Free Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell Page A

rabbi’s den, which was lined with four walls of books and two old friends, and one very large stranger, the fourth man, who was unfolding the last leg of the card table. He was well over six feet but nonthreatening in his size, perhaps because his face was so wonderfully appealing. What a nose. And those eyes. Even with the heavy eyelids, the irises were so small they left a generous margin of white on all sides, giving him the look of wide-eyed astonishment at just everything in the world.
    Slope liked this man immediately. He looked at the faces of his friends, and like himself, they were unconsciously, accidentally smiling.
    â€œPull up a chair, Mr. Butler.”
    â€œCharles.”
    â€œEdward.”
    â€œLet me give you the ground rules, Charles,” said Robin Duffy, a small and compact bulldog of a man introduced as Louis’s lawyer and neighbor of twenty years.
    â€œLouis explained the rules to him,” said Rabbi Kaplan, pulling his own chair up to the table. “Charles came with twelve pounds of nickel and dime rolls.”
    The strained silence was broken by Robin Duffy. “I like a man who comes prepared to lose big.”
    â€œSo Louis invited you to join the game?” Slope dealt out the cards, and immediately went to work on building a pastrami sandwich.
    â€œI inherited his chair.” Charles eyed the tray of sandwich makings with the discrimination of a connoisseur, and passed over the cheddar cheese for the Swiss, so as not to overpower the more delicate slices of cold chicken. He pulled the letter out of his jacket pocket and exchanged it for the jar of mayonnaise in Slope’s hand.
    The doctor stared down at the handwriting that had become so familiar to him over his years with the medical examiner’s office. Louis’s friend was pointing to the third paragraph, which indeed spelled out a legacy. The letter was silently passed from man to man as the dealt cards lay where they landed. It seemed Louis’s friend had been left more than the chair.
    â€œWell, that fits,” said Duffy when he folded the letter and handed it back across the table. “I always figured the poker game was just a front for raising Kathy.” He popped the cap from a bottle of beer and picked up his cards. “Did Lou ever tell you where he found her?”
    â€œNo. No, he didn’t.”
    â€œShe was maybe eleven. He caught the little brat breaking into a Jag. Well, he’s holding her out by the collar of her jacket, and she’s swinging away, little fists pounding the crap out of air. So it was take the kid home with him, or spend what’s left of the wife’s birthday hassling with Juvenile Hall.”
    â€œBut Helen didn’t understand,” said Slope, picking up his cards. “She thought Kathy was a present. She wouldn’t let go of the kid for twelve years.”
    Charles smiled down at a clear space on the table where his photographic memory projected the pages of Hoyle which dealt with the rules of poker, a game he had never played. Nowhere in the rules did it list doomsday stud with deuces wild. “Louis must have been pleased that she turned out so well, becoming a policewoman and all.”
    The other three men looked up from their cards, their faces all asking the same silent question: ‘Are you nuts?’
    â€œHelen Markowitz did teach Kathy table manners.” Duffy examined the card which had been laid down faceup. “I’ll bet a nickel. But the kid never really changed. She likes being a cop ’cause she can steal more interesting stuff with her computer. And she gets clean away with it.”
    â€œYeah,” said Slope, lighting a cigar and pushing his own coins to the center of the table. “I’ll see that nickel and raise you a dime. Whatever Louis needed, Kathy could get for him. I guess he had a few occasions to worry about his pension. After she broke into the FBI computer, I saw him make