‘Of course.’ Charles seemed only to be glancing at the pages of the manuscript as he turned the sheets one after the other, yet he was reading every word and catching Mallory in a lie. He had noted the redness of her eyes, and now he found the reason for it in the indents of thumb and forefinger which marked the base of each page she had read before him. After a few minutes’ cursory reading, he looked up at her.
‘I wonder what his lie was. She’s characterized him as a married man from the onset. So that can’t be it.’
‘It won’t be in the manuscript. I’m guessing she caught him in a recent lie.’
‘That’s an interesting possibility. You think he might have been cheating on the woman he was cheating with?’
‘That wasn’t it. I think the only use she had for this man was getting pregnant. But then she aborted the baby. I’ve got a problem with a lie as a murder motive, but it’s all I’ve got. Amanda Bosch was a professional researcher. She might have done a background check on him. It’s a reasonable assumption since he’s the father of her baby. So she caught him out in a lie.’
‘Well, that won’t narrow the field by much. There are as many categories of lies as there are people.’
‘Too bad your old friend Malakhai can’t reconstruct Amanda and ask her what the lie was. If I don’t wrap this up fast, the perp will get away with her murder. When you finish with the manuscript, just leave it in my office.’
‘All right, but I wouldn’t count on this too much if I were you. I don’t think a writer draws on life to a greater extent than an actor does when he fleshes out a role. The actor doesn’t act his life, and I suspect, even when a writer does an autobiography, he doesn’t write his life.’
‘And this last bit of type – the LIAR lines you call an emotional outburst? Who is she screaming at if not the character in the book?’
‘All right, I’ll read it with that in mind.’
‘Are you going to the poker game tomorrow night?’
‘Of course.’ The poker game was the highlight of his week. He had inherited his chair in the game from Inspector Louis Markowitz, and with that chair came three friends. Each new friend was something precious to him, as though in the gathering of people he could make up for a life of isolation in academia and think tanks. ‘If I didn’t show up for the game, they’d expect me to send them a check for the usual losses. That’s only fair, I suppose. I wouldn’t want them to suffer financial damage by my absence.’
‘Charles, one day I’ll sit down with you and teach you how to beat those guys at poker.’
But that would not be today. She was ticking off items in a notebook, and even at half the room’s distance, he could see a great many unchecked items yet to go. He turned to the window and looked down to the street two floors below. ‘Actually, Rabbi Kaplan says my consistent losses speak well of me.’
‘Did he tell you why?’
‘What? And ruin his reputation – spoil the good name of Kaplan the Cryptic? No, I think I’m supposed to work it out.’ His eyes were still on the street below, following the progress of a familiar figure in a shapeless winter coat. He turned to face her. ‘All right, you know, don’t you?’
‘The rabbi was complimenting your honesty, Charles. Poker is a liar’s game. Tomorrow night, I want you to get something off Slope and Duffy.’ And now she made a check by one more item which must have been himself. ‘I gave both of them shopping lists, things I need to get without going through Coffey or Riker.’
‘You know, Mallory, there are other police officers on the force besides yourself. They tend to think of themselves as members of a team.’
‘Yeah, Riker has the same idea.’ There was an edge to her voice, more impatience than anger. ‘He thinks he’s my coach.’
Here, Charles would have liked to have said something in Riker’s defense, for he liked the man very much, but there were perils to giving even the appearance of choosing any side but hers. In all their conversations, he seemed always to be seeking safe ground with her. ‘Why don’t you come to the game with me? Rabbi Kaplan speaks highly of you as a born card shark.’
‘I can’t. I was barred from the game when I was thirteen.’
A key was turning in the lock, and as the door opened, the hose of a vacuum cleaner preceded the small dark head of Mrs Ortega.
This precluded Charles asking any personal questions like What in God’s name did you do to those people to get barred from the poker game?
Mrs Ortega stopped suddenly, eyeing the cat, perhaps with a view to skinning it and making a purse of the pelt. In her oft-expressed view as a professional cleaning woman, the only good fur shedder was a dead one. The cat rubbed up against Mallory’s jeans, and now that Mrs Ortega associated the cat with Mallory, she looked at the younger woman with surprise and something less than her former respect for a fellow believer from the Church of Immaculate Housekeeping.
Mallory handed the woman a twenty dollar bill, with the silent understanding that she knew the cat fur would make extra work. Mrs Ortega pocketed the bill and cast a kinder eye on the cat.
The buzzer went off, loud and irritating. Mallory put up her hand to stop Charles on his way to the door.
‘Okay, who is it?’
‘Riker,’ he said, without the usual split second of hesitation.
He opened the door, and there stood Riker in all his slovenly glory. Mallory’s jaw jutted out. Charles could see she wasn’t buying this. No way could he have known who was on the other side of the door. She too could recognize the polite light buzzer style of Henrietta Ramsharan of the third floor, and the sharp raps of the musician on the first floor. But Riker had no style in any sense of that word, not in any aspect of his life.
‘Hi, Charles,’ said Riker. He nodded to Mallory, and made an exaggerated bow to Mrs Ortega, who screwed up her face and walked into the next room muttering something which might have been ‘damn cops’.
‘You called Charles to tell him you were coming and when,’ said Mallory to Riker. Then she looked at Charles for confirmation, not believing for a moment that he could’ve known by any other means.
Charles smiled and shook his head. There were limits to what he could discern from knocks, but in truth, Riker had never called him; he had seen the sergeant’s arrival from the window. And now he had his first breakthrough in the art of poker as he decided not to enlighten her. His mind was racing on to new hopes of being the big winner of tomorrow’s game as Riker was settling into the deep padding of the couch.
Riker pulled a crumple of papers from the inside pocket of his overcoat and spread them out on his lap in an attempt to smooth out the damage. The first page was a map of the park with yellow lines drawn in two areas. He looked up at Mallory, who was still glaring at Charles.
‘Heller pinpointed the exact site where Amanda fell. The guy’s a genius. He took soil samples down to the Department of Agriculture. The dirt in the wound was full of microscopic critters that won’t live in the shadow areas of the wooded patch where we found Amanda.’ Riker dangled a cigarette from his lip and fished his pockets for a match. ‘Heller says he’s gonna write a monograph and give you half the credit, Mallory. So, you ready to take a look at the crime scene now?’
‘What for?’ She picked up the sheet with the yellow markings. ‘I can read a map.’
‘Hey, Mallory, I’m just along for the ride, okay? But most of us like to swing by the crime scene, maybe take a look at the place where the victim died.’
‘Waste of time. I read the report. Forensic’s been over the ground and probably ten or twelve cops with big feet. What am I gonna see?’