When the running gunman was out of sight, Mallory holstered her revolver and turned back to the old don. “Was that one of your hotshot bodyguards?”
Angry now, the don reached for the car phone. “That punk is a dead man.”
Mallory grabbed his wrist. It took very little effort to restrain him. “Who are you going to call? Another bodyguard? One of your nephew’s kids?” She sat quietly for all the time it took him to grasp this simple thing-he was the dead man.
She opened the door and stepped out of the car. “Might be smarter to call a cab and head for the airport.” She closed the door slowly, saying, “Don’t light in any one place for too long. You know the drill, old man.”
Mallory crossed the street to the condominium. Frank the doorman was smiling as he held the door open. “Two cops came by, miss.” He followed her into the lobby. “They showed me their badges and told me to let them into your apartment.” He pushed the button to fetch her an elevator. “But they didn’t have a warrant, so I told them to go screw themselves into the ground. I hope I did the right thing.”
She put two twenty-dollar bills into his coat pocket to tell him he had done exactly the right thing.
The elevator doors opened, and she looked up to the mirror mounted high on the back wall. It gave her a compressed view of an empty interior. When she stepped off the elevator at her floor, she had her revolver out of the holster. The gun preceded her into the apartment. After checking all the rooms and closets, she sat down on the couch and rifled her tote bag for the cellular phone.
It was gone. But where-
She checked her watch again. Now she reached over to the standard telephone on the end table and dialed Father Brenner’s number.
Where is the damn cellular?
While she talked to the priest, she searched the drawer of the table-a futile activity. Mrs. Ortega, world’s foremost cleaning woman, had put the apartment back in order after the robbery. So what were the odds that a single item would be out of place? Where had she lost the damn cellular phone?
She finished her instructions to Father Brenner. “I want you to say a mass for her.”
“Consider it done, Kathy. What was your mother’s name?”
“You don’t need her name. When you talk about her, just say she was a woman who was brutally murdered. And leave me out of it.”
She glanced at the messages accumulated on her answering machine.
“Kathy?”
“That’s all you get. It’s enough, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’ll say the mass tomorrow.”
“No, do it tonight, I need it tonight.”
“All right, tonight it is. So you’re not looking for spiritual comfort for yourself?”
“No. You can save that routine for the believers, the suckers.”
“Are you still lighting the candles, Kathy?”
Mallory hung up the phone.
She emptied the tote bag on the coffee table, and spread the files and notebooks-not here. The last time she had seen the cellular phone it was in this bag, wasn’t it? No, wait. She remembered sliding it into the pocket of her blazer last night. She reached out for the desk phone, ignored the pulsing light of the messages waiting, and pushed the buttons for the number of her cellular phone.
“Hello?”
The voice was Andrew’s. So she had left it behind on the roof. “Hello, Andrew. How are you?”
“Oh, Mallory. I was hoping you might call. Shall I give you your messages?”
“Sure.”
“You have one from Jack Coffey. He says the chief’s boys are after you with orders to bring you in. Oh, and J. L. Quinn called and asked for you. But he didn’t leave a message.”
“Did Quinn say anything?”
“Well, we did have a lovely chat. But there’s no message. He said he’d probably catch up with you later in the day.”
“Thank you, Andrew.”
Picking up a spare phone from her office was next on her list of things to do. It was shaping up to be a busy day. She pulled out her notebook and ticked off what she would need from her apartment.
The doorman called on the house phone to announce J. L. Quinn. She should tell Frank to turn the man away. Time was precious, and she had already stayed here too long. What could Quinn want now? Perhaps his long chat with Andrew had raised a few questions.
“Send him up, Frank.”
When she admitted Quinn to her apartment, he was wearing his courtesy smile. She was learning to categorize his facial expressions, discovering small variations in the mask. He casually examined the surroundings, as if he were looking for something.
She remained standing and folded her arms to let him know he would not be staying long. When he turned to face her, his smile was unaltered, but his eyebrows were raised, and she knew he was going to apologize.
“Sorry to drop by without calling first, but if you recall, the only number you gave me was for the cellular phone, and it seems that Andrew Bliss has that.”
He glanced at the long leather couch, probably waiting for an invitation to sit down. She ignored the subtlety.
“So, Quinn, I understand you had a long talk with Andrew.”
“Yes, he told me he made a confession to a green-eyed angel. I was surprised you hadn’t arrested him.”
“Andrew’s idea of confession is my idea of a rambling drunk. I think we got as far as the sins of puberty. What do you want, Quinn?”
He was staring at the walls, bare but for the single clock, a piece of minimal design with dots in place of numerals. The furnishings of her apartment were expensive, and stark. There should be nothing here to give away any shading of her personality. But by the faint nod of his head, she knew these environs were what he had expected to find; that much was in his face when he turned back to her.
“Mallory, I wonder if you’d have dinner with me tomorrow night. And perhaps the theater.”
She turned away from him and covertly scanned her front room as though for the first time. What did Quinn see in this place? Perhaps it was what he did not see: no personal items to connect her to another human being, no dust, nothing out of place, and no wall hanging to indicate an interest in anything but time. The large clock dominated the space. The furniture was arranged in precision symmetry.
And now she understood.
This extreme order had not created the intended false front of a guarded personality-the real effect was all too personal, next to naked exposure. It was an effort to shake off the feeling of violation.
“I’m free tomorrow,” she said. “Would you like to do something a little more exciting than dinner and the theater?”
“Name it and it’s yours.” One splayed hand indicated that his offer included the whole earth. “Anything.”
“A fencing match.”
His smile was back, but only for a moment. “So Charles told you about the scar.” He walked over to the couch and ran his hand over the back of it, approving the quality of the leather, and perhaps wondering how she had managed it on a cop’s salary. “A fencing match. Well, that does sound more diverting.”
She sat down in a chair and gestured to the couch. “Do you still keep your hand in? You have a membership at a fencing club?”
“Yes, on both counts.” He settled into the plush leather cushions and crossed his legs. “What’s your background, Mallory?”
“One semester of fencing classes at school, but I think I can take you.”
It was predictable that he would not smile at this. He would never be rude enough to suggest that she was blowing smoke.
“The agility of youth goes a long way, but it won’t take you all the way. Don’t count on an easy win.”
“I can beat you. I’m willing to place a bet on it.”
He shook his head. “I won’t do money with you.”
“Not money. I was thinking along the lines of anything I want, against anything you want.”
“Those are outrageously high stakes, Mallory. I won’t take advantage of you. No bet.”