“Don’t I just love this town?” Riker said this as much to himself as to Charles. “But now I’ll tell you what really scares me. Mallory fits into this system so beautifully. She plays corruption like a piano. She did make Blakely back off of Coffey. Not only that, but the paperwork for his promotion is in the hopper. He’ll make captain before the month is out. You gotta wonder what she had on Blakely to pull that off.”
“You don’t know? But the payoff money in the-”
“Oh, it’s an open secret that Blakely is a dirty cop. Naw, she made her deal with him and she stuck by it. She won’t share the details. Coffey thinks it’s a mob connection, but only Mallory knows for sure. I’d bet even money she could get the dirt on any poor bastard that gets in her way. I feel sorry for Quinn if he’s holding out on her.”
“She won’t get any dirt on Quinn.”
“She can get anybody, Charles.”
“Quinn is an honorable man. His wealth comes from inheritance and a clever way with stock manipulation. He doesn’t steal, cheat or lie. I know this man.”
“Look, if you won’t bet that Mallory can stick him with a sword, I’ll bet you that Quinn is more like Mallory than you know.”
“No bet. I believe there is a sense of honor in Mallory. It’s a bit twisted but-”
“Charles, that’s not exactly what I meant, but never mind.”
“No, please go on.”
“Twelve years ago, Quinn pulled political strings to keep the police away from the family during the murder investigation.”
“But those people were falling apart, they couldn’t take any more.”
“Everybody gets ripped up in a murder investigation. There’s a lot of breakage, but it’s necessary. We couldn’t do the job with Quinn’s interference. People in high places owed him favors and he called them in. He obstructed a homicide investigation-that’s a major crime, and you’ve gotta have a lot of dirt on the right people to pull it off. That’s why Markowitz brought Quinn into the case and made him part of it. You see how it works?”
Charles shook his head. “The correct-”
“The correct procedure would have been for Markowitz to lose his job slapping Quinn with a charge of obstruction-Quinn and every politician he knew. So instead, the old man made use of Quinn and his connections. Clever? Well, Mallory learned a lot from her old man. The kid turned out to be a natural. You know, she works the weasels better than Markowitz ever did. It cost her one house to learn how far she could go, but she’s the new master.”
Riker said his good night as he stood up. He ambled off toward the roof door. Then he stopped and turned to face Charles. “The kid’s all grown up now. I feel like I’m out of a job.”
Charles smiled. Riker did not.
For another hour, Charles continued to sit on the roof with a blanket around his shoulders, staring at the lunatic on the roof of Bloomingdale’s. He looked at his watch. The minute hand was coming up on the hour when Mallory would relieve him, and she was never late.
“Hello, Mallory.” He said this to the night air, for he had not heard her open the door, nor any footsteps. He had absolutely no sense of her presence.
“So, how’s it going, Charles?” She settled a grocery bag on the ground beside him.
Did she seem disappointed that he hadn’t given her a chance to sneak up and frighten him? Yes, she did, and he was delighted. Mallory had a strange and unsettling sense of gamesmanship, but he was definitely getting the hang of it.
He lowered his binoculars. “I think Andrew might be dying.”
She took the binoculars from his hand and stared at the thin figure of Andrew Bliss lying on the down quilts, barely moving anymore. “No, he’s okay. I just saw him twitch. Good night, Charles. Thanks for the help.”
And now he pressed his luck. “You know this man is obviously not in his right mind.”
“He’s hiding out from a killer. That sounds like a pretty sane game plan to me.”
“Hiding out on the roof of Bloomingdale’s with full media coverage from dawn to dusk? This is hiding? This is sane?”
Oh, right.
It was, now that he thought about it, and smart too. And after dark, Andrew could be assured of a hundred voyeurs among the thousand windows that looked down on the roof. If they could count on a sane killer, and Mallory certainly did, then who would be fool enough to harm the man without cover? Yet Charles could not shake the idea that this poor lunatic was Mallory’s idea of a good piece of lean meat, a bit of bait for a serial killer.
It was with some reservation that he made his way across the roof and left a helpless fellow human in the hands of Mallory. And now another thought occurred to him as he descended the stairs: She would always view civilians as a class of defenseless, witless sheep, and she would lay down her own life for any one of them, without hesitation. She was a cop.
If God was not listening to Andrew’s prayers, Mallory was, and she had grown tired of the slow drone of intonations. She lowered her directional microphone, picked up her cellular phone and dialed the number of the priest. Before she could speak, she heard the old man’s voice saying, “Yes, Kathy?”
“I want to make confession, but I don’t remember the words.”
“There’s a good reason for that, Kathy. You never made a confession in your entire life, not in or out of the church,”
“Tell me what to say.”
“Do you remember the last time we discussed confession in my office? I remember your very words. That’s not the way it works,‘ you said. ’If you can’t catch me doing it, then I didn’t do it. I’ve got rights, and you can call Markowitz, he’ll tell you. I don’t ever have to confess to anything.”
“And did you call Markowitz?”
“Yes, Kathy, I did.”
“And?”
“He said, ‘The kid is absolutely right.’ Then he hung up on me.”
“So tell me the words. I want to take communion. I can’t do that until I confess my sins, and I need the damn words.”
“Actually, the church has loosened up a bit since you were with us. You can take communion if you-”
“No, I want to do this right.”
“Why don’t we just talk about it first?”
“Is this under the seal of the confessional? You can’t tell anyone, right?”
“That’s right. You were so young when your mother died. There is no fault attached to your actions. You were frightened, you ran away. That’s what children do. I only wish you had told me about this when you were still a child. You shouldn’t have had to carry that-”
“You would have told the others.”
“Still the same trusting little soul you always were.”
“Sarcasm is unbecoming in a priest. I think you spend too much time hanging out with Rabbi Kaplan.”
“An occasional poker game.”
“I knew it. If you’d known, you would’ve talked. You would have told them all.”
“No, that would never have happened. But what if they had known? Helen wanted to adopt you. If your mother was dead, that would’ve been possible. Was your father still living?”
“This is not about my father.”
“You witnessed your mother’s murder?”
“I saw her after the bastard left her for dead. She was crawling toward me, covered with blood. Any one of those wounds should have killed her. You know what kept her going? She had to crawl a long ways with mortal wounds. But she thought I would get to her in time to save her. That’s why she was holding on.”
“No, Kathy. She wanted to touch you before she died, to say goodbye. That’s what kept her going. It was for you that she kept going. She must have loved you more than her own life.”
“No. She believed I was going to save her. But I ran away.”