Malakhai awakened, fully clothed, on the bed in his New York hotel room. He was not running through his dreams anymore, but neither had he shaken off the confusion of things unreal.
And the ringing had not stopped.
He switched on the bedside lamp and looked at his watch. It was two o’clock in the morning. He picked up the telephone receiver, intending to slam it down again, when he heard a woman’s voice.
„Malakhai?“
„Yes?“
„When you were a prisoner of war in Korea, was your cell completely dark? Or did it have a light?“
„Mallory.“ Odd child – and rude. Malakhai glanced toward his wife’s side of the bed. He stared at the glint of gold foil and his hand tightened around the telephone receiver. So it had happened again. He had fallen asleep before removing the hotel mint from Louisa’s pillow. No – he had forgotten. „I’m so sorry.“
„That prison cell,“ said Mallory’s voice at his ear, no doubt believing that he had spoken this apology to her. „Was there a light? A window?“
The sense of shame was overwhelming him – all for a bit of chocolate wrapped in gold foil. He kept the tears out of his voice when he spoke to Mallory. „There was light during the day, but not much.“
This old history was an event with large gaps in it, but the physical surroundings were clear. „My cell had a small window facing a stone wall. I could see the light, but not the sky, not the sun. Shadows moved from one side of the wall to the other. That’s how I kept track of the time.“
„What did you do with all that time?“
„I spent it with Louisa.“
„And that was the beginning of – “
„My madness? That’s what the army psychiatrists said.“ But he had always thought of it as a discipline, a religion with a requisite of absolute faith and a complement of sins and atonements – even a litany of guilt. He took the mint off Louisa’s pillow and crushed it in his hand. I’m so sorry.
What would he forget tomorrow?
„It wasn’t war you loved – the killing,“ said Mallory. „That’s not why you signed up for Korea.“
„It was Louisa I loved.“ He sat up and unbuttoned his shirt, averting his eyes from the other side of the bed. „But there’s an interesting parallel. I once saw a poster in Warsaw, a bit of political art. It was the portrait of a young woman. The top of her head was obscured in a wash of blood red, as if it had been blown away. Beneath the poster were the words – how shall I translate them? ‘War, what a woman you are.’ I think that sums it up.“
The line went dead. Apparently, Mallory had been satisfied with the short answer. Would she have understood the music? No, it was pointless to attempt that explanation. It would only try her patience.
He had given Louisa form and substance in a Korean cell, but she had come back for him years before that, in the chaos of World War II, when Roland had aptly named him Hollow Boy.
Malakhai lay back on the pillow. The ceiling became low clouds over the plains of a European winter. His arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, for it was bitter cold. Not night anymore, but morning – first light.
He could have spared the child if he had called out from the safe cover of the rock wall, but he didn’t. He watched a five-year-old boy walk into the field. It was perfect, really. Instead of waiting another hour for one of the Germans to trigger an explosion, the curious child was heading toward a land mine.
Young Private Malakhai had been rubbing his frozen hands through the succession of annoying miracles that had kept the German boys alive. They had nearly finished dismantling the heavy tree, clearing it from the road, section by section. He didn’t know or care what all the soldiers in the troop truck were laughing at. One of them was pointing at the child who would be dead in minutes. The soldier beckoned to the little boy, and the small figure moved closer, stepping quickly now.
Good.
Malakhai’s fingertips were going the blue-gray color of frostbite, and he wished the child would hurry even faster to his dismemberment and death.
A smiling, yellow-haired soldier was holding out a sausage. The little boy moved forward, shy eyes round as brown cookies, his tiny hand extending to the promised treat.
The first mine blew under the child’s foot, and the rest followed. There was hardly a second in the chain of explosions for the soldiers to register the shock of what was happening to them as the parts of their bodies bid torsos farewell and flew elsewhere. And it rained blood for a time; a fine mist crystallized death into frozen red drops.
The truck was on fire. The air was filled with the acrid stew of odors, sulfur and smoke, burnt tires and burnt boys. Malakhai had not yet felt the pain of the head injury made by a fragment of metal. He moved out from behind the cover of rocks and began the death count of the thirty-four soldiers for his report. He didn’t count the child, who was not a military statistic.
When he was done, he stood over the smallest corpse. The little body at his feet was mutilated, but not divided. The boy had been at the center of the first explosion, yet the tiny, perfect face was unspoiled, and his limbs still clung to him by red tendons and bones.
Malakhai felt the hardening of an erection. And this was also curious. He could not explain it away, but as Louisa’s face filled his mind, he found it natural to be thinking of her, coupling her with all things sexual. He could feel the heat in his crotch, more intense now – live fire in winter. And inexplicably, it had all begun with this little corpse at his feet. The child must belong to that farmhouse in the distance.
Malakhai’s body stiffened and froze in the attitude of attention – lightening. Across the snowy plain, he heard the music of a violin.
Impossible. The head wound?
Auditory hallucination? Of course, and it was not his first. He was learning all the medical jargon, wound by wound. But this was not the familiar ringing, the pain of hellish bells and bombshells. This was music, and violins were not in his repertoire of injuries to body and brain.
He looked down on the face of the child. Snowflakes settled upon the rounded glass of brown staring eyes, and they melted there. Malakhai felt nothing but the sex warming his crotch in a spill of cum.
He turned his head in the direction of the farmhouse, the better to hear the music. A wind was rising, and the faint notes were drifting away from him. And now there was another sensation of wetness. His hand moved up to his face.
Tears?
For Louisa.
Thoughts of her had conjured up no companion emotions of pain or loss. He was only tasting the salt of tears – Louisa’s gift. The hollow boy was weeping by conditioned reflex to an imagined violin. He credited Louisa with this trick, creating false tears for a dead child, trappings of sorrow, an illusion of regret.
But why?
Two indistinct figures were emerging from the distant farmhouse. The parents? Perhaps they had just discovered that their child was not sleeping in his bed. He knew their frightened eyes would be turning toward the fire of the burning troop truck. And yet, Malakhai was feeling no empathy or sympathy, nothing but the throbbing of his head wound.
What would Louisa have him do now?
Ob, of course.
Private Malakhai picked up the small body, which weighed nothing, and turned his back on the dark smoke and twisted metal, the charred uniforms and dead boys. He made his way across the white field newly dusted with snow, following the small tracks of the littlest boy.
The young soldier walked with uncommon grace upon frostbit feet, moving slowly toward the farmhouse where the child’s footprints had begun.
Mallory was bored with the wall where Oliver Tree was being murdered again in a larger-than-life projection.
She ejected Louisa’s Concerto from her computer. A portable CD player lay on the desk. The old batteries had been tossed out long ago, and now she hunted through all the drawers, searching for the new ones. Where were they? The movers could not have lost them. She had packed the contents of this desk herself and carried the box in her own car.
No batteries – no matter. She connected the CD player to an adapter for the wall socket, then draped a bulky audiophile’s headset around her neck. Tethered by a wire, she passed in front of the projector’s lens. The moving pictures wrapped around her body, and flying arrows moved silently through her hair.
She opened the closet door and pulled out all the neatly folded cartons. One corner of the den had been cleared for use as two of the walls in a Korean prison cell. She reconstructed the packing boxes into large cardboard building blocks for two more walls only five feet high. When she was done, strips of masking tape ran from the top of one cardboard wall to the opposite wall of plaster – a reminder that there was no room to stand upright. The tape roughly effected bars across her view of the ceiling.
Pulling the last of the boxes into position, she sealed herself off from the rest of the den and sat cross-legged on the floor of her cell, five feet square. After a few minutes she was aware of small noises never noticed before, the tick of the wall clock and rain pelting the window glass. Tinny music from a strolling boom box wafted up from the street. But the enclosing walls were at least devoid of Oliver’s flying arrows and his death. Mallory looked up at the faux bars of paper tape covering her new minimalist world. She put on the form-fitted headset, and its cushion blocked out every sound beyond the cell.
Perfect peace.
This was not what she had anticipated. There was no discomfort, though she could not see the door or the windows. Perhaps it was her absolute trust in the alarm system.
No, it was more than that, something familiar. An old memory was surfacing.
My little house.
Mallory had re-created a piece of her childhood, a refrigerator carton that had once been home to a ten-year-old fugitive. Her cardboard house had been a peaceful sanctuary from the insanity of city streets, the roller coaster of emotions from flight to fight.
She felt safe here.
And Malakhai had done this for a year of solitary confinement. She would almost welcome such a sentence. But what had Malakhai done with his time, besides listening to interior music in his memory and reconstructing a dead woman?
Mallory picked up the CD and set Louisa’s Concerto on replay so it would repeat endlessly. The stereo headset created the illusion that the orchestra played in the center of her skull. But there was nothing for her in this music, no ghosts from 1942, only notes chaining into one another, strings blending with horns.
Malakhai, what did you do with all the days?
Well, he had retained every detail of Louisa’s corpse, the blue dress, the blood behind her eyes and the pink froth at her lips. He must have replayed her death a thousand times inside his head.
Mallory ceased to pay any attention to the music. She concentrated on an image of Faustine’s Magic Theater – Malakhai’s version, not Oliver’s. She decorated it with cafe tables and wine bottles, peopled it with civilians and soldiers, then filled the air with smoke. The chandelier dimmed and the stage was lit with a row of candles. Standing on the stage beside her was a red-haired girl, who held a violin. Mallory stepped into the girl’s skin and turned Louisa’s head toward young Malakhai. The boy stood in the wings, hidden from the audience by the edge of the curtain and awaiting his musical cue.
Mallory’s hand was rising, lifting the violin to cradle it between her shoulder and her chin. Then Louisa stroked the strings with a bow that smelled of rosin. Hidden beneath the instrument was the arrow meant to replace the bow at the end of the act. Mallory turned her eyes back to Malakhai.
Do you see him yet, Louisa? Do you see the uniform?
No, not yet. And only Mallory could see the arrow loaded in his crossbow. Louisa’s eyes were closed. She was so involved in her music.
This illusion was Max Candle’s routine. But tonight, Malakhai holds the weapon on her – on them.
He’s so young. Eighteen years old, all new again. The pistol grip of the crossbow was in his right hand, and his eyes were shaded by the brim of an officer’s cap. The crossbow pistol was rising.
The uniform’s material was gray, the buttons were silver – and the collar was red. No detail should be lost. She looked at young Malakhai through Louisa’s eyes. The handsome boy wore fine black boots. His crossbow pistol was aiming at her now.
What was Louisa thinking? It was easier to creep inside the mind of a killer – so difficult to be a victim in the crosshairs of a weapon sight. First she saw the uniform, and then she saw the SS insignia. Malakhai?
Yes, she knows him now. She was moving past her fear of the uniform. Louisa looked at her old love. His ringer was on the trigger. Was she wondering why Malakhai was doing Max’s routine? Yes.
Why isn’t Max here?
Max can’t shoot you, Louisa. Only Malakhai could do that – because he had loved this girl since they were children.
Mallory waited for the boy to deliver the missile. Did Louisa still believe that a silk scarf would fly – harmless silk on a wire that she could wind round the hidden arrow? Franny Futura had spoken of her surprise. No, Louisa had no idea what was coming. She turned away from the audience, revolving as she played, to hide the switch of the violin bow for an arrow. She was going through with the act that had opened every show.
Why do you trust him, Louisa?
I’ve known Malakhai all my life.
Mallory, less trustful, looked at the boy. His dark blue eyes were on Louisa’s face, probing, touching – the last caress of a distance. His finger pulled the trigger.
Foolish, Louisa.
There was no time for her to cry out with surprise. The shaft from the crossbow was buried in her shoulder, so deep, such pain. The violin and its bow fell to the stage. The hidden arrow dropped from Mallory’s hand. How could this be happening? Louisa stared at him as he turned to run. Why? Why did you hurt me?
He was running away from her. Louisa was falling, and Mallory’s cheek was pressing to the cool wood of the stage. His boots made a pounding sensation that Louisa could feel through her skin as she lay on the floorboards.
Over the next hour, Mallory played the scene over and over again. In one scenario, she left Louisa falling to the stage and ran away with Malakhai, weaving across the room, upsetting tables and startling patrons. Then they were outside the theater and breathing deeply, Malakhai and Mallory. It had rained that night. The air was damp and cold. Malakhai looked up the street and down, but Mallory saw no one on the sidewalk. In the cover of rain, the cover of night, he tore off the outer layer of his uniform. Beneath it, he wore street clothes. He ran back into the theater. Only a few minutes had passed by, not the fifteen he had estimated, not even ten. He was so young, time would crawl and drag for him, but only a few minutes were passing by.
Louisa is dying. Is that what you wanted, Malakhai?
The next time Louisa was wounded, Mallory lay down upon the stage with her and bled from the same arrow, from many arrows, betrayed time after time, left ripped and bloody, listening to the sound of Malakhai’s pounding boots hitting the wood, running away, leaving her behind to bleed and die.
Now Louisa was deep in shock. Someone lifted her from the floor and carried her to a room backstage. Strong arms laid her body down. Mallory could hear the door closing on the noise of the crowd, the sliding chairs and tables, the clink of glasses and babbling voices.
A pillow was covering her mouth.
No air. Panic was rising. The primal instinct to breathe was overriding all her senses. Her hands pushed the pillow away. Mallory fought with more strength than she had, adrenaline gorging every muscle, lungs burning, bursting, dying for a sip of air. He pressed the pillow down harder. Louisa writhed and pushed. Her legs kicked out. Blood poured from the wound, greasing the floor, making it all slick and red.
Where is Malakbai?
He’s gone, Louisa. He ran away. You know that.
No help was coming, not ever. Her assassin was on top of her with his full weight, pressing down on the pillow. Mallory could hear voices on the other side of the door, speaking in foreign tongues.
Why don’t you scream, Louisa?
I can’t. There are German soldiers at the door.
So soon? Only minutes had passed by since the shot. Soldiers from the audience?
Her killer was so desperate now. She wasn’t dying fast enough. His knee pressed down hard on her chest with all the weight of his body. She could hear her breastbone breaking, snapping. Pain was layered over with shock. She could feel her heart being crushed under the weight of him, torn by shards of broken bone.
No, no!
And then her body ceased to thrash. Blood welled up behind her eyes. What Malakhai had begun was being finished now – nearly done. And then Louisa lay still, eyes wide and staring. A pink froth spilled past her lips, and tiny delicate bubbles burst, one by one.
Mallory curled into a ball within the dimensions of Malakhai’s prison cell. There were no sounds or images anymore, no life of the sleeping mind, for the dead do not dream.
When she opened her eyes again, morning light was splashed across the ceiling beyond the masking tape bars, and every muscle ached. She felt the stiffness in her neck and limbs. The concerto was still looping on the CD player, flooding her brain with music that meant nothing to her. So much for the myth that Louisa inhabited her composition.
She had never considered musical metaphors before. Her foster father’s swing music and his rock ‘n’ roll had moved her body without conscious effort or thought. Louisa’s music was too difficult.
Mallory forced a meaning on the composition. Between the strings of violins, the cornets were firing high notes. Perhaps they stood for guns. And now all the pieces of the orchestra loomed up in a great wall of sound. It exploded into shards of clarinets and flutes – bombs bursting in air, bright shrapnel falling like stars. And then music cascaded into liquid valleys of rich low octaves. When the lull came round again, that hollow place in the music, Mallory nodded unconsciously. She had a long-standing acquaintance with emptiness.
How much had Malakhai figured out during his year in the box?
The killer was marked by Louisa’s blood. The others might be dabbed with it, but the assassin would be splashed with it. Malakhai had always known who the man was. Not one small detail of that night had been lost to him. And yet he had waited all this time for revenge.
She picked up the CD player to turn off the music. The cord was no longer taut, but loose. She pulled on it, and the black wire slipped easily through the crack between the boxes until the plug jammed in the narrow cardboard crevice. The machine was not connected to the wall anymore. It had come loose while she slept. The battery bay was empty – she knew that. She had thrown away the old batteries long ago. Yet she could still hear the music inside her head.
No! That was not possible!
She kicked out at the enclosing cartons, then screamed in sudden pain. The tendons in her legs were on fire. A shoulder muscle spasmed. Panic was rising in a swirl of music, spiraling up and up. It was a fight to be still, to lie back and let the muscles uncramp. The music gathered speed. Beads of sweat slicked over her face. Her heart was beating faster, harder, hammering to the music. She pushed the cartons out of the way to make an opening, and pain stabbed her arms.
The music was welling up again, about to crash down on her in a crescendo. Her hands went up in a defensive posture. And then the music softened, like a living entity deciding not to bludgeon her with a heavy falling wall of sound. Mallory slowly rolled her body, and on her hands and knees, she crawled out of Malakhai’s box, dragging the CD player by the wires of her headset. And the music crept after her.
This isn’t real!
The score was climbing again, rising. In a rage, Mallory smashed her fist down on the music machine. A small rectangle of plastic broke away to expose the battery bay. Not an empty compartment.
She had believed that the old cadmium batteries had been thrown away, but there they lay, side by side – alive, recharged in the night.
Idiot.
Mallory touched the power switch. The music ended. She breathed deeply. So nothing was what it seemed. Even insanity was only a cheap trick.
Lieutenant Coffey opened the window blinds spanning the upper half of the wall. In the squad room beyond the glass, all his detectives were gathered around a small television set, and cash was being laid down. He guessed it was still an even-money bet, for no one but the mayor’s publicist knew how the TV script would play out this morning. He turned back to the larger television screen in the corner of his office.
Detective Sergeant Riker slouched in a chair, showing no enthusiasm for the coming event – perhaps because he had no money riding on it. He had been hustled through the office door before he could even make conversation with the gamblers in the next room.
Jack Coffey ran one hand through his hair, stopping short of the bald spot, which he attributed to stress and blamed on Mallory. In silence, he and Riker watched the weather segment of the morning talk show. Jack Coffey resented the smug weatherman, a happy idiot with luxurious, unmerited hair and a huge paycheck for presiding over a gang of cartoons. Smiling suns and frowning raindrops decorated the map in the background. A single large snowflake was menacing the entire state of Connecticut.
The lieutenant leaned forward and browsed through a fresh stack of paperwork on his desk.
What the hell?
He ripped off the top sheet and waved it at Detective Riker. „How did she get Heller’s crew to go along with this? I signed off on the platform inspection, not the parade float.“
Riker shrugged, and Coffey decided that his sergeant might be genuinely in the dark. Mallory had probably covered her partner with deniability for this less than legitimate work order.
Coffey looked back through the glass. Last-minute bets were going down while the weatherman laughed at the cartoon raindrop converging on New York State with incoming storms.
The screen image changed to a tourist’s home movie of the Thanksgiving Day parade. The camera was focused on Mr. Zimmermann’s wife and children. The little family was gamely smiling as Mrs. Zimmermann’s hair stood straight up in the wind. The children waved as they stood beside the giant snowman float. For no good reason at all, the video camera panned to a clear shot of the rocky knoll overlooking the rear end of the parade route. Mrs. Zimmermann and the children jostled one another as they hurriedly regrouped in front of the camera’s new position. Now they all moved backward toward the park, while every other camera in New York City was pointing at the spectacle of giant balloons flying in the opposite direction.
The image dissolved and was replaced by the stage set of the mayor’s favorite morning talk show. A man and woman were sitting on a couch. The ma-and-pa duo of broadcast journalism had not changed dramatically since Jack Coffey was a schoolboy. The anchorman had always worn a bad toupee, but the dark color no longer agreed with the facial crags and the triple chin of middle age. His female cohost was spookier. She had not aged at all, and she never stopped smiling. Her perpetual grin was rumored to be an accident of plastic surgery.
Riker leaned toward the set and turned up the volume as Heller walked out on stage. The head of Forensics appeared to be shaking hands with the TV people against his will. Perhaps Heller was only uncomfortable in the public eye. Or maybe Mallory was holding his family hostage in a remote location.
The large bear of a man sat down on the couch between his television hosts. Heller had great composure, hardly blinking as they mangled the list of his formidable credentials and previous triumphs in law enforcement. His slow-roving brown eyes turned to the monitor beside the couch. A split screen enlarged the same image for the television audience. It was a frozen shot of the rocky knoll above the head of the tourist’s smiling wife.
„Now watch the knoll,“ the anchorman instructed his viewing audience.
The still shot moved into the slow-motion action of Mrs. Zimmermann’s hair waving in the wind. The television host carefully pronounced each word. „See the dark shadow on the rocks? See it? See the puff of white smoke?“
Riker picked up the television guide and ran his finger down the column for morning programs, perhaps to reassure himself that the mayor’s publicist had not booked NYPD’s forensic expert on some kiddie program.
„Now that puff of smoke. That’s a gunshot, right?“ The anchorman turned to Heller. „Clear evidence that the policewoman didn’t act alone. Is that right, sir?“
„Detective Mallory didn’t act at all,“ said Heller. „The smoke is in sync with the sound track on the news films. The movement of shadows was also matched to the tourist shots. The smoke came from a rifle. We recovered the cartridge from two kids who were playing in the park that morning.“
The grinning woman touched Heller’s sleeve. „But are you sure it was the rifle shot that hit Goldy? I mean, the balloon was so big.“ She faced the camera as her hands made a wide arc to express big for the learning-disabled audience. „It could’ve been the gun, right? You couldn’t miss a thing like that with any weapon.“
„The balloon wasn’t the target,“ said Heller. „It was hit on a ricochet. My team examined the evidence on Detective Mallory’s suspicion that the float was the primary target. We found two holes in the material of the giant top hat. There’s an entry hole for the shot and an exit hole for the ricochet. I found corresponding marks on the metal armature underneath the hat material.“
The anchorman raised one eyebrow and held this pose. „You’re saying it was an assassination attempt on one of the magicians?“
„No,“ said Heller. „I’m saying a bullet ricocheted off a parade float. Beyond that, you might only have a gun-happy drunk.“
„Well, at least we’ve accounted for one of the bullets,“ said the grinning woman. „Now the shots – “
„One shot,“ said Heller, holding up his index finger, making no mistake about whom he was dealing with. They obviously needed this visual aid to count a single bullet. And this lent credence to Riker’s theory that they might indeed be watching a children’s program.
The male host countered with three fingers. „We have witnesses who heard three shots.“
There were two electronic bleeps to censor words in Heller’s response. Coffey suspected they were uncomplimentary adjectives for civilian testimony. Heller went on to reiterate this in more polite language. „You’ve run those tapes a hundred times. Did you hear three shots? No.“ His index finger was rising again. „One shot. Detective Mallory never fired her gun.“
Coffey turned to the wide window on the squad room. There were loud cheers and whistles behind the glass. Money was being grabbed up and jammed into pants pockets. A few wadded bills were flying through the air, propelled by unhappy losers.
Riker leaned over and switched off the set. „Like it or not, boss, the kid’s in the clear. You want me to dust off her desk?“
Coffey nodded with a rueful smile.
„Lieutenant, I know what you’re thinking,“ said Riker. „How’s Mallory ever gonna learn the rules if you can’t catch her breaking them?“ He smiled. It was not the wide grin of an ungracious winner. Riker was merely content to be on the opposite side of the loser – his commanding officer.
In peripheral vision, Coffey was tracking a man in uniform. Sergeant Harry Bell had cleared the stairwell, and now he was crossing the squad room. When the desk sergeant was only a few steps from the office door, Coffey slowly stretched out one arm and turned his palm up. As if on cue, Sergeant Bell came through the door and deposited four ten-dollar bills into the lieutenant’s hand – his winnings.
Harry Bell’s face was deep in disappointment as he turned on the startled Detective Riker. „You never made a bet on your own partner? Jesus, Riker, even if you thought Mallory was guilty, you could’ve put down something just for show.“
Mallory knelt down on the cellar floor and shined the flashlight across the cement. The talcum powder was undisturbed. It was a wide field of dusting. There were no marks for a makeshift scaffolding of boards to get him past the powder trap, and he didn’t fly over it. Yet Billie Holiday was singing on the other side of the accordion wall, and she knew he was in there. She could smell the smoke from their cigarettes, Malakhai’s and Louisa’s.
At one end of the partition, she studied the long row of bolts securely holding the edge of the wood to the basement wall. No common crowbar could pry them loose. Judging by the size of the metal heads, their shanks would sink deep into double rows of brick. Yet she pulled on the end panel, and the bolt-lined strip of metal came away from the wall, sliding easily, silently, to accordion the rest of the panels backward along the track and away from the brick. And by this new door, she entered the storage area.
She crept along a row of shelves and bent low as she circled stacks of cartons. It was a pleasure to see the surprise on Malakhai’s face when he looked up from the open box at his feet.
He smiled. „I wondered how long it would take you to work that out. Even Charles thinks the center panels are the only way in. I suppose it helps if you know Max’s sense of humor.“
„Did you find what you were looking for?“
He held up the charred leather spine of a book. The carton at his feet was filled with ashes and blackened pieces of book covers. „They used to be Max’s journals. I suppose Edith found them after he died.“ He held a smoking cigarette. Louisa’s had gone out. „Why did you want them?“
He dropped the book spine into the carton and wiped his hands on a cloth. „My wife was in there. Max told me about his diaries one night when we were out on the town. He was very drunk and feeling guilty.“
„He kept diaries in Paris?“
„No, he started them much later – after I came back from Korea with my resurrected Louisa. Putting my late wife in the magic act affected Max more than I realized. His diaries were love letters to a dead woman. That’s why Edith burned them – jealous of a ghost.“ He made a halfhearted kick at the box.
„Was Max Candle as crazy as you are?“
Malakhai smiled as he lifted a bottle of wine from the case and examined the label. „I always know where I stand with you, Mallory.“ He poured out a glass of wine and handed it to her. „I know it’s obscene to drink before noon.“
She accepted the glass.
„Good,“ he said. „I hope you never become too well behaved.“ He looked down at the carton. „The wives always know, don’t they? A dead rival must’ve sent her right over the edge. Poor Edith – poor Max.“
He took a drag on his cigarette and tilted his head back to watch the plume of blue smoke rising to the high ceiling. „I can tell you my life story by the cigarettes. Like the night we ran from Paris, Max and I. He saved my life, dragged me through the streets and pushed me onto trains. We made the crossing at the Spanish frontier.“
„You told me the border was shut down tight. You said you couldn’t get Louisa out of Paris – not that way.“
„It was closed. Oh, sometimes it would open for an hour or a day, but that night the border was closed down tight as a coffin lid. What did I care? I was in a bad way. Max had a better chance to make the crossing alone, but he wouldn’t leave me. There was really no way out, you see. However, Max always listened to an inner voice that said, Jump or die. Even then, he took such absurd chances.“
He closed the box of ashes.
„We got off the train at Cerbere. The frontier police were lining up all the passengers and checking their travel documents. We had some of Nick’s forgeries in our pockets, exit visas to leave France, letters of transit to get us out of Lisbon. They were useless of course. No one could get a legitimate exit visa that month, so all the papers were suspect. We had no baggage – that was suspicious, too. And Max was still wearing his tuxedo. The frontier police were Frenchmen, a fashion-conscious race, but still they must’ve found that odd, particularly the silk top hat.“
„Max went off to chat with a policeman guarding the station door. When he came back to me, all his money was gone, but he had directions for circumventing French checkpoints. The guard told him all the papers were being cross-checked by telephone and cables, so we couldn’t get back on the train. We left the station with the passengers who were stopping in Cerbere. Then we climbed a steep hill. I remember passing low stone walls and olive trees. There were a million stars in the sky. We stopped at a Spanish sentry house.“
„Max spoke to the border guards. I sat in that hut and cried through the whole interview. They asked him why his friend was so upset. He told them my wife had died that night. Then they asked Max why he was crying. Tears were streaming down his face when he told them he was the lover of his friend’s wife. Then he really startled the guards. Told them he only had a few francs in his pocket and half a pack of cigarettes. He had not come prepared for a bribe. Oh, and the paperwork was forged. He mentioned that too. Well, now the guards were on the floor laughing. I didn’t get the joke, so my weeping went on. They let us through, I don’t know why. It was a fluke that we weren’t arrested that night. German soldiers were waiting all along the border, like cats at a mousehole.“
„There was another joke waiting for us when we finally arrived in Lisbon. The letter of transit was proved a forgery. Of course, I knew it would be, but I didn’t much care what happened next. We were sitting on a bench in the anteroom of an official. This fool in a fine suit stood over us, waving the evidence in his hand. The man was so angry. Max stood up in his dusty tuxedo and bowed. He was so charming. Said he hoped the official hadn’t been offended by a bad forgery, because it was never our intention to insult him.“
„Oh, no, said the official. The papers were really first-rate. He was consoling Max. Then the two of them disappeared into the man’s office. From time to time, I could hear laughter through the door. An hour later, we were on a plane out of Lisbon. I don’t know why. It was absurd. The whole war was like that.“ He tapped the end of his cigarette in the ashtray. Louisa’s lay dead and dark.
„I remember having a cigarette on the plane. There was smoke all over the world that night. Boy soldiers puffing in foxholes, generals having cigars with their whiskey – hookers lighting up on street corners, glowing in the dark. Between the gunfire and the cigarettes, I wondered that any of us could see with all that smoke. Later it turned out that none of us could.“
He looked at the slender white shaft between his fingers. „It’s medicinal, you know. My wife was dead. I took a few small puffs of nicotine and consolation. I believed I had killed Louisa with my arrow. More pain set in. Another cigarette, more consolation.“ He tilted his head to one side.
„And after she died,“ said Mallory, „when you used her in the act, how do you know Max was still – “
„Still crazy about Louisa? When I brought her ghost back from Korea, I took her to dinner at Max’s house. He fell in love with her all over again. Never mind that she was dead. He was an American. All things were possible to Max.“
He pushed the ashtray to one side. „But that’s another story and another cigarette.“ He walked over to the wardrobe trunk. „Oliver’s memorial service is tonight. I recommend the white satin tuxedo.“
„That’s customary for the death of a magician, isn’t it? But everybody keeps telling me Oliver wasn’t one.“
„And they’re right about that. Hopeless bungler. There won’t be an elaborate service, not like the one we held for Max Candle. That was quite an event. Magicians came from all over the planet to give him a proper send-off. I haven’t heard of anything on that scale since he died. Anyway, Oliver’s already been buried. We’re just having a wake at a little place in your neighborhood.“
„Futura said Oliver loved Louisa, too.“
„He was devoted to her. Oliver never married, you know. Never cheated on her memory.“
„And you’ve never loved anyone but Louisa?“
He knelt down beside Mallory. „You’re still wondering – am I crazy, or is Louisa just part of the act? Do I carry her around for guilt or profit?“
„I think you might’ve been legitimately crazy once. But now it’s just a routine. It’s getting harder to work the wires, isn’t it?“ Mallory pointed to the ashtray. „Her cigarettes keep going out. It’s almost over now.“ She smiled, and he took that as a warning, backing away from her.
„This is my second trip to the basement this morning,“ she said. „I thought I found what you were looking for – an old letter stuffed in the toe of a shoe.“ That was where Mallory’s foster mother had hidden valuables to keep them safe from burglars – as if there had been a black market for bad poetry written by Helen’s middle-aged husband.
Malakhai was hovering over her. „Was it a letter from Max?“
„From Louisa. It was addressed to you. She probably thought you’d keep her personal effects if she didn’t make it through the night.“ Mallory glanced at the wardrobe trunk. „I always wondered why you didn’t.“ She looked down to inspect her fingernails, as if this transaction meant nothing to her. „I’ll trade you for the letter. When you fired that gun on Thanksgiving Day, which one of them were you aiming at?“
He shook his head slowly to say, No deal.
„I’ve got rules, Malakhai. Nothing is free. Tell me which one you were aiming at – or I destroy Louisa’s letter.“
„So be it.“ There was no hesitation. He was not bluffing.
Mallory stood up and walked over to the wardrobe trunk. „I know she wrote it the night she died.“ She pulled out the white tuxedo and draped it over one arm. „Louisa mentioned the confession in the park.“ She turned back to him. „Last chance. Was it Nick Prado? Was he standing near the float when you fired that rifle?“
He looked down at the case of wine, head shaking from side to side. No deal.
Mallory reached into the pocket of her blazer and drew out the single page. It was a fragile thing, yellowed and creased – such delicate paper. The ink was a faint flourish of violet lines, almost illegible. She walked back to him and put it in his hand as an offering – for free.
He looked down at the aged paper, not quite believing in it yet.
She turned toward the partition. Malakhai’s head was bowed as he read the faded lines of his letter. It was written by a woman who did not know how the night would end, if she would escape or be captured – live or die. ‘Dear Malakhai,’ it began, and the long goodbye followed after.
Mallory had received a similar letter from her prescient foster father, written before his own violent death and delivered on the day of his funeral. Three generations of Markowitzes, all police officers, had written these letters to their families. The cop’s daughter understood the importance of the farewell.
Walking close to the accordion wall, she headed for the side exit, never turning back for the chance to catch him crying.
She had rules.