Killer on the Keys

by Michael Avallone

  It came rapidly. That musical moment of greatness.

  Gregory slid down the scale all the way, with feathered magnificence, crashing to a crescendo in reverse and Valentin's piano ran along with him, for the full ride. Keys and strings blended, fused and shot sparks and then both instruments seemed to soar upwards and moan and mourn in a mutual union of the best there is in sound.

  Then, suddenly, with lightning cut-off, the music stopped.

  Just like that.

  A tremendous silence, as tangible as a crack of thunder, filled the caverns of Carnegie Hall. For one long, dazed, unthinking moment, the Hall was a churchyard at midnight. Then the violin made one screeching sound like a woman's high, hysterical scream. The piano remained dead. Impossibly stilled. Cut off from its source of life.

  On stage, the setting, the tableau, had some of the answers. Some of the reasons. But none of them were good enough at that exact second on the clocks. Like a paratrooper abruptly landing in the middle of a picnic on the lawn, or a man removing his own head very casually before your eyes, while he untangles a snarl in his hair, the stage of Carnegie Hall was a scene from a kind of Inferno.

  The tall figure of Gregory, back turned to the audience, was riveted where it stood, center stage. The Strad was dangling like a limp banana stalk from his right arm, the bow jammed inartistically under the strings. I started to ease up from my seat, staring. The deathly stillness of the stage was broken by the wooden clatter of the Stradivarius falling. And Gregory was staring dumbly, unable to move. My eyes followed his. As everyone else's must have. As everyone else's had to.

  Slumped over the ebony hulk of the concert grand piano, his thin form as indefinite as a rag doll's, obscuring the keyboard, was Valentin. Georges Valentin. His face lolled against the black-and-white keys. Turned upward and outward as if he were trying to see the proscenium arch. The hard way. The rimless spectacles had somehow fallen from the young Frenchman's nose. They were no longer to be seen. There was something unmistakeable about the flushed, awful crimson of his face, the grotesque thrust of his pink tongue past the barrier of his horsey teeth, through the pathetically small hole of a mouth.

  Even from where I sat, I could tell he was dead.

  As the brocaded, ultra-stylish curtain fell, to close off the scene, to block out the audience, to dam up the Truth, I also saw that Gregory was incapable of movement. Like Lot's Wife, he had turned to stone before everybody's eyes. He was frozen into immobility.

  It was then, with the large curtain falling, the audience roaring into sudden, reflective life, that somebody screamed.

  Not a woman, either. But a man. Some man, someone in the up-front seats just behind Rodor Fife's glistening silver head.

  Someone who had just seen another man die right before his eyes.

  A man who would no longer need any Karate lessons.

  Carnegie Hall was exploding with noise, confusion and hysteria as I vaulted past the Balenciaga beauty on my right, pushing back the V.I.P. on my left, in the process. Waves of badly-frightened vocal thunder rained down from the galleries above and behind me. Carnegie was jumping, but not for the usual reasons. Music was forgotten.

  I got backstage in a hurry.

  The stagehands had taken over. The Union does have its merits. A white drape of some kind was placed over the concert grand coffin. Valentin's huddled corpse was barely discernible beneath the shroud that obscured nearly all of the piano. Grips, lightmen, directors and officials were all milling about, making a mob scene of their own. But it was a muted, quiet mob. Death, when it comes so close, has a way of jamming silence down most throats. A gaggle of people were grouped around Tadeusz Anton Gregory, trying to keep his tall figure on its feet. His face was a white mask of terror, without a drop of blood in it. He looked terrible. There was nothing surprising about that, considering the circumstances. He was as dazed as any child, with grief.

  His press agent, a man named Hendricks, oddly in control of himself, thanks to little imagination plus methodical pragmatism, was doing his best to restore some kind of order and sense. I knew him, so I grabbed his arm as he swept on by me, crisply snapping out instructions to the small mob uselessly standing around, crowding Gregory. His self-control broke in half; he began to snarl and then he recognized me and relaxed. Walter Hendricks was a cocktail acquaintance from the old salad days when Gregory was on the way up.

  "You covered him pretty fast, Hendricks," I suggested, trying to keep my own shock at bay. "How can you be so sure he's dead?"

  "Oh, Noon. Hello." He wagged his head, a wolf's dome of lean features, leathery skin and grimly sure of itself. "Heart attack. Never saw anyone go so fast. Just like that." He snapped a hard thumb and finger. "No chance at all. Heart's dead as a doornail."

  "Heart attack?" The echo of the two words was foolish.

  "You heard me. Imagine. Right in the middle of a performance. New one on me. Twenty years I've been around the business. Never saw anything like this before. New under the sun, I can tell you."

  "How's Gregory?" I echoed, trapped with rioting ideas.

  "See for yourself. Not a peep out of him since we dropped curtain. What a kick in the pants for him—" With that, he forgot all about me and barked over his shoulder at a fattish woman wandering by. The woman was glassy-eyed, shaking her head, looking lost. "Gladys, where the hell's that damn house physician? We can't wait all night—"

  Gladys had no answer for him. She began to cry and Walter Hendricks threw up his hands in exasperation. Some of the reality of what had happened had begun to come home to him, at last. I pushed through the mob suffocating Gregory. They fell back, muttering. I didn't like what I saw in Gregory's face. His dark, shining hair was undone like last year's mop, his eyes were burned out and defeat had set up a home in each shoulder. I reached down gently and buttoned up his rumpled tuxedo. Like I was his old man and he was a sick, disappointed kid who'd been left behind when the team went out to play the big game. Only this wasn't kid stuff and sports had nothing to do with it. Death had everything to do with the way Gregory was feeling. Death and fortune-telling in uneasy doses.

  "Chin up, Maestro. Just a tough break, that's all."

  He seemed to see me for the first time, raising his head at the sound of my voice. His hands shot upward, closing around both my wrists as if I had been about to hit him.

  "Edward! You saw—a heart attack. How is that? Can such a thing be? Valentin was a mere boy. A boy of twenty five—"

  "Que sera, sera."

  "But children don't die of heart attacks!"

  "It's incredible and unusual," I admitted slowly. "Suddenly by Steinway. But it happens. A pity, all right. He was great tonight. Out there, he had everybody in the palm of his hand. You too."

  His face lit up. A flaming candle illuminating a dead country. Laughing Academy style. I didn't like that at all.

  "Was he not? A fitting Swan Song . . . oh, Valentin . . . I had such great plans for him. . . ." His voice fell to a whisper and his eyes ignored the people standing all about us, gawking. Looking on, the rubber in their necks preventing them from doing anything useful at all. "Do you imagine . . . Edward . . . can there be any connection, do you think, with what we were discussing early this—"

  "Cut that out." I kept my voice low, close to his ear. "Get hold of yourself, Gregory. What happened tonight was due to the kid's bad heart, obviously. Period. The cops will be here soon enough. Asking all their necessary questions. Don't go coloring this accident up with witch-hunts and beer suds readings.''

  He tried to smile. It made a gruesome farce of his keen Middle European handsomeness. Rather like a Dracula's fanged leer.

  "I am the fool, am I not? It is because I am so—tired. So weary. You are right, Edward. I won't say anything stupid. The devil take Madame Alarma—"

  "Good. That's a relief. You had me wondering there for a minute. I can't handle a superstitious violin player. A dumb tuba man, okay. But not the Great Gregory going off half-pitched. That would be o
ut of my league. We agreed on that, now?"

  His frenzied grip on my wrists eased up. He exploded a long sigh, keeping his back to the shrouded piano no more than five yards from where we stood. The standerarounders began to mutter, make noises and fan out, which sort of indicated the missing house physician had been at last found. Tadeusz Anton Gregory had one last word for me before dropping the whole subject and concentrating on restoring himself to order again. Walter Hendricks was pawing his way back to his side.

  "Thank you, old friend. I will be all right now. You will see."

  "Prove it, Maestro. I'll hang around to take you home."

  There was no sign of white-haired Rodor Fife or any of his musicians. Which was nothing to really think about Some people, constitutionally, just can't stand the sight of Death. You can't blame them either even though such an attitude never helps the living.

  Later on, the Law was satisfied with the D.O.A. status of one Georges Valentin, citizen of France, visiting American shores as a guest artist. It was all going to be written off as a fatal but very natural accident A personal disaster. I knew none of the plainclothesmen and cops who swarmed all over backstage. The Homicide Department, in the person of my old friend, Captain Michael Monks, do not ever answer such emergency calls unless they just happen to be in the neighborhood. The local Precinct, the 17th, was more than enough Law for the death of Georges Valentin. No longer viva La France. Poor slob.

  When there was nothing left for me to do but take Gregory home, I did. Not even Press Agent Walter Hendricks was allowed that honor.

  The Great Gregory was still off his feed when I left him at the door of his ground floor Kips Bay Plaza retreat. Fortunately, we had ducked every reporter around the Hall and had even beaten any of the smarter ones home before the idea occurred to any of them. Or anybody.

  I tried to cheer the Maestro up before I left, but my parting shot was what they charitably call ill-timed. A bum among bon mots.

  "Well, Gregory, you'll have to take better care of your next accompanist. The really good ones are scarcer than raving beauties."

  Several shades paler than white was his face. His teeth gritted together like meshing gears and his glare was concentrated venom.

  "What do you mean by that remark, Edward?"

  I apologized, feeling stupid. So he calmed down almost immediately, begged my forgiveness for flying off the handle and literally ran inside the apartment, slamming the heavy door shut. I took my leave at that, knowing I was leaving one miserable, very worried, very lonely virtuoso. Valentin's death was a blow to his whole life-style.

  Going home in a night owl taxi, I was pretty puzzled myself. Not only by the sudden shock of Valentin's tragedy but by Gregory's incredibly juvenile regard for some phony mystic at a high class party. Madame Alarma had not only alarmed the hell out of him, she had now been made to look good by a coincidental catastrophe so very near the very man whose palm she had muttered darkly over. What the hell. Nobody can read the future as far as I'm concerned. If anybody really could, why didn't they bet on horses or pick lottery winners? You can tell Jean Dixon, Woodruff and anybody else who works that racket the same thing. To hell with Madame Alarma and all of them.

  I rode back to my own little grey home on West Central Park that October evening without a second thought for the whole business.

  But I was wrong. Dead wrong.

  And Gregory was right.

  There was a great deal he had to be worried about. A whole helluva lot. Everything was not coming up roses for him.

  Or for a lot of other people, as things turned out.

  Rain beat on the bedroom windows that night. A pounding, pulsating downpour that was rather like a tropical symphony. Under the watery thunder, mentally involved with a lot of nettling details I didn't want to think about, I couldn't sleep. Not a wink.

  Several choice little items simply would not heave to and set sail in the darkness. The night outside, closed over Central Park West, blocking out moon, stars and neon altogether; it was like a solid monster. I fretted in the shadows, trying to drift off. I couldn't.

  The rain tempo was something out of Carnegie Hall. Something that sounded and reminded me all too vividly of Gregory and his magic Strad. That in itself was enough to set the wheels spinning, rotate the engine, rev up the machinery. Gumming up sleep, rest and relaxation. Unlike Walter Hendricks, I am all imagination.

  And then there were those choice little items.

  Gregory's famous left palm.

  The mysterious Madame Alarma.

  Valentin's unlikely heart attack.

  In broad daylight, it was easy to laugh, to scorn, to call it all bogeyman stuff. To label it a freak of coincidence. But the Night has always been the greatest friend the Unknown has ever had. Along with Ignorance and Fear. And a free-wheeling mentality.

  Even men with I.Q.'s of 190 will lock their doors and sleep with the lights on, sometimes. Especially when they're feeling lonely.

  Mine is nowhere near that high.

  And Gregory had called me a true child, hadn't he?

  I slept very badly that stormy, rainy night on Central Park West.

  Walpurgis Night was back in business, selling nightmares at the same old stand. The dancing raindrops added a little mood music, too.

  Making me offers I couldn't refuse.

  Because I was unable to.

  I didn't need the Godfather, though. It was Gregory who really did. There was so much he hadn't told me, so much he'd held back but there wasn't any way of knowing about that on the night that Georges Valentin crashed in his keys. And I couldn't know there was more than mere fortune telling and reading palms in the life story of Tadusz Anton Gregory. Much, much more.

  There was just no way of knowing.

  I'm not a mind reader.

  QUICK POISON

  A week passed in which nobody saw or heard of the Great Gregory by word or deed. The Tragedy At Carnegie Hall, as it came to be known slowly, went the way of all tragedies; it became last week's news, yesterday's gardenias and What-Else-Is-New? Since no one obviously knew of Gregory's dilemma with fortune-tellers and his advanced state of nerves, there was nothing for any newspaperman or columnist or TV Show Plato to play around with. For myself, I had to get back to my own way of life, such as it is, and that means the running and operating of a private detective agency on West Forty-Sixth Street which happens to be one of the main arteries leading to Times Square. That particular week After Gregory was absolutely dead there was no business. No one was missing, no one had to be followed, no one was murdered within my immediate sphere of influence and most of the people who meant anything at all in the Noon scheme of things were absent for roll call. Captain Michael Monks, the best man in Manhattan Homicide, was off in Chicago attending a policeman's convention of some kind. Melissa Mercer, the lovely lady who worked for me in a secretarial capacity before she staked a claim on my insides (heart, lungs and soul) was parked in Los Angeles at that time, trying to make a trial separation from me work out into something sensible. We were both in love, we ought to have gotten married, but I had continued to hold back on the grounds of my dangerous practice. But Melissa, whose blackness of beauty was but a facade for argument and not genuine cause for our differences, had finally nailed me down with a very unanswerable bit of logic: "If you can shack up with me, Ed, what's the difference? We're as close as you'll ever get with anybody on this crazy old earth. It isn't the piece of paper, you know that? It's just that I want to be known as Melissa Noon, way out front where everybody else can know it. To hell with Women's Lib."

  Melissa Noon. It sounded right, I knew it was right, but I had copped out at the last second, saying the usual, "Give me time to think about it. After all, I've been a bachelor for centuries—"

  "I'll give you six weeks, Ed. That's how long I'll be in L.A. Meanwhile, don't pick up any other girls. You hear?"

  I heard and after we made love in the afternoon and I saw her off on the Kennedy Airport jet in the ev
ening, all I did was think about it. Gregory's concert ticket had showed up a day later in the mailbox, followed by the personal visit of the Maestro. It had been a very necessary distraction all around. Though Georges Valentin wouldn't have thought so if anyone had been able to ask him.

  Monks had gone to Chicago three days after the Carnegie Hall sensation so we hadn't really talked about that, either. There was really nothing much to say on the subject anyhow.

  And the red-white-and-blue telephone on my desk was still silent. As well it should be after the falling out I'd had with The Man in the matter of the* London-Torin Bird-Desmond Allan Cursitortive assignment. I'd stop playing Mr. Fall Guy for the President of these United States, so the hot line to the White House was deader than real heroes are in present-day Hollywood movies. The Chief had let me tell him off and walk out on him without having me lined up against a wall and shot. But I still had the phone. Old habits, like iron wills, are hard to break.

  So with nothing going on, the office filling up with the dust of disuse, I decided it was high time to make some inquiries about Tadeusz Anton Gregory. I figured he was searching for Valentin's replacement. He had to be. His concert work depended on an accompanist. October had changed into November and the winds of winter were putting in a gusty appearance, so on the excuse of going looking for a new topcoat, I made sure I wound up in the Kips Bay Plaza area. I didn't want to phone the Maestro. I wanted to surprise him, anyway. You usually learn more that way. It's a detective's instinct and something I haven't lost since I asked my first question. Something like, "But why are leaves green, Miss Slocum?" I must have been a real tartar for every teacher I ever had.

  The weather was fine that morning when I dropped in on Gregory at the apartment where he usually holed up during New York appearances. I'd heard he really lived in Connecticut somewhere in a fieldstone retreat in the woods, but I had never really known for sure. That close we were not. Most Show Biz types run a tight private life, even with people they do like. The price of Fame.