Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

„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.“

„I’m not drinking that,“ said Mallory.

„Yeah, you will.“ He handed her the glass. „Drink it down in one gulp. It’ll put you out of your misery. Then we won’t have to shoot you.“

She tipped back the glass and all but inhaled the contents to get this over with quickly. The taste and the mucous texture were equally vile. This was gross betrayal. She glared at Riker, her poisoner.

„Okay, kid.“ He sloughed off his coat and tossed it on a chair near the door. „The next time you tie one on, take an aspirin before you go to bed. Drink lots of water too. Half the pain is dehydration.“

Her wounded eyes were riveted to the brown spot on the lapel of his coat – fresh aggravation. How long had that coffee stain been setting in?

She held up the pages of the will. „How did you get this away from the lawyer?“

„I thought that might cheer you up.“ Riker sat down beside her and rummaged through his suit pockets. „I dropped by the executor’s office. Man, that place even smells like money. So I asked the secretary for the name of her boss’s cruise ship. I was gonna cable some questions on the will.“

He pulled out a mess of cards and crumpled sheets of paper. „Then the secretary, what’s her name – “ He held out a business card at arm’s length, rather than put on his reading glasses. „Gina. She tells me she’s on a waiting list for the police academy. Nice kid – loves cops. Well, Gina asks me what I think of her chances for acceptance. So I say the odds get better if I write her a recommendation. Then she tells me her boss was never on a cruise ship.“

„He’s been hiding from the police?“

„More like he’s hiding the platform and the crossbows. After the archery stunt at the parade, he thought we might take another look at Oliver’s death – maybe impound the props before the auction.“ He pointed to the paperwork in her lap. „Cut to page thirty-two.“

Mallory flipped through the sheets until she found the list of items to be auctioned for charity. All the magic props were listed by category. She ran one finger down the first column of the inventory.

„Let me save you some time,“ said Riker. „The platform isn’t on that list. But Gina says it’s the big-ticket item for the auction. The bidding starts at one o’clock this afternoon. The lawyer wants to unload all the magic props before the media hype dies down.“

He handed her the business card, and she read the address line penciled on the back. It was more than thirty blocks from her next appointment in Times Square. „What’s the going rate for a magic trick that bombed?“

„Quite a bundle,“ said Riker. „And the lawyer gets a cut of the action. The heavyweight bidder is a Hollywood producer. He wants to make a movie out of Oliver Tree’s fatal flop.“

„Who else was invited?“

„A lot of magicians in town for the festival. That’s why nobody gets to look inside the platform till they lay down the cash. The lawyer’s afraid they’ll rip him off.“