Rhyme shouted into Sachs's ear, "At the same time? Ask her if she comes in at the same time every week."

Sachs relayed the question.

"Oh, yeah, she does," the girl said. "She's like, you know, clockwork. Been coming here for years."

The criminalist noted, "People with regular habits're easiest to target. Tell her to go on."

"And what about her, Tracey?"

"Today she comes back from a ride? About a half hour ago? And what it is is she hands off Don Juan to me, that's like her favorite horse, and she wants me and the vet to check him out careful because a bird flew into his face and spooked him. So, we're looking him over and she's telling me about this guy who came along and calmed Donny down. We tell her that Donny looks fine and she's going on about this guy, yadda, yadda, yadda, and how interesting he is and she's all excited 'cause she's going to have coffee with him and he might be a real horse whisperer. I saw him downstairs, waiting for her. And the thing is, I'm like, what's wrong with his hand? 'Cause he kinda hid it, you know. It looked like he only had three fingers."

"That's him!" Sachs said. "Do you know where they were going?"

She pointed west, away from the park. "I think that way. She didn't say where exactly."

"Get a description," Rhyme called.

The girl explained that he had a beard and his eyebrows were odd. "All kind of grown together."

To alter a face the most important thing is the eyebrows. Change those and the face is sixty, seventy percent different.

"Wearing?" she asked.

"A windbreaker, running shoes, jogging pants."

"Color?"

"The jacket and pants were dark. Blue or black. I didn't see his shirt."

Bell returned with his officers and muttered, "Not a burr on the dog."

"Got a lead here." She explained about the rider and the bearded man then asked the girl, "And you're pretty sure she didn't know this guy?"

"No way. Ms. Marston and me, we've known each other for a while and she told me she's like totally off dating. Doesn't trust men. Her ex, he cheated on her and then, in the divorce, he got the sailboat. She's still pissed about that."

———«»———«»———«»———

The best illusionists, my friends, engage in a practice known as "routining."

That means planning the order and the pacing of their acts carefully—to make the performances as intense as possible.

For our third act today we first saw our animal illusion, featuring wonder-horse Donny Boy, in Central Park. Then we slowed the pace with some classic sleight of hand, combined with a touch of mentalism.

And now we turn to escapism.