Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

Fake? Yes.

Only the final mark was reliable. So Louisa must have used this passport to enter the country. But the letters and numbers of previous stamps were made by the pen of an artist, and not a civil servant with an ink pad. Clever. A new passport might have borne closer scrutiny in wartime Europe. Inside the cover, a circular embossing overlapped the photograph. This raised seal had very few imperfections.

She returned the passport to the pocket of her blazer, where it kept company with Louisa’s French identity card, which had expired late in 1942.

On to Paris?

She looked at the clock on the wall. Just past midnight – too early to go traveling on the Internet. Her European connection would not be at his desk for hours.

Originally, she had cultivated the Interpol man te steal from him, to raid data from his foreign network. But now, she looked forward to his conversations printing across her screen. Because English was not his first language, he was precise in his phrasing, no idiomatic speech or slang. His text was economical, clean and cold. Like the coupling of machines, their intercourse never deviated from software and hardware.

The foreign policeman was her only friend – or the only one not passed down by her foster father, not inherited along with the old man’s pocket watch.

One red fingernail touched the power switch, and the screen went dark. Mallory swiveled her chair toward the wall where Oliver Tree was taking another arrow into his flesh. She watched with detachment, her mind elsewhere, as the next arrow pierced the old man’s heart, and blood streamed over the white breast of his shirt. She switched him off, giving Oliver a respite from his screaming agony, his repetitive dying.

Notebook and pen in hand, Mallory jotted down the data she would need from the platform that took up so much space in the basement. She planned to shrink it to numbers and graphics the size of a monitor screen.

Locking the office door behind her, Mallory treaded quietly past Charles’s residence and on down the hall. Even before she cracked the stairwell door, she could hear the strains of music and a woman in deep pain. She recognized the voice at once – Billie Holiday.

Some blues fan was playing the old record albums on the turntable stored in the cellar.

Mallory leaned over the railing and looked down through the winding wrought-iron staircase. Harsh naked bulbs cast shadows of twisting metal all along two flights of the curved wall. Descending the spiraling stairs, she listened to the song recorded in the early years of a brief career.

Thanks to her foster father, Mallory’s musical education was peerless. At twelve years of age, she could name every record cut by Billie Holiday. Markowitz had called her Lady Day. This song was from the thirties, the high time of the lady’s short life, cutting loose, taking no prisoners, full-out song of songs.

Mallory pulled out her revolver.

The music ended abruptly when she reached the next landing, one flight away from the basement, as the next song began. The intruder had changed the record and the era. Now it was 1946, and the lady’s voice had coarsened.

Mallory paused on the stairs. The high volume of the record player did not bode well for a covert burglary. She knew it wasn’t Charles down there. He only cared for classical music. But he might have left the partition unlocked.

She slid her revolver back into the holster.

So which one of Charles’s tenants might be in the cellar? The third-floor psychiatrist only played rock ‘n’ roll. And the top-floor minimalist artist didn’t listen to anything but the white static between the stations on his radio.

She touched down on the bottom step. The old song ended in the middle of a lyric, and a more recent one began. It was 1955 and Billie Holiday was near the end of her career, three years away from her death at a jazz festival.

Mallory pushed open the stairwell door. Beyond the long field of black shadows, a tall crack of light split the accordion wall. She decided not to use the flashlight on top of the fuse box. If this turned out to be a learning-disabled burglar, she didn’t want to be an obvious target in the dark.

The record had hardly begun when the cut changed again. Lady Day was singing in the fog of London Town as Mallory drew near the partition. She looked down at the large, old-fashioned padlock. It was closed, and the chain was still laced through holes in the joining sections of wood. There was room enough for a hand to fit through the divide, but why would the intruder close the lock behind him?

And what recording was he searching for? Another tune began in 1958, when Billie Holiday was close to death.

Mallory reached into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers closed on the rod of keys she had pocketed this morning. She held it up to the long crack of light in the partition, unscrewed the metal ball at the top of the shaft and selected the key post that Charles had called a Boer War master. The old padlock fell open, and she silently guided the chain out of the wooden holes.

She used both hands to push against the slats of the folding wall, wincing at the unwelcome noise of unoiled hinges and the wheels of sliding panels moving across the metal tracks in the floor.

And now she was looking at the tall intruder’s back as he bent over the record player and moved the needle to the next cut on the album, a Duke Ellington classic. Lady Day sang, „If you hear a song in blue – “

Apparently, this was the recording he had been searching for. He moved away from the old turntable and walked toward the open wardrobe trunk. His hands were busy at the drawers when she came up behind him.

Malakhai must realize that he was not alone anymore. Her presence had been announced by loud creaking wood and grinding metal, yet he seemed unconcerned, not even bothering to turn around.

This was insulting.

The magician shifted his attention to the garments hanging on the other side of the wardrobe trunk. The white suit was where she had left it this morning, spread across the other clothes on the rack. The satin gleamed as it flowed over his hand.

„I think this will fit you, Mallory.“ He slowly turned his head to show her his smiling profile. „A woman of your word. I look over my shoulder – and there you are.“ His hand brushed a lapel of the white suit. „You’re Louisa’s size. Do you want it?“

„It’s not your property to give away.“

„Oh, but it is. Ask Charles.“ The wave of his arm included all the surrounding stacks of cartons stamped with Faustine’s name. „Max left me all the props, the wardrobe, everything from the theater in Paris. I just never bothered to collect it.“

Malakhai opened a drawer and pulled out a black silk disk. With a quick turn of his wrist and a snap, the full crown of a top hat sprang from its center. He set it on his head. „Faustine bought this for me. I was her apprentice.“

Mallory nodded to the trunk. „Did Faustine buy those clothes for Louisa?“

„No, she never met my wife. The Germans came to town one morning in 1940, and the old woman died that afternoon. Mere coincidence, of course. Faustine never met the German Army either.“

Mallory looked up at the air-shaft window in the rear wall. The glass and the bars were intact. „How did you get in here? Did Charles let you in?“

One hand rose in a dismissive gesture. „Oh please. I was passing through locked doors before he was born.“

Mallory folded her arms in the posture that said, Yeah, right. She was not impressed with his criminal potential. „So you turn on all the lights and crank up the music way too loud. Then you lock the door behind you – so no one will know you’re here? Am I missing something?“