The Vanished Man

hopped inside.
    Standing motionless, catching his breath. Malerick then started down the hallway toward the apartment he sought. Stopping at the door, he dropped to his knees and opened the toolkit again. Into the keyhole he inserted a tension bar and above it thelock pick. In three seconds he’d scrubbed the lock open. In five, the deadbolt. He pushed the door open only far enough to be able to see the hinges, which he sprayed with oil from a tiny canister, like breath spray, to keep them silent. A moment later he was inside the long, dark hallway of the apartment. Malerick eased the door shut.
    He oriented himself, looking around the entryway.
    On the wall were some mass-produced prints of Salvador Dalí’s surreal landscapes, some family portraits and, most prominently, a clumsy watercolor of New York City painted by a child (the artist’s signature was “Chrissy”). A cheap table sat near the door, its short leg lengthened with a folded yellow square of foolscap legal paper. A single ski, the binding broken, leaned forlornly in the corner of the hallway. The wallpaper was old and stained.
    Malerick started down the corridor, toward the sound of the television in the living room, but he detoured momentarily, stepping into a small dark room that was dominated by an ebony Kawai baby grand piano. A book of music, instructions noted in the margin, sat open on the piano. The name “Chrissy” appeared here too—penned on the cover of the book. Malerick only had a rudimentary knowledge of music but as he flipped through the lesson book he observed that the pieces seemed quite difficult.
    He decided that the girl might’ve been a bad artist but she was quite the talented young musician—this Christine Grady, the daughter of New York assistant district attorney Charles Grady.
    The man whose apartment this was. The man Malerickwas being paid one hundred thousand dollars to kill.
    •   •   •
    Amelia Sachs sat on the grass outside of the Cirque Fantastique tent, wincing from the pain throbbing around her right kidney. She’d helped dozens of people away from the crush and had found a spot here to catch her breath.
    Staring down at her from the huge black-and-white banner above her head was the masked Arlecchino, still rippling loudly in the wind. He’d seemed eerie yesterday; now, after the panic inside—which he’d caused—the image was repulsive and grotesque.
    She had avoided being trampled to death; the knee and boot that’d clobbered her belonged to a man who’d scrabbled over the heads and shoulders of the audience to beat them out the door. Still, her back, ribs and face throbbed. She’d sat here for nearly fifteen minutes, faint and nauseated, partly from the crush, partly from the horrifying claustrophobia. She could generally tolerate small rooms, even elevators. Being completely restrained, unable to move, though, physically sickened her and racked her with panic.
    Around her the injured were being treated. There’d been nothing serious, the EMS chief had reported to her—mostly sprains and cuts. A few dislocations and a broken arm.
    Sachs and those around her had been spewed out the south exit of the tent. Once outside, she’d fallen to her knees on the grass, crawling away from the crowd. No longer trapped in an enclosed space with a potential bomb or an armed terrorist, the audience becamebetter Samaritans and helped those who were woozy or hurt.
    She’d flagged down an officer from the Bomb Squad and, looking at him upside down from her grassy bed, flashed her badge and told him about the tarp-covered object under the seats near the south door. He’d returned to his colleagues inside.
    Then the brassy music from the tent had stopped and Edward Kadesky stepped outside.
    Watching the Bomb Squad at work, some of the audience realized that there’d been a real threat and that Kadesky’s quick thinking had saved them from a worse panic; they offered some impromptu applause, which he’d acknowledged modestly as he made the rounds, checking on his employees and the audience. Other circusgoers—injured and otherwise—were less generous and scowled and demanded to know what had happened and complained that he should have handled the evacuation better.
    Meanwhile the Bomb Squad and a dozen firemen had scoured the tent and found no sign of a device. The tarp-covered box had turned out to be cartons of toilet paper. The search expanded to the trailers and supply trucks but the