Crime School

by Carol O'Connell

  “You wouldn’t be threatening me, would you?” Baily leaned on the bar. “I wouldn’t like that, kid. And if you say one word to him, I’ll mess your face up so bad.”

  Mallory smiled, for she was younger, faster, and had no healthy sense of fear. Oh, and she was the one with the gun.

  Riker had arrived. He stepped out of the car at the curb and watched Deluthe drive off in search of a parking space.

  The two women fell into an uneasy silence. The bar’s lighting was low-key. Mallory and Baily had no worry of being caught in an act of voyeurism, for Riker was standing in bright sunlight, and the plate glass would act as a mirror. He was slowly turning round, responding to Angie, who hailed him with waving arms. His ex-wife left her children on the curb and crossed the street, dodging traffic and mouthing a happy Hello! As the former Mrs. Riker drew closer, Mallory realized that Peg Baily’s new hair color was the exact same shade of carrot red.

  Riker faced the window again, pretending interest in the posted hours of his favorite bar as his ex-wife came up behind him. Angie was still a pretty woman, but he would not look at her. She stood beside him, cheerful and chattering, probably asking how he had been—as if they did not see each other all the time. His own apartment was only a block away from hers. However, it was enough that Riker could be near this woman, that he could see her face every single day; he never spoke to Angie anymore—he never would again. It was just too hard on him.

  The woman put one hand on her ex-husband’s sleeve.

  Peg Baily’s hands curled into fists.

  Riker lost his slouch and stood up straight, rigid and stone silent. He stared at the window, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Angie’s shrug said, No hard feelings. Then, giving up on him, she crossed back to the other side of the street.

  Not wanting to witness any more of this, Peg Baily walked off to fetch a glass of club soda for her ex-partner, who never drank on duty. Mallory continued to watch the man lingering on the sidewalk, staring at his shoes and collecting his sorry wits. She was now convinced that there had been no affair between Riker and Sparrow. He was still in love with his ex. And why would he take up with a whore when Peg Baily was still waiting for her own turn?

  He entered the bar and waved to Baily. She started to slide his soda down the bar when he put up one hand to stop her, then ordered cheap bourbon.

  More trouble.

  He loosened his tie as he sat down beside Daisy, and the hooker promptly ordered a champagne cocktail.

  Riker was working on his second shot of bourbon as he listened to the prostitute’s slow drawl, so like Sparrow’s. Years ago, the hookers had been the best of friends, two small-town southern girls against the city. So far, the interview had turned up nothing useful, and now he stirred up a memory of old times. “Remember that little blond girl who used to run with Sparrow?”

  “Wasn’t just Sparrow. That kid used to work a battalion of whores.” Daisy signaled Baily for another champagne cocktail.

  “What was her name?”

  “Oh, darlin’, she had a lotta names. One hooker called her the Flyin’ Flea, and Sparrow called her Baby.”

  “And you?”

  “Hey Kid—that’s what I called her. First time I ever saw her was in a crackhouse.” The hooker paused to inhale her drink. “She came in lookin’ for Sparrow. What a dirty little face. And those eyes—tiny green fires, but so cold. Nothin’ warm and cuddly ’bout that little girl. And mean? Oh, darlin’, you got no idea. Ah, but her face—I saw it when it was clean. God don’t make angels that pretty. But I don’t mean to say that God made her. I don’t blaspheme. My mama raised me better.”

  This was going to take awhile. Riker had no idea how Daisy made a living on the city streets where time was money. She hailed from a more temperate climate, where customers and cops could wait around all day for a whore to finish a thought.

  “So, like I was saying, I’m in this crackhouse, and I hear a noise in the dark. At first, all I see is her eyes—cold, empty. Scary eyes. That little girl had no soul. She comes up to me and hands me a cigarette case—real silver. And she gives me this ratty old book with cowboys on the cover. Not my taste. Well, she swipes away the needles and trash so she can sit down beside me. Then she kicks out one little foot to make the rats run. And she says, ‘Read me a story.’ She don’t say please, nothin’ like that. Just says, ‘Read me a story,’ like that’s my job in life.”

  “So the kid couldn’t read?”

  “Oh, yeah, she could,” said Daisy. “Better’n me. She helped me with the hard words. But that night—that first time—she lays her head down in my lap and waits for her story to begin. So I read till she fell asleep. Then I sat up all night long to keep the rats away from her. I had to, don’t you see?”

  Riker nodded. “You were her mother that night.”

  “Other nights it was other whores—when she couldn’t find Sparrow.”

  Riker looked up from his drink. Mallory sat at the other end of the bar. If she lowered the dark glasses, would Daisy recognize her? Not likely, but the long green slants of her eyes had never changed. They might spook a whore who believed in ghosts.

  “So you looked after the kid,” said Riker.

  “Sometimes,” said Daisy. “Well, she could never count on Sparrow. That junkie whore was always gettin’ stoned and wakin’ up in strange places. Lucky the kid knew how to fend for herself.”

  Yeah, what a lucky little girl.

  Sometimes Kathy had lived out of garbage cans, finding a cold supper there. “You remember the day Sparrow got stabbed?”

  “Oh, darlin’, I’ll never forget. I went to the hospital to visit. The kid was there, too. Poor baby, she fell asleep sittin’ bolt upright on the edge of Sparrow’s bed. Too tired to lie down or even fall down. That’s the last time I saw the kid alive.”

  “Remember anything else? Did Sparrow say who stabbed her?”

  The hooker was wary now.

  “Hey,” said Riker, “I don’t need a witness. That stabbing is old history. This is a personal thing, okay?” A twenty-dollar bill slid across the bar. “Do you know who stabbed her?”

  “I’d be guessin’.” The prostitute’s hand closed over the money. “Only guessin’—hear me? Sparrow might’ve mentioned Frankie D. You remember that twisted little bastard?”

  Riker nodded. Frankie Delight had been that rare drug dealer who was not strictly cash and carry. “So Sparrow was trading skin for drugs?”

  “No, she’d never do that freak for a fix. I don’t care how bad she was hurtin’. No, darlin’, she was tradin’ brand-new VCRs. Still in the cartons. One of Tall Sally’s jobs went wrong and—”

  “I know that story,” said Riker. And ten-year-old Kathy Mallory would have been on the stealing end of that arrangement.

  The great VCR heist.

  He remembered the report from Robbery Division. A patrolman’s log had mentioned sighting suspicious persons in the vicinity of the crime, among them a little blond girl with green eyes. Lou Markowitz had read him the details, then said, in a tone between awe and pride, “The kid robbed a damn truck.”

  Daisy nudged Riker’s arm to call him back to the world, asking, “Whatever happened to Frankie?”

  Riker had never been certain until now. “I heard he left town.” One could say that the dead were way out of town. “So, Daisy, what’s Sparrow been up to? You guys keep in touch?” He doubted that this whore read the papers, and her television set would have been pawned long ago to buy drugs.

  “No, we don’t talk no more.” She stared at the bottom of her glass. “Not for a long time. But I did hear a rumor today. Some bitch told me that Sparrow was the hooker who got herself strung up last night. Well, I knew that wasn’t true. My Sparrow got clean—kicked them drugs. And she stopped liftin’ her skirt for a livin’. That was years ago, darlin’. Years ago.”

  He gave her another ten dollars. She snatched it from his hand, then climbed down from her barstool and backed up all the way to the
door, eyes trained on Peg Baily. Daisy whirled around and fled rather than risk an injury by staying a second too long.

  Riker ambled toward the end of the bar, where his partner waited, attracting stares from every man in the room. He sat down beside her. “Well, that was a waste of time. We’re not gonna find a stalker with hookers. Sparrow got out of the life years ago.”

  Mallory the unbeliever shook her head. She would not seriously consider any good thing said about Sparrow.

  Once a whore, always a whore?

  “How did it go with the theater group?”

  “That was a dead end,” said Mallory. “Sparrow was a last-minute substitute in the play. None of those people met her before the rehearsal. And that was the day she was hung.”

  “Well, somebody got her that job. We might find a tie between Sparrow and Kennedy Harper.”

  “No, Riker. This wasn’t a Broadway production. She answered an ad posted on a supermarket bulletin board. The director gave her the part because she showed up in costume and knew all the lines.”

  Riker tried to imagine Sparrow memorizing Chekhov. He drained his shot glass and laid his money on the bar. “So what’s next? Morgue time?”

  “No. Slope’s working on a fresher corpse right now.”

  “Okay,” said Riker. “A local cop, Waller, looked over your videotape. He gave Janos a name and address for the man in the T-shirt and jeans. You know that big church on Avenue B?”

  “A priest?”

  “You got it.” Riker stared at his empty glass, turning it over in his hands. “If you want off this case, I can work it alone.”

  “No.” She gathered up her car keys, then left an obscene tip on the bar. “I’ll see it through.”

  The East Village park was full of music, rock and rap, Hispanic and soul. It poured out of radios and CD players. Some youngsters sported earphones, and Riker had to guess their songs by the cadence of their struts, their bounces and glides.

  At the heart of Tompkins Square was a stellar memory of the night his father had thrown him out of the house—an elegant solution to the problem of a teenager’s dissident music. Young Riker had waged a showdown in the old band shell, the spot claimed by another boy, whose music had been a self-portrait, cool and dark, a jazz riff played on a clarinet. Riker had shot back a volley of rock ’n’ roll, louder and longer. And they had dueled awhile before laying down their instruments.

  After a bloody fight, each boy had won his cuts and bruises. And after too many beers, they had ended the night blind drunk, arms wrapped round each other for support, one musically discordant creature in a four-legged stagger walk.

  How he had loved those days.

  Startled pigeons flew up in the wake of a passing boom box. Riker put out his cigarette and returned to the church, where he discovered that Mallory’s plan to torture a priest had somehow gone awry.

  The church was no cathedral, but it held all the trappings of stained-glass windows, a giant crucifix and rows of votive candles blazing at the feet of plaster saints.

  Mallory had laid out twenty dollars for a disposable camera just to rattle the priest, and the man’s laughter was a disappointment. He liked the idea of taking part in a photo lineup of murder suspects. “No, don’t smile, Father,” she said. “So Sparrow belonged to your parish?”

  “Now how did you manage to make that sound like a guilty thing?”

  Father Rose was having entirely too much fun sparring with her in this novel departure from a priest’s workday. She doubted that he would make her shortlist for a double hanging. She glanced at Riker, who sprawled in the front pew, waiting to play his role of the easygoing policeman, everybody’s friend.

  Mallory lowered the camera so the priest could see her slow grin. She had a repertoire of smiles, and this one made people nervous. “A witness can place you at the crime scene last night.”

  “Yes, there was quite a crowd—even before the fire engine showed up.” The priest turned to the side. “Want a profile?” He froze in position, waiting for the flash. “Your witness is an old woman. Am I right? Very thick glasses? She was sitting in the window across the street, watching the whole show and—”

  “A show? Is that how you saw it, Father?” She shot him again. “Why were you at the crime scene? Forget something?”

  “So I am a suspect.” He seemed almost flattered.

  “You were out of uniform last night.”

  “I leave the collar home when I work at the neighborhood clinic. I donate my time three nights a week. Mostly bandaging cuts, dispensing aspirins—that kind of thing.”

  She looked up from the camera so he would have no trouble reading distrust in her eyes. “I want names. Who can vouch for your time—say an hour before the fire?”

  “The nurse who runs the clinic. We were leaving together when we heard the fire engines. Is this—”

  “When did you talk to Sparrow last?”

  “Sunday, but I didn’t—”

  “Did she mention any enemies? Somebody out to get her?”

  The priest shook his head.

  “No? You don’t know or you won’t say? Want to lawyer up, Father? You have the right to an attorney during—”

  “That’s enough, Mallory.” Riker rose from the pew, acting the part of an annoyed superior. “Go check out his story.”

  She walked down the altar steps, passing her partner as he climbed upward in dead silence. Riker was already departing from the script. There was nothing amiable in his face as he squared off in front of the priest. Mallory stayed to watch.

  “I know you tried to get access to that crime scene,” said Riker. “My witness is no old lady. He’s a big hairy fireman.”

  “Yes, he must be the one who told me Sparrow was dead. Well, she’s Catholic. She was entitled to last rites.”

  “The fireman said you knew her name before the cops identified her. You knew that was her apartment. So you’ve got what—two hundred people in your parish?”

  Father Rose wore a slightly pained expression. He understood that this was a test. “I recognized her face when—”

  “So you had a good view of the show, right? Front row—close to the window. Notice anything unusual?”

  “The hair jammed in her mouth?” The priest was rallying, almost smug. “No, too obvious. That made headlines, didn’t it?” He folded his arms. “You must mean the candles. I don’t recall any mention of them in the newspaper.” Father Rose waved to a nearby alcove that housed a plaster saint and a few small flames burning among tiers of candles. “Like those. Yes, I saw them in the water.” His smile was wider now. “But Sparrow’s were red. Mine are white.”

  So Father Rose had failed to notice a thousand dead flies spread on the water. At least one crime-scene detail was secure.

  The priest was smiling, triumphant.

  “Having fun, Father?” Riker moved closer, forcing the other man to backstep. “Sparrow is a friend of mine, and I’m not enjoying this much. So do me a favor and stop grinning at me.”

  Father Rose’s head snapped back, as if the detective had sucker-punched him—and he had. Riker backed off a few paces to reward the priest’s more somber attitude. “Maybe we have a religious connection. How would you explain all those candles?”

  “Well, they weren’t for ambiance.” And lest Riker take this for humor, the priest hurried the rest of his words. “All the lights were on in Sparrow’s apartment before the firemen broke the—”

  “Why do you light candles?”

  “Ritual.” The man was not so sure of himself anymore. “Burnt offerings. A light in the darkness. Hope?” This last word waned to a whisper as he watched the detective descend the stairs.

  Riker’s back was turned to the priest when he asked, “Did you know Sparrow was a prostitute?”

  Mallory watched the priest’s stunned reaction. He opened and closed his mouth like an air-drowned fish. And she knew he could tell them nothing more, not even if he violated every secret of the confessional. Spa
rrow had never confided in him. The two detectives walked down the wide center aisle, then paused at the sound of running footsteps.

  The priest called out, “Wait!” He hurried from statue to statue, lighting all the wicks. “Just another minute. Please.” He lit every candle on the altar as well. “I’m sorry.” The priest walked toward Riker. “So sorry. Sparrow is a special person to me.” His face showed deep contrition. “She has a good heart—better than most. She’s better than she knows.”

  Riker nodded and cracked a smile, raising his opinion of this man who could admire a whore.

  “And I was wrong about the ambiance,” said the priest. “Maybe that is your angle. Candles make for great theater—even when all the electricity is turned on. Look around you.”

  Candles flickered beneath the crucifix. The man on the cross writhed in an illusion of lights. And all along the wall, flames beneath the other figures created animation, action—actors.

  “Thank you, Father.” And Mallory meant that. His idea was worth consideration, but from a different angle. What if religious candles had the same significance as a jar of dead flies?

  7

  Autopsy—autopsia—seeing with one’s eyes.

  When Mallory was a child, she had learned her essential Latin from Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope.

  A refrigerator and sinks gave the doctor’s dissection room the character of a large kitchen. Long tables were laid with tools for slicing and dicing meat. A small metal platform the size of a butcher block held intestines in a shallow tray, and another body part lay in the bed of a hanging scale. Dr. Slope called out the weight, then switched off his recorder. “Hello, Kathy.”

  “Mallory,” she said, correcting him as she always did. She approached the steel table and looked down at the gutted remains of a woman her own age. A wide red cavity ran from the breast bone to a mound of blond pubic hair, and the smell of chlorine mingled with the reek of meat gone bad.