The Chalk Girl

distinguished man – in pop-eyed shock – leaned toward the one-way window. He listened to the intercom with rapt attention – while Mallory magnanimously offered to write off the murder of a deputy police commissioner as a traffic accident.

Score one for the smiling chief of detectives, who sat in the chair on Coffey’s right. The problem of Rolland Mann was neatly disposed of, and the department would escape the worst police corruption scandal in twenty years.

In the next room, Riker was throwing up his hands in a show of disgust. And when he quit the interrogation, he slammed the door behind him.

Now Coffey heard his remaining detective agree to throw in the attempted murder of Toby Wilder. ‘We’ll call it a misunderstanding,’ said Mallory. ‘Why not? The guy was stoned. He won’t remember anything.’

Willy’s lawyer nodded and smiled.

The district attorney in the watchers’ room turned to Jack Coffey. ‘Does Detective Mallory know I’m here – listening to this?’

‘Hell, yes,’ Chief Goddard answered for the lieutenant. ‘Walt, you know an ADA would never have the balls to sign off on this deal. That’s why I invited you.’

In the next room, Mallory was making it very clear that Willy would have to plead guilty to the unfortunate baby-tossing incident. ‘But we can knock that down to a misdemeanor.’

The defense lawyer leaned toward the nice detective to ask what she wanted in return.

Mallory proposed a trade of new murders for old. ‘Willy was only a kid when that wino died in the Ramble. I’m also interested in an assault on a boy from her school. If she tells me everything she knows, those old cases go to a judge in Family Court. She’ll get the same sentence as a juvenile offender.’

Riker entered the watchers’ room and stepped up to the glass. ‘Can you believe that lawyer? Willy got him out of the yellow pages. I’m guessing his biggest case was in traffic court. Zero experience in criminal law.’

This was the defense attorney every cop prayed for.

‘Detective,’ said DA Hamlin, calling for Riker’s attention. ‘Even if I put Mallory’s deal in writing, it’ll never stand up in court. Eight million New Yorkers are watching the baby-tossing film on television – right now. There isn’t a judge in town who won’t set aside the deal and hit Miss Fallon with the maximum sentence.’

Riker grinned. ‘Yeah, we’re counting on that.’

DA Hamlin was not done yet. ‘About that wino. If Miss Fallon confesses to a murder done as a juvenile, she’ll still do time in an adult facility – most likely the maximum time allowed by law. Do you think she fully understands this?’

‘No,’ said Riker. ‘But I’m only required to read Willy her rights. She’s a moron, and the lawyer isn’t much smarter. Look at that smile on the guy’s face. He thinks this is a good deal.’

When an hour had passed, the signed plea agreement was put on the table in the interrogation room. Mallory also laid out morgue photographs of the wino’s dead body savaged by three children in the Ramble. ‘I already know most of the details. I can even tell you how many times Agatha Sutton bit the victim. Aggy the Biter – isn’t that what you called her?’

Willy Fallon stared at the pictures. She was frozen, holding her breath – big eyes – as good as a guilty plea.

‘If you lie to me, Willy, just one lie, the deal is off, and I can’t help you anymore. You’ll rot in jail for the rest of your life.’

The lawyer nudged his client, prodding her into a nod.

And so it began, halting at first – and then with gusto.

The watchers in the next room sat in the dark – the only proper way to listen to a scary story. They heard the secondhand screams of a homeless man broken by rocks and torn by little teeth, bleeding and dying on the grass. And then came the long travail of Ernest Nadler. On days following the cruelty of stringing up the little boy by his wrists, his three torturers had returned to climb the hanging tree, to poke him with sticks – and other things – and the pain went on and on. Willy would not shut up. She was reliving all the torture, reveling in it – she crazy loved it.

FORTY-ONE

I sit in the garden and tell my story to Mr Polanski, the school handyman. ‘I think the dead wino is being erased,’ I say. ‘Like Poor Allison, the jumper.’

I look down at that place on the flagstones where the chalk girl appears on the first day of spring, and I ask him, ‘After I’m dead, do you think one day you’ll hose me away, too?’

The handyman shakes his head and puts up both hands. He doesn’t want to hear anymore. But I need to talk to somebody. I tell him, ‘I love my mom and dad. How do you say goodbye to people when they don’t believe you’re going anywhere?’

Mr Polanski doesn’t walk away from me. He runs.

—Ernest Nadler

Chief of Detectives Goddard stood by the mayor’s side during the televised press conference. The split-screen image also showed the baby-tossing video, now the most popular film clip with audiences everywhere. And though the town’s top politician had just announced the capture and confession of the offending baby-tosser, one reporter had the temerity to bring up the Hunger Artist’s unsolved murders. When the mayor’s tongue tangled, Joe Goddard leaned into the microphone to say, ‘You bastards know the drill. That’s an ongoing investigation.’

The mayor cringed at the chief’s wording, but he gamely went on to announce the death of Rolland Mann in an unfortunate traffic accident.

With a flick of the remote, Jack Coffey turned off the television set in his office and faced the flesh-and-blood version of the chief of D’s, who had appropriated his desk. The lieutenant did not sit down in one of the vacant chairs. He preferred to stand alongside his detectives, Mallory and Riker.

‘Now,’ said Joe Goddard, ‘about the funeral arrangements for Rocket Mann. Either he gets the twenty-one- gun salute with bagpipes – or we shove him in a pine box as an embarrassment to the department. The widow’s leaving it up to us. Annie Mann really doesn’t care, as long as she never has to leave her apartment again. My concern is blowback. What are the odds?’

‘He murdered Ernie Nadler,’ said Riker.

‘Then the bastard got what was coming to him,’ said the chief. ‘Case closed.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Riker. ‘What if we can prove that Mann was hired to kill that kid? How’s that for blowback?’

The chief swiveled the desk chair left and right as he considered the intractable detective. He turned to the man’s commander. ‘Jack, concentrate on the Hunger Artist. I want that case wrapped up fast. So maybe somebody pays and somebody skates. Don’t get too precious, okay? And please tell me Rocket Mann wasn’t on the shortlist for that one.’

‘No,’ said Mallory, ‘not his style. He favored crimes of opportunity, like trying to push Willy in front of a bus . . . like smothering a little boy in his hospital bed.’

Was she baiting Goddard?

‘Mallory?’ Coffey tapped her shoulder. ‘Shut up!’ And to the chief of D’s he said, ‘We don’t see Rocket Mann spending years collecting a murder kit. And we don’t see him out in the woods with a winch and a drill. He’d never put that much effort into a murder . . . but he was a killer. A real cold—’

‘I guess we got three votes for the pine box,’ said the chief. ‘But this ain’t a democracy. So Rocket Mann gets the fallen hero’s funeral. Nothing comes back to bite the department.’ This was couched as an order to leave that mess buried. ‘Now back to the Hunger Artist. Where’d you stash that junkie, Toby Wilder?’

‘He’s in the hospital,’ said Mallory, ‘getting his stomach pumped.’