Mallory's Oracle (25 page)

“His family. His wife died a few years ago, and he missed her terribly. He had a daughter, though. She's very smart, and very beautiful. He was so proud of her, you could hear it in his voice. When I read about the funeral in the paper, I tried to call her. I called every Markowitz in the phone book. You have no idea how many there are. But I couldn't find her. That poor child must have been wild with grief.”

There was that catch in Mrs. Mancusi's voice to say that grief had come to this house, too.

“Brenda should be home soon. She goes to school during the day, and what do you think she does at night? She dances at the Metropolitan Opera. Louis got her the job. Said it was nothing; he'd just called in a favor. They have operas with grand ballroom scenes, and my Brenda dances. Sort of like an extra on a movie set. During the day, she dances at school. That's different, of course. She's studying modern dance and classical ballet.”

Mallory heard the front door open and close. A gust of cool air came into the room with young Helen who was called Brenda. Mrs. Mancusi made the introductions, and Brenda sank gracefully to a low hassock facing Mallory. She smiled shyly—her hands entwined under her chin, arms propped on elbows, accidental elegance in every movement.

“I really loved that old man,” said Brenda with a child's soft voice. “Did you know him? Did you work with him or something?”

“We were in the same department. I'm interested in the Brooklyn Dancing Academy. He never talked about it at work.”

“He came regular, like every single Tuesday night for maybe a year. He paid for lessons, but he was much better than any of the instructors. He taught me old fifties-style rock ‘n' roll. After work, he walked me home to my apartment.

“You know, I used to hate that job. Pushing old farts around the floor, fielding gropes. I hated it. I was going to quit the night Markowitz showed up. You might think an old man like that—he was pushing sixty—you might think it would look silly, he was so heavy and all, but no. He was amazing. He was wonderful.”

Mallory closed her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up as Mrs. Mancusi was pressing a plate of pie into her hands and lowering a coffee mug to the table by her chair. She was gone back to the kitchen before Mallory could thank her. She turned back to Brenda, who was digging a fork into her own pie.

“The nights he walked you home, did he ever talk about his work?”

“Mostly we talked about me, about going home and doing it right, going back to school, stuff like that. He got me to enroll in a dance school, even loaned me the money for my first semester. I started in September.”

“That's why you quit the Brooklyn Academy?”

“Well, we'd been after her to quit,” said Mrs. Mancusi, reappearing with a sugar bowl and creamer which she set down on the table by Mallory's mug. “We could well afford her tuition. But she wanted to buy a gift for Louis with her own money.”

“Mom and Dad insisted on paying him back for the tuition.” Brenda stood up and moved toward the doorway. “I'll show you what I got for him. Wait just a minute.”

Mrs. Mancusi sat down on the couch and leaned forward to whisper to Mallory, “She's hoping you'll give it to his daughter. This is very hard on Brenda. She's not over his death yet. Neither am I, really. I'm not good at death.”

Brenda was back, lightly tripping into the room. She danced up to Mallory with the pent-up energy that went with the territory of being seventeen years old, and put a small box into Mallory's hands. Mallory opened the box and pulled out a gold pocket watch.

Mallory pressed on the winder to open it. On the inside cover it was inscribed with the words
I love you
inside a heart that a child might have drawn. In music box fashion, the watch played the opening notes to a golden-oldie rock tune. It must have cost the girl a fortune to customize that music.

“His old pocket watch didn't work,” said Brenda. “He wore a wristwatch and carried this old broken watch around in his pocket. Funny, huh? So, do you think his daughter would take it? Would it be okay, do you think? Will you give it to Kathy?”

“I'm Kathy.”

A sound that might have come from a kitten escaped from deep inside Brenda Mancusi. She folded down to the floor by Mallory's feet and sat tailor fashion and silent. Her head hung low as she was trying to make sense of the world by tracing the intricate pattern of the rug with one finger, searching the weave for clues and not finding any. Failure was in her eyes when she looked up again. “Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.” Her voice was cracking. “And I'm not helping you, am I? I'm not helping you at all.”

“Yes you are. The watch is beautiful. He would have loved it. I love it. Thank you. It was odd, wasn't it, the way he carried two watches. Brenda, do you remember anything else that was odd, out of the ordinary?”

“He was an out of the ordinary man. God I loved him. At least I got to tell him that before he died.”

Mallory looked down to the watch as one hand closed tightly over it.

“I think I went on too long,” said Brenda. “I embarrassed him maybe. He got up and left in a hurry. That was the last time I ever saw him.”

A hurry? Markowitz never did hurry. He tended to mosey everywhere he went. He was a slow ambling man, easy in his steps, strolling along with an impossible grace for one so stout. Never did he do anything in a hurry.

“Do you remember the conversation? I know it was personal, but it might help me a little. What were you talking about just before he left?”

“I was trying to tell him what he meant to me. When I took that stupid job at the Brooklyn Dancing Academy, it was all I could get. It was that or hit the streets like my roommate. She was a prossie. But the dancing turned my life around. First I did it for the money, and then he taught me to love it, and then I couldn't live without it. I told him that. I told him it was like it was meant to happen, my meeting him, one thing leading to another. It was like that meeting put everything else in motion. And then he left. So fast. Does that help? I really want to help.”

“Yes, it does.”

No, it didn't. It only told her what she already knew, what she already had to work with. No, wait. It told her what Markowitz knew before he died. Maybe it was time to step to the side instead of following him into the hole he had died in.

“God, I loved that old man,” said Brenda, drained, exhausted, as though she had danced a hundred miles. She brought her hand up to cover her face. She cried.

And Mallory didn't.

 

It was a video extravaganza. The VCR sat in the far corner of the room playing the tape of Louis dancing with young Helen. And on the clear wall she projected slides of murder scenes, old ladies cut to pieces. Washes of blood flowed across the screen and covered Mallory's face with the ricochet of colored light from the projected images of death. Click: victim number one. And Chuck Berry sang to the dancers. Click: victim number two. The hard beat of the music was moving Mallory's head, manipulating the foot that tapped in rhythm.

She rigged the VCR to loop the tape for continuous play and the partners danced on through the night without tiring ever. Mallory focused on the slides, looking for something that would not jibe, something out of whack, not belonging. She knew it was there. Markowitz had seen it. It had nagged her awake, night after night. What was she missing?

No, that was a mistake. She could see that now. She was also stuck in the loop with the dancing Markowitz and young Helen. Markowitz, had he been there, would have told her to look beyond the parameters of what he knew. She had more to work with now than he had ever had.

The sky, what Margot could see of it, was the deep violet of the hours before sunrise. She watched the man saying his goodbyes to the security guard, and then pushing his way around the revolving door and into the street.

Oh, yes. He was the one.

She crawled out of the torn and discarded mattress box, out onto the sidewalk where the rats were still dancing, still brave while the dark lingered. One rat, bolder than the rest, ran across the back of her spread hand. She pulled it into her chest and then looked at it as though the rat might have left prints.

The man was walking slowly, heading back for the subway station. She stood up on two feet. And only now the rats took notice of her and left the sidewalk with slithering quickness. On feet not so fast as a rat, Margot followed after the man.

They advanced across the flat stones, quick jerking shapes of light and dark, and some were spotted with brown and gray, uniform only in their forward motion, and one of them was insane.

Feet of red and red rings around the bright mad eyes, he was otherwise coal black until he passed into a dapple of sun, and iridescent flecks of green shimmered in the light. The feathers of his head were not smoothed back and rounded. Spiky they were, and dirty, as though a great fear had put them that way, and the fear had lasted such a long time, a season or more, and the dirt of no bathing or rain had pomaded them into stick-out fright, though the bird was long past fear now and all the way crazy. No fear of the human foot. A pedestrian waded through the flock, which parted for her in a wave, all but the crazy one, and it was kicked, startling the pedestrian more than the bird.

The woman shrieked and stiff-walked down Seventh Avenue. The insane pigeon followed after her, listing to one side with some damage from the kick, until he forgot his purpose.

Margot Siddon did not know how many hours she had gone without sleep. She followed the man down St. Lukes Place heading toward Seventh Avenue under a slow-brightening sky. Streetlamps still glowed and cast her shadow slipping down into the underground. Fluorescent lights washed her face to white as she passed through the turnstile. The station was deserted at this hour but for the two of them. To be sure of this, she walked the length of the platform, checking behind each thick post.

By all the laws that governed the universe and New York City, there should be a cop here at this moment when she least wanted to see one. Apparently, even this ancient rule had crumbled in the general breakdown of law and order. They were alone.

She walked toward him, only wanting to see his eyes one more time.

He turned when she touched his sleeve. As he shook off her dirty hand, the last sound he heard was the click. He was a good New Yorker, he knew what that sound must be, and he was given part of a second, that much time to be afraid, before she slipped eight inches of steel into his ribs. By his eyes, he was surprised to be falling, dying, with no time left to ask why.

 

Edith Candle woke in the ghostly gray hours before sunrise. Her bare feet touched to the carpet as she pulled a woolen robe around her shoulders and plotted out the day's schedule between her bed and the bathroom. She was drawing her bathwater and had not yet looked into the kitchen. On the far wall of that room, just above the sink, a childish scrawl spread in a thick line of lipstick: THE PALADIN WILL DIE.

 

He approached the park with a small anxiety. More than thirty years had passed since he had last been here. To him it would always be a place of menace. All memories fashioned at the level of a child's eye were unreliable in scale, but Gramercy Park was otherwise unchanged. And so perfect was the memory of his sixth birthday party, Charles Butler winced.

Edith had invited all the children in the square to that party, all the children who'd had nothing to do with him on previous visits. And he made no new friends that afternoon, but had once or twice been the cause of uproarious laughter which made him want to sink into the earth, to be anywhere but there.

While Cousin Max had loomed over the children, making objects go up in flames and birds go up in flight, six-year-old Charles had shrunk as much as possible, scrunching down in his chair, aiming for invisibility. For the magic show's grand finale, Max had given Charles his fondest wish. First, he made the boy the center of attention, and then, mercifully, Max made him disappear, something Charles's large nose had hitherto made impossible in any company of children.

After the show was over, Charles had reappeared against his will. The children with smaller noses and more modest brains had surrounded him and demanded to know how the trick was done. But he was honor bound not to betray Max's secrets. In slow steps, and of one mind, the children were closing the ranks of small menacing bodies while Edith and Max were packing up the magic act and trundling boxes and bags through the gates, across the street and back into the house. He was alone in the circle of faces all filled with hate, small eyes bright with anger.

The first punch to his stomach put him into shock, so startling it was to be hurt for no reason he could understand. He covered his stomach to protect it from the next blow, and he was kicked from behind. An open hand shot out to slap his face, and he thwarted it with raised arms. The same hand came back to him again as a fist in the side.