‘Right.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, she walks all over him. He’d break his Hippocratic oath for Mallory. And the rabbi would take her side against God’s.’
Riker finished his shot and poured another. His red eyes rolled up to Charles with a question which could only be And, what would you do for Mallory?
CHAPTER 6
All women are bitches.
Only death made them beautiful. That stunned look, when they knew death was coming, when they could see it, hear it coming for them. Only then did he respect them for this experience, this knowledge which had eluded him. To be dead, to be nothing, never to be challenged again.
To actually watch life leave the body was his obsession. But this, too, had eluded him. For in death, they might only have been asleep. The women had taken the secret with them. Bitches, unwilling to share. Perhaps one day, one of them would tell him what it was like as it was happening to her. Perhaps the next one.
He plotted against her as he opened his drawer to find his socks, as he pulled on his pants, as he buttoned his shirt. He schemed as he ate his morning meal and it went sour in his stomach. He kicked a small animal and heard his enemy screaming. He looked at sharp knives with longing and stuck one into a piece of fruit… many times. He killed her a hundred times a day, and the animals, the fruit and the insects all suffered for it.
Sandstone carvings graced the elaborate structures extending as curving arms from either side of the wide staircases running down into the plaza. The vast public space was presided over by a bronze angel high atop the Bethesda Fountain. Her wings were unfurled, her robes were rippled, and there was debate as to whether she danced or not.
From the cover of high ground and stonework, Mallory looked down at the man in the plaza. He was the only one walking the paving stones, casting a weak shadow from the morning sun riding low in its winter orbit. He checked his watch and sat down on the edge of the fountain’s wide pool. The Angel of Bethesda loomed behind him, some twenty feet or more above his head. The waters of the ancient biblical Bethesda were said to have healing powers. Mallory figured those waters would be wasted on a sick bastard like Palanski. The things she suspected him of were a crime in every philosophy under heaven.
Mallory lifted the antique opera glasses to her eyes. Bored silly by opera, she had finally found a practical use for this gift from Charles. She cared nothing for the delicate settings of tiny pearls and precious stones; it was the resolution of the lenses she approved of. She could pick out the mole on one side of Palanski’s face. And now she scanned the rest of the plaza. The sky was overcast, blunting the sun and giving its light an eerie quality as it flooded the stone floor. There were only occasional moments when the sun could create a shadow, and then the clouds would thicken and uncreate it.
Now a woman passed near Mallory’s position. Mallory turned to see the back of her walking along the path leading to the wide staircase. The woman’s carrot-red hair was piled on top of her head. She was small, only five foot – if that, and thin. A short, leather hooker skirt rode high above the bare goose-flesh legs. The backs of her knees bore the bruises of the needle, another trademark of a hooker.
The woman passed behind a bank of decorative stone which obscured half the staircase, protecting her from Mallory’s view. As the small prostitute cleared this facade, Mallory raised her binoculars to her face.
Not a woman.
Beneath the penciled dark eyebrows, the eyeliner and the smear of red lipstick that was her mouth, was the face of a child. How old could she be? Twelve or thirteen years? The light brown eyes had the look of a stunned animal. Her face was in a junkie sweat, though the air was cold and her thin close-fitting jacket could offer little warmth.
Mallory slipped the opera glasses into her pocket and wondered how long it had been since the baby whore last had a fix of the needle.
Palanski rose to a stand as the girl made her way down the stairs and along the wide stone floor. Her hand rose in a vague gesture of recognition and then fell back to her side.
Mallory slipped along the footpath leading down into the plaza on Palanski’s blind side. She was in the open now with no cover as she silently walked the stones. Skirting the fountain, she was moving faster now.
The little prostitute took no notice, legs in motion, but mind in limbo, eyes blank and staring at nothing, moving slowly toward Palanski, whose hand delved into his pocket and produced the lure.
In a sudden cloudbreak, the bronze angel cast a long shadow across the pool of water, the tips of its wings lighting on the stone under Mallory’s running feet. The little girl was within two yards of Palanski when Mallory rushed the child and gripped her by one arm, which was bone thin beneath the light material of the sleeve. When the girl looked up, a badge was thrust in her face. The girl, body and soul, crumpled under Mallory’s hand in the same dispirited resignation of her older peers, her sisters, the adult whores. For this was part of the job, wasn’t it – the arrest.
Palanski was gaping at Mallory as she pocketed her shield. His eyes were panic wide and disbelieving. He took one step forward. Instinctive reflex sent her free hand to the holster inside her jacket. He stopped dead. She watched his darting eyes and knew he was framing the story to explain this away. As his mouth opened, Mallory said, ‘Don’t even think about lying to me. I know what you did.’
Palanski turned, willing his feet to move at first, trapped on his toes for a full second, then breaking into a jog and now sprinting across the plaza.
Three packets of jettisoned white powder floated on the fountain’s waters.
‘You better run, you son of a bitch!’ Mallory’s scream echoed off the stones of the cold and desolate plaza, wherein she kept company with a blind bronze angel and a small child with faraway eyes.
Betty Hyde waited by the entrance as Arthur opened the door for an elderly tenant and her dog, then a woman with groceries and a man with a briefcase, the last stragglers of the morning. She looked across the street to the place which had been bloodied more than a month ago on the night Annie Franz was run down by a drunken driver.
Now there was no more traffic through the door to the Coventry Arms. Arthur had his smile in place as she walked over to him.
‘Good morning, Miss Hyde.’
‘Good morning, Arthur. Lovely day, isn’t it?’
A fifty dollar bill found its way from Betty’s purse into Arthur’s pocket in the New York sleight of hand which out-of-towners mistook for a handshake.
‘Yes, ma’am, it is indeed a lovely day.’
‘Correct me if I’m mistaken, but didn’t you switch shifts with Bertram on the night Mrs Franz died? I seem to remember you were on duty that night.’
‘Yes, Miss Hyde, you have a good memory.’
‘So you must have seen the whole thing.’
‘I saw everything, every detail. I was able to give the police a complete description of the drunken driver and the numbers on the license plate. They caught him within the hour, you know. It happened right over there.’
Arthur pointed to the park side of the street and continued in the well-worn patter of a tour guide. ‘It was 2:15 in the morning, and Mrs Franz was a little unsteady on her feet. I’m not saying she was drunk, mind you.’
No, Arthur would never say that. Betty nodded her encouragement to go on.
‘Well, they were arguing again.’
There had been no argument in Eric’s version when she had given him shelter from the press and the police. She had called her own personal physician to treat him for shock. In Eric’s version, he and Annie had been discussing the first draft of his new book.