The Chalk Girl

said, ‘But he didn’t leave you a dime.’

‘Daddy didn’t have a dime. He died broke.’ Phoebe offered up more factoids. ‘After he left my mother, he lived in hotels for ten years. That costs a lot of money. And he spent the time drinking himself to death. It surprised him that it took so long to die that way. He worked very hard at it.’ And now, with great pride, she said, ‘I paid Daddy’s last bar bill.’

In the child’s fashion of measuring things, she might describe her own smile as six feet wide. And this made Charles Butler smile, too.

‘He could’ve been a lady,’ said Coco, uncertain as she spoke to Mallory on the one-button cell phone. ‘I wasn’t wearing my glasses.’

The little girl gave up one more remembered thing. ‘A baseball cap pulled down low . . . No, he didn’t say anything . . . Well, he did, but he talked with his hands.’ The fingers of her free hand curled to hold an imaginary pencil, and she made a scribbling motion on the air. ‘Like he wanted something to write with . . . And then? . . . Uncle Red turned around . . . I don’t know.’ Her legs drew up. Her smile was gone. Anxious now, Coco raised one arm, as if to ward off a blow. The detective on the other end of this conversation was obviously breaking the rules again with leading questions.

‘I don’t know!’

Charles took the phone from her hand and killed the connection to Mallory with no word of goodbye.

When Riker walked in, the geek room was humming with electronics, and every monitor was aglow.

Mallory laid down her cell phone. ‘Coco’s remembering more details. Our perp wore sunglasses – at night.’

‘Well, that explains the holes.’ Previously, the little girl had alluded to great dark holes in the blurry face of Uncle Red’s killer.

‘There’s more,’ said Mallory. ‘Before Humphrey’s skull was cracked, the killer got him to turn around by asking for a pen – in sign language. The Hunger Artist played mute so his voice wouldn’t be recognized.’

Riker nodded. With these elements of disguise, they could rule out murder for hire. ‘And how goes the search for the Nadlers’ private nurse?’

‘She might be dead. She hasn’t paid income tax in fifteen years.’

‘We’ve got a visitor,’ said Riker. ‘Dr Slope sent her.’

The two detectives walked down the hall to the smallest interview room, the one used for private conversations that were neither taped nor covertly watched. One of the three chairs was occupied by Detective Janos, who dunked teabags with a gray-haired woman he introduced as ‘Dr Sills – a retired pathologist.’ Janos rose from the table. ‘She used to work in the Medical Examiner’s Office.’ He walked toward the door, saying, ‘She remembers our dead wino.’

Riker’s smile was broad as he pulled up a chair beside the woman. ‘Thanks for coming in, ma’am.’

‘Anything for Edward Slope. He said you were interested in people who came in to view the body of a derelict.’

Mallory sat down across the table from the doctor. ‘You brought paperwork on the wino’s ID?’

‘There’s no paperwork, dear. I brought my memory. Edward had to jog it a bit. He said that corpse was autopsied the same day a traffic fatality came in with a severed head. An unforgettable day. That’s when we found the derelict’s body. Someone had stored it in a locker that was supposed to be empty. No idea how long it was in there. But I’m sure Edward told you that.’

‘No,’ said Riker. ‘That must’ve slipped his mind.’ He would bet that a morgue attendant had pocketed a bribe for misplacing that body, another black mark for the Medical Examiner’s Office.

‘Well, that was odd,’ said Dr Sills. ‘And the paperwork was missing, too. I remember that because we had to call every precinct in Manhattan.’

Now the wino was so much more interesting.

‘But it doesn’t surprise me that Edward forgot the paperwork problems for that day.’

Riker nodded. Of course not. Why would Dr Slope give Mallory more ammunition for their next war? Sending in Dr Sills was probably the ME’s idea of remorse for not coming clean. Even a lie of omission would cost that dead-honest man a night’s sleep.

‘It was total chaos,’ said the retired pathologist. ‘A full house between a gang shoot-out and a ten-car pileup – so many corpses, all those poor family members coming in to identify remains. But only one was a child, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. A beautiful boy. He came in all by himself, looking for his father. He broke my heart.’

‘You remember his name?’

‘No, I’m sorry. This was so long ago.’

‘Does Toby Wilder sound familiar?’

She shook her head. ‘I did ask for his school ID. It was a private school, I remember that much. I had to call them for the mother’s home phone number. Then I had the boy fill out forms to keep him busy until she could get there. It upset him when his mother walked in. I gather he wanted to spare her the ordeal. And then I saw the white cane.’

‘His mother was blind,’ said Riker.

‘Yes. That’s the only reason I allowed her son to view the body. When I pulled back the sheet, the boy began to cry – so quietly, not a sound, only tears. Well, I thought this must be his father, but he said no. Then the blind woman said she wanted to see the body. She ran her fingertips over the dead man’s face, tracing all his features. And then she was crying, too – quietly, like the boy. She wiped her tears with a sleeve – hiding them from her son. That was my impression. Then the mother said it wasn’t her husband.’

‘We read the autopsy report,’ said Mallory. ‘The wino’s body was skin and bones. Malnutrition. He also had a broken nose, old damage, and a lot of teeth were missing.’

‘I understand what you’re saying, Detective. Yes, that would change a man’s features radically. But I assumed there had been some recent family contact – or how would the boy have known to go looking for his father in the morgue?’

‘Their reactions bothered you,’ said Mallory. ‘You knew there was something wrong. Who cries over a stranger?’

‘Yes, that was disturbing.’

THIRTY-FIVE

In civics class, I read aloud from my essay on the rules of comportment during a homicide investigation. It’s the only class I share with all of them, Humphrey, Willy and Aggy the Biter. While I talk, they never move a hair. They forget how to breathe. I scare them shitless.

It’s my best day ever.

—Ernest Nadler

Riker entered the tony restaurant of the Wall Street crowd. It was all done up in velvet curtains and wood paneling, real silver on the tables and money on the hoof. He pegged the maitre d’ for an ex-convict. There were no visible prison tats, but the man gave himself away when he did not immediately sneer at the detective’s bad suit and scuffed shoes, foreplay to hustling an unwanted customer out the door. Instead, the maitre d’ saw cop in those hooded eyes.

Even as a child, Riker had always seemed on the verge of arresting everyone he met. ‘The deputy police commissioner is expecting me.’

With great relief on the part of the man in the better suit, the detective was shown to a table, where a solitary dinner was in progress.

Rolland Mann had found a new way to establish his dominance: divide and humiliate. Riker had been told to