Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

After a moment Grady asked, "How's your cell, Andrew?"

"My -"

"Your cell here in detention."

"Don't much care for it. As I suspect you know."

"It's worse in prison. And you'll have to go into solitary because the black crew in general pop would love to get -"

"Come on, Charles," Roth said wearily. "We don't need any of that."

The prosecutor said, "Well, Joe, I'm about at the end of the line here. All I've been hearing is I didn't do this, I didn't do that. That somebody's setting him up and using him. Well, if that's the case" – he now turned directly to Constable – "get off your ass and prove it to me. Show me you didn't have anything to do with trying to kill me and my family, and you get me the name of the people who did, then we'll talk."

Another whispered consultation between client and attorney.

Roth finally said, "My client's going to make some phone calls. Based on what we find he might be willing to consider cooperating."

"That's not good enough. Give me some names now."

Troubled, Constable said directly to Grady, "That's the way it's got to be. I need to be certain about this."

"Afraid you'll have to turn in some friends?" the prosecutor asked coolly. "Well, you say you like to ask hard questions. Let me ask you one: What kind of friends are they if they're willing to send you to prison for the rest of your life?" Grady stood up. "If I don't hear from you by nine tonight we go to trial tomorrow as planned."

It wasn't much of a stage.

When David Balzac had retired from the illusionist circuit ten years ago and had bought Smoke & Mirrors he'd torn out the back half of the store to put in the small theater. Balzac didn't have a cabaret license so he couldn't charge admission but he'd still hold shows here – every Sunday afternoon and Thursday night – so that his students could get up onstage and experience what performing was really like.

And what a difference it was.

Kara knew that practicing at home and performing onstage were night and day.

Something inexplicable happened when you got up in front of people. Impossible tricks that you continually flubbed at home went perfectly, owing to some mysterious spiritual adrenaline that took over your hands and proclaimed, "Thou shalt not fuck this one up."

Conversely, in a performance you might blow a trick that was second nature, like a one-coin French drop, a maneuver so simple that you'd never even think to have an out prepared in case it went south.

A high, wide black curtain separated the theater from the business end of the store. It rippled occasionally in the breeze as the front door opened and closed with a faint Roadrunner meep-meep from the electric-eye alert on the jamb.

Now approaching 4:00 P. M. on Sunday, people were entering the theater and finding seats – always beginning at the back (in magic and illusion performances nobody wants to sit in the front row; you never knew when you might get "volunteered" to be embarrassed up onstage).

Standing behind a backdrop curtain, Kara looked at the stage. The flat black walls were scuffed and streaked and the bowed oak floor was covered with dozens of bits of masking tape, from performers' blocking out their moves during rehearsal. For a backdrop, only a ratty burgundy shawl. And the entire platform was tiny: ten by twelve feet.

Still, to Kara it was Carnegie Hall or the MGM Grand itself and she was prepared to give her audience everything she had.

Like vaudevillians or parlor magicians, most illusionists simply string together a series of routines. The performers might pace the tricks carefully, building up to a thrilling finale, but that approach, Kara felt, was like watching fireworks – each burst more or less spectacular, but on the whole emotionally unsatisfying because there was no theme or continuity to the explosions. An illusionist's act should tell a story, all the tricks linked together, one leading to the next with one or more of the earlier tricks returning at the end to give the audience that delightful one-two punch that left them, she hoped, breathless.

More people were entering the theater now. She wondered if there'd be many here today, though it didn't really make any difference to her. She loved the story about Robert-Houdin, who walked out onstage one night to find three people in the theater. He presented the same show as if the house were full – except the finale was slightly different; he invited the audience to his home for dinner afterward.

She was confident of her routine – Mr. Balzac had her practice, even for these small shows, for weeks. And now, during the last few minutes before curtain time, she didn't think about her tricks but gazed at the audience, enjoying this momentary peace of mind. She supposed she had no right to feel this comfortable.

There were a lot of reasons why she shouldn't be so content: her mother's worsening condition. The growing money problems. Her slow progress in Mr. Balzac's eyes. The brunch-in-bed guy who'd left three weeks ago today, promising he'd call her. Definitely. I promise.

But the Vanished Boyfriend trick, like Evaporating Money and the Wasting Mother, couldn't touch her here. Not when she was onstage.

Nothing mattered to her except the challenge of materializing a certain look in the faces of the audience. Kara could see it so clearly: the mouth faintly smiling, the eyes opening wide with surprise, the eyebrows narrowing, asking the most compelling question in every illusionist show: How do they do that?

In close-in magic there are sleight-of-hand gestures known as takes and puts.

You create the effect of transforming an object from one thing to another by subtly taking away the original and putting a second in its place, though the effect the audience sees is of one object becoming something else. And that's exactly what Kara's philosophy of performing was: taking her audience's sadness or boredom or anger and putting in its place happiness, fascination, serenity – transforming them into people with exhilaration in their hearts, however momentary that might be.

Just about starting time. She peeked out through the curtain again.

Most of the chairs were filled, she was surprised to see. On nice days like this, the attendance was usually quite small. She was pleased when Jaynene from the nursing home arrived, her huge figure blocking the back doorway momentarily.

Several other nurses from Stuyvesant Manor were with her. They walked farther inside and found seats. A few of Kara's other friends too, from the magazine and her apartment building on Greenwich Street.

Then just after 4:00 the back curtain opened wide and one final member of the audience entered – someone she never in a million years would have expected to come see her show.

• • •

"It's accessible," Lincoln Rhyme commented wryly, driving his glossy Storm Arrow to a spot halfway down the aisle in Smoke & Mirrors and parking. "No ADA suits today."

An hour ago he'd surprised Sachs and Thom by suggesting they drive down to the store in his van – the ramp-equipped Rollx – to see Kara's performance.

Then he'd added, "Though it's a shame to waste a beautiful spring afternoon indoors."

When they'd stared at him – even before the accident he'd rarely spent a beautiful spring afternoon outside – he'd said, "I'm kidding. Could you get the van please, Thom."

"A 'please' no less," the aide had said.

As he looked around the shabby theater he noticed a heavyset black woman glance at him. She rose slowly and joined them, sitting next to Sachs, shaking her hand and nodding to Rhyme. She asked him if they were the police officers Kara'd told her about. He said yes and introductions were made.