The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

He then shut out all the lights in the room except a small night-light. He returned to Rhyme's bed, held an index finger up and flicked his thumb against it. A three-inch point of flame rose from the digit.

The Conjurer wagged the finger back and forth. "Sweating, I can see." He held the flame close to Rhyme's face. "Fire. . . . Isn't it fascinating? It's probably the most compelling image in illusionism. Fire's the perfect misdirection. Everyone watches flame. They never take their eyes off it onstage. I could do anything with my other hand and you'd never notice. For instance . . ."

The bottle of Rhyme's scotch appeared in the man's grip. He held the flame under the bottle for a long moment. Then the killer took a sip of liquor and held the flaming finger in front of his lips, looking directly at Rhyme, who cringed. But the Conjurer smiled, turned aside and blew the flaming spray toward the ceiling, stepping back slightly as the stream of fire vanished into the darkness of the ceiling.

Rhyme's eyes flickered to the wall in the corner of the room.

The Conjurer laughed. "Smoke detector? I got that earlier. The battery's gone." He blew another flaming stream toward the ceiling and set the bottle down.

Suddenly a white handkerchief appeared. He wafted it under Rhyme's nose. It was soaked in gasoline. The astringent smell burned Rhyme's eyes and nose. The Conjurer coiled the handkerchief into a short rope and, ripping open Rhyme's pajama top, draped it around his neck like a scarf.

The man walked toward the door, silently opened the deadbolt and then the door, looked out.

Rhyme's nose detected another scent mixed with the gasoline. What was it? A rich, smoky scent. . . . Oh, the scotch. The killer must've left the bottle open.

Except that the smell soon overtook the gasoline's aroma. It was overpowering. There was scotch everywhere. And Rhyme understood with dismay what the man was doing. He'd poured a stream of liquor from the door to the bed, like a fuse. The Conjurer flicked his finger and a white fireball flew from his hand into the pool of single malt.

The liquor ignited and blue flames raced along the floor. Soon they'd set fire to a stack of magazines and a cardboard box next to the bed. One of the rattan chairs too.

Soon the fire would climb up the bedclothes and begin devouring his body, which he wouldn't feel, and then his face and head, which he horribly would. He turned to the Conjurer but the man was gone, the door closed. Smoke began to sting Rhyme's eyes and fill his nose. The fire crawled closer, igniting boxes and books and posters, melting CDs.

Soon the blue and yellow flames began lapping at the blankets at the foot of Lincoln Rhyme's bed.

Chapter Twenty-six A diligent NYPD officer, perhaps hearing an odd noise, perhaps seeing an unlocked door, stepped into a West Side alleyway. Fifteen seconds later another man emerged, dressed in a lightweight maroon turtleneck, tight jeans, baseball cap.

No longer in the role of Officer Larry Burke, Malerick began walking purposefully up Broadway. Glancing at his face, noting the flirtatious way he glanced around him--a cruisin' look--you'd suspect that he was a man on the prowl, heading for some West Side bar to defibrillate his ego and his genitalia, both in arrest lately as he approached middle age.

He paused at a basement cocktail lounge, glanced inside. He decided this would be a good place in which to hide out temporarily until it was time to return briefly to Lincoln Rhyme's and see how much damage the fire had done.

He found a stool at the far end of the bar, near the kitchen, and ordered a Sprite and a turkey sandwich. Looking around: the arcade games with their electronic soundtracks, a dusty jukebox, the room smoky and dark, smelling of sweat and perfume and disinfectant, the liquor-induced brays of laughter and hum of pointless conversation. All of which transported him back to his youth in the city built from sand.

Las Vegas is a mirror surrounded by glaring lights; stare at it for hours but all you'll ever truly see is yourself, with your pocks, squinty wrinkles, vanity, greed, desperation. It's a dusty, hard place where the cheery illumination of the Strip fades fast just a block or two from the neon and doesn't penetrate to the re

st of the city: the trailers, sagging bungalows, sandy strip malls, pawnshops selling engagement rings, suit jackets, prosthetic arms--whatever can be transformed into quarters or silver dollars.

And, everywhere, the dusty, endless, beige desert.

This was the world that Malerick was born into.

Father a blackjack dealer and mother a restaurant hostess (until her growing weight put her behind the scenes in a cash room), they were two of the army of Vegas service people treated like ants by casino management and guests alike. Two of the army who spent their lives so inundated with money that they could smell the ink, perfume and sweat on the bills, but who were forever aware that this astonishing flood was destined to pause in their fingers for only the briefest of moments.

Like many Vegas children left on their own by parents working long and irregular shifts--and like children living in bitter homes everywhere--their son had gravitated to a place where he found some comfort.

And that place for him was the Strip.

I was explaining, Revered Audience, about misdirection--how we illusionists distract you by drawing attention away from our method with motion, color, light, surprise, noise. Well, misdirection is more than a technique of magic; it's an aspect of life too. We're all desperately drawn toward flash and glitz and away from boredom, from routine, from bickering families, from hot, motionless hours on the edge of the desert, from sneering teens who chase you down because you're skinny and timid and then pound you with fists as hard as scorpions' shells. . . .

The Strip was his refuge.

The magic shops specifically. Of which there were many; Las Vegas is known among performers around the world as the Capital of Magic. The boy found that these shops were more than just retail outlets; they were places where aspiring, performing and retired magicians hung out to share stories and tricks and to gossip.

It was in one of these that the boy learned something important about himself. He might be skinny and timid and a slow runner but he was miraculously dexterous. The magicians here would show him palms and pinches and drops and conceals and he'd pick them up instantly. One of these clerks lifted an eyebrow and said about the thirteen-year-old, "A born prestidigitator."

The boy frowned, never having heard the word.

"A French magician made it up in the eighteen hundreds," the man explained. " 'Presti--' As in presto, fast. 'Digit.' As in finger. Prestidigitation--fast fingers. Sleight of hand."

So maybe, he slowly came to believe, he was someone more than odd man out in the family, something more than knuckle bait at the playground.