The Vanished Man

flare inside the store—Mr. Balzac lighting a cigarette.
    A breath. Let’s do it, she thought and pushed inside.
    He was by the counter with that friend of his who’d been in town this past weekend, an illusionist from California. Balzac introduced her as a student and the middle-aged man shook her hand. They made small talk about how his performance had gone last night, other people appearing in town . . . the typical gossip performers everywhere engage in. Finally the man picked up his suitcase. He was on his way to Kennedy airport for the flight home and had stopped at the store to return the props he’d borrowed. He embraced Balzac, nodded to Kara and left the store.
    “You’re late,” the magician said to her gruffly. Then observed that she wasn’t putting her bag behind the counter as she always did. He glanced at her hands. No coffee cup. That was, of course, the giveaway.
    A frown. “What?” he asked, drawing on his cigarette. “Tell me.”
    “I’m leaving.”
    “You’re . . .”
    “I talked to Ed Kadesky. I’ve got a job with the Cirque Fantastique.”
    “Them? Kadesky? No, no, no—it’s all wrong for you. That’s not magic. That’s—”
    “It’s what I want to do.”
    “We’ve been through this a dozen times. You’re not ready. You’re good. You’re not great.”
    “That doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “What matters is getting up onstage. Performing.”
    “If you rush it—”
    “Rush it, David? Rush it? When would I be ready? Next year? In five years?” Normally she found it difficultto hold his eye; today she looked straight at him as she said, “Would you ever let me go?”
    A pause, while he ordered papers, slapped them down on the scuffed, cracked counter. “Kadesky,” he scoffed. “And what’ll you be doing for him?”
    “Assistant at first. Then some winter season shows of my own in Florida. Then who knows?”
    He stubbed out the cigarette. “It’s a mistake. You’ll be wasting your talent. What he does, it’s not the kind of illusion I taught you.”
    “I got the job because of what you taught me.”
    “Kadesky,” he said again contemptuously. “New magic.”
    “Yeah, it is,” she said. “But I’ll be doing your routines too. Metamorphosis, remember—the old becoming new.”
    He didn’t smile though she could sense the reference to his act pleased him.
    “David, I want to keep studying with you. When I’m back in town I want to take lessons. I’ll pay for them.”
    “I don’t think that would work. You can’t serve two masters,” the man muttered. When Kara said nothing he said grudgingly, “We’ll have to see. I might not have the time. I probably won’t.”
    She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder.
    “Right now?” he asked. “You’re leaving now?”
    “Yeah. I think it’s best.”
    He nodded.
    “So,” Kara said.
    The illusionist said a formal “Goodbye then” and stepped behind the counter, offering nothing else.
    Struggling to keep the tears at bay, she walked to the door.
    “Wait,” he called as she started outside. Balzac stepped into the back of the store and then returned to her. He held something in his hand and thrust it into hers. It was the cigar box that contained Tarbell’s three colored silks.
    “Here. Take these. . . . I liked the way you did that one. It was a tight trick.”
    She remembered the praise she’d received for it. Ah. . . .
    Kara stepped forward and embraced him fast, thinking that this was the first physical contact they’d had since she shook his hand when she’d met him eighteen months ago.
    He gave her an awkward hug in return and then stepped back.
    Kara walked outside, paused and turned to wave but Balzac had vanished into the dim recesses of the store. She slipped the box of silks into her purse and started toward Sixth Avenue, which would take her downtown to her apartment.

Chapter Fifty-two
    The homicide was indeed a weird one.
    A double murder in a deserted part of Roosevelt Island—that narrow strip of apartments, hospitals and ghostly ruins in the East River. Since the tramway deposits residents not far from the United Nations in Manhattan many diplomats and U.N. employees live on the island.
    And it was two of these individuals—junior emissaries from the Balkans—who’d been found murdered, each shot in the back of the head twice, their hands bound.
    There were several curious things that Amelia Sachs had turned up when she’d run the scene.