‘You made a lot of them,’ said Mallory. They had been tap dancing for ten minutes now. Where was the gun? It could be hidden in his belt at the small of the back. He had not yet looked directly at the knife with the crest of Max Candle.
‘How much do you want?’ Kipling smiled. ‘This is a simple case of extortion, am I right?’
‘What’s it worth to you, Harry?’
‘What’s my marriage worth? Call my wife’s accountant. I don’t have all day for this. How much do you want to keep it quiet?’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Desperation. If you want the sordid details, you’re not getting them. Just tell me how much money you want.’
‘I’ll get back to you.’
She would not allow her eyes to travel back to the knife, to give it away. But she knew she could have it in her hand in a heartbeat if she only had the advantage of position. The chair and the rocking Kipling blocked the way.
Moving in slow silence, she angled around Kipling, who was holding the cap gun in his hand, examining it as a curiosity. She could see him in profile now. There was no gun concealed in the small of his back. He was dressed in a polo shirt and close-fitting slacks. There was no place on his person to conceal a large weapon.
So where was her damn gun?
‘So I had a relationship with Amanda Bosch – now how much do you want? How much not to tell my wife?’
‘Well, there’s a bit more to it than just the relationship with Amanda.’
‘You’ve only got me on one woman. If you believed there were others, you would have said so before now. I’m not going to pay the moon for this. Now how much do you want?’
‘Did I mention that I knew Amanda? I know you lied to her, and she caught you on it.’
‘But there were so many lies.’ By the way he smiled, he seemed to take some pride in that.
‘I’m talking about the lie that made her abort her baby. Does that narrow it down for you?’
‘That particular lie isn’t worth any cash to me. I don’t think you did know her. I think you’re a crooked cop. The news said you were a cop, and the daughter of a cop. Was your father crooked too? Does it run in the family?’
‘Let’s say I learned a lot from my old man. If I never knew Amanda, how do I know what tipped her off to the lie, what made her snap?’
She had not been a world-class poker player for nothing. Helen always wanted her to have a fine education, and now the weekly poker games of childhood were paying off.
‘Amanda was sitting on a bench outside the building on the day before she died, the day before she called you on the big lie. She never went up to the door, she just watched. It was a busy day for the doorman. People were coming and going, tenants, kids, dogs. Then she saw – ’
‘Let’s not get too dramatic, shall we? She saw Peter and she knew he wasn’t adopted. You know, until then, I always thought it was a blessing that he looked like me and not Angel.’
Still holding the cap gun in the palm of his hand, Kipling stood up and crossed over to the bookcase. He leaned against the shelf where Max Candle’s knife was sitting. He was only inches from it.
‘So it is a shakedown. If you know her, you know she was only using me for genetic material. She didn’t ask me if I wanted to make another brat, did she?’
‘She didn’t know that she could make one. It was a miracle pregnancy according to her doctor. So then you lied to her.’
‘Yes. I told her the genetic stew was botched. What of it? I told her it would be a monster, that all my children would be monsters – things growing on their outsides that really should be on the insides, missing their little eyes and little hands, little things like that. So what? That’s not a crime. A cop wouldn’t have any interest in that. This is a shakedown. Now how much do you want to make this nasty little business go away?’
‘It was a stupid lie, wasn’t it? You had to know she’d catch you in the lie when she saw your son.’
‘What were the odds they would ever meet? Most of the year, my son is away at school. There are camps in the summer. My wife has no maternal instincts. Peter looks so much like me, Angel hates the sight of him. He’s rarely around.’
‘But Amanda saw him. That’s why she forced the meeting in the park.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. We only met at her place.’
‘I know you met her in the park. You don’t have to talk to me. You could remain silent. If you say anything it could be used against you in a court of law.’
‘Are you reading me my rights? Still playing cops and crooks, are we? Next you’ll be telling me that if I can’t afford an attorney, one will be appointed for me. You’re no more a cop than I am. Did they kick you off the force? You’re a cheap little hustler, aren’t you? There’s no law against cheating on your wife. Maybe the two of you are thinking in terms of a multimillion-dollar civil suit? Well, forget it.’
Mallory shrugged. His constitutional rights were recorded on camera. His arm leaned on the shelf of the bookcase, close to the knife, only inches from it. It was working so well. The only snag was that she didn’t have the gun. What had he done with it?
‘You met her in the park. She called you on the lie. She had just killed her child, thinking it was a monster, but it wasn’t. She aborted it for nothing. She was so angry. You panicked when she threatened to tell your wife what a monster you were. She was going to do it then, wasn’t she? Right that minute. Then you killed her.’
‘So Amanda was the woman in the park killing. No wonder you thought you were going to score big. Cheating and murder. Has it occurred to you she knew more than one man in this building, that someone else killed her?’
‘No. It never did, not from the beginning.’
‘If it was me, I’d take the subway,’ said Amanda, taking a long drag on her cigarette.
Charles stared at her. There was no music in the cab. Perhaps it was the stress that had triggered the delusion this time.
Now he realized that there were flaws in his construction, glitches in the mechanics of freak memory, for every now and then, Amanda’s blue eyes would slip into Mallory green.
‘Amanda, you’re not allowed to smoke in this cab. See the sign? Perhaps you – ’
‘I ain’t smoking, buddy,’ said the cab driver. ‘And the name is Fred.’
Amanda smiled and continued to hold the cigarette. ‘One of the perks of being dead – no fear of lung cancer. But if it bothers you, I’ll put it out.’
He couldn’t smell the burning weed, and neither did the swirling blue smoke sting his eyes. That was a good sign. He was not altogether crazy. The gun pressed into his leg, and he removed it from his pants pocket and shifted it into his coat.
‘So, what’s with the gun?’
‘Mallory needs it.’
‘What did you say?’ asked the cab driver.
‘Nothing.’
‘Take the subway,’ said Amanda. ‘Just on the chance that she needs it in a hurry. This traffic is the pits.’ She stared out the back window at the still life of motionless vehicles trailing behind them.
‘I’m sure we’ll get moving soon,’ said Charles, waving his hand at the phantom smoke swirling around the interior of the cab. ‘You know, the cigarette smoke does bother me. The cab is full of – ’
The cab driver turned around to say, ‘For the last time, pal, I’m not smoking.’
And now the cab was filled with smoke that was not real, but which obscured every real thing. He was engulfed in the smoke, panic was rising.
Steady now. It’s not real.
But then he turned to Amanda, who was blurred by the thickening blue clouds of his delusion, and he realized he was getting lost in this very cramped space which was his mind.