Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  When he came to the small pile of boards on the sidewalk, he turned to see the splintered opening in the fence. He stepped lightly over the remnants of the wooden door and slipped quietly through the hole, wondering if this might be a good place to spend the night, perhaps to sleep through until morning without the rude awakening of a cop kicking him in the side to move him along. He was sick, flesh hanging on his bones, and he could not afford another injury. It took so long to heal now.

  Once he was through the fence, his eyes became accustomed to the poor light leaking through the hole, and the pale light of the moon overhead. He moved cautiously under the high marble arch and into the plaza. Someone else was there ahead of him. It was an old man with a bowed back. The boy held his breath as the old man settled wearily to a bench that had been cracked and smeared with paint.

  Now the boy’s gaze traveled up the length of the walls to see the crude paintings of muggers and subway trains, and the big red blob in the center of it. Painted across the stone face of the building were the words “Welcome to the Big Apple.”

  The fountain was also smeared with paint and gouged with something that had left tracks of rust in the wounds. The vandal had gone too far. A delicate arm of the fountain had been broken off and lay in the water like a severed limb.

  Again, the boy read the writing on the wall. “The Big Apple.” That was what his mother called New York City, the Big Apple. And what he saw in this wreckage was so New York. It was his mother’s building one block from a soup kitchen. It was the dark man on the corner who sang, “Come kiddy come. I got crack and I got smoke, and come kiddy come kiddy come.” It was the flowers that his mother could never put in the first-floor window box without seeing them broken-stalked and stolen by the day’s end.

  He could not get out of this town fast enough.

  The old man was rising unsteadily to his feet. The boy, sensing some remainder of authority here, melted back into the dark of the broken ash trees as the old man quit the plaza.

  The boy walked over to the pile of rubble and old paint cans at the base of the wall. He knelt down and selected a can of red. He made a tentative squirt in the air, and then he froze.

  A shadow loomed on the wall alongside his own, and it was growing larger.

  He looked up to see the face of an old woman. She never spoke to him, but only extended her hand to the paint can. She wanted it and there was a look in her eyes that said, Don’t fool with me, boy, just give it to me.

  He had seen that look so many times. Now it was a reflex action to surrender whatever he had in his hands. He gave her the can of spray paint and stepped back.

  She turned away from him and pressed the nozzle close to the ruined wall. She walked along the stone facade, writing in a giant scrawl of red paint, “Apple, Apple, in the river, all you do is make me shiver.”

  The boy read the line and said, “Amen.”

  Gregor Gilette left the after-hours bar with a weaving walk and wandered down the street, hearing nothing, seeing only the pavement before his shoes, until he passed by another man who was walking in the opposite direction. The other man had ragged clothes draped on a stick-figure body. His arms made wide circular motions in the air, arm over arm, swimming to Fifty-seventh Street.

  This was madness Gregor felt more comfortable with. His mind did not stray back to the wreckage of the plaza, for that was dangerous ground tonight.

  Now he thought to look for a cab, but the street was deserted and it had begun to rain. He stared at the open mouth of the subway. He and Sabra had come a long way since the days when they rode the underground, unable to afford a taxi during the young years of the struggle to make it here.

  He descended into the darkness beyond the shattered bulb intended to light his way. He bought a subway token from the man behind the glass of the booth and barely registered the fact that the cost of his token had gone up 500 percent. He passed through the turnstile to stand on the platform and wait through the dregs of night ending, a drunk slowly sobering, waiting for the train which takes its own time.

  An announcement was being made on the public address system.

  Even a native New Yorker could not actually understand the individual words that came out of the subway speakers, but he knew the words would only be a variation on the same theme: Your train will never come, so go away now.

  Two stragglers on Gregor’s side of the tracks took this message to heart and exited through the turnstiles. The platform on the other side of the tracks had also emptied. One overhead bulb spread a pool of light on the far platform, creating the illusion of an abandoned stage.

  Gregor was stubborn. He would stay. He would wait to see if the announcer lied. In the old days, half the time they lied.

  He shrugged against the post and sluggishly meditated on the upside-downness of drinking through the nights and sleeping through the days, eking light and warmth from electric bulbs. He pushed cigarette stubs and wrappers with the toe of his shoe, looking for friendly omens in the dirt tracks and the trash.

  He stared over the side of the platform at the tracks below. A small brown shape scurried between the rails. Gregor remembered Sabra’s old game of making a wish on the first rat of the evening. His footing was a bit unsure; tipsy still, he moved back to sag against the tiled wall.

  He was not alone anymore. Someone spoke to him. Sabra’s voice? A hoarse, hollered whisper, calling his name. From where?

  There—across the tracks, waiting for the train that goes the other way. She was peeking at him from behind a post, coming out now, walking into the pool of light. Her wide eyes were smiling and not. Then, a grotesque, clown-face smile split her face.

  But it was not Sabra—only an old hag, almost spectral in her long rags. One hand clutched a tin and the other held on to the handle of a wire cart.

  A train passed between them on the middle rails. He stared through the lighted square windows of the cars. There were no passengers. It was a ghost train, traveling empty to some maintenance depot. It passed on, and he could see the woman once more. Poor, pathetic, broken thing. How could he have taken her for Sabra?

  His northbound train was approaching. He could hear it in the tunnel. He could see the light growing larger. There was a little moment of terror before the train pulled in and blocked her from sight. The woman’s mouth opened wide and round. The brakes of the approaching train screamed. Her arm shot up like a referee of the game. And then she was lost from sight again, the entire platform blotted out by the tons of screaming, steaming metal.

  He boarded his train, tired and shaken sober. He never looked back through the windows of the car, but as the train picked up speed, he wondered if she looked for him in these quick squares of light.

  The cellular telephone rang. Andrew opened his eyes to the dark canopy of raincoats. When at last he had the phone in his hand, he said, “Hello?”

  “This mass is for a woman who was brutally murdered,” said a man’s voice. In the litany that followed, Andrew realized it was a priest saying mass for the dead dancer.

  Mozart and a ghost choir spilled out of the magical telephone and filled his senses. Moving along on his knees, he crawled out from the cover of his canopy and looked up to the ceiling of the sky with its faint sprinkling of stars. Mozart’s Requiem filled a cathedral of his mind’s making. Hooded monks paraded past his eyes, candles became torches, and there was blood on the altar and blood on the floor, a river of it winding and washing through the belly of the church, churning beneath his feet.

  Aubry crawled down the aisle under the falling axe. Her heart still beating with seconds of life. Everything was pulsating red. The exposed organs beat out their independent lives and deaths as they failed her, each one in turn.

  He reached out his hand to her too late. Her face was gone to dark sockets and a death’s-head grin. He knelt on broken glass in shock beyond pain. And there was a new fear in his eyes, which were blurring with tears, as he stared up at the final horror of the night—the stars.
In a suicide of heaven, the stars were going out.

  And now, all the brighter lights of New York City also failed him as he pitched forward in a faint.

  CHAPTER 9

  IT WAS PAST TWO IN THE AFTERNOON WHEN RIKER walked in the door, his eyes closing to narrow slits. He set his small bag of belongings on the coffee table, and sank down on the couch in the front room. He laid the assault rifle on the floor and slid it underneath the skirt of the slipcover and away from his host’s sight.

  “Thanks, Charles. I really appreciate this.”

  “My pleasure.” Charles was standing at the hall closet, pulling blankets and sheets from the top shelf. He was also making rapid calculations on the toll of sleep deprivation upon a man of Riker’s age, who drank too much and smoked too much. There were slowed reflexes to consider, and then—

  “Mallory’s holed up at my place,” said Riker. “I’m looking at maybe six hours of sleep before I take the night shift with Andrew.”

  “Couldn’t someone else do it?”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  Charles wondered if he had offended Riker, for it suddenly occurred to him—he would never have made that suggestion to Mallory. Oh, and there was one more thing to worry about. He tucked the bedding under one arm and searched the mantelpiece until he found the detective’s card. He handed it to Riker. “About an hour ago, this man came by with two officers in uniform. They were looking for Mallory.”

  Riker held the card out at arm’s length. “Kinkaid? You didn’t tell this cop anything useful, did you?”

  “Certainly not,” said Charles, as though cooperating with the authorities were something a gentleman would never consider. “But why does she have to hide? You don’t think Blakely would really harm her, do you?”

  “No, not now he wouldn’t. He might want to kill her, but when he resigned this afternoon, they made him turn in his gun. And Robin Duffy didn’t leave him with enough money to hire a shooter.”

  “So it’s over?”

  “The business with Blakely? Yeah. Now she’s only in trouble with the commissioner.” Riker held up the business card. “This cop, Kinkaid? He’s attached to the commissioner’s office. Beale wants to have a little chat with her about the proper form for arresting suspects while cameras are rolling. She made the evening news last night.”

  “But the worst is over, and Mallory is all right?”

  “She’s fine. She called Coffey this morning. He got on her case right away. Told her it was her lucky day that Oren Watt wasn’t pressing charges for abuse of power, and if she ever pulled a stunt like that again, he’d suspend her in a heartbeat.”

  “But under the circumstances—”

  “He had to rag her. If he didn’t, she’d walk all over him. I taught him that.” Riker obviously took some pride in this. “Coffey still has a lot to learn, but he does learn fast. So then Coffey tells her, real sarcastic, it might be nice if she showed up for a meeting once in a while. And the kid says, ‘Why should I? All the important meetings are in the men’s room.’ Coffey told me that in the men’s room of Peggy’s Bar.”

  Charles carried his bundle of sheets and blankets to the spare bedroom. When he returned to the front room, his houseguest was sitting up straight enough, but the man was fast asleep.

  Charles gently lowered Riker’s body down, and then lifted his feet to the cushion and began to untie the shoe-laces. When he was done with the pillows and quilts, one would have to admit that Riker’s own mother could not have done a better job of tucking him in.

  Quinn stood by the large window in the dining room, watching the river rolling by, no longer aware of the Chopin étude in the background. In a polite ripple of baroque chimes, an antique mantel clock consulted with him about the passing time. His first appointment of the evening was with Gregor Gilette.

  There was nothing he could do to ease the pain which Emma Sue Hollaran had caused, but he could do something to Emma Sue. He had tried to stop her, even threatened her, and the woman’s own stupidity had foiled him. She truly did believe she was invincible, and she would continue to believe that until she lay crushed beneath the wheels of the machinery he had put into motion. Too late for Gregor, however. The damage could not be undone. Revenge was only the next best thing, but he found it a necessary thing.

  Quinn packed his sword and his mask in preparation to meet with Mallory later in the evening. As he packed the formal white fencer’s uniform, he planned out Mallory’s future as he would a military campaign. It was a strange warfare, this, for all his strategy was toward embracing the enemy, and preventing her from ever leaving him.

  He avoided his reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece as he zipped up his fencing bag.

  Other women had come to him, not believing that he could care for them. Nothing in his eyes ever led them on, ever promised them anything. They had come to him without expectations; they left him without rancor. And it was always they who left him. For even when he did care for a woman, even when she moved him, his eyes were disbelieved. The woman would put all her faith in the unintended counterfeit contempt of his expression, and having a better opinion of herself, she would leave him.

  It would be different with Mallory. She would never look outside herself for affirmation of her worth. She was made for the battle between man and woman. She promised an exciting tension that would last, always challenging, never abating, for she was young and had little need for rest. Tonight, he would beat her in the fencing match, and she would make him pay for that.

  He smiled, or thought he did. The expression never made the translation to his eyes, and so it was unrealistic, unbelievable.

  He wanted Mallory more than he had ever wanted anyone. He wondered if she knew that. No, of course she didn’t. He could depend on his cold eyes to never give away an honest emotion. But if he told her what she was to him, would he be believed? No. His eyes would always foil him. Perhaps one day he would tell her in the dark.

  Charles watched over Riker as the man turned in his sleep. The room had grown dark. He pulled on a delicate chain, and a glass lampshade of colored panels cast a small pool of warm light. Now he could read the dial on the alarm clock he had placed by the couch. It was set to go off at eight-thirty, when Riker would rise to take his tour of duty on the roof. It was nearly time. But surely Riker needed more rest. Tonight the man looked ten years older than he should.

  Charles leaned down and gently switched off the alarm. He pulled an old knapsack from the hall closet and began to pack Riker’s binoculars, a blanket against the chill night-what else? Riker would probably need his cellular phone, so he should leave that behind.

  Riker rolled over in his sleep and never heard Charles stealing out the door to do his time on the roof.

  Central Park was the only place where a New Yorker could be alone after dark. The average New Yorker seldom took advantage of this well-known fact. The rare tourist was sometimes found there, having parks that one can freely roam in his own part of the world. Such people’s bodies were usually recovered from the bushes in the early daylight hours by the sanitation crews, whose job it was to clean up the litter of tourists and muggers alike.

  Even the muggers entered the park with some trepidation. They had been known to become confused and attack one another, anger escalated by the mutual insult of having been taken for an ignorant tourist. Though a police station was nestled in the heart of the place, the police never went walking in the park after dark.

  Sabra did.

  She came walking across the wide-open expanse of the great lawn, showing some strain, as though the cart she pulled behind her on the grass might be a solid block of lead.

  She was headed toward the dark cover of trees. Coming finally to the footpath at the edge of the lawn, she dropped to a bench. The thousands of city lights, bright eyes above the tree line, had been following her, tracking her across the grass. They vanished now, blotted out by leaves and branches. She sat in near blackness, owing to a string of broke
n path lights.

  Her body had become too heavy to drag around anymore. Would that she could leave the weight of it sitting on the bench, just abandon this body, this sack of ailments and sores, and go on her way. In a second more, she realized that this was possible, that the method was in her reach, resting on the top of her cart in the form of a discarded butcher knife. The handle was old and cracked, but there was nothing wrong with the blade. Why not? She hadn’t the energy to fight the city anymore.

  Portrait of a falling woman, deadfall, making no shrieks, no useless flailing motions of the arms and legs. Ah, but the night was not over yet. There were places to go and things to do. Yet she found it near impossible to rise from the bench.

  The near-dead always weighed more.

  The high ceiling of the gymnasium was aglow with bright panels concealing long fluorescent tubes. Yet the flood of light was so diffused, it seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, refracting off the cream-colored walls and illuminating every part of the room. And so, the lone swordsman dressed in white had no shadow.

  He fastened the collar of his fencing jacket as he walked to the center of the hardwood floor. He stepped over the painted blue line which defined the narrow rectangle of the fencing strip—the field of combat. All the important lessons of Quinn’s life had taken place within this six-by-eighteen-foot boundary. Here, he had been taught philosophy and human nature, honor and deception. Despite his gold medal, he had also learned humility, for he well understood there was always something more to be learned on this strip.

  His mask lay on the floor near his feet as he swung the sword and parried with an invisible partner. This would be an easy win, for he already understood Mallory’s style. In every conversation, she created a false opening, an invitation, and then she stabbed him in the heart. What was a fencing bout but a conversation of swords?