When Markowitz had died, the account of his less spectacular, unmagical funeral had been buried on page fifteen. That small column of type had been accompanied by a photograph of herself, her face dry of any of the normal signs of grief.
Of all the tears she had recently cried for Coffey, who knew her better than to believe in them, and all the tears she had cried for the more easily gulled district attorney who knew her not, not one drop had been the genuine article. Conversely and perversely, on principle, she had never shed one false drop for Markowitz on that day when they had laid his coffin in the ground. None of the words spoken over the grave had reached her when the rabbi cast his eyes up to the sky where the God of Sunday school was hiding out, laying low, behaving like a good New Yorker who didn't want to get involved.
She had kept the integrity of the hard case, one who believed that a stiff was a stiff and dead was dead, a dedicated unbeliever in the flight of souls.
Goodbye, Markowitz.
She closed her paper and stepped into the street, putting out her hand to wave down a cab. Near by, a car alarm went off in a shriek. A burst of pigeons took flight from the overhead branches of a tree, their wings rushing, all swirling as one, soaring up beyond the lamplight, screaming as one, night-blind in their flight, rising high above the woman with the wide, astonished eyes, and then gone over the rooftops, lost in the dark.
Carol O'Connell
Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.
At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.
Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.
