‘Yeah, and I think you’re right about consolidating the cases, but Coffey’s never gonna buy that. The boss figures our chances are better if we work the fresh hangings. And he’d go nuts if he knew I was here.’Janos’s implication was clear: there would be no more covert meetings. He turned to the grimy window of the Hole in the Wall Theater. ‘An actor in Sparrow’s play tipped us off to this place. They’re running a videotape of her dress rehearsal.’
A handmade poster taped to the window had retitled Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters as The Hanging Hooker. Alongside the poster was the attendant publicity. Front-page stories of New York tabloids had also given star billing to the comatose prostitute.
You’re famous, Sparrow. You made it.
And now, if only the whore would finish this dragged-out affair of her dying.
After Janos had walked back to his car, she paid the three-dollar admission at the door, then passed through a curtain to enter a dark room that stank of smoke and sweat. There were chairs for twenty, but only two other patrons watched the television monitor. One of the men rose from his chair, muttering, ‘Rip off.’ He was obviously disappointed that The Hanging Hooker was actually a classical play -no nudity and nothing lewd. The second man followed him out of the room, equally offended, leaving the detective to watch the video alone.
Only the keenest observer would have noticed the change in Mallory as her young face took on the conviction of a stubborn child. She sat very still, eyes fixed on the screen, a window she watched with great expectation – waiting for Sparrow. She had been waiting for years.
An elderly crone appeared on stage in company with a young actress, a beautiful girl so far removed from the drooling, eye-rolling dementia of the coma patient. The voice that filtered through Mallory’s shock was familiar and not.
‘Nothing ever happens the way we want it to – ’
Sparrow was dressed in the clothes she had worn to her hanging. The southern accent had been erased, and a gifted surgeon had made her too young for the part of Olga. Years had passed since Mallory had last checked up on Sparrow, and now she saw another change in this woman, something surgery could not provide. The whore was lit from within – fresh fire. Even Sparrow’s eyes had made a comeback, clear and bright, seeing the world for the first time – all over again, an encore of youth. This was what she had looked like on the night they first met.
And how old was I, Sparrow? Eight? Nine?
It was winter then, a sudden storm, and a feverish young Kathy Mallory had crawled into the last remaining telephone booth in New York City, the only one with a door that she could close against the stinging snow. She had fed money into the coin slots, a daily habit and the only constant of a childhood on the streets.
More than a thousand miles away and years away, a dying woman had written a telephone number on the little girl’s palm. All but the last four digits had been smudged off her hand before that terrible day had ended. Kathy continued to obey long after her mother had died. Though she had forgotten the reason for these telephone calls, she continued making up numbers to replace the three that were missing. Whenever she heard a feminine voice on the line, the child would become inexplicably hopeful and say the ritual words, It’s Kathy. I’m lost.
None of the startled women on the receiving end of these calls had known who she was, thus giving themselves away as impostors. That night, one of them had cried into the telephone, ‘Won’t you tell me who you are? How can I – ’
Click. And another connection was severed, another woman left in tears, and hope died. The child had become an addict of hope, and the best part of this game was that she could get it back again every day, any time she wanted it.
The fever had given way to violent chills. Her small hands were shaking as she tried her last coins, her last call, saying, ‘It’s Kathy. I’m lost.’
Out of a thousand women, only Sparrow had responded, ‘Where are you, baby? I’ll come get you.’ This had been said with the lilt of the Southland – so like a dead mother’s voice.
Anticipation had kept Kathy from giving into sleep and death while she waited for the Southerner to come and find her. The little girl’s eyes had begun to close when she saw a shadow on the other side of the fogged glass. It was coming for her, moving quickly, flying through the storm. The door opened, and a woman’s arms reached into the telephone booth to gather up the shivering child, warming Kathy with fake fur and perfumed body heat.
While the delirium lasted, the little girl believed that her dead mother had come to carry her home, and all that was lost had been restored. The night of the snowstorm, pressed up against the warm breast of a whore, was the happiest time that Kathy Mallory had ever known.
‘ – our life is not over yet,’ said the actress on the screen.
The summer heat was stifling in the small theater, yet the young detective remained in her seat after the play was done. Head bowed, she sat in absolute darkness, awaiting the video’s next run – so she could continue to nurse her deep hatred of Sparrow.
Riker had already made a case for combining the investigations, and he had lost. Mallory should have handled this, but she had failed to show, and this worried him. Coming late to any appointment was outside the pathology of a punctuality freak.
She was still wearing dark glasses when she entered Jack Coffey’s private office and pulled up a chair without waiting for an invitation to sit down. Riker smiled in the belief that she had picked up this bad habit from him.
Lieutenant Coffey leaned back in his chair, only glancing at his wristwatch to remind Mallory that she was late. ‘Riker tells me the scarecrow has a type – stage-struck blondes.’
‘Hmm. His victims were stand-ins for Natalie Homer.’ Mallory seemed almost bored as she leaned toward the stack of newspapers at the edge of the desk. ‘Her case is the key to the scarecrow’s hangings.’
The lieutenant was not rising to this bait, but it was early in the game, only round one by Riker’s reckoning. The boss kept his silence, expecting Mallory to elaborate. She picked up a newspaper, cast it aside after a minute, and opened another. After folding back a page, she glanced at Coffey, her eyebrows arching to ask him why he kept her waiting.
‘The scarecrow is a copycat, and a bad one,’ said the lieutenant. ‘He was nowhere near Natalie Homer’s crime scene.’
Did that sound defensive? Riker thought so.
‘And I say he was there.’ Mallory lowered her sunglasses to scan a column of newsprint that interested her more.
‘Too many things don’t fit,’ said Coffey, ‘all those candles, the wrong noose. I know this perp never saw that crime scene.’
‘I would’ve thought just the opposite,’ said a friendly voice, and Coffey spun his chair around to stare at the tall man whose head barely cleared the top of the door frame. Misunderstanding the look of surprise, Charles Butler glanced at his watch, saying, ‘Oh, sorry. I’m too early?’
The lieutenant would be wondering why a civilian had been invited to the briefing. Riker gave up on the idea of damage control and braced himself for a shouting match. It was predictable that Coffey would do all the yelling. Mallory would sit back and let the man knock himself out. And perhaps then she would drop the bomb of Lieutenant Loman’s presence on Natalie Homer’s crime scene.
There were no free chairs, and Charles Butler was always self-conscious about inadvertently dwarfing people and their furniture. He leaned against the glass wall, believing this would make him smaller and more polite. ‘The inconsistencies make sense to me.’
The lieutenant was forcing a smile. ‘So you’re siding with Mallory?’