one, taking him for deaf and learning disabled too.’ Now Betty Hyde placed one hand gently on the man’s arm to announce herself. ‘Hello, Eric. I’d like you to meet Mallory, a new resident.’

‘How do you do,’ said Eric Franz.

The man’s voice was cultured, but in this crowd that told her very little about his background. The lack of cane and glasses had the opposite effect of aiding the blind Franz to blend in. Here was a man with eyes out of focus and staring at nothing.

Betty Hyde slipped the cane into one of his hands and the glasses into the other. In the tone of conspirators, he asked, ‘What’s between me and the door?’

‘Four people I never cared for. Hit them with the cane if you can manage it.’

Dark glasses in place, he made a courtly bow to Mallory, missing her general direction by two feet. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

He walked across the crowded floor with the confidence of a sighted man and hit no one on the way out. And there was time for Mallory to wonder if he wasn’t navigating entirely too well, and how he had been blinded, and how much insurance money had been involved, and if he had carried insurance on his dead wife.

‘He isn’t all the way blind, you know,’ said Betty. ‘He spots fakes and sharks in the dark – all the survival skill necessary to make it in New York City.’

Mallory knew Harry Kipling was watching her. She could see his dark hair in peripheral vision and saw his head turn as she crossed the room with Betty Hyde. She turned back to look at Kipling’s wife, who was following her husband’s every move. There was an expression of bitterness in the woman’s eyes. Now, all things flashed across the woman’s face – hate, anger, suspicion and hurt.

Not a happy marriage.

‘I know the lawyer who drew up their prenuptial agreement,’ said Betty Hyde, nodding to the Kiplings. ‘They have one child. The estate passes over the mother and goes to the son when he comes of age. I’ve only seen the boy once.’

‘I haven’t seen many children today.’

‘Most of the year, you won’t see any children at all. Children from this building are a new class of wealthy homeless people. They only come home from boarding school during the holidays. But if you really dislike your children, you can pay the school extra to keep them away from you for the entire year.’

‘Do the Hearts have children?’

‘Judge Heart has one child by another marriage, a daughter. I’ve never seen her in the flesh – only in publicity photos that ran in the Sunday supplement before the Senate hearings. I suspect they rented the girl for the photo sessions.’

‘Is there anything wrong with her?’

‘Like drug addiction, shoplifting? Oh, Mallory, that’s so common among this group, I wouldn’t stoop to writing about it.’

‘Could there be another reason why you never see her – something radically wrong with her?’

‘You mean something like a lockaway child, an embarrassment in the public eye? That’s an interesting angle. Leave it to me, dear. I’ll get back to you. It’s something you can only dig out of the right people. You won’t find it on any records, not with the money behind the judge.’

‘And the blind man? Eric…?’

‘Eric Franz? No, he and Annie never had any children, unless you count the guide dog. And the dog is such a sweet animal, it would be hard to believe it was Annie’s natural offspring.’

‘A bad marriage?’

‘It was no great love affair. Her idea of sport was to rearrange the furniture so he’d trip over it. And Eric used to tell their friends that Annie was feeding him dog food. Now that was his idea of a joke, but she probably did. She had a great sense of humor.’

He was a late visitor to the kitchen, and alone. He pounded his hand on the cutting board, and a bowl of fruit jumped and tilted over, rocking its apples to the table.

That bitch.

She knew what he had done and what he was. She knew things.

An apple was still rolling on the board, red as her lips were red. He held the ripe fruit in one hand and fumbled in the drawer for a paring knife. He stabbed the skin and watched the juice flow out. He stabbed it again and again. And now he sliced off the skin in slow peels, imagining the screams emanating from the mutilated fruit in his hand.

Bitch.

All women were bitches.

She was sitting in the Rosens’ library, facing her computer screen. It had taken five minutes to break into the guts of the building computer system – so much for security. Now she scrolled through the files on the tenants and made notes on access routes to bypass all but three computers.

She set up a dummy screen, and in the area of PERSONAL MESSAGES, she typed her own message, tailored only by the three different names, and otherwise the same. If her suspects didn’t check the bulletin board tonight, they would do so in the morning. Once the computer was accessed again, the fake board would disappear with no trace of tampering.

She picked through the building’s list of fax numbers. Two of the suspects had fax machines. That would come in handy. After a glance at the building schematic for the best route to the basement room where the phone lines were located, she picked up her flashlight and telephone kit.

Thirty minutes later, the elevator operator was carrying her up and out of the basement. The iron cage stopped at the lobby floor. A boy got on the elevator. He might be fourteen years old.

If Harry Kipling had played around, his wife had not. The boy had the same blue eyes and black hair, the same stocky build as the father. And now the boy was looking her up and down. His slow, widening smile was more of a leer.

She stared at the boy in the wordless disbelief of, You’re kidding, right?

The boy’s face went to a high red color, and he got off on the next floor, though it was not where he lived.

She wondered if womanizing might be genetic.

She continued on, watching the floors drop away. Looking up through the iron grille of the doors, she saw the tip of the white cane at the blind man’s feet. Eric Franz was standing by the elevator when the doors opened on the Rosens’ floor. As she stepped out of the elevator, he inclined his head. ‘Miss Mallory? I’ve been looking for you. Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just Mallory, right?’

‘Right,’ she said, after a hesitation.

‘It was your perfume,’ said Eric Franz in response to the question she was about to ask. He shrugged and smiled. ‘When you lose your sight, Nature gives you another gift, a heightened sense of awareness. Betty Hyde tells me you have an interest in the judge. So do I.’

‘Also professional? I work for a research group. I assume she told you that too.’

‘Yes, she did. But my interest in the judge is personal. I’m curious about an old incident. Being blind has its drawbacks, you know. There’s always missing information on some level. Take the day the medical examiner’s people showed up for the death of old Mrs Heart, the judge’s mother.’

‘Are you saying it wasn’t a natural death?’

‘Supposedly, it was a heart attack. Maybe it was, but I did wonder when the police detective came a half hour later. I was in the lobby when he said to the doorman -just the one word – “Homicide”.’

‘That wouldn’t make sense if she died of a heart attack.’

‘It is interesting, isn’t it? And now I expect you’ll want me to describe the police officer?’

Mallory smiled. Yeah, right.

‘He was tall and thin,’ and as though Franz had read the expression on her face, he hurried on to answer her next unasked question. ‘He made long strides. He knocked into me. I remember saying to him, “What are you – blind?” I never miss an opportunity to use that line. When he knocked into me there wasn’t much bulk to him. He apologized and, judging by his accent, he was originally from Brooklyn. Oh, and he wore too much aftershave. It was a very expensive brand. And his coat was made of leather.’

‘You mentioned the ME investigator.’

‘Oh, that man was already up there in the judge’s apartment. The Hearts’ family doctor was there, too. I was sitting in the lobby waiting for a friend who was detained in traffic. All of them trooped past me.’

The detective could only be Palanski. Palanski again. He was the closest thing NYPD had to an ambulance chaser.

The mouse crept silendy across the kitchen floor, mindful of the giant’s blue pajama legs. Its small eyes were filled with the reflected crumbs of a golden croissant. It snatched up the bread and scurried back to its hiding place beneath the refrigerator, where it sat feeding in the dark, insanely pleased with itself.

Charles watched the cream bubble over a blue gas flame and wondered how many days the mouse might have left in this world. Mrs Ortega had tried repeatedly to murder it with traps, to break its back with a broom, and to poison it. So far, the savvy city mouse had eluded her with supernatural skill, and gained Charles’s respect. But Mrs Ortega was also a mythic creature in her own right. However quick the mouse might be, Mrs Ortega was sure to be close behind it, broom held high.

The mouse was as good as dead.

The coffee dripped its rich brown juices down into the carafe. The heady aroma wafted high up to the fifteen-foot ceiling of the kitchen and beyond the appreciation of the mouse and the man.

Charles carried his coffee into the front room and set it down beside the bulky manuscript. He cleared his mind of all but the task at hand.

One thing became clear to him in the first twenty pages of text: if Amanda Bosch was the female character, she had no capacity for self-delusion. He ceased to speed read and slowed down to a human pace, for this was very human material – Amanda awaking from a bad dream and finding it there beside her in her bed.

The male character of the novel seemed not to know or care about the rules between men and women when they became lovers. The woman wondered why he came back time and again. He showed so little interest in the affair once the conquest of her had been made.

The excuses he gave to explain his infrequent need of her were insulting. Yet she did not end the affair, telling herself it was better to be touched by this cold and dispassionate man than never to be touched at all. This, she realized, must be what it was like to feel as a man did when he separated the act from the partner. She never asked about his wife, fearing that he had never felt anything for her either, nor for anyone. He could make love to a woman better than any man she had ever known, yet he did not like women.

When they were together, in warm weather and cold, the bedding would always be soaked with sex and sweat. They went swimming in the fluid off their bodies, plunging down and rising up in the water that streamed off their flesh. He would make her come first, insisting on it, manipulating her body. And when she came, he took a technician’s pride in this job well done. There was a perverse coldness in the very heat of the act.

He would be dressed when she came out of the bathroom, where she had been emptying out his sperm and flushing it away to the sea. She would watch his back as he walked to the door, reciting the litany of excuses, not turning to say goodbye, and never a kiss, as though to teach her not to set too much store by this attachment which was detachment.

She would strip the wet bedding off the mattress and lay it out to dry in the air – the heat of July the first time, and the winter now. It was better than nothing, she told herself, knowing it was not.

Charles looked away from the manuscript to a clear place on the wall beside his chair. Eidetic memory called up the photograph of Amanda Bosch which Riker had shown him only once. His vision was a perfect reproduction, even to the smudge and crease at the upper left-hand corner of the print. Her sad eyes stared at him. The expression was in the very shape of her eyes, a sadness fashioned in her mother’s womb.

He felt that he knew Amanda Bosch so well, he might have had a dialogue with her and predicted the answers to nearly every question.

If he only had her back to life for a minute’s work.

But only Malakhai could have pulled off that stunning trick – to blend the device of dialogues and the illusion of a woman with uncanny, unerring faithfulness to life.

He had often thought of Malakhai over the years, the elderly magician and his strange creation. What a mad idea.

And yet.

The manuscript did promise an exquisite problem in mental construction. It could be done. The manuscript’s narrative was no mere imitation of life, it was Amanda’s mind at work. With only the manuscript and the photograph, the old man could have done this. But the old magician was insane, and far from here in mind and body.

It was a lunatic idea, and he must let it go.

He turned back to the manuscript, but the face of Amanda would not leave him. Eidetic memory had called it up, and his mind’s eye could not send it away. It swam over the text. His thoughts ran strongly with Malakhai now, as he stared into Amanda’s eyes.

Oh, Malakhai, how do you like your last days, old man? Are you still in love with Louisa? Still crazy? And does that dead woman share your bed tonight?

He stared at the telephone. With one call he might have an audience with the greatest magician who ever lived. Cousin Max had said there was none better, cracked brain or no. What would he say to Malakhai? ‘Excuse me for presuming on family connections, but I have a small problem with a dead woman of my own. How do I go about becoming as mad as you are? Or am I half the way gone already?’

He shook his head slowly from side to side. This was no kind of dabble for an amateur in the art of illusion. He must not forget what the mental construction of a succubus had cost Malakhai, who was a master. He turned back to the manuscript. It was that time of night, he supposed, when mad ideas seemed the most wonderful.

He was an hour into his reading when a noise called his attention away from the pages. He was unaccustomed to company at this hour. He had forgotten about Nose. Now he watched the cat a scant few inches from his slippers.

The fact that Nose was declawed had hampered the animal only slightly. A small brown mouse had wriggled free of the clawless paws only to be captured more firmly in rows of sharp white teeth. Charles silently rooted for mouse. The cat’s teeth crunched down on small bones. The mouse cried. It was not a squeak; the tiny animal was crying.

The cat looked up at him, very Mallory in the color and the aspect of its eyes.

He reached down with the good intention of taking the mouse away to kill it quickly. The cat emitted a low warning growl, and the tail began to switch and threaten as his hand hovered near the mouse.

Back off, said the cat’s eyes. It’s my toy, not yours.

Angel Kipling gathered the quilted silk of her robe closer about her person, as though the room might be cold. It was not.

She sat before the computer, transfixed by what was written there in the personal message file. She could see her husband in the reflection of the dark screen behind the green letters. A tiny replica of Harry floated toward her from deep inside the box of glowing letters. Now she could feel the heat of him standing close behind her chair.

‘Angel, what’s wrong?’

‘Oh nothing, Harry.’ She continued to stare at the screen. At last, she said, ‘It’s a personal message. I think it must be for you.’

She rose from her chair and walked slowly in the direction of her own bedroom, where she slept alone. She turned to see him bending over the computer monitor, reading the message which filled the scrolling screen and repeated endlessly: YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR…

He only wanted to be where the cat was not feeding on the mouse. He unlocked the door of the office across the hall from his residence, and at the touch of a button, the reception room filled with soft colored light from antique shades of stained glass. The ancient woodwork of furniture and tall arched window frames gleamed and lustered.

He wandered into the back room which was Mallory’s office and another planet. The wall switch filled this room with harsh light, bright as day, and brought him rudely and solidly into the age of electronics. Machines gleamed and stared at him with dead gray terminal eyes. The beige metal knights of the New Order formed a row of perfect symmetry. A wall of manuals faced a wall of equipment, and no speck of dust dared alight in this place for fear of Mallory the Neat.

The corkboard which lined the rear wall was an even more ruthless departure from his own world of antiques and all things civilized. If murder be Mallory’s religion, the ghastly collage of this wall was a shrine to Amanda Bosch, a Madonna without a child.

When had Mallory accomplished all of this? Did she never sleep?

There were photographs of Amanda’s apartment, her person, and samples of her handwriting. Mallory’s precision in the neat placement of every item was overridden by the softer personality of Amanda. The shot to his heart was the picture of the old wooden cradle Amanda had purchased for her unborn child.

He looked at the autopsy photos and looked away. The crime site photos were more palatable. But every artifact of the death had become intensely personal, for now he knew this woman as few people could have known her in life.

The best of the death photos was centered on the board. The damage to the skin of her face he overlaid with a memory of the photo Riker had shown him when she posed as a living model. He superimposed the rosy live flesh over the white and the dead. When the living image lay over the death mask, it had the unsettling effect of the photographic woman suddenly opening her eyes.

His mind did a little dance and jog away from reality and then came back to it with caution, tripping all the way, falling now as the wound to the side of her head bled through the double image. He winced at the living expression juxtaposed with the clotted blood. The brown blazer she died in bore the drippings of the wound in a great bloody stain draped over one shoulder.

She was smiling. That bothered him. He found he could alter the smile to a more appropriate expression and still be true to the likeness. Now her facial arrangement seemed only friendly and slightly inquisitive. ‘What now?’ it asked. He held this new image of her for too long – so long that it would remain in memory for years.

He scanned the items of the apartment inventory and found a bottle of her perfume on the list. He found it again in the photograph of her bathroom counter. She wore the scent of roses. The perfume bottle bore the logo of an old and prestigious house. He remembered seeing a bottle of that scent among the sequined costumes and the make-up boxes in the cellar where the illusions of Maximillian Candle were stored.

Her husband was staring at the computer screen when she walked into the room.

Pansy Heart came up behind him softly. Noise of any kind irritated him. Over his shoulder she read the words, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR, YOU LIAR. The words filled out the entire screen. She looked up to the slot at the top of the screen, which labeled this file as a personal message.

He turned on her. His face was red with anger.

‘Don’t you ever sneak up behind me again!’

She backed away quickly, stilling the hand that rose almost of its own accord when it sensed an oncoming blow. But he only turned his face back to the screen. He pounded on the console and sent the books and papers flying. She knelt on the carpet and began to crawl on all fours, retrieving every fallen thing.

‘Get out of here!’ he yelled. ‘Get out!’

She backed away from him, still on her knees, then stumbling to a stand, now scurrying off down the hall. As she entered the bedroom, she was met by her own reflection hurrying toward her. She stopped before the full-length mirror and fit her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out loud.

When had she dropped so much weight?

With her hair pulled back the way he insisted she wear it, and with the new thinness of her body, and now that expression of a hunted animal, she had come to be a living likeness of Judge Emery Heart’s dead mother.

The braille printer scrolled out the message, filling sheet after sheet with two damning words.

Eric Franz sat very still, eyes fixed on a scene inside his head, a horror movie that never ended. A bright snowfall cascaded by the wide front window, large flakes illuminated by the building’s exterior lights. He turned from the window and ripped the scrolling sheets from the printer.

And now it snowed outside and inside as he created his own small storm of white flakes of paper being torn into ever smaller bits. He worked in the dark.

His hands were full when he returned to the front room of his apartment. Charles unloaded his small cache on the coffee table. Of the ingredients for making a woman, Riker’s contribution had been half a pack of cigarettes left behind this afternoon. According to the medical examiner’s report on Mallory’s wall, Amanda had been a smoker. There were no cigarettes on Mallory’s meticulous inventory. Amanda might have given up the habit when she knew she was pregnant, but her manuscript was filled with imagery of smoke, matches struck in the dark when she woke alone to hug her knees and rock her body and hold herself in her own arms through the long night into a morning of filled ashtrays and dust motes swirling in the blue smoke and the gray light.

Cousin Max’s contribution had been the bottle of rose scent from the old wardrobe box in the basement. Old Malakhai’s Louisa had gone everywhere in the scent of gardenias. Amanda Bosch had gone about in roses.

He called up Amanda’s face on a patch of wall, the eidetic images of life over death, which were fixed in memory.

Now what was Malakhai’s recipe!

He should have started with a massive head injury like the one Malakhai had sustained in the Korean conflict. Such a wound was definitely concomitant with all the most bizarre aberrations, such as the stigmata.

Well, if he had no physical trauma, he certainly had his own injuries to the heart and the mind. And perhaps this was Mallory’s contribution to the unholy stew.

Next on the list would be the years of Malakhai’s solitary confinement in a Korean prison cell, the terrible isolation he had suffered, emerging finally from that cell with a phantom Louisa.

Charles reflected on his own years of isolation. A sprawling university campus was as close to the six-foot square cell as he could come. He thought of his years of being the freak child among the tall students ten years his senior. And then came the years of isolation in the sheltering womb of Effrim Wilde’s think tank before making his escape into real life and his own consulting firm.

For most of his life, he had been a thing apart, an alien in a culture of socially adept people. All of this would nearly approximate Malakhai’s isolation from the world. But he needn’t go back so far in time. There was the ache of loneliness each time Mallory quit a room.

Another contribution, thank you, Mallory.

If anything should happen to Mallory, she could never be reconstructed as Malakhai had done for Louisa, as he would attempt to do for Amanda Bosch. No one had access to Mallory’s thoughts and feelings. Nothing must ever happen to her.

Oh, fool.

He had forgotten the music. The concerto had been a prime ingredient in Malakhai’s creation of Louisa. In childhood, it had been the trigger of his own imagination. His copy of the concerto had been worn to shreds. But the music was so much a part of him he had never thought to replace the recording. There was an old 78 vinyl record in the basement somewhere, as well as the old turntable for that period of technology.

Ah, but wait. If Amanda Bosch was to be a mental construct, perhaps he should practice first with the music. He had only heard the piece a thousand times in his life.

Now he had all the ingredients of Malakhai’s madness. The music, the scent, and the loneliness.

Yes, he could manage it.

He lit one of Riker’s cigarettes and set it to smoking in the ashtray. He concentrated on Amanda’s face, recreating the image he had composed in Mallory’s office, the pictures of life imposed on death. And now the eyes of Amanda Bosch stared into his own. Photographic memory assisted him with every detail of those sad eyes. She had only the flatness of any photograph he could call up, for he was no Malakhai. But even in this poor translation, she was compelling. The eyes communicated much of her, even in the poverty of only two dimensions. Mystery was there, and profound loss.

And now with an inner ear, he searched for the notes of Louisa’s Concerto.

He had been a child of seven the first time he heard the work performed as the overture to Malakhai’s performance of magic and the madness of dead Louisa. Cousin Max had taken him to the show as a treat for his birthday.

He could find many of his own features in his adult cousin, but Max had been a handsome translation: a nose not so great, and eyes with a more normal proportion of white to the colored bits.

He and Cousin Max had found the way to their seats by the glow of flickering candle footlights. The conductor’s baton was rising as they settled down to the red velvet chairs in the concert hall.

There had been no gentle beginning to Louisa’s Concerto. The instruments had welled up and rocked him with an explosion of opening chords, and the music rolled over him, powerful and eerie, then calmer, subsiding into echoes of music within the movement, metaphors of empty corridors. The music rose again to crash down upon him with a passion. And then, at the most unexpected moment, there was a lull, bleeding into an empty silence that caused angst among all the listeners. It was a vacant space which the ear strained to fill with echoes from the refrain – echoes that were not heard, except in the mind. It was a true vacuum, and the imagination of every independent listener had rushed to fill it with phantom notes to end the terrible, unbearable silence.

And then, the real music of solid instruments had resumed with an intake of breath which emanated from every quarter of the hall, relief from the audience that they were not lost. The music was back and flooding over them, making them all new again as though they had been cleansed, not by fire, nor by water, but by passage through the void.

The curtain rose and the music had begun again in accompaniment to the magic act. Malakhai had created Louisa on stage as a real presence. Then he sent her out into the audience, and here and there, a gasp was heard as one person and another imagined that Louisa had touched them. The scent of flowers was everywhere for a time, and then it was gone away into the dark of a child’s imagination.

And this time, in the void, the magic silence where the listeners placed the phantom notes, rather than endure the emptiness, there he had heard a woman screaming.

Long after the hall had emptied of its audience, and only the concerned stage manager remained, Cousin Max had sat in the front row, holding the hand of a badly frightened child.

Max had once told him the best of music kept to the natural rhythms of the heart. Louisa’s Concerto had been such a piece. He had the basic structure of it now, and he strained to find the subtle places where Louisa had placed the most delicate constructions. He sat still for an interval of time which might have been an hour or four, and finally, he had recreated the music, note for note, just as he had heard it that first night so long ago. And in that void Louisa’s genius had created within the music, he recreated the scream, just as he had heard it as a child, but not to the same effect. Now he welcomed the sound of another voice, even a scream, to fill the empty space he had come to recognize as loneliness.

He lit another cigarette to replace the one whose coal had gone dark. The smoke spiraled and wafted around his face without odor or sting to the eyes. He could only smell the roses.

Perhaps the perfume had been a mistake. The scent in the small gold bottle retrieved from the basement had the life span of all things with living ingredients. It filled his senses with the tainted aroma of decayed blooms which had died long before young Amanda was born.

The strains of the concerto were in his mind in vivid detail, interior music, corridors of sadness, and then -Amanda.

She was only the two dimensions of his called-up photographic image, but there was a palpable energy to the woman before him. Expressive eyes could create that illusion in any number of dimensions.

Now, in the manner of adding pinches of pepper and dashes of salt, he put the liquid and gleam in the soft blue eyes, and he gave her a luster of Mallory’s sun-gold hair which could thieve light from shadow.

Ready now.

He leaned forward. ‘Amanda?’

The photographic image bowed its head in response. It was more like a sheet of paper bending to force, an awkward attempt at animating the flat image of a dead woman.

‘Why were you killed, Amanda?’

She responded with Mallory’s voice. He created it for her with only the silk of Mallory and not the sarcasm, only the soft notes for Amanda, and with this voice Amanda said, ‘He lied to me.’

Her soft mouth had opened and closed in a succession of jerking photographic images – a poor approximation of life, a bad joke on God.

There was a wounding to the eyes, as though he had offended her. And he had. His eyes went away from her, and she died off to the side of peripheral vision.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said to no one, for there was no one there, not Amanda certainly, nor even her after-image any more. What a grotesque puppet show this had been. How pathetic was he.

He capped the perfume bottle, but the death of killed roses hung in the air. When he passed into the other rooms, it hung in memory, this smell of death. And when he was in his bed and most vulnerable, hands and feet bound by sleep, floating helpless in the dark – Amanda came back.

All the night long and all about his dreams, fresh young roses were being killed. Even the small, sleeping buds, still closed in tight balls of soft petals – they were also dying.