The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

by Carol O'Connell

  “Who told Palanski she was working that building?”

  “He’s got sources in that crowd.”

  Riker leaned forward. “And I’ll bet his sources don’t stop with the doorman. He can work those wealthy people like street weasels. Is it just me? Am I the only one in this room that finds that interesting?”

  Coffey shot Riker a look that said, Shut up.

  Captain Thomas ignored him and looked at Coffey with raised eyebrows, clearly asking if Riker was housebroken and leash-trained. “Palanski is one of the best detectives I have. He’d be an asset to any investigation.”

  “It’s Mallory’s case, Judd. You don’t get squat. That’s it.”

  “Commissioner Beale and I go back a long ways, Jack.”

  “As far as Beale is concerned, the sun only shines on Kathy Mallory this week. The little bastard’s grinning like a ghoul. She’s the only cop ever commended by the Civilian Review Board for shooting a citizen. She can do no wrong.”

  “But what about you, Jack? You’re in line for promotion. This is a high-profile case—big money, big names in that building. Palanski’s got sixteen years’ experience. Mallory’s a kid. You don’t want her to blow that promotion out of the water, do you?”

  “Judd, if I thought you were threatening me, I’d have Mallory blow you out of the water, ’cause I just really hate that.”

  Riker sat back in his chair. If Coffey kept up this insubordination with superiors, then one day he might have to stop ragging the kid and show him a little respect. Then what would he do for fun?

  “Tell Palanski to back off, Judd.”

  The captain sighed. “You know, Jack, with all the moonlighting and the free food and discounts for cops, all the little fiddles getting worked all over town, if we ever enforced the rules, we wouldn’t—”

  “I don’t know where you think you’re going with this, Judd,” said Coffey. “You got something on one of mine, you spit it out! Now!”

  Thomas put up his hands to say, Okay, enough, and he lifted his bulk out of the chair and left the room.

  And Riker knew that was too damn easy. He was wondering what the captain’s own fiddle might be, when Coffey turned on him, angry.

  “Do you know what Mallory has on Palanski?”

  “No idea. She’d never rat out another cop. She might shoot him if he gets in her way, but she’ll never rat on him.”

  “You went too far with Judd Thomas.”

  “It’s her life on the line. You know Palanski is dirty and I know it. He’s responsible for all the damn leaks. One of those leaks could get her killed.”

  “You went too far, Riker. Thomas finds Palanski useful the way I find Mallory useful. If all she’s got on him is flashy clothes and fifty-dollar haircuts—Mallory’s clothes are tailor-made, for Christ’s sake, and she doesn’t cut her hair over the bathroom sink, does she? Right now, we’re real lucky the captain got his new job with politics instead of brains. But let’s not count him a complete moron. Let’s not push our luck, okay?”

  Riker hated it when Coffey was right. “You want me to see what I can turn up on Palanski?”

  “No. I’ve got someone else working Palanski undercover. So just table that, okay? No more speculation, even if your lips don’t move.”

  “You didn’t put it through Internal Affairs?”

  “No, no IA men. I want to keep this one in the family. When you see Mallory, tell her to get her ass back in here. I think it would be nice if she went through the formality of handing in reports—just to be polite.”

  “You know, this might be her version of professional courtesy. Maybe she thinks you’d rather not know what she’s doing and how she’s doing it. She might have something there. Think about your pension.”

  “I’ve already got a problem with the way she’s handling the case. She’s trying to cover three suspects by herself. It’s a scattergun approach for one cop. If she doesn’t get him soon, she’ll lose him.”

  “Oh, I think she knows which one it is. If she tells you she has three suspects, you can figure two of them for smoke. She thinks you don’t trust her to run her own investigation, and that’s wise on your part. I haven’t trusted her since she was ten.”

  “It’s nothing supernatural, I promise you,” said Charles.

  Justin was deathly quiet, his small face turned to the cab window, to the fall of snowflakes silently crashing against the glass.

  “When I get home, I’ll go back down to the cellar and have a close look at the target. I’ll find that the old mechanism was triggered by accident. You probably jostled it when you leaned on the target. It’s that simple. In fact, I don’t even need to look. And I won’t look, that’s how much faith I have in you. There’s no other explanation, Justin. The knife came from the other side of the target. No one made it fly through the air. All right?”

  The boy turned to him. In that small face, there was clearly a will to smile.

  When they exited the cab in front of the school on the Upper East Side, Charles stayed awhile to watch Justin join the other boys who were standing about the yard in groups of threes and fours. But Justin did not join them. Hands in his pockets, head down, he stood alone by tacit agreement of the yard.

  Charles winced, for he was watching a living memory of his own school days. Now a bell called the boys back into the building, two by two, and three by three, and Justin on his own.

  Charles unfurled his umbrella against the hard drive of snow and stared at the park on the other side of the wide street. Mallory would be a straight shot across the park and a jog in the road north. Perhaps he would visit her if she was at the Rosens’ apartment. Also just the other side of the park was the crime scene.

  Cabs passed by him, empty of passengers and ripe for the hailing, but he liked to walk in the snow. Over the years, he had acquired a taste for all the solitary occupations. And so would young Justin.

  On his foul-weather meanderings closer to home, Charles would frequently encounter others in this select club. He was on a nodding acquaintance with fellow rain-walkers and snow-walkers, and they would smile at one another in passing, recognizing the secret sign—the gait of no pressing business, while all the other pedestrians were hurrying along, anxious to be out of the wet and the cold.

  He crossed the street and took a path that wound down from the sidewalk and into a pristine valley of new snow. Only his footsteps marked the way until he came to the road which wound through the park. He walked along the road, wondering what Mallory was up to, wondering if he would actually want to know that.

  Now a horse-drawn carriage approached him. The snow ploffed on his umbrella, and it suddenly occurred to him that his shoes were not meant for snow. It crossed his mind to hail the carriage driver. But no. He let the carriage pass unhailed. New shoes could be got, new snow was not so easy to come by. He continued his solitary tracking.

  What would Markowitz have said about Mallory’s negligence in failing to visit the crime scene? What might she have missed? Nothing probably. Her refusal was most likely only an overreaction to Riker’s lecture on procedure.

  Suppose he visited the scene himself, and possibly noticed something useful? How would she react to that? Well, they were partners, weren’t they?

  “You’re living in a fool’s paradise,” said a voice which had come to shelter under Charles’s umbrella. “Behold a pale horse,” said the man who materialized at his side to hold a conversation with a third person, who was not visible to the naked mind.

  Charles felt an involuntary shudder. He looked down to a shiny bald spot in the center of the smaller man’s matted swirls of gray hair. The old man’s coat was dirty, but good wool. A scarf was wrapped around his neck and trailed behind him on the ground. It was the longest scarf Charles had ever seen, and with all the colors of an unwashed, unkempt, unraveling rainbow. The man continued to walk along with him, accepting the shelter of the umbrella as though it were his due.

  Charles knew he could never look on madne
ss in the same way again. He had done his own time with one who was not there. And he had to wonder how often Malakhai had done that trick before the damage became permanent, before it became impossible to send Louisa away. Each thought changed the configurations of the very brain itself. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.”

  “I’m Charles Butler. Good day.” He moved the umbrella to one side, the better to protect his gray-haired companion from the driving snow that dusted the old man’s sloping shoulders.

  “And lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,” the old man intoned.

  “Well, perhaps it hasn’t been a good day,” said Charles.

  “A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon at her feet.”

  What is Mallory’s day like? What is she up to right now?

  “And there was war in heaven.”

  That might not be far from the mark.

  Now the old man parted company with Charles, as the invisible partner in conversation led the man down another path of revelation and gravel covered over with snow.

  When Charles came to the site of the murder, the yellow strands of tape were still in evidence, stake-tied by their broken ends and waving in the white wind of snow.

  He walked to the place confirmed by Heller’s map as the original murder scene. He stood by the water and looked around in all directions. So far he had learned nothing that Mallory might not have gleaned from the map. The site was within view of the path along the water. That fit nicely with Mallory’s theory of a spontaneous act. There was not sufficient cover to do a murder undisclosed.

  The murder had taken place on a rainy day. Few people walked in the rain and the snow, but those who did were habitual in their defiance of the elements. He stared up at the towering building on Central Park West. The upper floors reached above the treeline of bare branches. Mallory might be looking out one of those windows at this moment.

  He walked around the leg of water to the path lined with benches, and then he sat down to wait. He had not been sitting there for very long before the one he waited on came walking along the path—the other walker in the snow.

  He nearly missed her, though she was close. The bright snow had strained his eyes, and he had to work to pick out the particulars of her, the white face, white hair covered by the white woolen cape. She was as close to invisible as one could be without being a figment of the mind.

  Cora pulled the hood of her white cape close about her face.

  Too late.

  He had seen through her camouflage. The man was very tall, but not threatening in his stance. She squinted to focus on his face, which became clearer as he walked toward her.

  Well, with that silly, wide grin, she might assume that he was one of the more docile lunatics who roamed the park at will. No, he was not dangerous.

  Her hands went past the layers of sweaters beneath the white cape, and into the deep pockets of her white woolen trousers, looking there for a few coins.

  “Excuse me,” the man said, standing before her now and bowing down to her so the wind wouldn’t take his words, and no matter if it did, for she read the words off his lips.

  She drew the coins from her pockets and offered them to him. “Now promise me you won’t spend this on wine.”

  “Oh, no thank you. It’s not money I need.”

  And now her suspicions were aroused anew. He didn’t want money? Well, he must be crazy, and perhaps dangerous as well. She turned away from him. He circled round to the opposite end of the path, but kept a courteous distance. There was an apology in the way he stood, and a foolish hopeful look to his eyes, the pair of which had entirely too much white around the irises.

  Oh yes, he was quite mad.

  “I need your help,” he said. “It’s about what happened there on the morning of the nineteenth.” He turned to point to that place across the dark water where the broken yellow tapes were waving in the wind. He turned back to face her before speaking again. He had already picked up on the fact that she was a lip-reader. That spoke well for presence of mind.

  “Ma’am, I don’t suppose you were out walking that morning?”

  He seemed sane enough now. The shape of the words on his mouth had a good neighborhood to them, without slang or slur of form, and she could find no fault with his manners.

  “Yes, young man, I was out walking that morning.”

  “Did you happen to notice two people, a man and a woman, standing over there?”

  He must be speaking of the young lovers, Blue Legs and the tall umbrella. Oddly, she felt protective of the young couple. Who was he to pry into their secret meeting?

  “Why do you ask?”

  When he was done explaining that the lovers were murderer and victim, she felt the need to sit down. He sensed this and guided her to a bench a few feet up the path. He dusted it for her with touching chivalry and sat down beside her.

  Now the man’s face was all concern. Was he reading the new horror that was setting in behind her eyes? She had taken Blue Legs’ wound for a flower. What a fool she had been. A rose in winter? Why hadn’t she known the young woman was on her way to dying? Perhaps she could have—

  Oh yes, she could have. If only she had not had the fool’s idea to go out without her glasses and her hearing aid.

  And now she bowed her head with the weight of a dark understanding. In the same way she had prevented the carnage twixt a beetle and a spider, with only the flick of her wrist, she might have prevented a murder.

  So a bug survived, a woman died.

  Blue Legs, I am so sorry.

  He touched her hand lightly to call her face back to his so he might ask another question. Had she seen anything else, anything out of the ordinary?

  Well, no. The young lovers had taken all her attention.

  A speeding blur of red cap and jacket with churning blue-jeaned legs ran past them in a boy’s whiff of spearmint gum and wet wool. A dog was fast on the heels of the boy. Dog and boy left the path and put new tracks in the virgin snow of the incline behind the benches. Then they were gone.

  “Oh, the dog. Yes, there was a dog racing up that hill, and he caught his leash in the brambles. I suppose I should have thought it odd to see the dog with the leash and no human attached to the other end. But you know, people will let the dogs run wild in the park, though it is against the law.”

  “There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” said the man. And now she found his smile quite engaging—though still a bit loony.

  When they stopped to speak with the doorman at the Coventry Arms, the man’s friend, Mallory, was not at home. The doorman checked the name against a list on frayed, creased paper. He smiled broadly and invited them to wait for Miss Mallory in the lobby.

  “Mallory, just sit down and shut the hell up.”

  To Coffey’s surprise, and he hoped it was concealed surprise, she sat.

  “Don’t you ever walk out on a meeting again. I don’t want any more grief from you. Don’t you even think about irritating me anymore, no more insubordination, none of that crap. I’ve got Riker for that. If he thinks you’re stealing his song and dance, he won’t like it.”

  “I’m not going to work with Palanski.”

  “No, you’re not. But that was my decision, not yours. And now about that other little job I gave you. Did you pull the records for me?” Did you steal them for me?

  She said nothing and he had to make what he could of the silence. He was operating by Mallory’s rule book now.

  “I hope you’re doing this discreetly.” Don’t get caught.

  Silence.

  “I’ve got an idea Palanski does a lot of overtime.” He’s on the take.

  She only nodded, but that was promising.

  “He seems to have some kind of radar for homicide scenes within smelling distance of money—even on his days off. He was on vacation time when the body turned up in the park. Oh, sorry, Mallory. I’m telling you what you already know. That’s rude,
isn’t it?”

  He was close to joy when the side of her mouth dipped with annoyance. So even Mallory had buttons. “Did you bring me the records?”

  “You don’t want to see his records,” she said.

  “Mallory—”

  “Markowitz never turned on a cop.”

  “Shut up, Mallory. Granted, I’m no Markowitz, but neither are you. Your old man was a detail fanatic. He’d take any information he could get, from anywhere, anybody. You should have learned more from him when you had the chance. Your lone-cowboy attitude isn’t something I expect to cure in a day, but I do want to keep you alive long enough to bring you up on charges the next time you cross me. Someone at the Coventry Arms tipped Palanski to the activity. It might be your perp, or it might be you rattled another cage and it’s unrelated. If I’m going to plug the leaks, I need the dirt on Palanski.”

  Her arms folded across her chest. No, she was telling him, she was not going to roll over on a cop.

  “I’ll handle Palanski,” she said. And then she threw in, “If you like,” as a concession. It was a small gift from Mallory, a consolation prize as she was telling him to go to hell. Another round was lost.

  “Okay, you handle it.” Was he losing his mind, loosing her on Palanski, giving her carte blanche? “Don’t do anything Markowitz wouldn’t ask you to do.”

  “Understood.”

  Later, in the washroom, he saw a ghost in the mirror over the sink. It was Markowitz—no, it was Jack Coffey wearing Markowitz’s old worries over Mallory and what she did and what might come back on him. Breaking laws to keep them was the norm now.

  He was so easily seduced by her.

  He was going to kill her. It was the only way. But first, a little fun. He would make her pay for torturing him, and she would pay slowly.

  Thoughts of her came and passed. When she was in his mind, she brought with her a burning sensation, inflicting a hot, red flush all through his body and his brain. When he thought of her, it was her eyes he saw before him, the bright lanterns of an onrushing accident, running mindless, relentless, along a single track, no one at the wheel, no way to stop her.