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.“

There was no harmless way to hold her head. Two degrees of tilt in either direction brought on more painful throbbing. Mallory sat on the sofa, facing away from Charles Butler’s front windows. Her sensitivity to sunlight was another unfamiliar symptom.

Riker, the wise man of hangovers, looked deep into her reddened eyes, then turned back to Charles. „Naw, she’s not sick. This is fixable.“

The two men walked off toward the kitchen and left her in merciful silence. She bowed her head over the thick text of legalese in her lap.

On the street just outside the window, a cat’s sudden scream elongated into a howl of agony, and Mallory’s fragile nerve endings thrummed in a sympathetic vibration – not to be confused with sympathy. She even took some satisfaction in the animal’s obvious pain as she wished it a quick and violent death, then resumed reading Oliver Tree’s last will and testament.

Riker’s voice carried down the hall from the kitchen. „I need a raw egg, club soda and Tabasco sauce.“

She barely heard Charles’s response. „You’re sure this won’t kill her?“

When Riker returned to the living room, he was carrying a glass of suspicious dark slime topped with frothy bubbles. „Charles is making you a cappuccino chaser.“