Brenda was back, lighty tripping into the room. She danced up to Mallory with the pent-up energy that went with the territory of being seventeen years old, and put a small box into Mallory's hands. Mallory opened the box and pulled out a gold pocket watch.
Mallory pressed on the winder to open it. On the inside cover it was inscribed with the words I love you inside a heart that a child might have drawn. In music-box fashion, the watch played the opening notes to a golden-oldie rock tune. It must have cost the girl a fortune to customize that music.
"His old pocket watch didn't work," said Brenda. "He wore a wristwatch and carried this old broken watch around in his pocket. Funny, huh? So, do you think his daughter would take it? Would it be okay, do you think? Will you give it to Kathy?"
"I'm Kathy."
A sound that might have come from a kitten escaped from deep inside of Brenda Mancusi. She folded down to the floor by Mallory's feet and sat tailor-fashion and silent. Her head hung low as she was trying to make sense of the world by tracing the intricate pattern of the rug with one finger, searching the weave for clues, and not finding any. Failure was in her eyes when she looked up again. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Her voice was cracking. "And I'm not helping you am I? I'm not helping you at all."
"Yes, you are. The watch is beautiful. He would have loved it. I love it. Thank you. It was odd, wasn't it, the way he carried two watches. Brenda, do you remember anything else that was odd, out of the ordinary?"
"He was an out-of-the-ordinary man. God, I loved him. At least I got to tell him that before he died."
Mallory looked down to the watch as one hand closed tighty over it.
"I think I went on too long," said Brenda. "I embarrassed him maybe. He got up and left in a hurry. That was the last time I ever saw him."
A hurry? Markowitz never did hurry. He tended to mosey everywhere he went. He was a slow, ambling man, easy in his steps, strolling along with an impossible grace for one so stout. Never did he do anything in a hurry.
"Do you remember the conversation? I know it was personal, but it might help me a little. What were you talking about just before he left?"
"I was trying to tell him what he meant to me. When I took that stupid job at the Brooklyn Dancing Academy, it was all I could get. It was that or hit the streets like my room-mate. She was a prossie. But the dancing turned my life around. First, I did it for the money, and then he taught me to love it, and then I couldn't live without it. I told him that. I told him it was like it was meant to happen, my meeting him, one thing leading to another. It was like that meeting put everything else in motion. And then he left. So fast. Does that help? I really want to help."
"Yes, it does."
No, it didn't. It only told her what she already knew, what she already had to work with. No, wait. It told her what Markowitz knew before he died. Maybe it was time to step to the side instead of following him into the hole he had died in.
"God, I loved that old man," said Brenda, drained, exhausted, as though she had danced a hundred miles. She brought her hand up to cover her face. She cried.
And Mallory didn't.
It was a video extravaganza. The VCR sat in the far corner of the room playing the tape of Louis dancing with young Helen. And on the clear wall she projected slides of murder scenes, old ladies cut to pieces. Washes of blood flowed across the screen and covered Mallory's face with the ricochet of colored light from the projected images of death. Click: victim number one. And Chuck Berry sang to the dancers. Click: victim number two. The hard beat of the music was moving Mallory's head, manipulating the foot that tapped in rhythm.
She rigged the VCR to loop the tape for continuous play and the partners danced on through the night without tiring ever. Mallory focussed on the slides, looking for something that would not jive, something out of whack, not belonging. She knew it was there. Markowitz had seen it. It had nagged her awake, night after night. What was she missing?
No, that was a mistake. She could see that now. She was also stuck in the loop with the dancing Markowitz and young Helen. Markowitz, had he been there, would have told her to look beyond the parameters of what he knew. She had more to work with now than he had ever had.
The sky, what Margot could see of it, was the deep violet of the hours before sunrise. She watched the man saying his goodbyes to the security guard, and then, pushing his way around the revolving door and into the street.
Oh, yes. He was the one.
She crawled out of the torn and discarded mattress box, out onto the sidewalk where the rats were still dancing, still brave while the dark lingered. One rat, bolder than the rest, ran across the back of her spread hand. She pulled it into her chest and then looked at it as though the rat might have left prints.
The man was walking slowly, heading back for the subway station. She rose up on two feet. And only now, the rats took notice of her and left the sidewalk with slithering quickness. On feet not so fast as a rat, Margot followed the man.
CHAPTER 7
They advanced across the flat stones, quick jerking shapes of light and dark, and some were spotted with brown and gray, uniform only in their forward motion, and one of them was insane.
Feet of red, and red rings around the bright mad eyes, he was otherwise coal-black until he passed into a dapple of sun, and iridescent flecks of green shimmered in the light. The feathers of his head were not smoothed back and rounded. Spiky they were, and dirty, as though a great fear had put them that way, and the fear had lasted such a long time, a season or more, and the dirt of no bathing or rain had pomaded them into stick-out fright, though the bird was long past fear now and all the way crazy. No fear of the human foot. A pedestrian waded through the flock, which parted for her in a wave, all but the crazy one, and it was kicked, startling the pedestrian more than the bird.
The woman shrieked and stiff-walked down Seventh Avenue. The insane pigeon followed after her, listing to one side with some damage from the kick, until he forgot his purpose.
Margot Siddon did not know how many hours she had gone without sleep. She followed the man down St Lukes Place heading towards Seventh Avenue under a slow-brightening sky. Streetlamps still glowed and cast her shadow slipping down into the underground. Fluorescent lights washed her face to white as she passed through the turnstile. The station was deserted at this hour, but for the two of them. To be sure of this, she walked the length of the platform, checking behind each thick post.
By all the laws that governed the universe and New York City, there should be a cop here at this moment when she least wanted to see one. Apparently, even this ancient rule had crumbled in the general breakdown of law and order. They were alone.
She walked toward him, only wanting to see his eyes one more time.
He turned when she touched his sleeve. As he shook off her dirty hand, the last sound he heard was the click. He was a good New Yorker, he knew what that sound must be, and he was given part of a second, that much time to be afraid, before she slipped eight inches of steel into his ribs. By his eyes, he was surprised to be falling, dying, with no time left to ask why.
Edith Candle woke in the ghosty gray hours before sunrise. Her bare feet touched to the carpet as she pulled a woollen robe around her shoulders and plotted out the day's schedule between her bed and the bathroom. She was drawing her bath water and had not yet looked into the kitchen. On the far wall of that room, just above the sink, a childish scrawl spread in a thick line of lipstick: THE PALADIN WILL DIE.