Nick sauntered back to the front room, opened the terrace door and stepped outside. It was a rare calm night for a town called the Windy City. He walked toward the retaining wall and looked over the edge. Even through a fog of drugs and booze, he could still feel the vertigo, the sensation of falling while standing still, the irresistible pull of the earth so far below.
It had taken him a month only to approach this ledge. And now that he had hit on exactly the right dosage of sedatives and bourbon, he was free to look down at the insect life on the pavement, tiny people straggling along the sidewalk in the predawn hours, leaving night-shift jobs or rolling out of after-hours bars. From this distance, he could not distinguish between hookers and newsboys.
He turned to look over his shoulder.
She wasn’t there.
Mallory had been right – her job was the hardest one. And he had given her credit for that. The memoirs of the great Nick Prado lay on his coffee table. Within those pages, Mallory was mentioned as a corroborating footnote for three perfect murders. He had gone on at length about his greatness – so the world would fully appreciate how hard the young detective’s job had been – and why she had failed.
The manuscript was neatly packaged in an envelope addressed to a prominent literary agent. His cover letter detailed the reasons for his upcoming publicity stunt – to kick off the book auction of the century. He had included a press package. The glossy black-and-white photographs had all been taken when he was young and beautiful. He had spent hours selecting the best of them and burning every lesser image in his fireplace. All his imperfections were gone now. In his favorite portrait, he was only nineteen years old, and this one lay on top of the envelope so the reporters would have a picture to run with his obituary.
He looked down at the street again. Almost dawn. He had selected this hour in deference to the cameras. The sky would be light enough for a backdrop, but not too bright.
Timing is everything.
All the daily papers and local TV stations had been alerted in time for the morning news. The first reporter and cameraman had arrived on the street far below. Nick put on his glasses, the better to see one of the tiny ants emerge from a toy van with his video equipment. The headlights of another van were pulling up to the curb. And more of them were coming to the party in private cars. When he had counted one crew for each news channel, and a smattering of more ants to represent radio and the print media, he removed his eyeglasses.
He was never photographed with bifocals.
So they had all turned out, and right on time. Nick had not disappointed them once in all his years as the king of hype. He had promised them a stunt to rival the great Max Candle.
The terrace ledge was broad enough for a larger, wider man to walk with ease around the entire building, but from the street it would appear more dangerous. Back east in New York, Mallory would see him on television, for this act would certainly go national, maybe international with live coverage by satellite. Television executives would salivate over him. His show would crank up the figures for advertising sales beyond their wet dreams of profit. Throughout the hours of his ordeal, broadcast journalists would speculate on the reasons for his protracted stroll in the clouds, and not if he would jump, but when. They would probably put the cause to outstanding warrants for his arrest and his prospects of dying in prison.
Thank you, Mallory.
As he formed this thought, he turned around to look over his shoulder again. Satisfied that he was alone and none of his locks were undone, Nick climbed onto the ledge, still holding on to the belief that this was his own idea.
He had always maintained that he would end it when the last six minutes of joy were sucked out of life, and he must credit Mallory for that. But at least, she had not selected the day and the hour. She was ruthless enough, but not that talented. The timing was his own.
Faith faltered, and he looked behind him one last time. His legacy was still sitting on the coffee table, and Mallory was nowhere in sight.
Fool. Of course, she isn’t there.
But then, in thoughts of her, he made a misstep in his mind, and then his foot stumbled on the ledge.
He was in flight.
Too soon!
Too late. His arms waved wildly as he struggled to form his body into a swan dive, aiming for grace. His head pointed toward the street; his arms spread on the air as it rushed around his head, ripping the breath from his mouth. The lights of independent windows melded into bright streamers of electric yellow. And the pavement was coming up to kiss him on the lips as he flew ever nearer to the insects who were waiting for his close-up shot.
There were only seconds left to congratulate himself, for Max Candle could never have topped this finale:
Nick smiled for the cameras.
Or such was his intention.
The television film captured an expression of extreme horror, but only the tape of his scream was allowed to run on the morning news.
Later in the day, the Chicago police counted five locks at the entrance to the dead man’s penthouse, and despite this show of concern for security, the door had been left wide open. A search of the premises had turned up no suicide note, no personal papers of any kind. Based on a shredded photograph found on his coffee table, it was theorized that an affair with a younger man had gone tragically awry, and the deceased was written off as just another jumper in a city of tall buildings and lost loves.
There was only one remarkable aspect to the otherwise mundane death of a public relations man: A lone woman had been waiting in the street when the first camera crew arrived. Though there was not one clear photograph of her face, it was reported that she had been looking skyward minutes before the jumper appeared on the ledge. But it was not her prescience that made her newsworthy; it was her behavior while a human being was hurtling to his death – when every other pair of eyes was riveted to that screaming, flailing, falling body.
Her travesty went unnoticed until the film and photographs were reviewed. In wide-angle shots of crisscrossing lenses, taken among the frenzied newsprint and television media, the tall blonde could be seen turning her back on the spectacle in the sky. She was walking away from the circus – at the moment of impact.
Carol O'Connell
Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.
At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.
Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.
