Mallory's Oracle

by Carol O'Connell

“I don’t want you to leave the house. Give me the address.”

  “No, dear, I don’t think I will.”

  Mallory sat back in her chair and stared at a point beyond Edith’s white head, wondering how much it would take to bully the old woman. Edith was a little person; it shouldn’t take much effort. And if she did frighten Edith—just a little—how much flak might she expect from Charles?

  It was a rare win for Charles.

  “Edith, what do you know about that woman that I don’t know?”

  “I know the underlying violence in her. It’s too risky, Kathy.”

  Mallory noted the Rolodex sitting by the phone. It was out of place in this room of antimacassars and ancestor portraits. A ballpoint pen lay next to the Rolodex. There might as well be a neon arrow to point the way.

  “How about some coffee, Edith? Will you give me that much?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  The moment Edith was through the door to the kitchen, Mallory found the new card under the Rs and plucked it out of the file.

  When they were done with coffee, Mallory gathered up her keys and said, “Promise you won’t keep that appointment?”

  “If it worries you, of course I won’t. But before you go, I think there’s something you ought to see.” She led Mallory back to the hallway and into the large kitchen. Faint letters worked over with cleaning solvent were scrawled on the wall over the stove.

  Edith, with all her gifts, could not have read Mallory’s face as she turned to the young woman and said, “Just like Max.”

  Mallory only said, “Yeah, right.”

  Redwing’s eyes rolled back when the Doberman puppy crept into the kitchen. He was new to this game of hers, but pain had taught him quickly. He was also half mad with hunger and thirst.

  A small plate of raw meat sat on the floor between the woman’s feet. He inched toward it, one eye to the woman who was punishment and delight, cigarette burns in his flesh and sensual croons and strokes. He nosed the red meat. The odd smell of it was familiar to him now. Every good instinct to let it be was overcome by hunger. He tasted it. He wolfed it. And now the thirst was stronger and the room began to revolve. No, it was he who turned in slow circles, his tongue dropping out between his teeth. Thirst, terrible thirst. His dark head sank low, close to the floor. His tongue licked the dirt of the tiles, and his eyes closed to crazed slits of white. He began the low growl that would build into a howling.

  It was a bright, clear day, and still warm in the patches of sunlight. The West Village dogs gathered in the fenced-off triangle of Washington Square Park for the canine social hour, when they were allowed to slip their leashes. They chased Frisbees, sniffed one another, rolled in the dirt and grinned gloriously with slobbering saliva.

  In the space of seconds only, all the dogs stopped grinning at once, noses lifting to the wind, trying to identify the danger. Their humans were slower to pick up on the change in the atmosphere. The dogs moved in concert to one corner of the triangle and away from the black Labrador who had gone strange in the eyes, which were all whites now and narrowed to slits. The dark head hung low and the dog’s tongue hung out. His growl was low and constant.

  Something caught the dog’s eye. He turned his head in tandem with the bright gold hair of the woman striding across the small West Village park on her way to the East Side. Her hair threw off sparks of sun, and the dog followed her progress with mad eyes. His was not the dog’s grin, but the bared teeth of a threat. He moved in an unsteady lope toward the edge of the triangle. His human came toward him on slow, cautious feet. “Here, boy,” the slender young woman called to him, holding out his collar and leash. He ignored her and hung his head over the low fence. She came closer. He spun on her quickly and nipped her hand for the first time in the seven years they had loved one another. She looked down at the teeth marks, small wells filling with blood. She was too shocked to scream.

  The dog moved back a few steps and made a run at the fence, clearing the top of it by a bare inch. He was soft-pounding over the cement of the walk, following the golden woman with her sun-sparked hair. Now his human did scream and the golden one turned around to see him bounding toward her, his tongue hanging, growling low. A child passed between them, and the flash of the child’s red T-shirt turned his head. He lunged for the child and closed his teeth around the tiny freckled arm. The small human was alternately crying and screaming, eyes wide with terror. The dog’s teeth clamped down hard until he heard the snap of the human’s puny bone breaking between his jaws. Now he tossed the child back and forth with the shake of his head.

  The golden girl was running toward him, calling to him, whistling high and shrill. But he was busy with the meat in his mouth. The golden one kicked him in the head, and again in the ribs. Now she had all his attention. He dropped the boy’s arm from his mouth, his black lips spreading to show all his teeth as she backed away from him. His jaws opened wide and he made the leap for the golden one, who was waving him to her. It was the leap of his life, quick and with more strength than he knew he possessed. His eyes were fixed on her white throat, he was in the air, flying to her when the world exploded.

  The metal in her hand smoked and his heart burst in the same moment. Her face filled his last seconds of life as she bent over him and nudged his body with the barrel of her gun. Her face was cold, without passion for the kill. The golden one was a different kind of animal than he had ever known. And then she moved on, and the dog stared at the sun until it went black.

  A woman was cradling the torn and broken four-year-old boy. Mallory took the child from her arms and laid him down on the grass, elevating the bloody arm. She clamped off the fountain of blood from the severed artery with the pressure of her hand. Her eyes perused the crowd of unfamiliar faces, searching for the one who was no stranger. Riker elbowed his way through the crowd to kneel alongside of her. She had known he could not be far behind.

  “Give me your belt,” she said.

  He stripped it off and handed it to her. She looked up to the closest civilian. “Get the ambulance. Use the phone in the NYU building. And you,” she said to a nearby woman. “There’s a doctor’s office in that brownstone. Go get him. Tell him it’s a lawful police order if he doesn’t move fast enough. Riker, put some pressure on the artery.”

  Riker’s hand replaced her own over the wound.

  “That’s a major artery. Keep the pressure on till the ambulance gets here.”

  Hands free, she bound the broken arm with the belt and a skateboard. She commandeered Riker’s jacket and two other jackets to cover the child and keep him warm, to minimize the damage of shock that was already settling into his enormous eyes. The pain would come later. Now he was only crying for his mother.

  She stood up, waved goodbye to Riker and moved quickly across the park, leaving him to the first aid and the paperwork of a dog bite. She smiled as she put more distance between them. Riker was a department legend. No suspect had ever shaken him off a tail. This was a first, and he would be a long time getting over it.

  “Hi, Charles. It’s Riker. Is Mallory around? ... You got any idea where she might be? ... How did you know? ... Yeah, I’ve been following her during the day, but the brat gave me the slip.... It’s important that I find her, like now, this minute. If she wanted to lose me, and she did, she’s onto something.... Yeah, I’m worried too.”

  Riker hung up the pay phone in front of the supermarket and turned east on Bleecker Street. It was early yet, not quite dark, but the Halloween costumes were spotting the streets with purple tinsel hair and monster masks. A giant tube of toothpaste walked by, and then a leafy plant on two legs. A smallish gang of werewolves and ghouls who did not come up to his recently rebuckled belt were being escorted down the street under the protective eyes of two moms. It was rare to see a child without a bodyguard in any part of the city. The smallest of the monsters wore a trendy mask from a science fiction movie.

  “Boo!” the child yelled at Riker who obliged him by putting
up his hands and yelling, “Don’t hurt me!” The children laughed, and the bodyguards herded them on as Riker headed south toward the precinct.

  Oh, kid, he said to himself, you don’t know what scary is.

  “ ‘The paladin will die!’ That’s Mallory, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Edith!”

  The scrawl was faint red and overlaid with scouring powder. Charles had not been breathing as he read it, and he had to make a conscious effort to resume. Edith Candle was twisting a tissue into shreds, leaving the kitchen.

  He followed her down the hall, stopping at the door to Max’s library. His eye for the thing out of place drew his attention to the clutter on the octagonal table. He could see the heavy scrollwork of an ornate silver frame which lay beneath a newspaper, exposed only by one corner. His eye went to the mantelpiece where the set of three frames sat intact. This one on the table would be a match.

  Edith was pulling on his sleeve. “I’m very upset just now, Charles. I’m really not up to having any company today.”

  Ignoring her, he walked into the library and stood by the table. Within inches of the silver frame was a large manila envelope bearing the return address of a New York clipping service. It lay on top of hastily concealed scraps of paper. As he lifted the newspaper off the frame, he uncovered a photograph of Mallory, a close-up taken at Louis Markowitz’s funeral. Her beautiful face was trapped behind the glass of the silver frame. Charles crossed the room in two strides and grasped Edith by the shoulders.

  “Who is going to kill Mallory, Edith? Who?”

  “I can’t tell. My gift is not that strong.”

  “Screw the gift. You set her up. Who’s going to kill her?”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  He went to the mantel and picked out the portrait of the young bride-to-be. “Her fiance lived in this building. His name was George Farmer. George Farmer killed his fiancée the night before the wedding, and then he turned the gun on himself. He’s a vegetable now, isn’t he? Lying in a private hospital, staring at the ceiling. I’m told he drools a bit now and then. But he wasn’t the one who died, so he didn’t merit a silver frame. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”

  “My gift carries a terrible burden, Charles. I tried to avert that tragedy. But I failed.”

  “Hardly a failure, Edith. By your obscene standards, it was a roaring success. And Cousin Max? You killed his concentration, didn’t you? You were the last person he wanted to see that night. That’s why my parents stopped bringing me by for visits with you. They knew you manipulated his death. And now you’ve set Mallory up to die. You worked the damn thing out, didn’t you? Of course, the old women, the seances, who would have better insider information than you? Who’s going to kill her, Edith?”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying these things.”

  “Originally you were planning to orchestrate an accident with Herbert and his gun. Martin was going to be the victim this time. Just a little something to keep your hand in, right? Herbert’s a rather twisty, frightened little man, isn’t he? Probably wasn’t much of a challenge for you.”

  “Charles, you’re distraught. You don’t—”

  “But then along came Mallory with all her violence, all her hate, all that beautiful young energy waiting to be fired like a bullet. And you changed your plans. Do I have it right? Where has she gone?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that she’s in danger.”

  “That much I believe.”

  He touched the edge of the silver-framed portrait on the desk. “Kathleen Mallory is not your trophy.” He brought down his fist to break the glass and free her image. The blood streamed from the tear in his hand. He left a red palm print on the door as he quit the apartment with the wadded photograph of Mallory in the closed fist of his good hand.

  Mallory took stock of the VCR, the color television, and the most expensive stereo known to audiophiles and burglars. It didn’t fit with the peeling wallpaper and the threadbare carpet. The air was ripe with spaghetti sauce, and the stronger smell of garbage wafted up from the air shaft window, which had been opened against the heat from the clanking radiator.

  A Doberman puppy padded into the room, eyes blind to his surroundings, dazed and favoring a foreleg as he walked. The little boy sat on the floor in front of the television.

  The boy looked up at her as though from a great distance and not the few feet that separated them. His yellow eyes rolled after her as she followed Redwing into the next room.

  The kitchen, which was also the bathroom, had the same proportions as the front room. A purple shower curtain hid the tub, all but its lion’s-paw feet. A dirty gold drape of black orchid print concealed the toilet, but not the smell of the plumbing backup.

  “Sit, sit,” commanded Redwing, smiling with all her teeth.

  Mallory sat down at a broad table littered with the crumbs and morsels and crusted sauce of the evening meal.

  “We will have tea now,” said Redwing, moving slowly to a countertop lined with glass jars of unlabeled dry leaves and powders. Redwing opened a cupboard and brought out two teacups which did not match.

  “None for me, thanks,” said Mallory, staring at the countertop, watching the progress of a roach climbing the toaster, which held all the fingerprints laid on it since the day it was purchased. Each thing was in its proper place, but each place was coated with whatever had been spilled there—yesterday, last month. She leaned down and flicked a roach from her shoe as though she were long accustomed to doing this.

  “You must drink the tea.”

  “Why?”

  “The customs of my craft. You cops, you have your tools. I have mine. You want information, you must let me spin my craft, yes?”

  Mallory nodded. The boy was standing just inside the door. He seemed to have appeared there. She looked down to his stocking feet. So quiet he was. She had never heard him speak. His eyes fixed upon Mallory and would not let go of her. Redwing spoke to him in French. He climbed a chair to fetch a tin canister from the cupboard, moving in a sleepwalk. More words were fired at him, and now he found the honey jar for Redwing, moving with no will of his own, pulled here and there by her words.

  Mallory followed the boy’s every move. How much damage had Redwing done to him? He was dressed like any other kid, in good jeans and a T-shirt, but all normalcy ended there. He walked slowly to Mallory, stopping at her chair and setting the honey jar on the table with automaton deliberation.

  While Redwing’s back was turned on them, Mallory reached out and touched the boy’s face. The gentleness of her touch startled both of them. The gauze of dullness lifted from his eyes to give her a sudden window on something quick and bright which lived in there. Mallory smiled at the boy. The boy smiled back, faltering a little. ‘I’m coming back for you,’ her eyes said as her hand caressed his smooth young face and released it. The boy’s eyes rounded, and then a curtain dropped and they were dulled again, two filmy yellow circles, nothing more, no one home.

  The clock on the wall was ticking loud. The teakettle whistled and shrieked. The radiator made all the noises of tired metal being overworked, pouring out more heat than the room could hold. Redwing closed the window, the only source of air that was not sweating and stained with odors. The boy retreated to the doorway and hovered there, a tentative, small body without ballast or substance.

  Redwing delicately placed the teacups on the table.

  “Drink.”

  A black fly circled Mallory’s cup. She waved it off. As she raised the cup to her lips, a wisp of Helen resurrected to notice the lipstick stain on the rim, and then the specter evaporated in the heat. Mallory sipped her tea. It was good, and sweet enough without the honey Redwing was spooning into her own cup.

  “So you’re curious about Pearl Whitman? This was the woman your father died with, was she not?”

  Mallory nodded and sipped her tea.

  “I once offered my services to the police,” said Redwing. “Did you know that? No? They sent m
e away. No thank you, they said. Then last night, Lieutenant Coffey comes to ask me for information. I told him nothing. Screw the police. But you are not police anymore. With you it is personal. You I will help.”

  The boy appeared behind the woman’s chair. As Redwing smiled broadly, the boy’s eyes rolled back and his hands curled up into angry fists.

  “Drink it all, and then we look into the dregs of your cup, your life.”

  “Just promise me you won’t tell anyone I made a house call.” Henrietta smiled as she snipped the last of the sutures. “Fortunately, most people forget that a psychiatrist is also an M.D. If you rat on me to the tenants, I’ll be spending all my free time listening to their aches and pains.”

  “Not a word,” said Charles.

  Either she was a wildly gifted stitcher, or he was simply beyond pain. Shock could do that, he supposed.

  “It’s been a long time since I worked on flesh and blood.” She applied the gauze and then the adhesive over the stitches in his hand.

  “So, what do you think of our resident medium?”

  “It all fits,” she said. “Other things have happened here over the years.”

  “You mean the murder of Allison Warwick?”

  Henrietta nodded. “I didn’t know George Farmer very well. I’d just moved in. He was only a nodding acquaintance when we met in the halls. But you could see the progress of the paranoia even if you weren’t looking for it. I watched him change over a period of about six weeks. By then, I’d come to know Edith very well. She told me about the automatic writing.”

  “Don’t tell me. George walked in one day and saw a message written on the wall.”

  “Right. The tenants were in the habit of just walking in without knocking, a custom of the house. The writing was about Allison. Edith told me she had no memory of writing it. I’m guessing there’d been quite a bit of writing on the walls in that six weeks. Whatever he saw, it ate away at him.”