„I see you’ve been busy this morning.“ Charles put the useless key back in his pocket and trained the flashlight beam on a metal box bolted to the accordion walls. The chains were gone, and the partition had been closed to a thin crack of electric light from the other side. A number pad on the new lock required a code to open the door latch. „Were you planning to give me the combination?“
Mallory touched four buttons on the pad. A green light blinked at the top of the box, followed by a click of metal. „It’s a good lock. Malakhai won’t be able to open it.“
Charles spread the wood sections apart. They moved silently on recently oiled tracks, and the hinges no longer creaked. „But I don’t mind if Malakhai comes and goes when he likes. I think – “
„It’s charming, right.“ And now she added trespassers to the list of decrepit furniture and malfunctioning electrical wiring that he found so endearing.
Charles walked around the dragon screen, pulling the new crossbow strings from a paper bag. He stopped to stare at the area in front of the platform. „Mallory, have you been cleaning?“
The debris of last night’s drinking and magic was gone. Empty bottles and broken bowstrings had been thrown out with the trash, and she had swept the floor at the base of the platform. But even without dust tracks, she could see evidence of Malakhai’s return visit. While she was busy with Riker and the rabbi, Malakhai’s search had expanded to the boxes and trunks on the first row of shelves. So he had found no difficulty in getting past the new lock. And now she must rethink cliches about the generation that could not program VCRs.
Charles was hunched over the toolbox. „Have you been following the news today?“ He pulled out a can of machine oil. „The reporters are taking another look at Oliver’s death.“ Screwdriver in hand, he walked over to the crossbow he had mounted on the pedestal yesterday. „I didn’t know his nephew had a juvenile arrest record. What did he do? Shoplifting? Something like that?“
„I’ll ask Riker.“ Mallory smiled. Lieutenant Coffey would suspect her of the press leak, but he would never prove it. And the brass at Number One Police Plaza would stay on Coffey’s back until he found the nephew – no matter how much it strained the budget. She had doubled the manpower on a homicide case that did not officially exist.
„I saw the mayor’s press conference this afternoon.“ Charles pulled the crossbow pistol from its slot in the pedestal. „A reporter asked about the murder in the park, and the mayor was livid – pounding on the podium. He said Central Park is the safest precinct in New York City. Said it three times.“
„He always does that,“ said Mallory. „Every time we find a dead body in the park.“
Charles unscrewed the metal plate that covered the firing apparatus. „Then Central Park isn’t the safest precinct in Manhattan?“
„Well, yeah, it is. The crime stats are lower. But the park is the only uninhabited precinct.“
She stared at the opened cartons on the shelves. They were not part of the shipment from Faustine’s Magic Theater. What was Malakhai searching for? And now she thought of another unanswered question, one that had hampered her background check. „What is Malakhai’s first name?“
Charles appeared to physically duck under this question, kneeling down to examine the center gear of the pedestal. „If he has another name, I’ve never heard it.“ He held up one finger slicked with a dab of recent oil, evidence of last night’s shooting party. „Have you been – “
„I searched the title on that upstate hospital. Nick Prado said Malakhai owned it.“
„He does.“ Charles wiped the oil off on his jeans. „You didn’t fire this – “
„According to the paper trail, a foreign trust fund owns that property.“
„He’s a very private man, Mallory.“ Charles pulled the crossbow off the pedestal and held it up to her. „I did mention that these were dangerous, right?“ He bent the curve of metal as he pulled the new string across the horns of the bow, then turned his back on her to reinstall the pistol grip in the pedestal slot.
So he did not plan to discuss Malakhai anymore. Fine. A change of subject, a little detour – no problem. There were other avenues of investigation, other suspects. She could make use of his Ph.D. in psychology. „What can you tell me about a classic narcissist?“
„So Nick Prado made your short list. He’ll be so pleased.“ Charles bent low to look through the sights of the crossbow. „A true narcissist would enjoy being the center of your investigation, whether he was guilty or not. Does that help?“
„Let’s suppose he’s guilty.“
Charles shook his head in disbelief. „Nick had no reason to harm Oliver.“
„Then help me eliminate him as a suspect.“ She put one hand on his arm. „If Prado didn’t do it, I can’t hurt him, can I? So hypothetically, let’s say he did it.“
„I’m not worried about you damaging Nick. His ego is indestructible.“ Charles loaded an arrow into the crossbow, cocked it and depressed the lever to set the pedestal gears in motion. He bent down to an open crate and pulled out another crossbow. Mallory sat down on the floor beside him as he dismantled it.
„All right,“ said Charles. „He is a classic narcissist. You probably guessed that when he flirted with you the other day. Most men would never approach a woman like you.“
He looked up from his work of separating pieces of the crossbow. „You’re beautiful.“ This had the sound of a guilty confession. Charles’s face was comical even in serious moments. His were the eyes of a frog in love. „But Nick truly believes he’s a good match for you. I know it sounds ludicrous but he sees himself as young and virile.“
Charles slotted the bow at the end of the shaft, then reached into his bag of strings. „I wasn’t joking when I said he’d be pleased to be a murder suspect – even if he was guilty. The true narcissist believes he can outwit everyone in the immediate world.“
„So if he planned a murder, he might get sloppy with the details?“
„No, I wouldn’t put it that way. The plan would be very carefully thought out, but perhaps too complex. The more intricate the plan, the greater the possibility of error. That’s the blind spot of the narcissist. And it wouldn’t fit your theory of a key switch. That’s much too simple for Nick.“
The pedestal stopped ticking. She heard the twang of the string, and in the same instant, the arrow was wobbling in the center of the target on the stage.
„But the simple murder is the smartest one,“ said Mallory. „This one was damn near perfect.“
„And that’s the problem with it.“ Charles laid the crossbow aside and picked up another. „It doesn’t fit the profile of a narcissist. Switching the keys is hardly a challenge. Simple sleight of hand. No, if Nick was planning a crime as large as a murder, he’d do something more convoluted. So he’s probably your worst suspect.“ Charles held up a screw with obvious rust, then reached for a can of oil. „You know, Malakhai was right. This apparatus won’t help you work out the Lost Illusion.“
„What’s to work out?“ She looked up at the target. „He was supposed to get the cuffs off before the arrows hit him.“
„A cut-and-dried escape routine?“ Charles shook his head. „Oliver was trying to re-create a Max Candle illusion. An accident was built into the act – Max’s trademark. Oliver explained that to the policemen and the reporter. He didn’t want them to rescue him when he started screaming. When the first arrow drew blood, they wouldn’t let me up on the stage. I guess they thought I was acting, too.“
Charles stood up and dusted off his jeans. „Unlocking manacles and dodging arrows.“ He threw his hands up. „Where’s the magic? If you’d ever seen one of Max’s illusions, you’d understand.“
„Okay, show me.“
„Well, that’s a snag. I don’t know how the major illusions were done.“
But Charles’s intelligence scores went right off the charts. Was he holding out on her? No, that would show on his face. „Do you know how any of them work?“
„I could show you a trick Max designed for a children’s party. The illusion is called matter through matter.“ He climbed to the top of the platform. After pulling the target from the slots between the two posts, he laid it on the floor at the edge of the stage. „This illusion uses the lazy tongs. Remember when Oliver spread out his cape, and it fell to the floor – empty?“
„That metal thing that comes up through the trapdoor?“
„Right.“ Charles descended the stairs. „At least you’ll see how that works.“ He bent over an open crate and lifted out a large flat object covered in quilted material. After propping it against the wall of the platform, he pulled the wrapping away to expose a mirror in a thick frame of maple. It was the size and oval shape of the target, with the same black support pegs at the sides. The glass surface wildly distorted every object in its field. It reminded her of a carnival mirror that alternately made giants and midgets from the reflections of ordinary people.
„I learned this trick when I was nine years old. I’m going to pass through this glass.“ He carried the mirror up the stairs and fitted the frame into the slots of the standing poles, suspending it three feet above the floorboards. „Max created this illusion for a children’s Halloween party, so it’s a bit of a departure from the regular routine.“ He pulled on the red velvet drapes, drawing them closer to the mirror, almost touching the support posts. „He didn’t die in this act.“
„Why not? Kids love stuff like that.“ She walked to the foot of the staircase. „Halloween is supposed to be scary.“
„No, he wouldn’t die for an audience of children.“ Satisfied with the setup, Charles came down the stairs again and moved slowly through the mass of cartons, reading all the labels. „I was accustomed to watching Max die onstage. The other kids weren’t.“ He opened a box and pulled out four brass pipes and disks. „You still don’t understand. Realism was his priority. An adult audience really believed he died in the finale of every act.“
„Lots of blood and gore?“ She sat down on the bottom step.
„Nothing that crude.“ He quickly assembled the parts into freestanding poles, then screwed metal loops into the heads of each one. „The audience never saw any actual blood, but the mind’s eye supplied it – lots of it.“
„Didn’t he ever worry that somebody in the audience would try to save him and ruin the act?“
„No, never. I think Houdini had that problem in the thirties. I guess the world changed.“ Charles set out the brass poles to form the four corners of a square near the foot of the staircase. He connected the poles with lengths of red velvet rope hooked onto the brass loops. „Max could always count on a few good Samaritans rushing the stage. They added some drama to the act. But they were always too slow, too late. Most people just sat and watched him die.“
Charles was looking at the cafe table and the chair that Malakhai had used last night. „Max had no degrees in psychology, but he understood the darkest things about his audience.“ Charles picked up the chair and set it in the center of the velvet-roped square. He dipped one hand into another carton and retrieved a long cape of scarlet silk, an exact copy of the one Oliver Tree had worn.
„You think it’s like herd instinct? Is that what keeps them in their seats?“
„Yes, but there’s more to it.“ He examined the material and draped it on a pedestal. „I understood the phenomenon better when I was at school. I did a paper on crowd behavior. My best case study was a small town in New Jersey. A clothing store caught fire. A schoolgirl was trapped in a room fronted by a plate-glass window.“
His face was somber as he unchained one of the velvet ropes and entered the square. This was not a pleasant memory. „Her name was Mary Kent. She was fifteen years old.“ Standing behind the chair, he glanced up at the platform. „There were broken bones in Mary’s hands. That’s how hard she beat on the window, but the plate glass was too thick. She was a tiny little thing, not strong enough to break it. This was a Saturday afternoon, and there were lots of pedestrians passing by on the street. They gathered in front of the window, completely mesmerized by the fire – and the girl who was screaming and beating on the glass. I suppose the window was a lot like a giant television screen. They formed an audience and watched her die.“
„Where was the fire department?“
„No one called them. Eventually, a fireman saw the smoke from the other side of town. But they were too late for Mary. Not their fault.“
He stepped outside the square and walked up the platform staircase. „I interviewed all the witnesses – the audience. They blamed the firemen for Mary Kent’s death – actually ragged them for being too slow with the fire truck. They all believed that someone else had called in the fire – or that’s what they told me. I asked why no one had thought to pick up a rock and break the glass so Mary could escape. ‘Never thought of it,’ they said. Just never occurred to any of them.“
„Did you believe the witnesses?“
„No, I didn’t.“ He pointed down to the roped-off square. „You’re going to sit there. Remember, this illusion was staged for an intimate audience and a narrow field. That’s because of the mirror. So don’t move outside the ropes.“
Charles checked the reflection of the chair in the mirror. „Max arranged the Halloween party for me.“ He touched a switch on the side of the left post. A lightbulb glowed from its submerged socket in the crossbeam. „The other guests were children of magicians – a very tough audience.“
Mallory took her seat inside the ropes as Charles ran down the stairs, two at a time, and retrieved the scarlet cape. She glanced at the nearby carton filled with the same material. „Why so many?“
„Real silk.“ He turned off the floor lamp near the base of the platform. „Sometimes the material ripped when the metal tongs came up through the floor. So Max needed a large supply.“
He disappeared around the dragon screen. And now the lights were going out all over the basement. The bulb in the crossbeam made a dull halo around the mirror.
„Ready?“ Charles returned, wearing the scarlet cape. A monk’s hood covered his hair and shadowed his face as he walked toward the platform.
The mirror reflected only the black shadows of the space behind her chair. When Charles neared the top of the staircase, she could see his face climbing in the wavy distortion of the glass, elongating and compressing in grotesque caricatures. He stood center stage and spread his arms wide. The material of the cape concealed the entire mirror and touched the curtains on either side of the posts. After a few moments, the silk collapsed. Charles had vanished, but the red material was not falling to the floor. It was slipping through the center of the mirror in a thinning stream of scarlet silk.
And now the cape had disappeared into the looking glass, and Charles’s disembodied head was floating inside the oval frame. The light shone all around the mirror, no feet, no physical man to make that image. His nose elongated in the carnival glass, turning to a snout, and his eyes widened to saucers. When he bared his teeth, they grew longer in the distortion of the mirror, turning into fangs as he mouthed a silent howl.
Two white hands appeared beside the floating monster head. He snapped his fingers, and the mirror revolved on its pivots, spinning end over end between the posts. When the oval frame stopped revolving and righted itself again, Charles was no longer trapped inside the glass. The mirror was empty and black.
A finger tapped Mallory’s shoulder, and she jumped, startled.
Charles stood behind her.
And that must be the scary part.
He was grinning, utterly pleased with himself. „What did you think of it?“
„Good trick.“ She glanced back at the platform. „So tell me if I’ve got this right. The cape was tied to a wire that fed through a hinged opening in the mirror. That’s why he used a carnival mirror, right? So the distortion would hide the imperfection?“
Charles nodded, not smiling anymore. He was turning on the lamps.
„The drapes are lined in black,“ said Mallory. „I know you can’t move the support posts. But the mirror frame is thick enough to reposition the glass inside it. When the lazy tongs spread the cape, you pushed the glass out of alignment and stepped behind the curtain. And then you were reflected in the mirror from a different angle.“
„Well, yes.“ He turned to her with a face full of disappointment. „But what about the effect? The illusion – “
„I got the mechanics right?“
Charles didn’t answer her. He walked back to the platform and climbed the steps, moving slowly, as if suddenly very tired. When he stood before the oval frame, he pressed on one side of the glass to reposition it. And now he found her face in the wavy distortion. Their eyes met, and he stared at her with his unhappy reflection. In this new angle, the carnival mirror shortened Charles’s nose and contracted his bulbous eyes to more normal proportions.
Mallory sipped in a breath and held it.
In the distortion of the mirror, Charles was reborn as an incarnation of his famous cousin. Mallory’s eyes were riveted to the beautiful man inside the glass – alive and a hundred times more compelling than any of the old photographs. The man in the mirror was touching her insides with chemistry and flooding her face with heat. It was a fight to remain still, to keep the fragile illusion in place. One move would destroy it, but she had the sense of levitating with a lightness of head and body, almost hollow now, rising slowly.
So beautiful.
This was what Louisa saw the day she met Max Candle. In that first second, Malakhai was doomed to lose his young wife. This man was so -
And then Max was gone, vanished in the moment when the mirror was lifted from the post slots. Charles turned to her with his more familiar face, his large nose and the eyes of a sad but charming frog, unaware that he had resurrected the dead.
„Magic is wasted on you,“ he said.
After Charles had left the basement, Mallory continued to prowl through the boxes until she found the missing leg irons for the Lost Illusion.
All four crossbows were fixed on their pedestals and angling up toward the target. She cocked the weapon nearest the staircase. Very smooth operation, no problems. No need to run the pedestal gears again. Every weapon had fired in good working order. Now she only needed to work out the rest of the mechanics.
With a cape slung over one shoulder, she climbed to the top of the platform and stood before the target. She had watched the crossbows work from every angle on the ground below. Now she planned to see the trick from Oliver Tree’s point of view on the stage.
She knelt on the floor and attached a leg iron to the ring at the base of each post. The shackles had no locks, only catches to keep them closed. In her mind, she was replaying the tape she had watched a hundred times. These irons were exactly like the ones Oliver had worn on his ankles when he hung spread-eagle across the face of the target.
Mallory reached down to unhook a pair of NYPD handcuffs from her belt. Oliver had used two pairs, but there had been only one key. She had blown up segments of his film performance and found the piece of the broken key extension falling against the gray backdrop of the band shell. There had been no sign of a second key when the fingers of his left hand splayed wide with sudden pain.
Out of habit, she pulled out her own cuff key. Of course, it would never work. When her hand was bound to the posts and stretched out, this one would be too short to undo the lock. She set her key ring down on the floor and reached into the back pocket of her jeans for the relic from Faustine’s Magic Theater. She unscrewed the bulb at the top of the extension rod and selected a post with teeth to match her own cuff key.
Mallory stood up and closed one of the bracelets around the iron ring on the right-hand post. The handcuff chain dangled the open bracelet within easy reach – easier for her than Oliver. His corpse was five inches short of her own height of five ten.
And now she was confronted with her first problem. This platform was made for Max Candle, a man seven inches taller than Oliver. Yet there was no difference in the post-ring positions. On Oliver’s replica, the iron loops appeared to be the same distance from the top of the posts.
Mallory shook the dust off the silk cape and draped it across her shoulders, then pulled the hood over her hair. The long hem trailed on the stage behind her. She looked down at the outline of the trapdoor. The foot pedal was in plain view, and when she stepped on it, a square of wood dropped open behind the heels of her running shoes.
The mechanical framework rose out of the floor, slowly coming up beneath the trailing material, silently spreading its metal bones to fill out the cape in the form of raised arms. A curved metal dish imitated the top of a human skull beneath the hood. She stepped away from the cape, and spread her legs to attach the floor shackles to her ankles. Reaching up, she slipped her right wrist into the handcuff dangling from the iron ring. It took a bit of fiddling to close the bracelet with one hand while holding on to the skeleton key. Oliver Tree had done this much faster with two sets of handcuffs.
It was the first tick of the pedestal that made her drop the key.
Her mouth went dry as she watched the piece of metal clatter to the floorboards, landing beside her own discarded key ring.
The spread cape blocked her view of the crossbows. Mallory stretched one foot the length of the leg-iron chain, but she could not reach the floor pedal to drop the cape and give her a clear view of the weapons. How had Oliver Tree done this?
Bound by both legs and one hand, she listened to the ticking, the gears grinding. The noise was coming from her left side. She imagined the peg rising, moving closer to the crossbow trigger.
What is the crossbow aiming at?
She had seen Oliver die so many times, and she knew each trajectory by heart. The test firing of Max’s crossbows had agreed with the tapes of the park death.
The pedestal was ticking, ticking.
Think! Where is the arrow going to strike?
She saw Oliver clearly now. The left-hand bows fired arrows into his thighs. There was only time to frame this thought, to shift one leg. The ticking stopped. The arrow ripped through the spread silk and pinned her to the target.
No pain.
Mallory looked down at the arrow that had torn through the blue jeans and missed her skin by a hair’s breadth. Her breathing was slow and shallow, the better to listen for the movements of company in the basement, sounds of a would-be assassin. She had so little faith in accidents these days.
The gun was in her free left hand, but Mallory had no memory of pulling it from the holster. She had been that intent on the sound of footsteps on the staircase.
The red material was pulled to one side.
Malakhai.
He was looking down at the arrow pinning her leg to the target. He glanced at the open trapdoor and stepped on the floor pedal in front of it. „The lazy tongs work in slow gear. They’ll go down in another minute.“ He ignored the gun in her hand and pointed at the floor pedal. „You’re supposed to step on that before you put on the cuffs and leg irons. Timing is everything, Mallory.“ He was mildly distracted by the rising muzzle of her gun. It was harder to miss, now that she was aiming at his face.
„Point taken,“ he said. „I’m forgetting my manners. Good evening. You’re looking well.“
„You missed me by an inch.“
He glanced down at the arrow in the denim material. „I’d say it was closer than that. You probably jarred the pedestal gears when you cocked the crossbow.“ He reached into the breast pocket of his coat and extracted a pack of cigarettes, acting as if this were perfectly normal, holding a casual conversation with a chained woman. „You did cock the bow. Am I right, Mallory?“
„Am I supposed to believe this was another accident?“
His slow smile implied that this might be the more charitable view – an accident instead of a stupid mistake. „I told you not to walk in front of a loaded crossbow.“
Had the weapon been loaded when she cocked it? She could not recall checking the magazine for an unfired arrow from her test round. Was she going to own up to an oversight like that?
Well, no.
She pulled on the handcuff bracelet that bound her wrist – a not too subtle suggestion for him to unlock it, and right now.
Malakhai lit a cigarette. „The pedestals are as delicate as Swiss timepieces. In fact, the gears are Swiss.“ He exhaled a slow stream of smoke – portrait of a man at leisure. „It takes some finesse to do this illusion.“
She yanked the chain, but he did not get the hint.
Malakhai looked down at the revolver as she extended it toward his chest. „I gather you dislike criticism.“ Ignoring the gun, he reached down and pulled the arrow from the target. „You remind me of an old proverb. The girl who can’t dance always blames it on the band.“
And now he was holding a sharp arrow in one hand and standing much too close. Her finger rested lightly on the trigger.
There were so many fractured parts to her emotions. Malakhai showed no fear of the gun. That was enough to make her angry. And she wanted this to be his fault, not hers. But now he was looking down at the keys lying on the floor. This was more evidence of her own errors, and she hated him for that. She stared at the arrow in his hand. Did he mean to do some damage? Or was this a sick game he was playing?
Her body went rigid. Every muscle flooded with adrenaline for the fight, as if it would take any force to squeeze a trigger. And darker chemicals were released into her brain as a response to rage, magnifying it to obliterate reason.
In the last untainted part of her mind, she heard herself speaking calm, icy words, „Let go of the arrow. Let it fall and step back.“
A drop of sweat rolled down the side of her face. The trembling in her gun hand was nearly imperceptible. It was a muscle spasm of tight control – to prevent her revolver from firing into his chest.
Mallory pulled down on the manacle until the metal bit into her wrist. Pain was a focus, a trick of her own to clear her mind of violence. But she could still feel the anger massing, building toward a single convulsive act. If she could not stop it, she was going to kill him. She strained at the bracelet, pulling it down harder to bring on more pain, but it was not enough.
„Drop it!“ she yelled.
At the moment Malakhai turned away from her to send the arrow flying off the stage, her manacled hand shot straight out with more force than she possessed in a normal state of mind.
The crack was loud, and for an instant, she believed her gun had gone off.
Malakhai turned around, surprised to see her metal bracelet freed from the post. Dangling from the other end of her handcuff chain, the iron ring was attached to a splintered piece of wood.
„Are you bleeding?“
„No.“ She bowed her head over the red abrasion on her wrist, not wanting him to see that she had also been startled. The breakage was unintentional. She had only wanted the pain. „So you just happened to be passing by? Is that your story?“
He took her metal bracelet in both his hands. She never saw him work a key. The handcuff simply opened and released her wrist. He held up the manacles and the splintered section of wood. „I can fix this. But don’t break anything else, all right? Perhaps if you kept your hands in your pockets?“
He knelt down to open the leg irons, and Mallory pushed him away. Then she reluctantly holstered her gun and undid the catches that bound her ankles. The anger was not receding, but it was under control as she stepped to one side of the target.
„Nasty tear in those jeans, Mallory. Lucky it wasn’t your skin. Maybe next time it’ll be a vital organ – like poor Oliver.“
„Is that a threat?“
„That’s a fact. I guess you’ll have to wear something else to dinner. We have reservations for eight o’clock. No time for you to go home and change. Did you like the roses?“
„How did you know my address?“
He pointed down toward the wardrobe trunk, just visible over the top of the dragon screen. „I suggest the green silk.“
Mallory was dressed for a different season in 1942. Walking away from the cab, she felt the wind whistle around her feet. The gold dancing shoes were not made for the month of November. Though they fit well, she felt crippled by the slender straps and delicate heels. Near the front door of the restaurant, they paused by a mirror, and Malakhai drew her attention to the gleaming material of the suit. „Louisa says the silk has faded a bit. Once it was green enough to match your eyes.“
The Greenwich Village restaurant catered to Europeans. The single long room was filled with accents of other languages. Near a window overlooking West Fourth Street, a small table was laid with three place settings.
Three people sat down – if one counted Louisa, and Mallory did. As Dr. Slope would say at every poker game, I came to play.
Malakhai pulled out a package of cigarettes.
„They won’t let you smoke in here,“ said Mallory. „That’s the law.“
„Ah, the new draconian regime.“ Malakhai took a cigarette from the pack. „But you can’t possibly believe this restaurant enforces the mayor’s petty little fits?“ He pointed to the name of the cafe emblazoned on the menu. „These people are French, are they not? What were you thinking?“
Mallory no longer wanted to kill him.
Other women in the restaurant were looking their way – his way. And the men were also stealing glances at him. Though the table was next to the street window, Malakhai was the gravitational center of this room.
His eyes were dark attracters. She was alternately leaning toward him and pulling back. „Did you plan to search the basement? Or did you just show up to scare me?“
„Does anything scare you?“ There was no sarcasm in his voice. „The pedestal mechanism is old. Who knows what else is broken – besides the post.“
„Your ashtray, sir.“ A young waiter in a red dinner jacket had materialized by the table. It was not an ashtray he set before Malakhai, but a plain saucer. „If anyone should make a scene – “
„I know, Jean. You’ll be shocked to see me smoking in your establishment – and very loud when you tell me to put out my cigarette. I promise to be contrite.“ After the waiter had left them to consult their menus, Malakhai rolled the unlit cigarette between his fingers. „You see that woman over there? The indignant one in the purple dress?“
Mallory turned around to look at a party of three patrons near the door. They were pulling on their coats and gesturing to the woman in purple. But she ignored them to blatantly stare at Malakhai and his cigarette, a red flag to a militant antismoker.
He smiled at this woman as he spoke to Mallory. „She and her friends are ready to leave. And yet, how can she go without exercising this bit of power over a stranger?“ He pulled out a silver cigarette lighter. „Here I am, about to indulge in a simple pleasure, something she can deny me.“
The woman’s eyebrows shot together. She was waving down their waiter, as if the boy were a passing taxi. Jean cruised on by, pretending not to see her. The three dinner companions were standing by the door and hailing her. The woman in purple joined her friends with obvious reluctance. Out on the sidewalk, she was still not finished with Malakhai. She paused by the window to glare at him, to be sure he was not getting away with anything.
He made the unlit cigarette disappear into his closed fist. When he uncurled his fingers very close to the window glass, his hand was empty. The three companions applauded the trick as the purple woman stalked off down the sidewalk. Malakhai closed his hand again. This time he opened it with a lit cigarette resting between his fingers.
Mallory looked down at the saucer, where a second cigarette was smoking. There was lipstick on the filter. He must have put it there while she was distracted by the little magic show at the window. She stared at it for a moment, watching the smoke curl upward. „Where did Louisa come from?“
„If you knew that, you’d be an instant celebrity in the music world. There’s no record of Louisa anywhere. Some frustrated historian even started the rumor that I made her up.“
„Any rumors about murder?“
„Quite a few. Nick Prado started most of them to boost record sales in the early fifties. This was fifteen years before he quit the stage to start his public relations firm. But even then, he had all the instincts of a first-rate publicist.“
„Prado knows the real story.“
„Does he? He’s never said so – not to you, Mallory.“
„You never believed her death was an accident. You knew Louisa was murdered. You knew it long before the poker game.“
She had expected him to deny that. But he didn’t. There was nothing in his face to tell her whether she had guessed right or wrong.
„Why are you so preoccupied with Louisa?“
„Oliver’s will left everything to charity, so I don’t have a money motive. I think he frightened the man who killed your wife.“
Their conversation stopped when Jean the waiter returned with a bottle of burgundy. He poured a small amount into a wineglass and hovered by the table, waiting for Malakhai s approval. Then the young man filled all three glasses and left.
„Oliver did botch the trick,“ said Malakhai. „I could tell that much from the television coverage.“
„What was his mistake?“
„Oh, I’d be the last one to spoil your fun. I’m sure you’ll work it out.“
„What about that boy who died when Max Candle did the act? Was that another one of Nick Prado’s stories? A publicist’s pipe dream?“
„No, that really happened, but the story isn’t widely known. Max was devastated. He was hardly going to use the boy’s death for publicity.“
„That accident should have made the national news.“
„Why? Max Candle died on stage and magically came back to life. The boy stayed dead – less magical, only an accident report on a police blotter. Nothing more.“
„Maybe you were in the audience the night Max did that trick.“
„In fact, I was.“
„So you would’ve known how to sabotage Oliver’s trick in Central Park.“
„Not necessarily. He didn’t do it the same way Max did. So I’d have to know Oliver’s version.“
Hours later, she was no closer to a solution for the Lost Illusion. Her magical wineglass was never more than half empty, though she had never seen Malakhai refill it. And toward the end of a long evening, she had learned to be more careful in the pronunciation of every word, lest she slur her speech or drop any more syllables.
All the way home in the cab, Mallory sat up straight, but the rest of the world would not. It leaned, it spun. It was out of control.
Her Upper West Side apartment building slid into view alongside the passenger window. The rear door opened and Malakhai stepped onto the sidewalk. He extended one hand to assist Mallory out of the car, as if he feared her feet might miss the ground attempting this maneuver on her own. As they crossed the building’s marble threshold, she nodded toward a blur of green uniform, which must have been Frank the doorman.
In silence, they rode the elevator upward, not straight up but tilting off to one side. When they reached her floor, Malakhai escorted her down the hall, politely and firmly holding her right arm. This was a bygone courtesy she recognized from another era’s black-and-white movies. Canny Mallory made use of his archaic good manners to keep herself from tripping on the unruly roiling carpet.
They stopped in front of her door, and he waited patiently while she tried three times to work the lock. Twice, she lied and blamed the problem on a new key. Finally, the door opened. Malakhai stood close beside her, yet his voice seemed distant as he said, „Good night.“
At last, Mallory was inside her apartment, leaning against one stationary wall and willing the rest of the room to stand still. And now she remembered the question she had wanted to ask at the top of the evening.
She pulled open the door on her second try at turning the knob in the right direction – around. And then she was running down the hall. The elevator was engaged. She pushed through the door to the stairwell and accomplished a remarkable ballet of footwork to keep her balance on the concrete that shifted out from under her in a staircase conspiracy to break her neck.
She crossed the lobby, running uphill much of the way, and thanks to the quick efforts of Frank the doorman, there was no steel-framed glass impediment between herself and the street. Mallory was out on the sidewalk, breathless, and weaving only a little – or so she imagined.
Malakhai had just climbed into the back seat of a yellow taxi. He was instructing the driver when she appeared beside the passenger door.
„Whose side were you on in World War II?“
The car was rolling away from the curb as he leaned out the window and called back to her, „I was wearing a German uniform the night I shot Louisa.“