"Okay."

"Anyway, the usual supervisor was off and we had a temporary sergeant who was old-school. So it's one of my first days at the Seven-five and I'm the only woman on this particular watch. I go to roll call in the assembly room and there're a dozen Kotex taped to the lectern."

"No!"

"Kid you not. The regular supervisor never would've let anybody get away with that. But cops're like kids in a lot of ways. They push until an adult stops 'em."

"Not what you see in the movies."

"Movies're made in Hollywood. Not in the Seven-five."

"What'd you do? About the pads?"

"I walked up to the front row and asked the cop sitting right in front of the lectern if I could have his seat-which is where I was going to sit anyway. They were all laughing so hard I'm surprised some of them didn't pee their pants. Well, I sat down and just started to take notes about what the sergeant was telling us-you know, outstanding warrants and community relations things and street corners with known drug activity. And about two minutes later, no more laughter. The whole thing became embarrassing. Not for me. For them."

"You know who did it?"

"Sure."

"Did you report him?"

"No. See, that's the hardest part of being a woman cop. You have to work with these people. You need them behind you, watching your back. You can fight every step of the way. But if you have to do that you've already lost. The hardest part isn't having the balls to fight. It's knowing when to fight and when to just let it go."

Pride and power . . .

"Like us, I guess. My business. But if you're good, if you can bring in audiences, management'll hire you. It's a catch-22 though. You can't prove you'll draw crowds if they don't hire you, and they won't hire you if you can't bring in door receipts."

They walked closer to the massive, glowing tent and Sachs watched the young woman's eyes light up as she gazed at it.

"This the sort of place you'd like to work?"

"Oh, man, I'll say. This's my idea of heaven. Cirque Fantastique and doing TV specials." After a moment of silence as she gazed around her, she said, "Mr. Balzac has me learning all the old routines and that's important-you've got to know 'em cold. But"-a nod toward the tent-"this is the direction magic's going. David Copperfield, David Blaine . . . performance art, street magic. Sexy magic."

"You should audition here."

"Me? You're kidding," Kara replied. "I'm nowhere near ready yet. Your act has to be perfect. You have to be the best."

"Better than a man, you mean?"

"No, better than everybody, men and women."

"Why?"

"For the audience," Kara explained. "Mr. Balzac's like a broken record: you owe it to the audience. Every breath you take onstage is for your audience. Illusion can't be just okay. You can't just satisfy-you have to thrill. If one person in the audience catches your moves you've failed. If you hesitate just a moment too long and the effect is dull you've failed. If one person out there yawns or looks at his watch you've failed."

"You can't be at a hundred percent all the time, I'd think," Sachs offered.

"But you have to be," Kara said simply, sounding surprised anyone would feel different.

They arrived at the Cirque Fantastique, where rehearsals for the opening show tonight were underway. Dozens of performers were walking around, some in costumes, some in shorts and T-shirts or jeans.

"Oh, man . . ." came a breathy voice. It was Kara's. Her face was like a little girl's, eyes taking in the brilliant white canvas of the sweeping tent.

Sachs jumped at the sound of a loud crack above and behind her. She looked up and saw two huge banners, thirty or forty feet high, snapping in the wind, glowing in the sunlight. On one was painted the name CIRQUE FANTASTIQUE.

On the other was a huge drawing of a thin man in a black-and-white-checkered bodysuit. He was holding his arms forward, palms-up, inviting his audience inside. He wore a black, snub-nosed half-mask, the features grotesque. It was a troubling image. She thought immediately of the Conjurer, hidden by masks of disguise.

His motives and plans hidden too.

Kara noticed Sachs's gaze. "It's Arlecchino," she said. "In English, that's 'Harlequin.' You know commedia dell'arte?" she asked.

"No," Sachs said.

"Italian theater. It lasted from, I don't know, the fifteen hundreds for a couple of hundred years. The Cirque Fantastique uses it as a theme." She pointed to smaller banners on the sides of the tent that displayed other masks.

With their hook noses or beaks, arching brows, high serpentine cheekbones, they appeared otherworldly and unsettling. Kara continued, "There were a dozen or so continuing characters that all the commedia dell'arte troupes used in their plays. They wore masks to show who they were playing."

"Comedy?" Sachs asked, lifting an eyebrow as she looked at a particularly demonic mask.

"We'd call them black comedies, I guess. Harlequin wasn't exactly a heroic figure. He had no morals at all. All he cared about was food and women. And he'd just appear and disappear, sneak up on you. Another one, Pulcinella, was way sadistic. He played really mean pranks on people, even his lovers. Then there was a doctor who'd poison people. The only voice of reason was this woman, Columbine." Kara added, "One of the things I like about commedia dell'arte was that her part was really played by a woman. Not like in England, where women weren't allowed to perform."

The banner snapped again. Harlequin's eyes seemed to stare off slightly behind them as if the Conjurer were easing up close, an echo of the search at the music school earlier.

No, we don't have a clue who or where he is . . .

She turned away to see a guard approaching, looking over her uniform. "Help you, Officer?"

Sachs asked to see the manager. The man explained that he was away but did they want to talk to an assistant?

Sachs said yes and a moment later a short, thin, harried woman-dark, gypsy-like-arrived.

"Yes, I can help you?" she asked in an indeterminate accent.

After introductions, Sachs said, "We're investigating a series of crimes in the area. We'd like to know if you have any illusionists or quick-change artists appearing in the show."

Concern blossomed in the woman's face. "We have that, yes, of course," she said. "Irina and Vlad Klodoya."

"Spell those please."

Kara was nodding as Sachs wrote down the names. "I know about them, sure. They were with the Circus of Moscow a few years ago."

"Right," confirmed the assistant.

"Have they been here all morning?"

"Yes. They rehearsed until about twenty minutes ago. Now it is they are shopping."

"You're sure this's the only time they've been away?"

"Yes. I supervise myself where everyone is."

"Anyone else?" Sachs asked. "Maybe somebody who's had training at illusion or magic? I mean, even if they're not performing."

"No, nobody. Those are only the two."

"Okay," Sachs said. "What we're going to do is have a couple of police officers parked outside. They should be here in about fifteen minutes. If you hear about anyone bothering your employees or the audience, acting suspicious, tell the officers right away." This had been Rhyme's suggestion.

"I will tell everyone, yes. But can you please to tell me what is this about?"

"A man with some illusionist experience was involved in a homicide earlier today. There's no connection to your show that we know of but we just want to be on the safe side."

They thanked the assistant, who offered a troubled farewell, probably sorry that she'd asked the reason for the visit.

Outside, Sachs asked, "What's the story on those performers?"

"The Ukrainians?"

"Yeah. Do we trust 'em?"

"Husband-and-wife team. Have a couple of children who travel with them. They're two of the best quick-change artists in the world. I can't imagine they'd have anything to do with the killings." She laughed. "See that's who gets jobs at Cirque Fantastique-performers who've been pros since they were five or six."

Sachs called Rhyme's phone and got Thom. She gave him the Ukrainian performers' names and what she'd learned. "Have Mel or somebody run them through NCIC and the State Department."

"Will do."

She disconnected the call and they started out of the park, walking west toward a slash of livid clouds, like striations of bruise, in the otherwise brilliant sky.

Another loud snap behind her-the banners again, flapping in the breeze, as the playful Harlequin continued to beckon passersby into his otherworldly kingdom.

Refreshed, Revered Audience? Relaxed?

Good, because it's time now for our second routine. You may not know the name P. T. Selbit, but if you've been to any magic shows at all or seen illusionists on television you're probably familiar with some of the tricks this Englishman made popular in the early 1900s.

Selbit began his career performing under his real name, Percy Thomas Tibbies, but he soon learned that such a mild name didn't suit a performer whose forte wasn't card tricks, vanishing doves or levitating children but sadomasochistic routines that shocked-and therefore, of course, drew crowds throughout the world.

Selbit-yes, his stage name was the reverse of his surname-created the famous Living Pincushion, in which a girl was apparently skewered with eighty-four needle-sharp spikes. Another of his creations was the Fourth Dimension, a routine where audiences watched in horror as a young woman was seemingly crushed to death under a huge box. One of my favorites of Selbit's was a routine he introduced in 1922. The title says it all, Revered Audience: The Idol of Blood, or Destroying a Girl.

Today I'm delighted to present to you an updated variation of Selbit's most renowned illusion, one that he presented in dozens of countries and that he was invited to perform at the Royal Command Variety Performance in the London Hippodrome.

It's known as . . .

Ah, but no . . .

No, Revered Audience. I think I'll keep you in suspense and refrain for the moment from mentioning the name of the illusion. But I'll give you one clue: when Selbit was performing this routine he instructed his assistants to pour fake blood into the gutters in front of the theater to tantalize passersby and get them to buy tickets. Which, naturally, they did.

Enjoy our next routine.

I hope you will.

I know of one person who most certainly won't.

Chapter Ten.

How much sleep? the young man wondered.

The play had ended at midnight then there'd been drinks at the White Horse until who knew when, home at three, on the phone for forty minutes with Bragg, no, maybe an hour. Then the ridiculous plumbing had started up its ridiculous banging at 8:30.

How many hours' sleep was that then?

The math eluded Tony Calvert and he decided that it was probably better not to know too much about the extent of his exhaustion. At least he was working on Broadway and not doing advertising shoots, where you started work sometimes at-heaven help us-6:00 A. M. His afternoon call at the Gielgud Theater tidily made up for the fact that he had to work Saturdays and Sundays.

He surveyed the tools of his trade and decided he needed some more tattoo concealer since chisel-chin boy was standing in today and the ladies from Teaneck and Garden City might wonder about the credibility of a leading man who lusted after the ingenue starlet when his ample biceps said "Love Forever Robert."

Calvert closed the big yellow makeup case and glanced in the mirror by the door.

He looked better than he felt, he had to admit. His complexion still retained a bit of the tan from the glorious March trip down to St. Thomas. And his trim build belied the dumpy sluggishness churning in his belly. (God's sake, keep it to four beers. Okay? Hello, can we live with that?) His eyes, though: yep, pretty red. But that's easily taken care of. A stylist knows hundreds of ways to make the old look young, the plain look beautiful and the weary look alert. He attacked with eyedrops and then followed through with the coup de grace-a swipe or two with an under-eye touch-up stick.

Calvert pulled on his leather jacket, locked the door and started down the hallway of his East Village apartment building, quiet now, a few minutes before noon. Most of the people in the building, he guessed, were outside, enjoying the first truly nice spring weekend this year or were still sleeping off their own debaucheries.

He used the back exit, as he always did, which deposited him in the alleyway behind the building. Starting for the sidewalk, forty feet away, he noticed something: motion down one of the cul-de-sacs leading off the alley.

He stopped and squinted into the dimness. An animal. Jesus, was that a rat?

But no-it was a cat, apparently injured. He looked around but the alleyway was completely deserted, no sign of its owner. Oh, the poor thing!

Calvert wasn't a pet person but he'd sat for a neighbor's Norwich terrier last year and remembered the man telling him that, just in case, Bilbo's vet was around the corner on St. Marks. He'd take the cat in on the way to the subway.

Maybe his sister'd want it. She adopted children. Why not cats?

Lingering in alleys wasn't the best idea in this neighborhood but Calvert saw that he was still completely alone. He moved slowly over the cobblestones so he wouldn't spook the animal. It was lying on its side, meowing faintly.

Could he pick it up? Would it try to scratch him? He remembered something in Prevention about cat-scratch fever. But the animal looked too weak to hurt him.

"Hey, what's the matter, fella?" he asked in a soothing voice. "You hurt?"

Crouching down, he set his makeup case on the cobblestones and reached out carefully in case the cat took a swipe at him. He touched it but then drew his hand back in shock. The animal was ice-cold and emaciated-he could feel stiff bones beneath the skin. Had it just died? But, no, the leg was still moving. And it uttered another faint meow.

He touched it again. And, wait, those weren't bones under the skin. They were rods, and inside its body was a metal box. What the fuck was this?

Was he on Candid Camera? Or was some asshole just ragging him?

Then he glanced up and saw someone ten feet away. Calvert gasped and reared back. A man was crouching- But, no, he realized. It was his own image, reflected in a full-length mirror sitting in the corner at the end of the dark alley. Calvert saw his face, shocked, eyes wide, frozen for a moment. He started to relax and laughed. But then he frowned, watching himself slowly falling forward-as the mirror pivoted to the cobblestones and shattered.