"This the last performance?"

"I guess so."

"I'd like to congratulate him. Is there some way to get backstage?"

"You just missed him." He freed a picture of my client from the signboard and slipped it in a manila envelope. "He doesn't like to stick around after a show."

"Missed him? That's impossible."

"He uses a tape recorder at the end of the act. Gives him a head start. Doesn't take off his costume or anything."

"Was he carrying a leather bag?"

"Yeah, and his big black case."

"Where does he live?"

"How should I know?" The fat young man blinked at me. "Are you a cop or something?"

"Me? No, nothing like that. Just wanted to tell him he's made a new fan."

"Tell his agent." He handed me an 8 by 10 photo. Louis Cyphre's perfect smile shone brighter than the glossy surface. I flipped the photo over and read what was rubber-stamped on the back: WARREN WAGNER ASSOCIATES.

WY.9-3500.

The jittery pill-popper turned his attentions to a pin-ball machine inside the entrance. I gave the fat young man back his picture. "Thanks," I said, and melted into the crowd.

I caught an uptown cab which dropped me off on Broadway in front of the Rivoli Theatre, across from the Brill Building. The tramp in the army coat was off duty. I took the elevator to the eighth floor. The peroxided receptionist had silver fingernails today. She didn't remember me.

I showed her my card. "Mr. Wagner in his office?"

"He's busy right now."

"Thanks." I stepped around her desk and jerked open the door marked PRIVATE.

"Hey!" She was right behind me, clawing like a harpy. "You can't go in the -"

I closed the door in her face.

"... three percent of the gross is an insult," piped a midget wearing a red turtleneck sweater. He sat on the ratty couch, his little feet sticking straight out like a doll's.

Warren Wagner, Jr. glowered at me from behind his burn-branded desk. "What the hell do you mean barging in like this?"

I said: "I need you to answer two questions and don't have the time to wait."

"Do you know this man?" asked the midget in his whisky falsetto. I recognized him from the Saturday matinees of my childhood. He was in all the "Hell's Kitchen Kid" comedies, and his ancient, wrinkled features were the same when he was young, but the spiky black crewcut was now as white as a detergent commercial.

"Never saw him before in my life," Warren Jr. snarled. "Take a powder, creep, before I call a cop."

"You saw me on Monday," I said, keeping the edge out of my voice. "I was working undercover." I got out my wallet and let him look at the photostat.

"So, you're a shamus. Big deal. That doesn't give you the right to come crashing into a private meeting."

"Why not save the adrenaline and tell me what I need to know. I'll be out of your hair in thirty seconds."

"Johnny Favorite means less than nothing to me," he said. "I was only a kid then."

"Forget about Johnny Favorite. Tell me about a client of your who calls himself Dr. Cipher."

"What about him? I just signed him last week."

"What's his real name?"

"Louie Seafur. You'll have to get my secretary to spell it for you."

"Where does he live?"

"Janice can tell you that," he said. "Janice!"

Silver-nails opened the door and peeked timidly in. "Yes, Mr. Wagner?" she squeaked.

"Give Mr. Angel here the information he requires, please."

"Yes, sir."

"Thanks a lot," I said.

"Next time, knock."

Silver-nailed Janice didn't give me the benefit of her jiggling, gum-chewer's smile, but she did look up Louis Cyphre's address in her circular file. She even wrote it out. "You belong in a zoo yourself," she said as she handed me the memo. She'd been saving that one all week.

The 1-2-3 Hotel was on 46th between Broadway and Sixth, name and address all in the same package: 123 West 46th. Elaborate finials, gables, and dormers crowned an otherwise unpretentious brick building. I went in and gave the desk clerk my business card, wrapped in a ten-spot. "I want the room number of a man named Louis Cyphre," I said, spelling it for him. "And you don't need to say anything to the house dick."

"I remember him. Had a white beard and black hair."

"That's the party."

"Checked out over a week ago."

"Any forwarding address?"

"Not a one."

"What about his room? Rented it yet?"

"Wouldn't do you any good; been cleaned top to bottom."

I stepped back into the sunshine and headed toward Broadway. It was a beautiful day for walking. A Salvation Army trio, tuba, accordion, and tambourine, serenaded a chestnut vendor under the Loew's State marquee where new "Lounger Seats" were promised for the grand reopening Easter Sunday. I savored the sounds and smells, trying to remember the real world of a week ago when there was no such thing as magic.

I used a different approach with the desk clerk in the Astor. "Excuse me, I wonder if you might help me out. I was supposed to meet my uncle in the coffee shop twenty minutes ago. I'd like to phone him, but I don't know the room number."

"What's your uncle's name, sir?"

"Cyphre. Louis Cyphre."

"I'm terribly sorry. Mr. Cyphre checked out this morning."

"What? Back to France?"

"He left no forwarding address."

I should have chucked the whole thing right there and taken Epiphany for a Circle Line cruise around the island. Instead I phoned Herman Winesap downtown and demanded to know what was going on. "What the hell is Louis Cyphre doing at Hubert's Flea Circus?"

"What business is it of yours? You were not hired to follow Mr. Cyphre. I suggest you stick to the job you're getting paid for."

"Did you know he was a magician?"

"No."

"Doesn't that fact intrigue you, Winesap?"

"I have known Mr. Cyphre for many years and fully appreciate his sophistication. He is a man with a wide range of interests. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that prestidigitation was among them."

"In a penny arcade flea circus?"

"Perhaps it is a hobby, a form of relaxation."

"Doesn't make sense."

"Mr. Angel, for fifty dollars per diem, my client, yours too, I might add, for that price he can always find someone else to work for him."

I told Winesap I got the message and hung up.

After a trip to the cigar stand for additional dimes, I made three more calls. The first, to my answering service, yielded a message from a lady in Valley Stream with a missing pearl necklace. Someone in her bridge club was suspected. I didn't write down the number.

Next, I called Krusemark Maritime, Inc., and learned that the President and Chairman of the Board was in mourning and not available. I tried his home number and got some flunky who took my name. I didn't have to wait long.

"What do you know about it, Angel?" the old brigand barked.

"Some. Why don't we save it. I need to talk to you. Soon as I can get there'd be as good a time as any."

"All right. I'll call downstairs and tell them to expect you."

THIRTY-EIGHT.

Number Two, Sutton Place was the building where Marilyn Monroe lived. A private driveway curved off 57th Street, and my cab let me out under a pink limestone vault. Across the way, a row of four-story brick townhouses was marked for doom. Stark whitewash crosses were crudely brushed on every window like a child's painting of a graveyard.

A doorman festooned with more gilt braid than an admiral hurried to assist me. I gave my name and asked for the Krusemark residence.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Elevator on the left."

I got off on the fifteenth floor, stepping into a spartan walnut-paneled foyer. Tall gilt-framed mirrors on either side provided an infinity of foyers. There was only one other door. I rang the bell twice and waited.

A dark-haired man with a mole on his upper lip opened the door. "Mr. Angel, please come in. Mr. Krusemark is waiting for you." He wore a grey suit with tiny maroon pinstripes and seemed more like a bank teller than a butler. "Right this way, please."

He led me through large, luxuriously furnished rooms with views of the East River and the Sunshine Biscuit Company over in Queens. Precisely arranged antiques suggested those period display rooms at the Metropolitan. These were rooms for signing treaties with quill pens.

We came to a dosed door and my grey-suited guide knocked once and said: "Mr. Angel is here, sir."

"Bring him in where I can see him." Even through the door's thickness, Krusemark's husky growl reverberated with authority.

I was ushered into a small, windowless gym. The walls were mirror-covered, and the multiple reflections of stainless steel body-building machinery gleamed endlessly in every direction. Ethan Krusemark, wearing boxer shorts and a skivvy, lay on his back under one of these shining contraptions, doing leg presses. For a man his age, he was pumping a lot of iron.

At the sound of the door closing, he sat up and looked me over. "We're burying her tomorrow," he said. "Toss me that towel."

I flipped it to him, and he wiped the sweat from his face and shoulders. He was powerfully built. Knotted muscles bunched beneath his varicose veins. This was one old man you didn't want to fool with.

"Who killed her?" he growled at me. "Johnny Favorite?"

"When I find him, I'll ask."

"That danceband gigolo. I should have deep-sixed the bastard when I had the chance." He smoothed his long silver hair carefully back into place.

"When was that? When you and your daughter snatched him from the clinic upstate?"

His eyes locked on mine. "You're way out of line, Angel."

"I don't think so. Fifteen years ago, you paid Dr. Albert Fowler twenty-five thousand dollars for one of his patients. You gave your name as Edward Kelley. Fowler was supposed to make it look like Favorite was still a vegetable in some forgotten ward. Up until a week ago he did a pretty good job for you."

"Who's paying you to dig into this?"

I got out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingers. "You know I won't tell you that."

"I could make it worth your while."

"I'm sure you could," I said, "but it's still no dice. Mind if I smoke?"

"Go right ahead."

I lit up, exhaled, and said: "Look. You want the man who killed your daughter. I want Johnny Favorite. Perhaps we're both interested in the same guy. We won't know unless we find him."

Krusemark's thick fingers curled into a fist. It was a big fist. He punched the flat of his other hand and a noise like a board snapping echoed in the gleaming room. "Okay," he said. "I was Edward Kelley. It was me paid Fowler the twenty-five Gs."