"Makes no difference to me," Malerick had replied. "He can kill him if he wants to. That won't affect my plan. I just want him taken care of. Out of the way."

Barnes had nodded. "Suspect that'll be good news to Mr. Constable." He could imagine the growing dismay and panic within Constable as he sat over the cooling body of his lawyer, waiting for Weir to arrive with guns and disguises to sneak him out of the building-an event that, of course, was never going to happen.

The jail door would open and a dozen guards would haul the man back to his cell. The trial would go on and Andrew Constable-as confused as Barnes and Wentworth and everyone else in his Neanderthal clan in upstate New York-would never know how they'd been used.

As he waited at another stoplight he wondered how the other misdirection of his was unfolding. The Poisoned Little Girl routine (melodramatic, Malerick had assessed, if not an outright cliche, but he'd learned from years of performing that audiences do much better with the obvious). Not the best misdirection in the world, of course; he wasn't sure they'd discover the syringe in the Lanham.

Nor could he be certain the girl or anyone else would eat the candy. But Rhyme and his people were so good that he guessed there was a chance they would leap to the horrifying conclusion that this was another attempt on the life of the prosecutor and his family. Then they'd find there was no poison in the candy after all. What would they make of that? Was there other tainted candy?

Or was this misdirection-to lead them away from Manhattan Detention, where Malerick might be planning some other way to break Constable out?

In short, the police too would be floating in a soup of confusion, having no idea what was actually going on.

Well, what's been going on for the past two days, Revered Audience, is a sublime performance featuring the perfect combination of physical and psychological misdirection.

Physical-by directing the attention of the police toward both Charles Grady's apartment and the detention center.

Psychological-by shifting suspicion away from what Malerick was really doing and toward the very credible motive that Lincoln Rhyme proudly believed he'd figured out: the hired killing of Grady and the orchestration of Andrew Constable's escape. Once the police had deduced that, their minds stopped looking for any other explanation as to what he was really up to.

Which had absolutely nothing to do with the Constable case. All of the clues he'd left so obviously-the illusionist-trick attacks on the first three victims, who represented aspects of the circus, the shoe with the dog hairs and dirt ground into it leading to Central Park, the references to the fire in Ohio and the connection with the Cirque Fantastique . . . all of those had convinced the police that his intent couldn't really be revenge against Kadesky because that, as Lincoln Rhyme had told him, was too obvious. He had to be up to something else.

But he wasn't.

Now, dressed in a medical technician's uniform, he eased the ambulance he was driving through the service entrance of the tent housing the World Renowned Internationally Heralded Critically Acclaimed Cirque Fantastique.

He parked under the box seats scaffolding, climbed out and locked the door. None of the stagehands, police or the many security guards paid any attention to him or the ambulance. After the bomb scare earlier in the day, it was perfectly normal for an emergency vehicle to be parked here-perfectly natural, an illusionist would note.

Look, Revered Audience, here is your illusionist, center stage yet completely invisible.

He's the Vanished Man, present but unseen.

No one even glanced at the vehicle, which wasn't an ordinary ambulance at all, but a feke. In place of medical equipment it now held a dozen plastic drums containing a total of seven hundred gallons of gasoline, attached to a simple detonation device, which would soon spark the liquid to life, sending the deadly flood erupting into the bleachers, into the canvas, into the audience of more than two thousand people.

Among whom would be Edward Kadesky.

See, Mr. Rhyme, when we talked before? My words were just patter. Kadesky and the Cirque Fantastique destroyed my life and my love and I'm going to destroy him. Revenge is what this is all about.

Ignored by everyone, the illusionist now walked casually out of the tent and into Central Park. He'd change out of the medical worker's uniform and into a new disguise and would return under cover of night, becoming, for a change, a member of the audience himself and finding a good vantage spot to enjoy the finale of his show.

Chapter Forty-four.

Families, clusters of friends, couples, children were slowly entering the tent, finding their seats, filling in the bleachers and box seats, slowly changing from individuals into that creature called an audience, the whole becoming very different from the parts.

Metamorphosis . . .

Kara turned away from the sight and stopped a security guard. "I've been waiting for a while. You have any idea when Mr. Kadesky'll be back? It's really important."

No, he didn't know and neither did the two other people she asked.

Another glance at her watch. She felt heartsick. An image came to her of her mother, lying in the Stuyvesant home, looking around the room, pierced with clarity and wondering where her daughter was. Kara wanted to cry in frustration at being trapped here. Knowing that she had to stay, do what she could to stop Weir, yet wanting so desperately to be at her mother's side.

She turned back to the brightly lit interior of the huge circus tent. Performers waited in the wings, getting ready for the opening act, wearing their eerie commedia dell'arte masks. The kids in the audience were wearing the face gear too, overpriced souvenirs from the stands outside. Pug and hooked noses, beaks.

They gazed around, mostly excited and giddy. But some were uneasy, she could see. The masks and otherworldly decorations probably made the circus seem to them like a scene from a horror movie.

Kara loved performing for children but she knew that you had to be careful; their reality was different from adults' and an illusionist could easily destroy youngsters' shaky sense of comfort. She only did funny illusions in her young children's shows and would often gather the kids around her afterward and tip the gaff.

Looking at all the magic around her, feeling the excitement, the anticipation. . . . Her palms were sweating as if she herself were about to go on. Oh, what she wouldn't give to be standing in the prep tent right now. Content, confident, yet wired, feeling the accelerating heartbeat of anticipation as the clock ticked toward show time. There was no sensation like that in the world.

She laughed sadly to herself. Well, here she'd made it to Cirque Fantastique.

But as an errand girl.

She wondered now, Am I good enough? Despite what David Balzac said, sometimes she believed she was. At least as good as, say, Harry Houdini during his early shows-the only escapism at those had been the audience members who snuck out of the halls, bored or embarrassed to watch him flub simple sleights. Robert-Houdin was so uncomfortable in his initial performances that he ended up offering the audience clockwork automatons like a wind-up Turk who played chess.

But as she gazed backstage, at the hundreds of performers who'd been in the business since childhood, Balzac's firm voice looped through her mind: Not yet, not yet, not yet . . . She heard these words with both disappointment yet comfort. He was right, she decided with finality. He was the expert, she was the apprentice. She had to have confidence in him. A year or two. The wait would be worth it.

Besides, there was her mother. . . .

Who was maybe sitting up in bed right now, chatting with Jaynene, wondering where her daughter was-the daughter who'd abandoned her on the one night when she should've been there.

Kadesky's assistant, Katherine Tunney, appeared at the top of the stairs and gestured toward her.

Was Kadesky here? Please. . . .

But the woman said, "He just called. He had a radio interview after dinner and he's running late. He'll be here soon. That's his box in the front. Why don't you wait there?"

Kara nodded and, discouraged, walked to the seat Katherine indicated, sat down and gazed back at the tent. She saw that the magic transformation was finally complete; every seat was filled. The children, the men, the women were now an audience.

Thud.

Kara jumped as a loud, hollow drum resonated through the tent.

The lights went down, extinguished completely, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the red exit lights.

Thud.

The crowd was instantly silent.

Thud . . . thud . . . thud.

The drumbeat sounded slowly. You could feel it in your chest.

Thud . . . thud . . .

A brilliant spotlight shot into the center of the ring, illuminating the actor playing Arlecchino, dressed in his black-and-white-checkered bodysuit, wearing his matching half mask. Holding a long scepter high in the air, he looked around mischievously.

Thud.

He stepped forward and began to march around the ring as a procession of performers appeared behind him: other commedia dell'arte characters, as well as spirits, fairies, princesses and princes, wizards. Some walking, some dancing, some cartwheeling slowly as if underwater, some on high stilts stepping more gracefully than most people stroll down the sidewalk, some riding in chariots or carts decorated with tulle and feathers and lace and tiny glowing lights.

Everyone moving in perfect time to the drum.

Thud . . . thud . . .

Faces masked, faces painted white or black or silver or gold, faces dotted with glitter. Hands juggling glowing balls, hands carrying orbs or flares or candles or lanterns, hands scattering confetti like glittering snow.

Solemn, regal, playful, grotesque.

Thud . . .

Both medieval and futuristic, the parade was hypnotic. And its message was unmistakable: whatever existed outside the tent was invalid here. You could forget everything you'd learned about life, about human nature, about the laws of physics themselves. Your heart was now beating not to its own rhythm but in time to the crisp drum, and your soul was no longer yours; it had been captured by this unearthly parade making its deliberate way into the world of illusion.

Chapter Forty-five.

We come now to the finale of our show, Revered Audience.

It's time to present our most celebrated-and controversial-illusion. A variation on the infamous Burning Mirror.

During our show this weekend you've seen the performances of illusions created by such masters as Harry Houdini and P. T. Selbit and Howard Thurston. But not even they would attempt an act like the Burning Mirror.

Our performer, trapped in a likeness of hell, surrounded by flames that close in inexorably-and the only route for escape, a tiny doorway protected by a wall of fire.

Though, of course, the door might not be an escape route at all.

Maybe it's just an illusion.

I have to warn you, Revered Audience, that the most recent attempt to perform this trick resulted in tragedy.

I know, because I was there.

So, please, for your own sake, spend a moment looking around the tent and consider what you will do should disaster strike. . . .

But on reflection, no, it's too late for that. Perhaps the best you can hope for now is simply to pray.

Malerick had returned to Central Park and was standing under a tree about fifty yards from the glowing white tent of the Cirque Fantastique.

Bearded once more, he was dressed in a jogging suit and a high-necked knit shirt. Tufts of sweaty blond hair poked from underneath a Chase Manhattan 10K Run for the Cure cap. Faux sweat stains-out of a bottle-attested to his present persona: a minor financial executive at a major bank out for his Sunday-night run. He'd stopped for a breather and was absently looking at the circus tent.

Perfectly natural.

He found himself oddly calm. This serenity reminded him of that moment just after the Hasbro circus fire in Ohio, before the full implications of the disaster had become clear. While by rights he should have been screaming, he in fact found himself numb. In an emotional coma. He felt the same at this moment, listening to the music, the bass notes amplified, it seemed, by the taut canvas of the tent itself. The diffuse applause, laughter, gasps of astonishment.

In his years of performing he'd rarely gotten stage fright. When you knew your act cold, when you'd rehearsed sufficiently, what was there to be nervous about?

This is what he now experienced. Everything had been so carefully planned that he knew his show would unfold as intended.

Scanning the tent in its last few minutes on earth, he saw two figures just outside the large service doorway through which he'd driven the ambulance not long before. A man and a young woman. Speaking to each other, ear close to mouth so they could converse over the sound of the music.

Yes! One of them was Kadesky. He'd been worried that the producer might not be present at the time of the explosion. The other was Kara.

Kadesky pointed inside and together they walked in the direction he'd indicated.

Malerick estimated that they had to be no more than ten feet from the ambulance.

A look at his watch. Almost time.

And now, my friends, my Revered Audience . . .

Exactly at nine P. M. a spume of fire shot from the doorway of the tent. A moment later the silhouette of the huge flames inside rolled across the glowing canvas of the tent as they consumed the bleachers, the audience, the decorations. The music stopped abruptly, replaced by screams, and coils of dark smoke began to pour from the top of the tent.

He leaned forward, mesmerized by the horror of the sight.

More smoke, more screams.

Struggling not to let an unnatural smile slide onto his face, he offered a prayer of thanks. There was no deity Malerick believed in but he sent these words of gratitude to the soul of Harry Houdini, his namesake and idol, and the patron saint of magicians.

Gasps and cries as those around him in this secluded part of the park ran forward to help or to gape. Malerick waited a few moments longer but he knew that soon hundreds of police would fill the park. Looking concerned, pulling out his cell phone to pretend to call the fire department, he eased toward the sidewalk. Still, he couldn't help pausing once more. He looked back to see, half obscured by smoke, the huge banners in front of the tent. On one of them masked Arlecchino, reached outward, holding up his empty palms.

Look, Revered Audience, nothing in my hands.

Except that, like a sleight-of-hand artist, the character was holding something-something hidden from view in a perfect backhand finger conceal.

And only Malerick knew what it was.

The coy Harlequin was holding death.

III.

TIPPING THE GAFF.

SUNDAY, APRIL 21, TO THURSDAY, APRIL 25.