Mallory's Oracle (21 page)

“I don't drive.”

“What sort of identification do you use when you write checks to merchants?”

“I don't write checks. I don't have a damn checking account.”

Now that had to be a lie. He knew for a fact that everyone on the planet had a checking account. “I can hardly give you money if you can't properly identify yourself. You can see that.”

And yes, she could see that apparently, for she was rising out of the chair, dragging her body up to a stand. The long dress hung on her bones. The floppy brocade vest could not hide the thinness of her arms and face. Did she never eat? he wondered.

She was moving slowly toward the grand staircase leading down to the main floor. It had crossed his mind to give the creature some change from his own pocket, but he had thought better of it. Such a gesture might have led to a scene.

While he watched Margot Siddon's slow progress down the wide steps, he had a few spare minutes to remember he had once played lead guitar in a sixties rock band. In his wife of twenty-five years, he could find traces of the hippy girl who had sung with the band and starved with the band. But who was this unmusical man who had just given the bum's rush to a woman who was certainly hungry?

He toyed with a paper clip as Margot Siddon turned at the base of the marble steps and moved, unsteady, across the wide expanse of gilded, wasted space, heading for the door. When she slipped and fell to the marble floor, he dropped his paper clip and dropped his eyes.

Riker kept a good distance from the glass wall of the office. He checked the exits for a fast retreat should Commissioner Beale look his way and call him in to be shot alongside Coffey. The gray little man was waving a newspaper in Coffey's face. Riker knew the headline by heart: “Invisible Man Eludes NYPD.”

When the case was eight weeks old, when Markowitz was only dead forty-eight hours, it was Chief of Detectives Blakely who had told Beale the case might break at any moment. Six weeks had gone by and now Blakely rested his flabby haunch on the desk, smoked his cigar and left Coffey to fend for himself.

Coffey was standing and looking down on Beale. Riker could have told him that Blakely's was the best position. Sitting on his ass, Blakely didn't tower over the commissioner. Coffey was entirely too tall to be a good political animal in Beale's regime. And no one had taught Coffey the ingratiating smile, the prelude to bending over and begging to be kicked. The man just stood there, rock solid, and in that moment, Riker came near to liking him.

Two uniformed officers joined Riker by the watercooler, feigning thirst and watching the show.

Maybe it was time to show support for Coffey, to take his side against the commissioner. Yeah, it was time. Riker pulled out his wallet and said to the uniformed officers, “I got five dollars says Coffey's still standing when the commissioner leaves.”

 

Margot Siddon plucked a paper cup from a trash can and held it up to a man with a tear in his sweatshirt who clinked in a dime and a quarter. Twenty minutes later, she was pushing change through a slot and asking a clerk for a subway token. She fell asleep on the train and missed her stop.

After a fifteen-block walk from the subway to her apartment, she stood outside her door with the sick realization that she had no keys. They must have rolled out of her pocket when she slid to the floor of the bank's lobby. She banged on the door of the empty apartment, crying against the wood, sinking to the hallway tiles. Her birth certificate was in there, somewhere in that pile of rubbish, and she could not get at it. She kicked the door with all the strength she had left.

Wait. The mailbox.

Her mail would identify her by name and address. But her box key was on the same lost ring with her apartment key. She pulled a switchblade knife from her pocket and danced down the steps to the mailboxes. She pried the box open, and pulled out one piece of junk mail and a utility bill.

 

Mallory squinted. Strong morning light poured through the long bank of tall windows, illuminating each cigarette burn on the red velvet couch. At each end of the couch sat unacquainted women who were well past a certain age, yet both sported rouge and lipstick to do a fire engine proud. An old man stood at the receptionist's desk slowly counting out dollar bills pulled from a plastic money clip which bore a dry cleaner's logo. The receptionist nodded, rippling four chins each time a dollar was plumped down on the desk in front of her.

The courtly Mr. Esteban was bending low to insert a videotape into the VCR. Mallory stared at a gray quarter inch on each side of the part in his hair, all that was not dulled with black dye.

“We tape all the students,” he was saying, “every two weeks, so they can see their improvement. Usually we erase them, but not this one. No, this one is a keeper. He was a wonderful dancer, a natural.” Hunched over the machine and with his nose an inch from the screen, Mr. Esteban watched the test numbers flash by on the monitor in advance of the film. “One moment and you will see.”

And she did see. There was gray-haired, overweight Markowitz and a slender young dancing partner some distance from the camera. The young woman in the red dress and dancing slippers was her own age or younger, familiar and not. As the oddly matched couple danced closer to the camera, Mallory sucked in her breath.

It was Helen Markowitz.

Helen was no longer pudgy and homey, no matron in this incarnation. She was three decades younger, an impossible teenage Helen with spiked hair and a ring in her nose.

Well, why not, thought Mallory, sinking down to a tattered red velvet chair. This had been a week for ghosts.

Rabbi Kaplan had told the truth. Markowitz was a wonderful dancer, lifting his partner high in the air to the music of Chuck Berry, spinning her out and twirling her back to his side. He was rocking and rolling. Illusion created of grace and fluid motion stole the years away until it was a young Louis dancing with the teenage Helen.

“What's the girl's name?”

“Brenda Mancusi.”

“Where is she?”

“She doesn't work here anymore. She never came back after we heard the news about our Mr. Markowitz.”

“I need her phone number, her address and a copy of that tape.”

 

He hadn't expected to see her again, yet here she was, holding two envelopes in her grimy fist, thrusting them into his face, screaming, “Look, look!”

He took the envelopes gingerly in two fingers, wondering if lice might be transferred in this manner, and loathing himself for wondering. He nodded as he read the name appearing on the utility bill.

“This only tells me that you and Samantha Siddon have the same last name.”

“I want my—”

“I did try to contact her attorney after you left the bank. He's in Europe. There's no number where he can be reached. His partner has agreed to look into the matter and get back to me.”

“Sure. That bastard probably left town with all my money.”

“I can assure you the money is safe in Mrs. Siddon's accounts. But those accounts will remain frozen until the bank receives instructions from the executor. And then, we'll need a picture ID. A passport or a—”

“I need money, you son of a bitch. You know what I got in my pockets? This!”

She pulled her deep vest pockets inside out. Lint-coated pennies and nickels spilled over his desk, followed by a slow-rolling moist wad of tissue, and last, the knife came tumbling out and landed in the center of his blotter. It was a switchblade.

She hadn't threatened him. He did realize it had only fallen out with the other contents of her pockets, the tissue and the coins. But a knife. Perhaps it had simply jarred him to see a knife in a bank, a weapon of any kind. Perhaps that was why he had pressed the silent alarm. He wasn't certain.

Now they both stared down at the knife as two paunchy gray-haired security guards were charging up the stairs from the lobby, their faces going red with the unaccustomed exertion.

His eyes and hers locked together in mutual disbelief.

She grabbed up the knife in one hand and ran down the stairs, passing between the old men, who reached out simultaneously and grasped the air she had passed through. They turned to follow after her as she ran the length of the lobby. The guards were so slow she had time to stumble, to collide with a patron, to burst into angry tears and beat them to the door.

 

“No,” said Mallory. “She's only expecting me. It would've queered the deal if Redwing ran a background check on you. I'm passing you off as a friend of the family.”

“Not a good idea,” said Edith Candle. “It's truth, bits and pieces of truth, that makes any scam work. An outright lie will work against you. If this woman's any good at all, she'll know.”

“We're doing it my way.”

The door was opened by a woman in a black dress and a crisp white apron. Mallory gave her name and they were ushered into the foyer. Floating on a rich sea of mingled perfumes were the sounds of teacups clinking in saucers and a gentle Chopin étude. The maid turned and hurried into the large room which opened off this small holding pen for suspicious callers. From the foyer, Mallory could hear voices: melodious laughter and high, twittering speech. The far wall was a bank of sun-bright windows. Riding below the perfume was the unaired smell of an invalid's room.

The maid was raising a sash to the noises of the street. And by that cacophony of noise, Mallory knew this could not be a parkside window. A driver was leaning on his car horn, something which was not done in the square by tacit agreement of every living and rolling thing that passed through. And on a near street, a siren careened down the block. It must have been stopped in traffic, because now the siren switched to the bleating mode, whining to get this show on the road. And inside the apartment, the old women gathered like birds on a fence, tensely perched on the furniture while the table was being set up and chairs were brought in. Women with hennaed hair chatted with blue-haired women, and all about the room was the air of things to come.

A matron in her early seventies was walking toward the foyer, smiling, her neck choked in pearls. Her head was disproportionately small, a white-haired marble atop a thick-waisted hourglass.

“Miss Mallory? I'm Fabia Penworth, Marion's mother. I'm so glad you could come, my dear. Oh, but who is this?” She stared down at Edith Candle, and then back to Mallory. “This won't do. You were supposed to come alone, dear. Redwing never sees anyone without advance notice.” She leaned closer and said in a stage whisper, “I've told her all about your father and his unfortunate death. She says the easiest spirit to reach is one who dies by violence. They want to contact us, they want truth to out.” She suddenly remembered the annoying detail of Edith. “But this won't do.”

Mallory said, “This is an old friend—”

“How do you do,” said Edith, stepping forward. “I'm Edith Candle. Perhaps Miss Whitman or Mrs. Gaynor mentioned me to you. I believe you all used the same broker at one time or another.”

“Why, of course. Oh, how do you do.” The woman was showing all of her expensive bridgework to Edith. “Well, I'm honored, really honored. I never expected this. I don't see any problem at all, really. I'm sure Redwing will be delighted to meet you, someone of your stature in the spiritual community.”

After being led into the main room and introduced to the medium, Mallory couldn't tell if Redwing was delighted or not. The medium's large, padded armchair had taken on the aspect of a throne. Imperial Redwing was dressed in Day-Glo colors, her head wound with a scarf of Indian pattern. The jewelry must weigh ten pounds, by Mallory's rapid estimate, all bangle bracelets and golden chains. Her feet were encased in tiny gold lame sandals with delicate straps. Her eyes squinted into slits as one plump hand rose in the air to the level of Edith Candle's lips, as though she expected it to be kissed. Redwing did not rise for the older woman.

Edith took Redwing's proffered hand in her own arthritic one. Mallory detected a wince of pain. Perhaps any pressure on Edith's inflamed joints might cause that, perhaps not. And now Redwing's eyes were open wide, too sharp, too bright.

The boy standing behind the armchair must belong to Redwing. Mallory assessed the genes of all races, rejumbled in this new combination: The child's eyes were yellow, the skin was golden brown and the hair somewhat kinky. The facial features were Caucasian. Though the eyes slanted up, the Asian folds were missing in this new translation of chromosomes. The boy's expression was dulled. Had he been drugged?

When the introductions were done and Redwing turned away, ending the audience, Mallory pulled Edith Candle to the only unpopulated corner of the room.