Riker entered the room and flopped down in a front-row seat, his tired face illuminated by the light from the window.
‘Hard day?’
‘Surreal.’ The detective rolled his eyes. ‘I’m trolling for hookers with the baby cop, and the ladies are crawlin’ all over him. Now you might think they want Deluthe’s sweet young body.’
‘No,’ said Charles. ‘That would be too easy.’
Riker sighed. ‘They wanna discuss literature with him.’ He held up the old western as he stared at the larger room beyond the glass. ‘What you’re lookin’ at out there – that’s the Kathy Mallory Hooker Book Salon. Those women can name all the characters from Kathy’s westerns. They used to read to her when she was a kid, but only for an hour at a time. Some of them knew the beginning of a story, and some knew the middle or the end.’
‘But none of them ever read an entire book.’
‘Right. So this is what they used to do between tricks – they’d marry up the plots of the whole series. Other hookers joined up from word of mouth. And then they started running ads in the Village Voice. It took them years to find each other. And tonight they see Deluthe come along with a book by their favorite author, and it’s one they’ve never seen before.’
‘The last western,’ said Charles. ‘They wanted the story.’
‘Yeah. Well, Deluthe tells ‘em he’s only gotten a few pages into it. So he opens the book and starts reading to a gang of whores. Now the traffic really slows down. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that in New York City. Then the kid stops reading, and he says, „Hey, I know somebody who’s read the whole book.“ So now the hookers think it’s a great idea to go to a police station. It gets better. They invite some more blondes with street-corner addresses. I had to send out squad cars to pick ‘em all up.’
‘And how can I help you?’
‘I’ve read maybe half those books, but that was fifteen years ago. You’re the only one who’s read ‘em all. We’re gonna trade plots for information. At least half of these women know Sparrow on sight. I need a time line for the week before the hanging.’
‘And you’re hoping one of them got a look at the scarecrow.’ Charles turned to the glass and watched Deluthe set up room dividers to create two small cubicles and the illusion of privacy.
Following Riker’s lead, he rose from his seat, and the detective put one hand on his arm, saying, ‘Just one more thing, Charles. Listen carefully. None of those whores know Mallory’s right name. Sparrow was the only one who ever called her Kathy. But you’re gonna hear stories about a little girl with blond hair and green eyes. That kid is officially dead. If she doesn’t stay dead, she’s facing charges of murder and arson.’
On that warning note, a startled Charles Butler was quickly ushered out of the room. Riker locked the door behind them, then opened his hand to display three keys. ‘That’s all of’em.’ For added security, he inserted a toothpick into the lock and broke it off at the lip of the metal. ‘We don’t want any eavesdroppers.’
The detective strolled into the interview room, saying, ‘Ladies, you came to the right place.’ He clapped one hand on Charles’s shoulder. ‘We know how all the stories end.’
And this earned them a round of applause.
If Riker had intended to shelter her from the hooker reunion of Sparrow’s friends, he should have posted a guard. Locked doors had always intrigued her, though this one did not pose much of a challenge. Mallory teased the toothpick out with her fingernails, then made short work of picking the lock. Upon entering the darkened room, she removed her sunglasses and sat down in the front row of chairs facing the one-way glass. And now she waited for the performance to begin.
Something was wrong.
Mallory leaned closer to the glass. She recognized most of these prostitutes from the story hours of her childhood, even women who had been badly altered by scars and broken teeth. It was surprising how many had survived, though this was but a fraction of their original number. The common denominator for these women was not Sparrow, but herself.
What was Riker playing at?
Deluthe stood at the head of the table of whores, writing furiously in his notebook, probably taking orders for a deli run. Riker would not want him in the room when this interview started.
Mallory turned on the sound system. It was another shock to hear Charles Butler’s voice. When he stood up, she could see his head above the gray partition of the far cubicle. Riker was introducing him to a prostitute. Would Charles have enough sense to wash up after shaking hands with Greta? His new friend, the whore, was missing half an ear, old damage from long ago.
Deluthe was on his way out the door to fetch the orders from the delicatessen, and now the interrogation would begin. Mallory raised the volume on the intercom. The sound system was intended to eavesdrop on one voice at a time, not six conversations. She closed her eyes to all distractions, then sifted through the babble, seeking out one man’s voice and then the other’s.
How did Charles know the plots of her westerns?
She listened a while longer, concentrating on a single voice. Charles had finished telling Greta how Far Trails had ended, and now he was asking her questions about Sparrow’s movements.
Mallory shifted her attention to Riker’s cubicle, where he was seated with another whore. A few minutes into this conversation, she knew he was trying to solve the wrong murder.
‘Markowitz didn’t know Sparrow was tight with the kid, he just wanted a pair of eyes on the street,’ said Belle. ‘You know, like if she saw the kid – ’
‘A little blond girl,’ said Riker, attempting to speed up the interview, for he already knew this part of the story. He had been the one who had approached Sparrow for information, but Lou Markowitz had put up the money.
‘Uh, huh. The cops were really hot to find that girl. Offered Sparrow cash – not chump change either. And then, up front, she got a get-out-of-jail-for-free card, and it was signed by Markowitz himself.’
Riker gave up the idea of moving this woman along any faster. Whatever drug she was doing, it was not laced with speed.
‘So Sparrow started out the day as a hooker,’ said Belle. ‘Then she turned into a snitch that afternoon. And that same night, she was warehousing stolen goods for a ten-year-old thief. So you can see how her career just wasn’t going real well.’
‘Warehousing goods?’ Riker feigned skepticism. He was hoping this was the shipment of VCRs. ‘It’s not like the kid was ever more than a small-time thief.’
‘Hey, who’s telling this story? Well, I’m walking down the street with Sparrow. She’s already decided to blow off Markowitz. And along comes the kid wheeling a grocery cart full of VCRs. Brand-new, still in the cartons. I ask her if she wants me to read her a story, and she says no. Well, that was a first. The kid looks to Sparrow and says she needs a place to stash her stuff.’
And now Riker listened to another version of the great truck robbery. In this one, Kathy took all the credit for the theft.
‘So now the kid wants to change the goods into cash. Tall Sally’s the only fence Sparrow knows, but the kid won’t deal with Sal. Never would say why. So they got another buyer for the VCRs.’
‘Would that buyer be Frankie Delight?’
Belle shrugged off the question. ‘Who the hell knows? I sure don’t. Now what happens at the end of Shadowland?’
Riker knew this book well. It was his personal favorite, and he did not even care about the glaring flaw of long-range shooting in the dark of a moonless night. ‘It ends with an ambush. Forty rustlers are up on the cliffs, guns aimed, waiting for Sheriff Peety to come through the canyon. And he’s got a bad feeling about this trail, like he knows what’s coming, but he’s got no choice. He has to follow the Wichita Kid.’