Badlands

Byrne’s green eyes were ebony in the moonlight.

“I gave it to her.”

FIFTEEN

JOSEPH SWANN WATCHED the evening news. They had found a body in a shallow grave in Fairmount Park. A helicopter hovered.

Although it had been more than two months ago, Swa

He had stood on the west side of Belmont Plateau that night, deep in the bushes and trees, lost in the shadows. He patted the dirt, dumped the bagful of leaves and debris on top of the bare earth. The scene looked undisturbed. The perfect illusion.

He recalled how he took off the gloves, slipped them into a plastic trash bag, how he later burned everything, including the thick plastic sheets that lined the trunk of the car, along with his clothing. It had been a shame to part with his bespoke suit, but it was a small price to pay. He had not been diligent about his visitors all this time to make a simple mistake. In fact, only one had ever gotten away. Sweet Cassandra.

He thought about how he had discovered the woman on the Faerwood grounds that night. She had looked strong, but she also looked manic. She had fired her weapon at him while he was standing in the gazebo, the pergola long ago fitted with the counterweight elevator.

As the police engaged their new mystery, Joseph Swa

The Seven Wonders, he thought.

The game is on.

Minutes later, as he climbed the stairs, he reached into his shirt pocket. He had kept a memento of the dead woman, a small souvenir of their brief time together. A business card. Such a personal thing, he thought, yet something so aloof, something one gives away like a handshake, or a compliment:

DETECTIVE GENEVIEVE GALVEZ

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

OFFICE OF THE PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY

PART II

THE SINGING BOY

The past walks here,

noiseless, unasked, alone.

—VIRGINIA WOODWARD CLOUD

SIXTEEN

IN THE YEARS before darkness became his mistress, and time became an abstract précis, Karl Swa

His art was magic.

Born in 1928 to an upper-middle-class family in Hanau, twenty-five kilometers east of Frankfurt, Germany, Karl began his exploration of the dark arts at an early age. His father Martin, a retired army captain from Glasgow, Scotland, had parlayed a small military retirement into a thriving metals business after settling in the area following World War I. Martin married a local girl named Ha

In 1936, when Karl was eight, his father took him to a performance at the Shuman Theater in Frankfurt, a show featuring a well-known magician named Alois Kassner. During this performance Kassner vanished an elephant.

For three nights young Karl could not sleep thinking about the illusion. More than the trick, Karl considered the illusionist himself. He trembled at the thought of the mysterious, dark-haired man.

Over the next year, Karl collected books on magic, as well as biographies of the great American, European, and Asian conjurers. To the dismay of his parents, and the detriment of his studies, this pursuit seemed to consume the boy.

At the age of nine, he began to perform magic tricks at parties for his friends—cups and balls, vanishing silks, linking rings. Although his technique was not dazzling, his hands moved with competence and grace. Within a year he improved substantially, moving his act from the table to the parlor.

As the rumblings of war in Europe began, Martin Swa

On October 4, 1938, Karl Swa

As the ship set to sea, the two silhouettes painted a frozen montage in Karl’s mind; his fragile, beautiful mother, his stoic father. It would be how he always remembered them, for he never saw them alive again.

PHILADELPHIA 1938

THE KENSINGTON section of Philadelphia was a near northeast working class part of the city, bordering the neighborhoods of Fishtown, Port Richmond, Juniata, and Frankford.

In November 1938 Karl Swa

In the late 1930s Philadelphia was a rich and vibrant community for magic and magicians. There were chapters of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, the Society of American Magicians, The Yogi Club, the Houdini Club—an enclave dedicated to preserving the memory of Harry Houdini.

A week after his tenth birthday Karl took the streetcar to Center City with his cousin Nicholas. They were on a mission to locate a tablecloth for Thanksgiving di

The poster in the window—a bright and bizarre display of doves and gri

FOR THE NEXT TEN DAYS Karl took on every odd job he could. He delivered newspapers, shined shoes, washed automobiles. He finally saved enough money. Three days before the show he went to the theater, and bought his ticket. He spent the next two nights in bed, looking at the voucher in the moonlight.

At last the day arrived.

From his seat in the balcony Karl watched the incredible spectacle unfold. He watched a stu

In another illusion Blackstone passed lighted lightbulbs right through a woman, each pass eliciting shocked gasps from the transfixed audience.

But nothing surpassed Blackstone’s version of sawing a woman in half. In Blackstone’s rendering, called the Lumbersaw, a woman was strapped facedown on a table, and a large buzz saw ran right through her middle. When Karl saw the illusion it brought tears to his eyes. Not for the woman—of course, she was just fine—but for the power of the ruse. In Blackstone’s gifted hands it was a level beyond enchantment, beyond even theater. For Karl Swa