Riker leaned over and switched off the set. „Like it or not, boss, the kid’s in the clear. You want me to dust off her desk?“
Coffey nodded with a rueful smile.
„Lieutenant, I know what you’re thinking,“ said Riker. „How’s Mallory ever gonna learn the rules if you can’t catch her breaking them?“ He smiled. It was not the wide grin of an ungracious winner. Riker was merely content to be on the opposite side of the loser – his commanding officer.
In peripheral vision, Coffey was tracking a man in uniform. Sergeant Harry Bell had cleared the stairwell, and now he was crossing the squad room. When the desk sergeant was only a few steps from the office door, Coffey slowly stretched out one arm and turned his palm up. As if on cue, Sergeant Bell came through the door and deposited four ten-dollar bills into the lieutenant’s hand – his winnings.
Harry Bell’s face was deep in disappointment as he turned on the startled Detective Riker. „You never made a bet on your own partner? Jesus, Riker, even if you thought Mallory was guilty, you could’ve put down something just for show.“
Mallory knelt down on the cellar floor and shined the flashlight across the cement. The talcum powder was undisturbed. It was a wide field of dusting. There were no marks for a makeshift scaffolding of boards to get him past the powder trap, and he didn’t fly over it. Yet Billie Holiday was singing on the other side of the accordion wall, and she knew he was in there. She could smell the smoke from their cigarettes, Malakhai’s and Louisa’s.
At one end of the partition, she studied the long row of bolts securely holding the edge of the wood to the basement wall. No common crowbar could pry them loose. Judging by the size of the metal heads, their shanks would sink deep into double rows of brick. Yet she pulled on the end panel, and the bolt-lined strip of metal came away from the wall, sliding easily, silently, to accordion the rest of the panels backward along the track and away from the brick. And by this new door, she entered the storage area.
She crept along a row of shelves and bent low as she circled stacks of cartons. It was a pleasure to see the surprise on Malakhai’s face when he looked up from the open box at his feet.
He smiled. „I wondered how long it would take you to work that out. Even Charles thinks the center panels are the only way in. I suppose it helps if you know Max’s sense of humor.“
„Did you find what you were looking for?“
He held up the charred leather spine of a book. The carton at his feet was filled with ashes and blackened pieces of book covers. „They used to be Max’s journals. I suppose Edith found them after he died.“ He held a smoking cigarette. Louisa’s had gone out. „Why did you want them?“
He dropped the book spine into the carton and wiped his hands on a cloth. „My wife was in there. Max told me about his diaries one night when we were out on the town. He was very drunk and feeling guilty.“
„He kept diaries in Paris?“
„No, he started them much later – after I came back from Korea with my resurrected Louisa. Putting my late wife in the magic act affected Max more than I realized. His diaries were love letters to a dead woman. That’s why Edith burned them – jealous of a ghost.“ He made a halfhearted kick at the box.
„Was Max Candle as crazy as you are?“
Malakhai smiled as he lifted a bottle of wine from the case and examined the label. „I always know where I stand with you, Mallory.“ He poured out a glass of wine and handed it to her. „I know it’s obscene to drink before noon.“
She accepted the glass.
„Good,“ he said. „I hope you never become too well behaved.“ He looked down at the carton. „The wives always know, don’t they? A dead rival must’ve sent her right over the edge. Poor Edith – poor Max.“
He took a drag on his cigarette and tilted his head back to watch the plume of blue smoke rising to the high ceiling. „I can tell you my life story by the cigarettes. Like the night we ran from Paris, Max and I. He saved my life, dragged me through the streets and pushed me onto trains. We made the crossing at the Spanish frontier.“
„You told me the border was shut down tight. You said you couldn’t get Louisa out of Paris – not that way.“
„It was closed. Oh, sometimes it would open for an hour or a day, but that night the border was closed down tight as a coffin lid. What did I care? I was in a bad way. Max had a better chance to make the crossing alone, but he wouldn’t leave me. There was really no way out, you see. However, Max always listened to an inner voice that said, Jump or die. Even then, he took such absurd chances.“
He closed the box of ashes.
„We got off the train at Cerbere. The frontier police were lining up all the passengers and checking their travel documents. We had some of Nick’s forgeries in our pockets, exit visas to leave France, letters of transit to get us out of Lisbon. They were useless of course. No one could get a legitimate exit visa that month, so all the papers were suspect. We had no baggage – that was suspicious, too. And Max was still wearing his tuxedo. The frontier police were Frenchmen, a fashion-conscious race, but still they must’ve found that odd, particularly the silk top hat.“
„Max went off to chat with a policeman guarding the station door. When he came back to me, all his money was gone, but he had directions for circumventing French checkpoints. The guard told him all the papers were being cross-checked by telephone and cables, so we couldn’t get back on the train. We left the station with the passengers who were stopping in Cerbere. Then we climbed a steep hill. I remember passing low stone walls and olive trees. There were a million stars in the sky. We stopped at a Spanish sentry house.“
„Max spoke to the border guards. I sat in that hut and cried through the whole interview. They asked him why his friend was so upset. He told them my wife had died that night. Then they asked Max why he was crying. Tears were streaming down his face when he told them he was the lover of his friend’s wife. Then he really startled the guards. Told them he only had a few francs in his pocket and half a pack of cigarettes. He had not come prepared for a bribe. Oh, and the paperwork was forged. He mentioned that too. Well, now the guards were on the floor laughing. I didn’t get the joke, so my weeping went on. They let us through, I don’t know why. It was a fluke that we weren’t arrested that night. German soldiers were waiting all along the border, like cats at a mousehole.“
„There was another joke waiting for us when we finally arrived in Lisbon. The letter of transit was proved a forgery. Of course, I knew it would be, but I didn’t much care what happened next. We were sitting on a bench in the anteroom of an official. This fool in a fine suit stood over us, waving the evidence in his hand. The man was so angry. Max stood up in his dusty tuxedo and bowed. He was so charming. Said he hoped the official hadn’t been offended by a bad forgery, because it was never our intention to insult him.“
„Oh, no, said the official. The papers were really first-rate. He was consoling Max. Then the two of them disappeared into the man’s office. From time to time, I could hear laughter through the door. An hour later, we were on a plane out of Lisbon. I don’t know why. It was absurd. The whole war was like that.“ He tapped the end of his cigarette in the ashtray. Louisa’s lay dead and dark.
„I remember having a cigarette on the plane. There was smoke all over the world that night. Boy soldiers puffing in foxholes, generals having cigars with their whiskey – hookers lighting up on street corners, glowing in the dark. Between the gunfire and the cigarettes, I wondered that any of us could see with all that smoke. Later it turned out that none of us could.“