It was another replay of Oliver’s final act – different actors. The policemen lowered Charles to the floor of the platform stage, handling him gently, as if he were not beyond pain. Edward Slope knelt beside the body, pressing one hand to Charles’s throat, desperate to find a pulse that wasn’t there.
Mallory reached the top step and looked down on the corpse. No magic here. This was the very real death of Charles Butler.
Dr. Slope stood up and turned to the audience. In a loud voice, he announced, „Well, that’s showbiz.“
What?
The audience was clapping and cheering as Charles stood up to take his bow. He pulled the arrow out of his chest. The shirt was torn where he had ripped a button free, and she could see a flash of the chain-mail vest and the tube that had held the arrow.
Her hand unconsciously opened and dropped the crossbow to the floor.
Edward Slope leaned close to her ear. „I’ve been rehearsing that line all day.“
Mallory slapped the doctor’s face so hard, she left the red imprint of her hand on his flesh.
Everyone laughed but Edward Slope. He was shaking his head, eyes saying, Sorry, so sorry. „Mallory, I thought you knew. I thought you were part of the act.“
The splintered piece of the broken post was dangling from the manacle on Charles’s wrist. And now she saw the peg in the wood. She looked up at the post to find the peg’s receiving hole in the damaged section. So Malakhai was right; Oliver had made his own replica too well, missing this one feature.
A damn breakaway post.
It left just enough maneuvering room to avoid the final shot. So Charles had pulled the arrow from the target and fitted it into the tube in his chest.
„That’s it?“ She was outraged. The audience was ecstatic. Her voice was still being amplified by Charles’s microphone, and her angry face was magnified by the video screen on the wall. „That’s all?“
Charles turned to her with his loony smile. And now the laughter masked his words for everyone but Mallory. „Well, you couldn’t figure it out.“ He raised his hand to dangle the wood in front of her. „Malakhai was putting you on. The handcuffs were never supposed to open. That was Oliver’s mistake.“
She heard Robin Duffy’s voice calling out to her from the first row, where he stood with the rabbi and Mrs. Kaplan. She turned to look down at Robin’s adoring face as he said, „Kathy, you were wonderful.“
Mallory turned on the uniformed officers standing at the side of the small stage. She yelled, „Give me agunl“
The audience roared, and so did the men in uniform. She tried to take a gun from Harris’s holster. He laughed and held it high in the air. She turned to Patrolman Briant. In the spirit of a playground game of keep-away, he also held his gun out of her reach.
This was humiliation on a scale she had never known before, yet she resisted the urge to kick Officer Briant’s testicles across the room; not a good idea in front of three thousand witnesses, almost as serious as shooting a sick rat.
Mallory bent down to the floor to pick up the crossbow pistol. This sent the audience into helpless shakes and quakes of laughter. And their screams of hilarity increased with every arrow she pulled from the target.
Well, Malakhai had not lied to her. The crossbows had all fired arrows, and Charles had not escaped from the handcuffs.
Mallory gave the driver the address for Nick Prado’s performance in the theater district. The cabby was nodding, driving slowly and not paying any attention to the street. He was fixated on the rearview mirror, eyes wide open and showing entirely too much of the whites as he watched her loading arrows into the crossbow magazine.
Perhaps the cabby was lamenting the fact that his car had no bulletproof glass between him and his passenger, a fool’s economy measure in New York City. And oddly enough, by this lack of protection, Mallory pegged him as the cautious type, only picking up the safe passengers – nuns, Girl Scouts and upscale theater patrons. Who knew a crossbow would turn up on a fare from Carnegie Hall?
Her next theory was that the driver might be carrying a pistol. People who owned guns traveled in a false bubble of security, always believing the weapon would be at hand when trouble happened. It never was. Lots of dead cabbies had carried guns.
The last arrow fell into the crossbow magazine. Mallory leaned forward. „Give me your cell phone!“
The driver plucked the phone off the dashboard and threw it back over his shoulder, not wanting any contact with her. Mallory dialed Riker’s number and counted two rings.
Riker, answer me.
Why had Malakhai waited so long? There had been other chances to kill Nick Prado.
She looked at her watch. It was nearly time for the hangman finale. Prado would be stoned on sedatives to get him through an act on a high narrow stage. He would make an easy, slow-moving target.
„Yeah, Riker here,“ said the voice in the cell phone.
„Riker, is Nick Prado still on stage? Do you have him in sight?“
„Naw, he was gone before I got here. I don’t think – “
„Gone?“
„Yeah, they changed the time slots. He went on when I was still uptown at Faustine’s.“
Damn Lieutenant Coffey. With only one extra man, she could have covered all three theaters.
„Riker, see if you can find Prado backstage. Malakhai is headed your way, and he’s got a gun.“
„Jesus.“
„I’m on the – “ The cell phone went dead. Oh, great, just great. A perfect evening. She tossed it over the seat of the cab. „You need new batteries.“
This was getting too complex, not Malakhai’s style at all. More like Prado’s sense of spectacle for maximum effect, his convoluted planning. It was almost as if the publicity king had orchestrated everything.
Of course, he did.
„Turn this cab around! We’re going uptown.“
„Anything you want, princess.“
The cab pulled over to the curb and she waited while the traffic crawled by. Finally, he made the illegal U-turn, and they were moving north toward Faustine’s.
She leaned close to the back of his head. „Do you have a gun?“
The cabby turned his head to look at her. He was more surprised than afraid, and his New York attitude was rising to the surface from sheer force of habit. „Lady, you’re already loaded for bear with your own damn – “
Mallory held her gold shield inches from his eyes. „When I ask to see your weapons, you show them to me. That’s how it works.“
„A cop. Well, why didn’t you – Aw shit.“ His hands loosened their white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. „Freaking cops.“
He reached over to the glove compartment and opened it. The city lights were crawling by the windows of the slow-moving car. Scattered raindrops hit the glass as the man pulled out his inventory. „I got a lead pipe, a razor, a knife.“ He showed her an aerosol can. „This is mustard spray, but it’s real old stuff.“ He pulled out a second can. „Here’s the pepper spray. But no gun. Satisfied?“
In a city with two lethal weapons per person, you could never find a gun when you needed one.
„Speed up. And you can go through all the red lights. That’s your tip.“ She threw two twenties over the front seat. „That’s the fare. I don’t need a receipt.“
And now the cab accelerated. Money always worked better than a badge in Manhattan.