Long after his detective had been dismissed, Jack Coffey remained to replay the TV clip of Mallory impersonating the actress. He played it again and again.
Shorthanded?
Yeah, she was.
The NYPD was always making pitches to the public, begging for tips and leads on a case. This was the first time in the history of the department that a cop had made a public plea for help from her own boss.
• • •
Damn
right
she was angry.
“I checked with the lieutenant! He
okay’d
it!” The desk sergeant was not about to lose face in front of his officers, those who had gathered nearby to watch this fight. “
Not
my fault,” he said to the detective, though he
had
given Mallory’s package to the wrong man.
The thick manila envelope,
clearly
marked, should have been picked up by Robin Duffy, a retired lawyer from Brooklyn. He had lived across the street from the Markowitz house during all the years of her foster care. She trusted Robin because he had no agenda other than to make her smile, and, toward that end, the old man would gladly swallow cyanide for her.
But the man who had made off with her evidence tonight was not so amenable.
Mallory stared at the sergeant’s logbook of signatures. Thanks to Jack Coffey—
bastard
—those documents were now in the hands of a poker fanatic on a mission from God.
She turned her head to look through the glass doors of the station house. There he was, a slender, bearded man standing on the sidewalk, holding her package in his hands—call it bait—and the rabbi had an air of false innocence about him, given that the name of his game was
Ra
nsom
.
He only had to wave at her, and she nodded her understanding of his terms; she had known him that long—most of her life. Though he had come for her unarmed, Mallory would have no recourse but to follow him into an evening of slow torture among men who played cards like demented nursing-home escapees.
She turned away from the desk sergeant and walked toward the doors to meet up with David Kaplan, her foster parents’ oldest friend and spiritual adviser. He was already smiling like a winner, and
that
she could fix.
Behind her, the sergeant called out, “Hey, if you can’t trust a rabbi, who
can
you trust?”
Yeah,
right.
• • •
The walls of Charles Butler’s library were fifteen feet high and colored with book bindings from floor to ceiling. Below a tall arched window, a Queen Anne desk was laid out with platters of meats, cheeses, sliced-and-diced vegetables, and there was mustard in three different shades from bright yellow to spicy brown for spreads on whole wheat, rye or pumpernickel—all the makings of triple-decker sandwiches.
And the air was richly flavored with whiskey and cigar smoke.
The poker table dated back to a gambling era of legend, bright lights and tommy guns—the birth of Las Vegas. However inspiring, it had not improved Charles’s odds of winning, not by one whit. His blush conceded to Kathy Mallory that he was holding a worthless hand, and with only the tilt of her head, she asked,
Why drag out the humiliation?
So he folded his cards.
Edward Slope was still in the game, and he would be until the last nickel chip was lost. Stubborn man, his jutting jaw indicated that he could not beat two pair, but he would not fold. And, “No,” he said to Mallory, “I’m not going to run a hair-strand test on the playwright. You’ve already got a perfectly good tox screen and a rather obvious call on cause of death.”
“Which one?” Mallory smiled. “Did you make two or three obvious calls? I’ve lost count.”
The doctor streamed cigar smoke over her head. He was stoic, giving her no satisfaction, unless Charles counted that small throbbing vein in the man’s forehead and the tight grip on his whiskey glass.
“I need that hair-strand test,” she said. “I want a longer drug history for—”
“Tough. There’s no reason to suspect a drug habit. The man was a damn vegetarian.”
“
And
a drunk.”
“
I
can’t justify it—so
you
can’t have it.”
This exchange of sniper shots across the table was as close as the two of them could ever come to civil discourse.
Seated in the club chair to her left, David Kaplan wore the faint smile he reserved for the happy occasion of holding good cards. Thus Charles, the most luckless player of the lot, could see that the rabbi was entertaining a notion that he might have a fair shot at winning this hand.
Fair?
What a dreamer.
No doubt, it was Mallory’s very lack of fairness that had allowed the rabbi to win a previous hand, building his confidence and his contributions to the pot. Poor David was done for, though no such intention was writ on Mallory’s face. It was more a matter of her style. Soon the players would be all in—every chip. The faster they lost to her, the sooner she could leave them. And that was thanks to an unbreakable bylaw of this game begun in her childhood: The players could not buy more poker chips to extend the pain of being beaten by a little girl with a big talent for fleecing them. The late Louis Markowitz had once referred to this old rule as a cap on his foster daughter’s weekly allowance money.
On the other side of the room, Robin Duffy sat in an armchair by the light of a Tiffany lamp. It was odd to see this small bulldog of a man with a somber expression. He was rarely without a smile and always joyful in Mallory’s company. But now, in her service, the retired lawyer sat out the game to sift through her evidence of legal documents. And to compensate him for this, she had taken over the old man’s seat at the table and played in his stead. Thus, Robin could not fail to be the night’s big winner by proxy.
Edward Slope stared at the backs of Mallory’s cards, as if she might have marked them with a clue to what she was holding. The doctor prided himself on his inscrutable granite façade, but Charles found it rather easy to read the man’s thoughts. Just now, the doctor would be wondering why Mallory would want more forensic tests on a man who had clearly died of a slashed throat. Might that be a ploy to distract him from a bluff? What the
hell
was she up to? As if seeking guidance from the founder of the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game, Edward’s eyes wandered to the empty chair, where Louis’s ghost was undoubtedly laughing his ass off.
Mallory further confused the doctor by losing interest in the hair-strand test. Now she only concentrated on getting at the remains of his stash, saying, “Don’t embarrass yourself.”
Magic words. Edward met her bet and raised it. Daring man. Chips worth many nickels and dimes were pushed into the pot. And David was right behind him in lockstep. Seeing the doctor’s raise, the rabbi also stepped off Mallory’s cliff, every chip wagered.
They would never learn.
How could they
not
be suspicious of her tonight?
With
no
argument, she had politely dealt the cards counterclockwise in deference to a crescent moon. She had even credited the proper wild card for an even calendar date coinciding with curbside trash collection. And she had also allowed for other cards that were wild for reasons related to weather.
Robin Duffy preempted the wholesale slaughter that was surely coming. He returned to their company with Mallory’s stack of papers in hand. The lawyer’s jowls lifted in a broad smile when he noticed how his pile of chips had grown in his absence. And he said to her, “I know how they did it, but there’s a snag in the plan.”
The old man had everyone’s ear as he slid into the dead man’s chair before the only space on the table not cluttered with plates and glasses, chips and cards, and he laid down the documents. “Peter Beck had no legal recourse, not in regard to line changes. He traded away all his rights for a casting veto.” Robin held up a clipped sheaf of paper. “This is his contract. It grants the director absolute creative control. Dickie Wyatt could alter the play in any way he saw fit.”
“He didn’t
change
Beck’s play,” said Mallory. “It was
erased
.”
“But there was no breach of contract.” Robin rippled the pages of the next document, a court transcript. “Now here’s where it gets interesting. When the play became unrecognizable as Peter Beck’s work, he won the right to void his contract . . . but he never did. And that’s peculiar. Evidently, Beck hated the new play. He calls it drivel in this transcript. So why would he want to keep his name on it?” Robin turned to the expert in all things psychologically inexplicable.
But Charles did not plan to psychoanalyze a corpse. Only hacks would do that. Relying solely on logic, he said, “My guess? Not one of his original lines survived. That’s newsworthy. Perhaps he wanted to avoid public humiliation on a grand scale.”
“No, that’s not it,” said Mallory. “Beck’s lawyers were behind a slew of court appearances. That’s like begging for the story to get out. Why would he make it a bigger story? Why drag out the fight?”
“A costly fight.” Robin turned the pages of another transcript. “This is the last court hearing. The playwright stalled the play’s opening with injunctions while his contract was in dispute. He was in control on that front—until a judge sided against him.” Finding the sheet he wanted, the lawyer pointed to a paragraph. “The play was undercapitalized and over budget. They’d laid out enormous funds for marketing, and Beck’s lawyers killed the ads.” He tapped one line of text. “Here’s where the judge accuses the playwright of using financial-starvation tactics for extortion.”
“He wanted them to restore his own play,” said Mallory.
“That would’ve made sense, but—” Robin turned the page. “Here it is.” He traced the lines of a closing paragraph with one finger. “The judge reminds Beck that he can sever the contract at will, and he tells the man to fish or cut bait. But Beck won’t do it.” The lawyer closed the document. “And that’s why the play was finally allowed to open with certain provisos. The theater couldn’t use the playwright’s name or his title on their marquee, and the—”
Correctly guessing that he was losing Mallory’s interest, the old man leaned across the table to catch her eye for a wink and a promise that, “It gets better. You’ll like
this
part. Dickie Wyatt was also the producer. His financial backing came from a Chicago investment group. This play was just another line on their company spreadsheet—oversight by bookkeepers. But they had a solid interest in all this litigation. I’m damn sure they were paying for it. The legal fees were gigantic.” He opened another document that began with a list of attorneys and their clients. “The investors were never represented in court.”
And,
yes
, she did like that part. “
Better
leverage. Beck could’ve nailed them.”
“Right you are,” said Robin. “If the backers were never told that their funds were used to finance litigation—and for the
wrong
play—Dickie Wyatt could’ve faced criminal charges. And I’m sure the attorneys pointed this out to Peter Beck.”
“And that was his hole card,” said Edward Slope. “He could’ve shut that play down anytime he liked.” The doctor turned to Mallory. “So he was going to make that announcement on the night he died. There’s your motive for murdering him.”
“But that’s insane . . . isn’t it?” The rabbi turned to Charles. “Mr. Beck fought so hard to have his own words restored. Why would he use his only leverage
after
the play opened? Doesn’t that defeat the objective of a hole card? You’d play that card to win a game—not to send the other players home and walk away with nothing.”
And now
all
eyes turned to Charles, who only spread his hands to say,
Who knows?
But they were patient. They waited him out. Edward pulled the sandwich plate beyond his reach, and David confiscated his glass, leaving the psychologist to cast about for some honest loophole in his high standards that prohibited channeling the thoughts of the dead. Ah, and now he had it! A rough profile might pass for the witchcraft they wanted from him.
“Well, given only the facts at hand . . . his play was being erased slowly. Pieces of it getting lost every day.” Whiskey and sandwich were restored. “Over time, frustration would be building. Anger. Humiliation. Beck was a celebrated playwright. That stature usually comes with a substantial ego. And that works nicely with a need for ultimate control right up to the end. He might’ve been in a volatile state of mind and—”
“Going crazy,” said Mallory, lover of brevity. “And then he snapped. That’s why he went to the play the night he died. He wanted a public showdown.”
David Kaplan turned to Mallory. “This murder was planned in advance?”
“It was.”
“Then . . . the murderer knew what was going to happen. So Mr. Beck must’ve played his hole card
before
he got to the theater.”
“Right.” Mallory nodded homage to the rabbi’s logic. “But obviously it didn’t work. So all he had left that night was revenge. Beck was there to get even with all of them. He was going to kill that play—loud and public.”
There were nods from the others in deference to this reasoning, for she was the recognized Queen of Get Even.
“Dickie Wyatt had the best murder motive—the most to lose,” said Charles. “But he died
days
before Peter Beck. In fact, I’m wondering now if that heroin overdose was an accident. It might have been a suicide if he—” Charles pressed up against the back of his chair, as if Mallory had pinned him there with an angry look, or, more precisely, ocular evisceration. The documents on the table were fair game, but how
dare
he disclose information found on the cork wall—
her
wall?
David Kaplan rested one hand on her arm, calling her attention away from Charles.
Thank you. Thank you.
“So Mr. Wyatt is off your list,” said the rabbi. “Who else was likely to be aware of Mr. Beck’s intentions that night?”
Mallory was not inclined to give up more details—or waste any more of her time. She opened her pocket watch, a pointed reminder that she had business elsewhere. Facing the rabbi, she sweetly called him on his cards, and then destroyed him by beating his three kings—though her own hand could only be read as a straight flush in a world where grown men had previously agreed that deuces were wild cards on a night with a waxing moon.