The Chalk Girl km-10

by Carol O'Connell

  ‘From Robin Duffy?’

  Now why was that a hard question?

  The first document was a court order for Coco’s travel to the state of Illinois. It was subject to the qualification of adoptive parents. Buried in the fine print of legalese was the second condition: the child’s release from material-witness protection. The next sheet was the companion form that required Mallory’s signature to bind the deal. Robin Duffy had already given her copies of this paperwork, but those had been left undated pending the wrap of her case. She turned back to the court order. It bore today’s date. And it was already signed by a judge. ‘This wasn’t Robin Duffy’s idea.’

  That was only a guess, but a good one.

  David Kaplan widened his sweet smile, inadvertently confirming that this was Charles Butler’s plot. The man picked up his wineglass for another taste – a stall. And now, in classic rabbi evasion, he said, ‘I know you want what’s best for the child. You want her to have every good thing that Louis and Helen gave to you.’

  In the cold tone of a machine that could talk, she said, ‘How well you know me.’

  The rabbi’s smile faltered, perhaps with a suspicion that he knew her not at all.

  She laid the papers on the table. ‘I have to wonder why you thought this was a good idea. It isn’t – not if you want me to keep that kid alive.’

  Only moments ago, everything had been clear to this man, but when he looked down at the document once more, he regarded it with some confusion.

  Good. It was Mallory’s turn to smile. She was certain that Robin Duffy had not obtained the signature on this court order, though the old lawyer knew the signing judge quite well – and so did the rabbi. Judge Cartland was sometimes a guest player in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. The detective lifted her glass and drank deeply. ‘Charles sent you. You forgot to mention that.’ She tapped the document’s signature line. ‘When did the judge sign this – like an hour ago?’

  Maybe right after Charles Butler got home from Birdland?

  David Kaplan raised both hands to say, You got me. ‘That little girl is in very deep trouble, trauma layered over trauma. Charles has a list of likely parents in Illinois. And he’s lined her up with a therapist in Chicago, a very good doctor. This poor fragile child needs a—’

  ‘That kid’s not going anywhere. She’s a material witness in a murder investigation.’

  ‘Charles says she’s not good witness material. When I spoke to the—’

  ‘You told that to the judge?’ She read her answer in his face, his quizzical eyes with no trace of denial, only wondering what he had done wrong. ‘You did!’ Mallory slammed one hand down on the table. ‘Behind my back!’

  Had she ever yelled at him before? No, never. They stared at each other with equal surprise.

  Angry still, she said, ‘You trust Charles Butler’s judgment more than mine.’ She leaned toward him. ‘In a homicide investigation?’

  How upside down was that? How would it square with this man’s flawless rabbinical logic? It would not. He simply had no faith in her. There was no other way to spin this night.

  ‘Rabbi, it was a mistake to mess with my case.’ She crushed the court order into a ball. ‘So you chose up sides.’ Not her side. ‘And then you gave that judge a reason to screw with me.’ She rolled the paper ball between her hands, making it smaller, harder. With the flick of a finger, she sent it spinning across the table, and it came to rest by his wineglass. ‘Keep it . . . Something to remember me by.’

  The rabbi’s eyes were sad, for this was a death of sorts, an end to things. She had stabbed him with words, and the win was clearly hers.

  Or not.

  ‘Kathy, when you only figuratively cut out someone’s heart – that won’t necessarily get rid of your problem . . . I will always love you.’ David Kaplan leaned back in his chair and emptied his glass. ‘I’ll always be here for you.’ The rabbi rose from the table and kissed her cheek in farewell. ‘But I’m guessing you won’t be sitting in on the poker game this week.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘Well, maybe next week.’

  When he had left her alone on the roof, she smashed her wineglass into the brick parapet. Unconditional love could be infuriating.

  The den in Mallory’s condo had one wall lined in cork. She had stolen it from Lou Markowitz’s office after the old man’s death. As far as Riker knew, it was her only theft of sentiment.

  To accommodate her electronics, the temperature of this back room was always on the chilly side, but it was ice cold by the looks of it – decorated with metal furnishings, wires and cables, steel shelves of manuals and gadgets. Even the damn carpet was gunmetal gray.

  And baby had a brand-new toy.

  The four computer monitors on workstations no longer had pride of place. They had been upstaged by a gigantic flat screen, and Riker gawked at it. A television set this size was every guy’s wet dream on Super Bowl Sunday. But he did not salivate; it was just another computer. No need of a keyboard or mouse – she only pointed to the picture of a file holder and pages tumbled out in animation. With two fingers, she caught them in midair and juggled them into positions across the wide field of electric blue. It was not bad enough that his partner’s only stable relationships were with machines – now she had found one that responded to her touch, one that could feel her body heat, and this vaguely creeped him out – possibly because he was drunk.

  Riker had moved on to the good stuff, Mallory’s single-malt whiskey, as he watched glowing boxes of text enlarge their type for the benefit of his middle-aged eyes. Standing up as straight as the liquor would allow, he gave his best impression of actually listening to her lecture on a tired old theme: How to Buy a Politician.

  Elected officials loved to see their names plastered on charities, so said Mallory. But all the worthy causes listed on her screen were funded by the Driscol Institute, and the Institute was funded by moguls in search of political whores to bed down with. ‘Good works get votes.’

  When she turned around to see if he was paying attention, Riker recited what came to all New Yorkers with their mothers’ milk. ‘The politicians wow the voters and then screw ’em over after the election.’ He said this in the tone of Yeah, yeah, what else is new?

  She rewarded him by refilling his glass. How many times had she done that? He had lost count of his shots tonight.

  Mallory capped the bottle. ‘The mayor doesn’t run this town. Grace Driscol-Bledsoe does.’ She faced her giant screen and pointed to one of her lists. ‘These council members were bought with small stuff, their names on scholarship funds and after-school programs.’ Her pointing finger moved to the next column of more impressive charities. ‘The Driscol Institute funded a civic center with the mayor’s name engraved in stone. That bought him votes in a district that hated his guts. Coincidentally, that’s when he dropped his opposition to a building site for a high-rise on the West Side. The land was owned by a real-estate broker, one of the major donors to Grace’s family charity – and he made a fifteen-million-dollar profit overnight. I figure Grace’s cut was ten percent.’

  And now Riker was paying attention. ‘Why didn’t the feds pick up on that? I thought they were tracking this stuff.’

  ‘They are. Corporations have to declare every donation to charity, but that has no effect on a money-laundering racket like this one. There’s nothing on paper that ties a charity donor to a politician. The trustees of the Driscol Institute are the middlemen.’

  ‘The money cleaners – and Grace is their leader.’ Riker looked down to see Mallory topping off his glass – a small bonus for staying awake. And so, just to prove that he was somewhat sober, he asked, ‘How does Grace collect her cut? Wouldn’t that show up in an audit?’

  ‘No. She gets paid by the donors.’ With a touch of the screen, Mallory opened another folder. ‘And here they are.’ This was an old client list for the late John Bledsoe’s consulting firm. ‘Grace used to channel the payoffs into her husband’s company. It looked good o
n paper – like legitimate earnings for a lobbyist. And the taxes got paid. No red flags for the IRS.’

  ‘So all that money her husband left to Humphrey – that really belonged to Grace? Well, that explains why the portrait of hubby and the kid was hung over a toilet.’ And now he could clearly see a pissed-off Grace Driscol-Bledsoe out in the woods, stringing up bodies, one of them her own son. ‘But can the lady climb a tree?’ He raised his glass for a deep swallow. ‘For a hundred million bucks, I say she can. That broad’s in better shape than I am.’

  His partner smiled – she was smiling at his empty glass. And then she turned back to the screen. ‘After the husband sold his company, Grace had no holding pen for the next batch of money-laundering fees, and her personal finances had to jibe with legal earnings.’ Mallory touched another folder, and a slew of facsimile checks spilled out across the blue screen, all of them made out to the woman’s personal companion. ‘Here’s the weak spot, a stupid mistake. Hoffman is underpaid. I’m guessing Grace gives out weekly cash bonuses.’

  ‘I bet she does a lot of things with cash,’ said Riker. ‘She’d never trust another partner to launder her own money – not after what her husband did to her.’

  ‘Right. And the feds have been tracking large cash flows for years. I know she’s got big money squirreled away – but she’s been selling off her jewelry.’ With one finger, Mallory dragged a parade of photographs across the screen. ‘These were taken after her husband sold the company and walked out on her. Count the jewels.’

  Riker stepped up to the screen and looked at the first photo of the society diva all decked out in shiny gemstones. Years later, in the final shot, she was almost modest. ‘So the lady’s down to her last strand of pearls – and that silver medallion.’

  ‘Grace really needs Humphrey’s millions,’ said Mallory. ‘It’s the only money she can spend in the open. Every cash transaction is a risk.’

  ‘Are we gonna share this with the rest of the squad?’

  ‘If we do, it’ll get back to Joe Goddard.’ One hand waved over her list of top politicians on the charity circuit – and on the take. ‘You want him to run this town?’

  ‘Oh, God, no.’ Crazy bastard – the chief of detectives was on a twisted mission, collecting dirty secrets for the good of the force, an extortionist on the side of the angels and the NYPD. It would be insane to give him the entire city. Yet Riker’s next thought was for a day down the road, when he might need to use all of this, trade the whole town to that lunatic to save his partner’s badge – and to keep her from waging a war she could not win.

  ‘It’s all about power with him,’ said Mallory, ‘but the chief’s just another version of Grace – just as dangerous.’

  Amen to that.

  ‘So . . . if the bad guys don’t get us, the good guys will?’

  ‘Now you’ve got it.’ Mallory tilted the whiskey bottle, and when she had filled his glass to the brim, she looked deep into his eyes, as if she could extract his soul this way. ‘That day – when Goddard told us he planned to get rid of Rocket Mann – he put his own job on the line. So he already knew he could control us . . . but how? A blackmailer has to put his leverage on the table. There’s no other way to get what he wants.’

  Through one clear spot in a fog of alcohol, he saw the true purpose of tonight’s civics lesson. Civics my ass. It worried him how often Mallory’s paranoia panned out. She knew the leverage had been laid out – for her partner.

  Riker shook his head to plead clueless. He waited for the accusation of betrayal, but all that came back on him was heartache. She only stood there so quietly – waiting for the truth.

  Standoff.

  He set down his glass and showed himself out.

  The alarm on the bedside monitor woke Grace Driscol-Bledsoe. The loud noise was enough to terrify her even before the door opened and the apparition flew into the room. By the poor light of a bedside lamp, she saw a disembodied head with balls of fire for eyes. Oh – only the nurse wrapped in a black robe. The lenses of Hoffman’s eyeglasses reflected the opaque globe of the lamp on the night table as she leaned over her employer to fuss with the tangle of sheets.

  ‘You slipped off the finger cuff, ma’am. Here it is.’ Hoffman had found the small device that was attached to the monitor by a cord, and she replaced it on Grace’s index finger.

  So this was not a stroke – more like a rehearsal.

  When the nurse had returned to her own room, Grace lay back on the pillows, but sleep would not come. After switching off the monitor and removing its connecting finger cuff, she rose from her bed with only the security of her emergency-alert medallion. With one press of the button at its center, a voice would boom from a box, seeking her out wherever she might be, increasing its volume and sound sensitivity until it found her and assessed her needs. During all her waking hours, this level of security would do. It was the nights that frightened her. She was most vulnerable in sleep.

  Barefooted, she padded down the hall to the room where her father had died. It was much the same as it had been all those years ago when Papa had been crippled by a stroke.

  As a girl, Grace had seldom visited the sickroom, so repulsed was she by the sight of that drooling man rolling his eyes and making pathetic attempts to form words, half her father’s face gone slack and the other half crying. In recent years, Grace came here all the time. Taking inventory soothed her. The closet had been restocked with supplies, and now she counted the bottles of medicines not yet invented in the days of Papa’s drawn-out death. Prized above all of them were doses of tbs, not legally obtainable outside of a hospital. This precious contraband was also kept in Hoffman’s black bag – kept close at hand every hour of the day and night.

  Moonlight gleamed on the chrome rails of the mechanized bed – her inheritance. It was still serviceable, though a new mattress had been purchased against a day when Grace might suffer another stroke of her own, a trauma more debilitating than the other two. It ran in the family – this other legacy from her late father. Papa, thank you so much.

  She inspected the red lights on a march of bedside machines, assurance that they were operational. Last, she opened a door to a linen closet, making certain that the stacks of sheets had not become musty while awaiting the worst day of her life.

  And the checklist was done.

  There were clinics in this country that were not so wonderfully equipped. This room guaranteed that she would not end her days in a nursing home, however feeble she might become. Hopefully, by the time she could no longer fend for herself, Hoffman would have been replaced by another nurse, one with greater incentive to keep her alive. And Phoebe would sleep at the foot of the bed, much like a good and loyal dog.

  Phoebe Bledsoe’s friend, Mr Polanski, was a skinny twin to Santa Claus and a kindred soul, another one who walked with the dead. The night watchman could not part with his late wife, and so he took her with him on his solitary rounds. But not tonight. ‘I talk to her more as I get older,’ he said, accepting a thermos of ice tea from Phoebe’s hand.

  ‘But your wife never talks.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not like your Dead Ernest. I missed that little boy when he left us.’

  Years ago, Mr Polanski had been the Driscol School’s man of odd jobs, a janitor and a fixer of leaks, a mender of cracks in the plaster and sometimes a roofer. In later life, physical labor had been too hard on him, and so he had become the protector of priceless furnishings and artwork. With a change of title from handyman to watchman, he had been kept on in this place of tradition – just another antique to the board of directors.

  And Phoebe, a former student, had been recycled as the school nurse.

  She accompanied the old man on his rounds, and they strolled through the gallery of alumni portraits dating back to the 1800s. Most of the people pictured here were renowned in the seas of politics and commerce. These lying walls advertised respectability beyond reproach.

  The gallery opened onto the dining hall, a
vast space lit by streetlight slanting down from a bank of tall windows. The long mahogany tables and their chairs wore ghosty dust covers. Long ago, this had been a place of sanctuary. The table in the far corner was where she had sat with Ernie, two children catching their breath and licking wounds in the no-cruelty zone of lunch hour.

  Mr Polanski and Phoebe retraced their steps to the grand staircase and climbed to the next floor, where classroom doors stood open in a hallway lined with wood paneling and freestanding lockers that clanged when hit with the soft body of a child. Ernie had once asked her why he was the only one singled out for physical violence in a school that offered so many variations on torture. Phoebe had theorized then that it was because he was two years younger and ten years smarter than his tormentors.

  When Mr Polanski had completed his rounds on every floor, they descended the back stairs to the garden door and went outside into a warm night scented by flowers. The watchman shined his torch on shrubs that hid a portion of the rear wall from the rooftop security lights.

  Phoebe stared into a patch of absolute darkness where it was daylight in an old memory. This was where Humphrey and the girls had Ernie pinned down, his back to the wall. And here he had disappointed them. All his fear had been spent that day. The boy had given himself up for dead and faced them down with a calm resolve.

  A mistake.

  Nothing could have angered them more. Before they tired of him, one of them – was it her brother? No, that time it was Willy Fallon. She had grabbed Ernie by the ears and knocked his head into the gray stone wall. The little boy had slumped to the ground, leaving a slick of his blood to mark the spot. It was still there on the following day. And all that day long, other students had streamed into the garden to gawk at a child’s blood. Eleven-year-old Phoebe knew the teachers had seen it, too, but they kept walking past it.

  Mr Polanski saw the train of her gaze, peeked into her mind and said, ‘It took me a long time to get rid of that stain.’

  No. Phoebe shook her head. It’s still there. And it was on her hands. It was everywhere.