Carol O’Connell - The Man Who Lied To Women

‘Did the first two Mrs Riccalos have anything in common?’

‘They were both professionals and carried the normal amount of life insurance through their employers. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t another policy or two. I’m still working on it. Sally Riccalo is also carrying insurance through the financial house where she works as a systems analyst. According to her resumé, she and Robert Riccalo worked for the same company ten years ago when the first Mrs Riccalo was still alive. Interesting?’

‘We started out with a rather simple problem of flying objects. You don’t think murder is a bit of a stretch this early on? I suppose the insurance beneficiary was – ’

‘Robert Riccalo. He’s also the beneficiary of wife number three.’

‘But isn’t the spouse usually the beneficiary?’

‘Yes, but it’s usually the wife who collects. So now I’ve got one heart attack, one suicide, and wife number three looks like she’s ready to explode. She wouldn’t get that upset over one pencil. What else has been flying her way lately?’

‘Oh, a pair of scissors, some bits of glass.’

‘What’s the father’s take?’

‘Anger, disbelief. Only the stepmother seems to be a believer.’

‘He accused the boy of moving the vase. He sounds like a believer to me.’

‘No. The stepmother is the only believer in the paranormal. Mr Riccalo probably thinks the boy is doing it by trickery.’

‘One of them is. Are you sure it was your pencil that flew at her?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Charles, you’re a disgrace to Max Candle’s memory.’

‘The art of illusion is not genetic. Having a magician in the family tree doesn’t vouch for talent in the rest of the bloodline.’

‘You have a whole damn magic store in the basement. You could make an elephant fly with all that equipment.’

‘Not really. Max had some brilliant illusions, but his specialty was defying death. It was Malakhai who could really make things move through the air, and nothing as clumsy as a flying pencil. He was the greatest illusionist who ever lived.’

‘Malakhai? The debunker?’

‘Well, debunking the paranormal frauds came later in life, after he retired from the stage. Before you were born, Malakhai did an act with his dead wife… You seem skeptical. No, really. She was his assistant.’

‘His dead assistant?’

‘Oh yes, it was only after she died that she went into the magic act with Malakhai. When she was alive, she was a composer and a musician.’

‘What did he do, have her stuffed?’

‘No, she never appeared to the audience in the flesh. It was always understood that she was there, and yet not there – dead but not entirely gone, if you follow me. Well, after the audience got comfortable with the idea that she was not only invisible but dead, things began to float through the air as she handed him one thing and another.’

‘He’d fit in nicely with our family of the flying pencils. So that’s why Malakhai got into parapsychology?’

‘Oh, no. He’s the sworn enemy of parapsychologists. Every time they think they’ve discovered paranormal ability, he drops by to blow them out of the water and expose another scam.’

‘Are you thinking of calling him in for this one?’

‘For flying pencils? Hardly. And it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to disturb him. Malakhai’s in his seventies now. He and Louisa are living in quiet seclusion.’

‘Louisa?’

‘That’s his dead wife. If you cared less for computers and more for classical music, you would know her name. Louisa’s Concerto was her only composition, but it was brilliant. No classical collection is complete without it. The concerto was played during every performance. Oh, it was no act on the stage. Perhaps I should have mentioned that. No, Malakhai lived with her, talked with her, slept with her. He only created the flying-object illusions in the act so the audience could see her too.’

‘And this guy, this loon, debunks the paranormal?’

‘Yes, as madmen go, he’s quite functional. He always owned to the fact that he created his own madness. He knew there was no supernatural aspect to Louisa.’

‘Yeah, right. How did he get so crazy?’

‘Well, Louisa died very young. She wrote this splendid concerto, and then she died. He’d known her since she was a child, and he couldn’t quite let her go – so he reconstructed her.’

‘Again please?’

‘He recreated her from memory, from intimate knowledge of her. It’s been done before, but the practice has been limited to remote Asian monasteries. The documented succubi created by monks were fashioned of pure imagination. Malakhai’s creation was based on a living woman – that was one difference. He knew Louisa so well. He knew what her response would be in every given situation. Then he constructed a faithful model of her. And after a while, he could not only hold conversations with her, but see her and touch her. It was a feat of immense concentration. You see, it has to be fanatically faithful to the living woman, to react in the same – ’

‘But it’s a trick.’

‘An illusion, a great illusion, and of course, delusion, but it was a piece of art as masterful as Plato’s Dialogues. And a lot of us do it to some small extent. Don’t you sometimes wonder what Markowitz would do or say in certain situations?’

She turned her face to the window, and he mentally slapped himself silly for crossing the line into her personal feelings, for he was one of the few who believed she might possess them.

‘Another distinction between Malakhai and the monks was that they called up their illusions and sent them away. Louisa was Malakhai’s constant companion. She still is.’

Mallory turned back to him, and he watched the busy-work of her good brain through the static distraction of her eyes.

‘But this Malakhai – he’s definitely crazy, right?’

‘Oh, yes, definitely. But it takes quite a good brain to go quite that crazy. When you consider the amount of concentration necessary to maintain a three-dimensional delusion – ’

‘And when he talked with her, she answered the way she did when she was alive, even if the question was new?’

‘Oh, yes. Perversely, truth and logic were the glue of the delusion. She couldn’t respond in any way that was untrue to the living woman.’

‘Could you do it? Could you have a conversation with a dead woman?’

‘Malakhai and Louisa grew up together. What she would say, in any given situation, was predictable to him. He knew her mind, her most private thoughts. I don’t know anyone that well.’

Certainly not you, Mallory.

‘Would you have to be crazy to create a thing like that?’

‘You would have to possess, at the very least, the insanity that goes with falling in love. A woman once told me that people in love were certifiable. I believe that. Malakhai reached across all the zones of reason to bring Louisa back. Now that’s the kind of love insanity is made of. He may be insane, but he’s also brilliant and rather charming. Whenever I stayed with Cousin Max, Malakhai and Louisa would come to dinner.’

‘Did the dead woman have a good appetite?’

‘As a child, I was never sure. There was always magic going on at Max’s house. They would set a plate for her and pour the wine, and during the course of the evening, the plate and glass would be emptied. The food and wine was probably spirited away in moments of distraction, I knew that, but part of me always believed in Louisa.’

‘Did you ever try the three-dimensional illusion?’

‘Delusion. No. Why would I? Why would anyone want to cross over that border?’