The ME investigator would not meet her eyes. She looked down to the paper napkin in his hands. He was shredding it to moist confetti. He opened his mouth to speak, but she dared not give him time to say he wanted a lawyer. She slammed her open hand down on the table, and his mouth closed as he jumped in his chair, nerves shot to hell.
‘Your biggest problem is that your partner is stupid. He buys stock, bearer bonds, and the idiot thinks nobody can trace them because the deals are cash. Every cash transaction is logged just like the credit transactions. All his financial activity is on computer. Did you know that Palanski’s been cheating you on the cuts?’ No, she could see he hadn’t known.
‘The way you handled your cut of the payoffs was only a little brighter.’ She thumbed through the sheaf of papers on the table till she found the one she wanted. She set this in front of him. ‘This is a record of all the cash deposits you made into your mother’s bank account. But you have power of attorney on that account, so you’re tied up by computer transactions too. Your mother’s entire legal income is Social Security, and yet she has this fantastic bank account. Still, Internal Affairs would never have tipped to that. Oh, but that fool Palanski.’
‘You won’t get anything on him without me testifying on the payoff.’
‘I won’t hurt you. A deal is a deal. I’m going to let you rat on yourself and Palanski. You know the drill. The first one to turn state’s evidence gets immunity.’
Nose was paroled from the bathroom for the evening. He purred around Mallory’s legs as she put the bullets into the speedloader for her revolver.
She faced the foyer mirror and thought of visual cues. She looked down at the cat and closed her long and narrow eyes to suspicious slits. Nose began to dance. The cue for the dancing, what was it? A muffled noise called her eyes up to the ceiling. The sounds upstairs were unmistakable. Plush carpet and thick insulation could not block out the scream. Now furniture was being turned over. Feet pounded into the front room above her head. She followed the sounds, eyes to the ceiling. She stopped by the phone in the living room.
She tapped keys on the building computer and scrolled through the list of tenants until she had Betty Hyde’s number. More furniture was moving. A dial tone. Another scream.
‘Hyde residence,’ said a foreign voice. ‘Put Hyde on the phone. Tell her it’s Mallory and it’s urgent.’
Telephone pressed between shoulder and ear, she opened the closet door and pulled out the heavy sheepskin jacket to hide the bulge of the gun. The jacket was bulky enough to interfere with action, but she was not ready to show her hand or her gun in public, for this was the visual cue to call the lawyer. She was slipping into the sleeves of the coat when Betty Hyde came to the phone. ‘Mallory, darling, I thought you’d never call.’
‘Meet me at Judge Heart’s apartment. I’ll be there before you. Stay back, all right? Stay the hell out of my way.’
She took the stairs three at a time. She noted the three locks as she neared the door. Most people only used one lock until they were in for the night. It was early yet. The main lock was the flimsiest. But the thick door was too formidable to break down. She banged on the door with her fist and pressed the buzzer. ‘Open up!’ Now there was dead silence within. And maybe a dead woman?
She banged on the door again. ‘Open up or I’ll call the police!’ Magic words for the man in the public eye.
She heard heavy footsteps on the tiles of the foyer beyond the door, and then the sound of the lock being undone, the latch chain being slipped into its notch. The door opened a crack, and she was looking into the cold eyes of Judge Heart just above the length of gold chain which bound the door to its frame.
She smiled politely, stepped back and kicked the door at the center, breaking the latch chain and knocking the man off balance. She pushed past him and entered the apartment.
Pansy Heart was in the corner of the front room, trying desperately to crawl into the pattern of the rug and disappear. Her nose was bleeding, her lip was split and the side of her face was already beginning to swell.
Behind her, the judge was screaming, ‘You have no right!’
Mallory turned on him. ‘I’m taking her out of here. Don’t give me any trouble.’
His face had gone to purple rage as he advanced on her. With a quick, sure kick, she put her foot into his groin and watched his skin drain of color as his eyes bulged out with surprise and pain. He slipped down to one knee. Pansy Heart was crying softly. Mallory pulled the woman up and walked her toward the door, one arm supporting the smaller woman about the tiny waist.
Betty Hyde stood in the doorway. Her eyes were fixed on Pansy Heart’s ruined face, and her mouth was suppressing a smile.
‘I’ll take care of her,’ she said, putting her arms around the crying woman as Mallory stepped back. ‘Come with me, Pansy. You need a doctor, dear.’
The judge was getting to his feet. He was clumsy and slow about it as both hands were clutching his groin. Mallory tucked a foot under his unbending legs and tripped him, sending his face into the corner of a heavy oak table and giving him his own bloody nose.
Pansy Heart looked back at her husband as though awaiting further orders. Then she yielded to the gentle force of Betty Hyde, who was propelling her through the door and into the hall.
The gossip columnist was on her way to an interview with this battered woman, and nothing but a joint act of Congress and God would have stopped her. Mallory wondered if she had done the judge a favor by preventing him from getting between Hyde and his wife.
Mallory set a tray of teapot and cups down on the table, and then she let her eyes roam the generous front room of Betty Hyde’s apartment. It was a copy of the Rosens’ only in the architecture. The decorator had been a pro. She knew Charles would have appreciated the American and British antiques masterfully woven with the modern pieces. The front room was open and airy, without bric-a-brac. It was gracious living without souvenir or sentiment or any heart to it at all. Mallory approved.
The judge’s wife was sitting in an early-American rocking chair, holding a cold compress to her swelling face. Betty Hyde sat on a footstool and gently pushed on the armrest of Pansy’s chair, rocking, lulling the crying woman. Entangling her gaze with Pansy’s, Hyde crooned soft words, smiling, eyes gleaming, playing the good nurse.
Mallory handed a cup of tea to the judge’s wife. The woman smiled her gratitude and accepted the tea with a nervous clattering of the china. She seemed even more fragile than the delicate Old Willow teacup.
Mallory leaned down until her eyes were level with the woman, who had ceased her crying and now looked up at Mallory with absolute trust.
‘Mrs Heart, were you at home the night the judge beat the crap out of your mother-in-law?’
The woman’s eyes were startled wide, and it seemed that her thin shoulders were being pressed to the back of her chair. Then her head dropped to her chest, and her entire body wilted. Now Pansy had been assaulted for the second time in one night.
Mallory eased back, lifted a cup from the near table and began to stir her own tea.
‘Did that old woman scream as loud as you did?’
The sobbing began again, racking the smaller woman’s leaf-light body.
Betty Hyde rolled her eyes. She rose from the footstool and led Mallory back to the kitchen.
‘That was brutal, Mallory. One day we must have a long talk about your style – I think I could learn from you. Are you just fishing, dear, or do you have something more on the bastard?’
‘I’ve got copies of the hospital records during the years Judge Heart’s mother lived with them. There’s another file with his wife’s hospital records. He probably didn’t kill the old lady with a beating, but if you want to get to the judge, I would suggest applying a little pressure on his mother’s doctor – you might want the old woman’s body exhumed. The DA is a good political animal. You might approach him with the word coverup and then explain that a high-profile case might be good for his career. And leave my name out of it.’