Sunday night at the Lacebird Lounge, the band played straight through the applause. Nobody heard the shot. 

Jack Devereaux is dead backstage. His partner, Tommy Greer, is slumped in a chair ten feet away with Jack’s revolver across his palm, powder on his cuff, and no memory of the last two hours. By Monday the late-city edition has him convicted. By noon his wife is climbing the stairs on Devlin Street with a hundred dollars and a husband she’s sure isn’t a killer. A liar, maybe. Not a killer. 

Nate Calhoun doesn’t need Tommy to be admirable. He needs the room to make sense, and it doesn’t. The bullet came from the wrong doorway. A mirror stands off its marks. The dead man’s camel coat has walked out without its hat. And the club’s books lead to Ludo Kask, a man whose money comes in after closing and leaves through other people’s invoices. 

Nate has a captain upstairs who wants a clean file by Friday, a former partner who can spare him ten minutes, and a singer who saw more than she’ll say in front of the wrong man. He has one week to find out who staged a murder like a magic act, and why. 

File No. 2 in The Nate Calhoun Files. Every case stands alone.