When she removed her coat, the black cashmere blazer and satin- trimmed jeans also passed inspection. The maitre d’ mouthed the words, Oh, yes. The people in his waiting line wore more formal attire, but Mallory was dressed in money.
The waiter took her coat and draped it over his arm. „They’ve been expecting you.“
„They?“
„Mr. and Mrs. Malakhai.“ He waved one hand toward the glass smoking section.
„Right, the invisible woman.“
Puzzled, the waiter looked toward the table where only Malakhai was seated. „His wife must be in the ladies’ room.“
„You’ve seen her?“
„Yes, of course.“
This man was reinforcing every bad thing she believed about civilian testimony to gunshots never fired, events that never happened – and now ghosts. She followed him to the smoking section. „Wait,“ she said, to stop him from opening the glass door. „What color is this woman’s hair?“
„It’s red. A bright fiery red.“
Mallory pointed toward the table. „He told you the color of her hair?“
„Well, no.“ The waiter seemed confused. „You mean it’s not real? But it looks so natural.“
As Mallory entered the glass room, she noted three place settings at the small round table, and a glass of wine had been poured for the corpse in the bloody blue dress.
Malakhai stood up as she set her new black handbag on the table beside the only clean wineglass. If her host had known her better, he would have been suspicious. She never carried a purse.
„Good evening.“ He dismissed the waiter before the man could pull out her chair. Now Malakhai performed this service himself. „You’re right on time.“ As Mallory sat down, he glanced at his watch. „And I mean to the second.“
In lieu of hello, she said, „You got a lot of mileage out of that German uniform. You wore it the day you took Louisa out of the transit camp – and again the night you shot her.“
Malakhai calmly took his seat and moved the wine bottle to one side of the table, the better to see his dinner companion – the living one. „I missed you all day. I kept looking over my shoulder, but you weren’t there.“
Back to that old game, simply ignoring what he did not want to deal with and diverting her to other things. Even his conversation was a magic act of misdirection. But tonight she had come prepared.
„You’re sure I wasn’t there? I know you had breakfast with Prado and St. John. In the afternoon, you worked on your act.“ According to the stage manager at Carnegie Hall, Malakhai had spent hours rigging strings and small anchor loops of metal.
„I gather you spent part of the day with Mr. Halpern.“ He blew smoke into the air. „And of course, your visit to the auction was on the evening news. Did you like Oliver’s version of the magic theater?“
„No.“ It had not lived up to the vision Malakhai had created for her in the basement. Oliver’s theater was only a pale copy that lacked the drama of wartime, smoke and wine, perfume and soldiers with guns. Even the corpse in Oliver’s platform had suffered a bloodless wound, more like an imitation of violence.
„About that uniform,“ she prompted him. „You were never in the German Army.“
He signaled to the waiter and pointed to the empty bottle, then turned back to Mallory. „I remember it well – superb tailoring. It belonged to an SS officer.“
„Did you kill that officer?“
„No. Sorry to disappoint you, Mallory.“ He blew a smoke ring and watched it rise into the blades of the fan. „I stole the man’s bag at a railway station. A mistake – I meant to steal his orderly’s clothes, a private’s uniform. I wasn’t old enough to pass for an officer. But then I realized that no one ever looked at the faces of the Gestapo. They only saw the SS insignia.“
She reached across the table and delicately plucked a hair from the sleeve of his dark suit. So this was the waiter’s evidence of a redhead. There was no root follicle for a DNA match. Even so, she made a show of folding it into a tissue and placing it in her purse. He followed this action with mild curiosity.
„You’re getting careless, Malakhai. I guess there wasn’t time to change clothes – after you stuffed that body into Oliver’s platform.“
„So his nephew had red hair. There were no pictures of him on the news.“ He set his cigarette in the ashtray next to one marked with Louisa’s lipstick. „I never met the boy. I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.“
„You don’t remember hiding the body? Not surprising. I know about the strokes.“
„Courtesy of Mr. Halpern? He was so upset when I couldn’t remember how – “
The waiter appeared with a tray balanced at shoulder level. After unfolding a stand with his free hand, he set his burden down, then rearranged all the items on a tabletop barely large enough to accommodate three plates and silverware, glasses, a bottle, an ashtray and a purse. Mallory and Malakhai watched in silent fascination as the waiter altered the laws of physics to expand space, creating more room for a basket of bread, a candle, another wine bottle and a large plate of hors d’oeuvres.
„I couldn’t have done that,“ said Malakhai.
When the three glasses had been filled with red wine, and the waiter had departed with their dinner orders, Mallory slipped one hand into the open purse by her plate. Malakhai took no notice. He was staring at her face, not expecting anything out of the ordinary tonight, certainly no magic – not from her.
„It’s an interesting problem,“ she said. „You have to get even for Louisa’s death before you forget who she was.“ Her blind fingers found the anchor loop inside the purse. The string was still in place. „What about the day Oliver died in Central Park? Do you remember where you were?“
„At home, hundreds of miles from here. I watched it on television.“
She teased a length of string from her handbag. „What time was that?“
„There are no clocks in my parlor. I believe it was a live performance – whatever time the show went on that night.“
„Night?“ said Mallory. „You didn’t notice the sun shining on the bandstand and the crowd?“
„Not bright camera lights?“ He smiled to say that this was an honest mistake. Sorry.
Yeah, right.
„Oliver Tree was pronounced dead at three thirty-one in the afternoon.“ She liked to be precise about death. „But you watched the show at night.“
Under the cover of her napkin, she moved the string toward Louisa’s place setting as she leaned forward. „Can you explain that?“
„After a stroke, sometimes it’s all I can do to find the right decade. Mistaking night for day is one of my lesser errors in time.“
„Or you watched Oliver’s show on a VCR. Maybe you taped it because you knew you wouldn’t be home that afternoon.“
„I remember an alarm clock going off. It might have been ringing for hours. Perhaps I did tape the show – as a precaution against a stroke.“
She left the napkin by Louisa’s glass. „So you have no alibi for that afternoon?“
„No, I’m something of a hermit. Days can go by without my seeing another soul, and it’s been years since I asked anyone for the time of day.“
„What’s your first name?“
„Malakhai is the only name I have. My father abandoned my mother and never acknowledged me as his bastard. So Mother put his surname on the birth certificate. It drove his family wild. My mother had an interesting sense of humor.“ He was staring at the bulge of her blazer where it covered the shoulder holster. „The gun ruins the line of the jacket. Does that upset your tailor?“
Other detectives had solved this problem by wearing the gun lower, but she liked the intimidation value.