“Right.”
Riker held up his phone. “You need this?”
“Yes. Thanks.” Charles took the phone, and Riker stood up and walked to the car to speak to the young uniformed officer.
Quinn was back among them again, his eyes opening as he struggled to raise himself on one arm. “Charles, we’ll have to come up with a plausible story for your doctor friend.”
“Oh, I don’t think it will be much of a problem. Henrietta will understand.”
“According to Riker, she’s bound by law to report the bullet wound. It’s highly unlikely she’d risk her license for neglecting that bit of paperwork.”
“We’ll see.” Charles picked up Riker’s cellular phone and punched in a number. “Henrietta? It’s Charles… Fine, thank you. I’ve got a slight problem, an emergency really, with a bit of blood. Do you have your medical bag handy?… Good. Could I drop by in a few minutes?”
The doorman recognized Andrew Bliss immediately. He also recognized that Mr. Bliss was stark naked but for the telephone clutched in one hand. He wondered if he was expected to do something about that. He only had fifteen minutes to go before his shift was over, and so he elected to assume that Mr. Bliss was a mugging victim on his way to visit the friend who lived nearest to the scene of the crime, possibly seeking comfort and clothing.
Yes, that was a reasonable assumption.
And since Mr. Bliss had brought his own telephone, the doorman felt relieved of any necessity of making a police report. Now Mr. Bliss was entering the elevator, the doors sliding shut behind him. The doorman’s problem was out of sight, and therefore it did not exist.
However, when his gaze fell on the bag lady, that was another story. He knew his duty now, and he quickly shot out one arm, palm to her face, to block her way without the necessity of actually touching her and possibly contracting the dreaded head lice which New Yorkers feared more than AIDS. He was quite sure the old hag would get the message via his angry scowl and the flat of his palm. These people were only lazy, not stupid.
The motion was so quick. He saw the flash of light on metal, and then his white-gloved hand was a bloody rag of ripped cloth and flesh. The woman passed by him, entering the stairwell, as he sank to the floor with the shock of seeing the white bones of his hand exposed to the light.
“Andrew, you smell.” This was Emma Sue Hollaran’s first observation when she opened the door to him. He walked past her and entered the apartment in the manner of a sleepwalker. She waved the air between them to chase the odor away. Then she walked over to the French windows. “Andrew, let’s go out on the terrace, all right?”
He nodded, following docilely behind her as she opened the doors and preceded him into the night air. The deep cover of potted trees gave them privacy from the windows of the building across the way, but a scattering of small, bright eyes looked down on them from the sky.
“There has to be a confession,” he said, “and an Act of Contrition.”
“So you knew.”
His head tilted to one side, and his face gave the impression that some part of his mind might have tumbled out of his head. “Of course I knew. How could I not-”
“Have you discussed this with anyone?”
“No. Emma Sue, you must listen. I don’t know how much time we have. The confession is very important. I don’t want you to die with a stain on your soul.” His face turned up to the sky, and he was suddenly preoccupied with the stars. The clouds were parting to clear a wider space in the heavens so more of them could watch.
“Now don’t excite yourself, Andrew. If it will make you happy, I’ll confess, all right? But you know, I wouldn’t have killed Dean if he hadn’t been so greedy.”
Andrew was moving his head from side to side, as though that would help. What was she saying? How could-
“Dean was starting the old scam all over again with Koozeman.” She walked to the French windows and turned back to face him. “You know those tickets were Koozeman’s concept, not Dean’s. I think it was his idea of a joke. He couldn’t believe that people would buy them. Could you move back just a little, dear?”
She pressed on his chest to gently push him farther into the cover of the trees. “I didn’t want any part of it. Too risky.”
Emma Sue bent down to a large ceramic planter and began to root around in the dirt. ‘ “That little bastard Dean threatened me. He was still a junkie, you know. All junkies are dangerous. You can’t trust them. Then Koozeman figured it out. He read the article about the long pick.”
She pulled an ice pick from the pot and shook the dirt off its gold handle. “It is unusually long, isn’t it? Do you remember this, dear?” She held it up to Andrew’s passive face. “No? Well, Koozeman did. He asked me if I was still chipping ice with the murder weapon.”
Wiping the rest of the dirt off the pick with the hem of her dress, she polished the gold handle till it shone. “Then that pig Koozeman said I’d have to go along with the scam for a second showing of the tickets. He needed to make his profit fast.”
She held the pick up to the light of the door, and nodded in satisfaction with her cleaning job. “I think he was planning on leaving the country. He was going to have problems unloading those stupid tickets, and he needed me to prime the pump with publicity and a list of new suckers. I told him he couldn’t blackmail me. He was part of the original crime, wasn’t he? He laughed at me. Said that line hadn’t worked when he tried it on Dean. But Dean was only threatening to expose Koozeman’s list of clients in the ghoul market. Koozeman said, in my case, he could supply the police with physical evidence. Then, at the gallery, he pointed out a cop, a blond cop in a black silk dress.”
Emma Sue held the long ice pick out to Andrew. He only stared at it. She picked up one of his limp hands and closed his fingers over its handle. “Just hold on to that for a minute, Andrew. I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared from the terrace and reappeared a moment later. He looked at the gun in her hand, and then dropped the ice pick to the stone tiles of the terrace. It rolled to a rest at Emma Sue’s feet.
“Pick it up, dear.” She kicked it back to him. “Oh, do pick it up, Andrew. I really want to give you a sporting chance. Think you can beat a bullet? Want to give it a try?”
“You killed Starr and Koozeman?” He said this slowly, as though trying to make sense of a foreign tongue.
“Yes, dear. And it was just a matter of time before I got around to you. Ah, but now you’ve come to me.”
“Why did you have to-? No, wait. Perhaps it wouldn’t be proper for me to hear any more of your confession. We’ll wait till she comes.”
Emma Sue put up the barrel of the gun for a moment. “Who’s coming, Andrew?”
“An angel. She’ll hear your confession. But while we’re waiting for her, we could pray together and ask for forgiveness.” He sank down to his knees.
“No, Andrew. It’s really better if you stand. The police can be such sticklers for details. I don’t want to have to think up a scenario for shooting a man on his knees. Now take the ice pick and stand up.”
Andrew only bowed his head and clasped his hands together in prayer.
“Oh, well, a little improvisation.” She knelt down in front of him and leveled the gun at his chest. “The reporters have gotten bored with you, haven’t they? But you had enough time to make your voice heard. It was very considerate of you to demonstrate your insanity to the whole world. When they find your prints on the pick, I think I’ll have a credible case for self-defense.”
“How can you do this?” There was no panic in his voice. He felt very calm. He was trusting in a higher power-Mallory.
“You were always the weak sister, Andrew. Koozeman even mentioned that. And now you’re just not dependable anymore. You’re the last witness.”
Mallory found the doorman slumped to the floor just inside the glass door and cradling his bloodied hand. A woman with a grocery bag was kneeling beside him, only staring at the wound, making no move to actually help the man.