“I’ve heard of it.”

“I’d try Barceló first. He’s the one who deals in special items and is in touch with top collectors. And if Costa has it, Barceló will know.”

“Would Barceló be willing to talk to me?”

“I gather he’s semiretired, but he always finds time for a good-looking young lady. You know what I mean.”

“I’ll doll myself up.”

“Pity I won’t be there to see it. You’re not going to tell me what all this is about, are you?”

“I still don’t know, Virgilio.”

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“Of course.”

“When this business you’re dealing with is over, if it does indeed end and you’re still in one piece and still have this book, bring it to me. I’d love to spend a few hours with it alone.”

“And why shouldn’t I come out of it in one piece?”

“Who knows? If there’s one thing all Mataix’s Labyrinth books have in common, it’s that anyone who touches them has a bad ending.”

“Another one of your legends?”

“No. This one is true.”

* * *

At the end of the nineteenth century, an island in the shape of a literary café came unstuck from the mainland of reality. From then on it has floated about, frozen in time, at the mercy of history’s currents, through the grand avenues of an imagined Madrid, where it can usually be found beached a few steps away from the National Library and flying the flag of the Café Gijón. There it awaits, a drifting hourglass ready to save any castaway who arrives with a parched spirit or a dry palate, offering them, just for the price of a coffee, the chance to look at themselves in the mirror of memory and for a moment believe they’ll live forever.

Evening was falling when Alicia crossed the avenue toward the doors of the Café Gijón. Vargas was waiting at a table by the window, savoring one of his imported cigarettes and watching the passersby with his policeman’s eye. When he saw her come in, he looked up and signaled to her. Alicia sat down and managed to catch a waiter’s attention as he passed by. She asked for a coffee to shake off the cold that had clung to her in the basement of the library.

“Have you been waiting long?” Alicia asked.

“All my life,” replied Vargas. “Fruitful afternoon?”

“Depends. How about you?”

“I can’t complain. After dropping you off I went by Valls’s publishing house to pay a visit to Pablo Cascos Buendía. You were right. There’s something there that doesn’t quite add up.”

“And?”

“Cascos himself turns out to be little more than an oaf. Full of himself, but still an oaf.”

“The simpler they are, the more dashing they think they are.”

“First of all, our friend Cascos offered me a luxury tour of the offices and then proceeded to rhapsodize about the extraordinary person and exemplary life of Don Mauricio, as if his own life depended on it.”