“And they may in turn sell to a C list, the ultimate morons who get stuck with worthless art. C list buyers are corporate collections and banks. They rarely notice they’ve been duped because the cost of the work is added to the asset value of the company. It’s a hidden loss, a worthless holding that won’t show up in an audit. And now you know all about art.”
“But I don’t know anything about Aubry’s mother. Why aren’t there any photographs of Sabra?” She had expected some reaction to that, but his composure never faltered.
“You can blame my father for that.” He leaned toward her. “My mother was every bit as beautiful as you are, Mallory. That’s why my father married her.”
Over another cup of coffee and dessert, she learned that Quinn’s father had not been married long before he discovered what hell it was to live with a woman obsessed by mirrors. One night, when Sabra was only twelve, her father said to her, “It’s a pity about your beauty. If only you had been born ugly or even ordinary, you might have developed an intellect.” He was drunk when he said that, but he meant it. He was afraid for his daughter.
Sabra had marched up the stairs and destroyed all the mirrors in her bedroom. Later, the Quinns began to notice the sabotage of family photographs all over the house. Eventually, she had destroyed every likeness of herself. She never wanted to see her own face again.
“It may seem mad to you, but I thought it was rather brilliant. It gave Sabra great focus, and she did develop that intellect and more. She was a creative genius. So perhaps you can also blame my father for her talent.”
“But eventually she did go insane.”
“She went through a bad time of it when her child died.”
“Her husband says she was crazy, certifiable. And she spent some time in an institution.”
“Gregor said that? Well, perhaps by New York standards she was always mad. She never took money from the family. That was insane, wasn’t it? With no help at all she made a startling career. Her museum retrospectives traveled the world. But she probably did need professional help getting through the aftermath of the murder.”
“Sabra was a strong woman. I have to wonder what pushed her over the top.”
“Sabra adored Aubry.”
“That’s not enough. We all lose people. And how is she living now? She doesn’t paint anymore. Hospitals are expensive. Gregor says she never used their health insurance plan, so her money had to dry up eventually. Wouldn’t she go to her husband or her family if she needed money to live on?”
“I only wish she had.”
Mallory knew he was lying, but she didn’t call him on it. “Let them lie, ” Markowitz had told her. “They always tell you more with the lies than you will ever get from the truth.”
She sipped her coffee, and stared out the window. “You know, when you ask a civilian the names of the artist and the dancer, they only remember Peter Ariel.”
“Of course. The cliché romance of the starving artist who’s only discovered after his death.”
“But if you ask a cop, they only remember Aubry’s name. That was your work, Quinn. You led the investigation back to Aubry every time, even though Peter Ariel was the most likely target.”
“Oh, was he? Then why did the chief medical examiner back up my point of view? Twelve years ago, he supported Aubry as the primary target.”
She watched Quinn and the young woman from the vantage point of a pile of garbage fresh from the restaurant’s kitchen, the spill of an overturned can. She didn’t notice the odor of fish heads mingling with the warm aroma of dog turds and the smell of fruit. Nor did she feel any curiosity about the young woman. This was simply all the spectacle offered to her at the moment, watching them together as they left the Central Park restaurant.
The woman with the wire cart was not so old as she appeared. Just as money could keep age at bay for a while, the dearth of money could and did accelerate aging. The lack of a roof to keep off the elements could ravage the skin and prematurely wrinkle the spirit. There were gaps between the teeth she had left to her. Her hair was iron gray and unwashed since that time, months ago, when she had been herded into the women’s shelter, stripped and deloused as the matrons watched from the door of the gang shower.
Now she spoke to the tea tin on the top of her cart, and nodding to it, she moved away with the cart in tow. Cart wheels squeaked, and aching feet with swollen ankles dragged across the gravel path. Her breathing was the wheeze of bad lungs as she strained to pull the cart which had grown heavier with each passing year on the streets of New York.
Coffey sat back in his chair, holding the telephone receiver a short distance from his ear. Commissioner Beale had a high irritating phone voice, and he tended to yell like a boy in the days when telephones were tin cans and wires.
“Yes, sir,” said Coffey. “I’ll pass your compliments along to Mallory before she leaves for Boston.... Yes, sir, Boston. Chief Blakely’s pulling her off the case and sending her to ...”
Coffey held the phone farther from his ear. “Well, Blakely felt the case might go high-profile if Mallory ... Yes, sir, the photograph of the ball.... Oh, you’re putting me in a hard place, sir. Blakely gave me a direct order to send her to Boston, and I would never ... Yes, sir. I’m glad you understand.... Well, no, sir, I wouldn’t mind if you had a word with him, but I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my name out of it. He might get the idea I was going behind his back to keep Mallory on the case. ... Thank you, sir.”
Coffey set down the phone. When he turned to his reflection in the glass wall of his office, he thought he recognized a Mallory smile on his face.
The rabbi’s desk and chair were the heart of this sun-bright room filled with books and papers, warm wood, and white curtains that lifted with every breeze from the open window.
Rabbi David Kaplan was a long, elegant figure in a dark suit. His graying beard was close-trimmed and did not conceal the leanness of his face. His eyes conveyed the tranquillity of a drowsing cat, and this was deception. In every meeting with Kathy Mallory, all his senses were in play, and speed of mind was paramount in all his dealings with her. His old friend Father Brenner had learned this lesson the hard way and too late.
Helen Markowitz had sent her foster child out among the Catholics to honor a covenant with Kathy’s birth mother, a woman Helen had never met. Kathy had never spoken about her first mother, and so Helen had to intuit the wishes of this woman who had taught her child to make the sign of the cross. It was the only stitch of evidence to link Kathy with a past. Protestants did not make such signs, so it was determined that Kathy must have begun life as a Catholic. Helen had honored that original intention—up to a point. The experiment had ended badly.
The child was sent back to frustrate Rabbi Kaplan until her religious education was deemed complete. His greatest frustration had been the fact that she was his brightest student, and he could not separate the makings of a scholar from the greater talents of a thief and a gifted liar.
When she was well into her teens, he had offered her a choice of which faith she would continue in. She had chosen Judaism on the grounds that Jews had no place called hell.
If he had been marginally successful in keeping her from the flames of the Catholic hell, he had not brought her any nearer to God. She had been insulted by his efforts, believing that deities of every faith were no more than fairy tales for slow learners. But for some strange reason, the Christian devil was very real to her. She had met him somewhere out on the road in those first ten years of life, the years she shared with no one.
Despite all the traps he set for her, all the lost leaders he had put out upon the air between them, he had learned very little of her origins. Through the years, he had continued with his gentle probes into her past, and she had fended them off with agility. And so their relationship had always been a bit like a badminton game.
The rabbi set the black telephone receiver down in its cradle and looked across the desk to the child he loved as much as his
own. “All right, Kathy. You have an appointment. Madame Burnstien will look at you.”
“Look at me?”
“She must have assumed I was sending her a dancer. She hung up on me before I could correct that assumption. It’s just as well. My wife tells me Madame’s whole life is the ballet. If you’re not connected to that life, you don’t exist. The woman only accepted my call because Anna’s charity group donates scholarship money for the ballet school.”
“Markowitz couldn’t get anywhere with her. What do you suppose he did wrong?”
“Well, your father’s best weapon was charm. As I recall, the scum of the earth could be quite taken with him.”
“So we know that doesn’t work on the old lady.”
The rabbi only smiled at the idea that charm might be an option for Kathy Mallory. “Now, you will mind your manners with this woman. You will address her as Madame Burnstien. Helen raised you to show respect for the elderly. Of course, Madame Burnstien is a lot tougher than you are.”
“Yeah, right.” She was not at all impressed. “I have a photo of her at Aubry’s funeral. She must be pushing ninety by now, and she walks with a cane.”
“My wife tells me Madame eats dancers for breakfast.”
“I still think I can take her two falls out of three.”
“And I understand she’s very good with her cane. I only saw it once—it’s formidable.” He stopped smiling and leaned toward her, all serious now. “When I say Madame Burnstien is tough, I’m not being facetious. She survived two years in a Nazi concentration camp. I don’t know what you could have in your own history that even comes close to that horror.”
“Four years with the nuns at the academy.”
“You’re so competitive.”
“So what’s the best approach?”
“The key to Madame Burnstien is respect. Try to earn it without bloodshed.”
Mallory stood on the sidewalk staring up at the old brown building reported to be the finest ballet school in the country. It had been a factory once, and now eight stories of lofts had been converted into rehearsal halls and classrooms. Girls and young women hung off the fire escape, dangling limbs sheathed in bright-colored leg warmers. Some smoked forbidden cigarettes, others lifted their faces to the weak light of the sun, leaching what warmth there was so early in the spring.
The rabbi’s wife, Anna Kaplan, had warned her that today there would be at least a hundred children underfoot. When Mallory passed through the front doors, she entered a wide room with high ceilings, where pandemonium ruled. Small breastless girls and a sprinkling of boys bore numbered cards hung around their necks with strings. Mothers hovered over them, clutching the leg warmers and costumes, harried and frazzled women consumed by the tensions of audition day.
The front desk was besieged by shouters and elbowers. A man with a phone attached to one ear was holding four separate conversations. And above all of this, a loudspeaker called out numbers, and children were separated from their mothers, taking positions on one side of the room.
Beyond this crush of tiny dancers stood a young woman close to Mallory’s age. They exchanged a look across the room. At first the other woman’s expression recognized Mallory as neither mother nor novice, but a fellow creature of the ballet. She smiled and shrugged to say, Awful, isn’t it? But now her head tilted to one side with the realization that Mallory was an altogether different animal, and interest intensified as Mallory moved toward her, advancing on the mob of children. They parted for her in a wave, the act of one mind in many small bodies.
“Where can I find Madame Burnstien?”
“Third floor. The stairs are quicker. The elevator takes forever.” The young woman pointed to a narrow staircase several feet away. She called a loud warning after Mallory. “If she’s not expecting you, she’ll nail your hide to the wall.”
A hundred small faces turned in unison, eyes rounding.
“I can handle it,” said Mallory. “I went to Catholic school.”
Fat chance old Madame Burnstien could outdo an insane nun.
Mallory took great pride in her enemies, and she was particularly proud of Sister Ursula.
She climbed to the third floor and stopped at the wide-open door to a rehearsal hall. There were other students in the room, leaning against the walls and seated tailor-fashion on the floor, but all Mallory could see was the single dancer hurtling through space in a powerful swirl of music, her body arching in the leap—call it night—and at last touching to ground in tattered red satin shoes.
She wore bright purple tights and leotard, and brilliant orange wool covered her legs from ankle to knee. A long braid of lustrous black hair floated on the air behind her as she stepped and turned before the mirrored wall. And now she began to twirl like a dervish, sweat glistening on her young body, spinning madly, wonderfully, and finally coming to rest before a white-haired woman with a wine-dark dress and a cane.
This old woman only frowned, declining any comment with the slow shake of her head, and disappeared through a red door, slamming it behind her.
The young dancer’s head bowed. Her body seemed to be losing strength, all confidence and power gone now.
Mallory watched her for a moment, trying to understand her and failing. The ballerina should have known how wonderful she was, but apparently she did not.
Markowitz would have understood. It had been his gift to sit across a desk from strangers, and then to steal inside of them, peek out through their eyes, walk in their flesh, go where they go, and then to know what their soft spots were. He had called it empathy.
Mallory had none, and she knew it. She might be adept at crawling into the living skin of a killer, but never would she be able to go where the ballerina goes.
Now she crossed the wide room, passing by the defeated dancer, to knock at the red door. After a full minute the door opened, but only a crack.
“Yes?” said the old woman facing her. Madame Burnstien was small and slight, hardly threatening. Her white hair was captured in a bun, and every bit of skin was a crisscross of lines. The only hand visible through the crack of the door was a cluster of arthritic knots wrapped round the cane.
“I’m Mallory. I have an appointment with you?”
“You are Rabbi Kaplan’s young friend?”
Mallory couldn’t immediately place the woman’s accent, but then Anna Kaplan had said that Madame Burnstien hailed from too many countries to call one of them home. In youth, she had danced for the whole earth. Mallory could not believe this crone had ever been young.
“Rabbi Kaplan said you would see me.”
“I said I would look at you, and I have. You’re a beautiful child, but you are too tall. Go away now.”
The door began to close. Mallory shot one running shoe into the space between the door and its frame. The old woman smiled wickedly and showed Mallory her cane, lifting it in the crack-width of the door to display the carved wolf’s head and its fangs.
“Move your foot, my dear, or you’ll never dance again.”
The cane was rising for a strike.
“Madame Burnstien, you only think I won’t deck you.”
The old eyes widened and gleamed. The smile disappeared and her brows rushed together in an angry scowl as the cane lowered slowly. There was exaggerated petulance in her cracking voice. “I like determination, child, but you waste my time. You are still too tall.”
“Everybody’s a critic.” Mallory showed her the gold shield and ID. “I want to talk to you about Aubry Gilette.”
“I have had many students. Aubry was a thousand dancers ago. What do you expect me to remember of one girl?”
“Oh, I think you remember her better than most. Don’t make me show you the autopsy photo. You’re old. It’d probably kill you.”
“Dream on, child.” The wicked smile was back, and the door was opening.
Madame’s office was generous in size, and showed Charles Butler’s penchant for antiques. The light of the corner window washe
d over an ancient ornate desk piled high with large paperbound books, sheets of archaic penmanship and notes of music. All but one brocade chair was filled with costumes. Every bit of the far wall bore an autographed photo, or a drawing of a dancer in motion. The only respite from the dance was a small painting behind the desk, a still life of flowers. Mallory had attended Barnard College long enough to recognize a Monet. She knew this must be the real article, for she had already learned that the old woman was death on second-best. Her eye moved on to a larger canvas hanging on the next wall, and this she recognized as Sabra’s, even though there was no signature.
“So Madame Burnstien, you knew Aubry’s mother well?”
“Very good, my dear. That’s a portrait of Aubry.”
There was someone dancing in the painting. Although the subject was abstracted, there was a figure there, ephemeral, shimmering, flying over a wide space. Action strokes gave it life, and the space surrounding it pulsed with color. Fuchsia juxtaposed with brilliant greens and vied for the foreground to create a depth of field that confounded all laws defining the flat planes of canvases. Flourishes and dabs of paint had the rhythm and the punctuation of music. Mallory turned away with the afterimage of a full ballet and even its score.
“Do you know what happened to Sabra?”
The old woman sat down and averted her eyes. “Has there been an accident?” One gnarled hand went to her breast.
“Not that I know of. She disappeared years ago. Do you know where she went after she left the asylum?”
“No.”
This was the simple truth. There was no pause, no telling sign of a new furrow in the old woman’s face, or a nervous shift in her body. And there was no hint of a question or a surprise in her eyes. So she was close enough to the family to have known about Sabra’s asylum years.
“You were at the funeral. I saw you in the old photographs. What was Sabra like that day? Was she already crazy?”
The old woman shook her head. Frowning, she waved her hand as if to chase away the words. Mallory came closer and leaned down to meet Madame’s eyes. “Maybe I should have asked if you’d seen Sabra recently.”
Killing Critics Page 15
