Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  The roller coaster was revving up its engine once more. The conductor of his moods was crying, All aboard, Andrew, and away we go! And he was climbing, soaring in his mind, looking toward the radiant lights of Bloomingdale’s ceiling. Gathering speed, Andrew. Never mind that safety belt, boy.

  He raced up the mechanical stairs, and two blue-haired dowagers bounced off the rail at his passing. He roughly shouldered a tall brunette who was young and a true child of New York City. But Andrew was one second gone before she thought to put her knee into his groin; he was moving that fast in the body, and his brain was fairly electrified as it sped along its single rail.

  In the late hours of the night, when the store had been swept free of consumers and staff, Andrew emerged from the shadows of Bloomingdale’s with a shopping list. He consulted his watch and then his notebook. The watchman and his dogs should be patrolling the second floor.

  He stepped lightly on the frozen mechanical staircase, heading toward the rug department. Oh, but on his way he must rip off a dozen raincoats. He would need at least a dozen to make a canopy. A small refrigerator was copped from the employee lounge. Housewares provided the electric espresso maker. He ticked off other items on his list: satin sheets, ten down quilts for his mattress, tulip glasses, a reclining chair and a reading lamp. An hour later, he leaned against the furniture dolly which he had boosted from the stockroom. Leverage was everything. He wasn’t even sweating.

  Andrew saw motion among the clothing racks, the shadow of a lithe and graceful dancer, sleek and young. No, wait. It was not a woman, but a large security dog. He had mistimed the watchman’s rounds. He quickly sprayed his entire person with perfume, the better to smell like Bloomingdale’s.

  CHAPTER 2

  The basement window gave her a ground-level view of the suburban backyard, with its green lawn and shade trees. This had been Louis Markowitz’s piece of the American dream.

  The glass pane was streaked with water from the lawn sprinkler, and the grass was neatly trimmed. Mallory knew this was Robin Duffy’s work. Markowitz’s old friend and neighbor did what he could to create the illusion that people still lived there. The old lawyer had raked the leaves in the fall, shoveled the walks in the winter, and brought her offers from young families who wished to buy the place and bring it to life once more. But to Robin Duffy’s consternation, Mallory always refused to sell, and she never explained her reasons for wanting to keep a house she would never live in again.

  When was she here last?

  She could not remember if it had been weeks ago or a month. She reached up and opened the window. A fresh breeze cut through the basement to kill off the musty smell of abandonment.

  Helen had been the first to abandon the house when she died under a surgeon’s knife. Then Mallory had moved out of Brooklyn and into a Manhattan condo with no reminders of home and grief. Markowitz had spent his last years working late hours to avoid coming home to empty rooms, unoccupied furniture and all the memories of Helen ganging up on him in the dark. After Mallory had put her father in the ground and finished his last case, she rarely visited the old place, though this was home and always would be.

  No, she would never sell the house, never evict the Markowitzes, or what survived of them in closets, boxes and drawers, from the attic to the basement. She could not imagine an afterlife for them-so where were they, if not here?

  Today she had one more piece of her father’s unfinished business, and she had come home again to look for answers among his personal notes in the boxes and files of his disorganized, unfinished life.

  She ran her fingers across the dust which had accumulated on the record albums of the swing bands and the cassettes of the Rolling Stones. There were also ancient reel-to-reel recordings, Markowitz’s prized collection of vintage radio programs from the late thirties and forties. She blew more dust from the elaborate recording equipment she had brought to the house a year before his death. She had used it to preserve his most precious recordings on CDs before the old-fashioned tapes could rot on their spools.

  Markowitz had been unreasonably happy when she told him he could play the CDs over and over, and never wear them out. She opened the plastic boxes now, all of them, and then she smiled. Though she had a mania for order and neatness, she was pleased to see the CD covers and discs completely mismatched to tell her he had made good use of her gift in the time that was left to him.

  Now Riker sat in Markowitz’s favorite chair. Helen had wanted to throw it out. To save it, the old man had dragged it down here to his basement sanctuary. He had never been able to throw anything away. Once she had chided him about that, but today she was counting on it.

  Riker was bent over an open cardboard carton. “Your old man’s filing system really sucks.” He reached into the box, his fingers raking through the mess of match-book covers, notepaper, one cocktail napkin, three dinner napkins, and all the assorted materials that would take the scratch of a pen or pencil. He read some of the notes and shook his head. “I’ve known Markowitz forever, but his shorthand still throws me. It could take a year to wade through this, and another year to make sense out of it.”

  “We’ll just separate the critical notes by the dates. He dated everything.” Mallory pulled up a small wooden chair which had been her own when she and Markowitz spent the rainy Saturday afternoons of her childhood in the golden age of radio, sipping cocoa and listening to the opening lines of The Shadow-Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

  Riker held up one paper napkin, yellowed with age. “This might be worth something. The date is right. Listen to this. ‘Weight twelve pounds, four ounces with bone. Started twelve-oh-five a.m. Finished twelve forty-five a.m. Time out to rest, five minutes. Time out to send the kid back to bed, fifteen minutes. Dull now. The next one would take longer.’ Now what’s that about?”

  She took the napkin from his hand. The date was four days following the murder of the artist and the dancer. How old had she been then? Twelve? She looked at the time and the reference to the kid. Herself? It couldn’t be. She had never been allowed to stay up that late.

  Suddenly she remembered exactly when Markowitz had written that note. She looked up to the basement ceiling, as though she could see into the kitchen on the floor above them.

  All those years ago, she had left her bed and gone down the stairs, minding the steps that made the most noise. She went stealing through the rooms of the dark house, hours beyond a child’s bedtime. Young Kathy had been heading for the kitchen, tantalized by the knowledge of half a pie at the back of the refrigerator. Food was never begrudged in this house. Food was love. But being caught out of bed so late on a school night, that was another matter.

  She had come upon Markowitz standing at Helen’s chopping block and working over a leg of beef with a meat cleaver. So intent was he on his hacking, he never heard the small bare feet on the tiles as the child slipped into the kitchen behind his back. She retrieved the cordless electric meat carver from a drawer, making no sound until she switched it on and the metal came to life in her hand, motor buzzing, the serrated blade working back and forth.

  Markowitz had whirled around in a near pirouette, so graceful for a man his size, excess weight hanging around his belt as a tribute to Helen’s cooking. He had been shocked to see the child standing there in her pajamas. There were sweat stains under his arms, and his face was flushed with unaccustomed exertion.

  “Kathy, I swear I’m gonna hang a bell on you. ”

  And then he had thought to look at the kitchen clock, wiped his hands with a dish towel and scribbled a note on a white paper napkin. He smiled down at her and ruffled her hair. When he smiled, she smiled. It was an uncontrollable reflex, even when she was angry with him, and sometimes it drove her nuts that he could make her do that against her will. She recovered her solemnity quickly and held out the meat carver.

  He had thanked her for it, and agreed that yes, the electric knife would be a lot faster than the cleaver. Then he read her mind an
d pulled the pie from the refrigerator and set it on the kitchen table. He poured them each a glass of milk, and they sat down together in companionable silence for a few bites.

  “So, what’s the deal with the meat?” the child had asked, nodding toward the chopping block with some suspicion. Not counting this slice of pie, she knew all food came from Helen’s hand, not his.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he said.

  When she had demolished her pie to the last crumb, Markowitz motioned her to stand, turned her around and gave her a very gentle push in the direction of bed and sleep.

  Now Detective Sergeant Mallory sat under a bare lightbulb in the basement, staring at the notes on the age-yellowed napkin. She handed it back to Riker.

  “These are the old man’s stats for the time it took to cut through the meat and bones of Peter Ariel and Aubry Gilette.”

  Morning came with rude bright light, which penetrated the tender, pink membranes of his eyelids. When Andrew Bliss opened his eyes, he wondered if the bedroom ceiling didn’t look rather like the blue sky, replete with fleecy clouds. He rejected this as impossible and closed his eyes again. But now there were car horns in his bedroom as well, and they played havoc with the fragile nerve endings behind his eyeballs, where his brain was fermenting in yesterday’s wine. Unaccountably, his hair hurt, but he would think about that later.

  He pushed aside a layer of down quilts, which he instantly recognized from Bloomingdale’s Domestics display. Memory was stealing up on him. He looked around at the cables and the tall pipes, the black ductwork and vents, the surrounding buildings, and the mountains of stolen goods.

  Of course.

  In a salute to recovering memory, he slapped his forehead. He instantly regretted that. Holding his poor, freshly injured head, Andrew murmured an apology to it as he began to rise.

  On your feet now, one leg next to the other. Good boy, you remembered.

  He was attired in striped silk pajamas. A matching robe was laid out on an armchair. How had he gotten that heavy chair up to the roof? Ah, well, in the manic phase nothing was impossible. The door of Bloomingdale’s roof was set high in a narrow shaft of brick standing twenty feet above the rooftop. The exit was sealed with industrial tape and bound by a heavy chain. The metal stairs leading from the door and down to the roof had been ripped away and twisted outward to hang in the sky as a staircase to nowhere. A second roof exit, resembling a storm cellar, was set into the ground. Half of this door had been barricaded with two steel beams and six large wooden cases topped by a pile of designer raincoats. The door handle was clear of debris, but useless.

  Well, haven’t I been thorough. But why?

  It was a mercy the espresso maker from Housewares was already plugged into the roof cable. He could never have found the electrical outlet this morning, certainly not before a cup of coffee. He switched it on and smiled feebly when the red light glowed.

  While the espresso machine was busy, he surveyed his new domain. Bloomingdale’s roof was an island, one city block square and bounded by heavily trafficked streets on all sides. Ah, paradise. The potted palm tree in the corner might have been some idea of homage to other island exiles with a preference for sweaty tropics.

  The espresso machine ceased its gurgling. When he looked down, he noticed the bullhorn plugged into the same outlet. What had he planned to do with that? And the binoculars? Or might this be something he had already done? He picked up the binoculars and adjusted the lenses in time to see a pigeon magnified to the proportions of Godzilla. Startled, he nearly dropped the glasses. He was unaccustomed to nature in the raw. He refocussed the lenses on the street below, and the next sighting was no less shocking.

  Oh, the clothes, the clothes these people wore. How did these idiots manage to commit so many really criminal offenses in a single outfit? Had they not eyes to see?

  It was coming back to him now.

  Right.

  He picked up the bullhorn in his free hand and cleared his throat, amplifying his phlegm a hundredfold. It worked.

  But where… Oh, right.

  He had broken into the security office last night. This was one of the bullhorns they used for fire drills.

  Through the telescoping lenses, he scanned the sidewalk again. A heavyset woman was strolling past the store-his store. Oh, this was really too much. He raised the bullhorn and inhaled deeply. “No you don’t!” he blared in a voice so powerful it caught his hangover off guard, and the reaction time for pain to set in had a long lag. “You there! You in the black and white dress. Madam, you know damn well you’re too heavy to wear horizontal stripes. Your friends have all told you that. Might I suggest a dark rose ensemble to go with that Mediterranean coloring?”

  The woman, trapped in the twin lenses, moved her head quickly from side to side. Her mouth fell open, and her head slowly bowed. As she turned away from the store, a newspaper fell from her hand and marked the spot where Andrew had scored his first direct hit. The young woman settled into the gait of an old woman, meandering down another street which was not Andrew’s street and of no concern to him. He had already moved on to the crime in progress at the bus stop.

  “Oh, you can’t be serious!” he screamed. And now delayed reaction set in. His brain was throbbing and thrashing against the sides of his skull in a mad attempt to get free of it. In a lower pitch, and with the pathos of genuine agony, he said, “You can’t possibly take that gorgeous Armani creation on the bus.”

  The perpetrator in the Armani suit was all eyes, and his eyes went everywhere.

  “That’s right, you know what you’ve done wrong. Now go and flag down a cab. Show some dignity, for Christ’s sake. Let’s try and live up to the clothes, shall we?”

  And the man did indeed put out his hand and flagged down a cab to carry him away as quickly as possible.

  Andrew went back to his bed of ten down quilts and rested his damaged head on a pile of silk pillows. His head lolled from side to side as he took stock of his campsite. Fortuitously, he had remembered the larder of Le Train Bleu, and apparently he had removed their entire stock of premium wines. The cases were stacked in a solid wall of champagne and red wine. Cartons of imported cigarettes were strewn everywhere.

  Did Bloomingdale’s sell…? Oh, right.

  He had raided the locker of an executive.

  Well, here was a snag. He had not had the foresight to steal a portable toilet before sealing the exits from the roof.

  What about the fire escape?

  No escape. The emergency exits were all interior. He looked up at the metal staircase which no longer led to the roof door. Distressed and mangled steel angled oddly away from the brick structure. Had he really done that? But how? Drunks could be so ingenious. He might have to get drunk again to figure out how he had managed it.

  What else? Was that a year’s supply of espresso beans from the gourmet selection on six? It was.

  Oh, joy.

  He opened the half-size refrigerator. No cream. He was inconsolable. Ah, but two magnums of wine were cooling with companion tulip glasses. Light flooded his soul again.

  And food?

  None. Not any in the refrigerator, nor among the boxes and cartons. He counted fourteen smoking jackets, eight Dresden teacups, nine pairs of silk pajamas, two potted palm trees and no food.

  During the bender, while he was in the genius mode, he must have resolved the problem of solid-waste disposal by eliminating the solids. Quite sensible. He could piss his liquid wastes over the side of the wall.

  He returned to his post at the edge of the roof and slung the strap of the field glasses around his neck. He took up his horn just in time. There was another blight on the street. “You… in the too-mauve-for-words pant-suit.”

  The mauve woman stopped and looked everywhere but in the right direction.

  “Up here,” he guided her. “I’m up here with the pigeons and God. Look up! Good. What are you trying to do to me? Do you want me to hurl myself into the street? You
can’t get away with that pantsuit, and you know it. Give yourself up on the second floor. Surrender to Alice. She’ll know how to deal with you.”

  The woman was entering the store. So far, the pedestrian masses were rather good about taking creative direction. So he had finally found his true vocation- fashion terrorist.

  Now if only he had his personal shopper, his life would be complete. He leaned over the roof once more and screamed into the bullhorn, “Annie! Annie, where are you?”

  Charles Butler unsheathed his blade and slashed open an envelope. He was arrested for a moment by the shining surface of his antique dagger.

  Mrs. Ortega had been polishing things again.

  He would rather have the ancient piece of silver clouded with tarnish. He never cared to come upon his own reflection, or even the knife blade’s width of it, by surprise. But every now and again, he must endure a time when his housekeeper would go mad with metal cleaners, of which there were as many varieties as there were metals. And for a time, he could go nowhere in his own home without some bright piece of Mrs. Ortega’s handiwork throwing back the image of a man whose nose was too long, and whose eyes resembled heavy-lidded hen’s eggs with small blue irises.

  Now he sat quietly awaiting his visitors’ knock on the door. No doubt the people advancing down the hallway were known to him. He hadn’t buzzed anyone into the building, so one of them must have a key. That narrowed the field to his tenants, his cleaning woman or his business partner. And of course the visitors were on their way to his own door, for this suite of offices and his apartment across the hall occupied the entire second floor of the SoHo building.

  This particular room was the reception area of Mallory and Butler, Ltd. Queen Anne reigned with Louis XV in period furniture with graceful curving legs, which seemed always on the verge of dancing. Each morning, Charles sat down to this antique desk, opened his mail by the light of a tall triptych of arched windows-and wondered what his partner might be up to.