by Gerald Elias
“Go on.”
“After a few weeks I was already better, I must say, than Tom at this, but what was I to do? Mama was very proud when I wrote her that Mildred Rivkin, one of the oldest residents at the Bonderman, had said to me, ‘What a wonderful ride, Ziggy.’”
Gottfried stopped. It was close to 2 A.M. Yumi had fallen asleep and Nathaniel was close behind her. Jacobus was listening less to Gottfried and more to the underworld surrounding him: the groans of the guts of the building pumping energy upward through the thousands of tons of steel and concrete and pipes and wires above their heads; and the more distant rumblings of the dark underground city, separated from them by only a cement wall. It may have been only a subway, but from its low, moaning vibrations Jacobus felt as if he were embedded in the innards of a great churning organism.
“I am getting off the subject, aren’t I?” said Gottfried. “I am so sorry. It isn’t often I have visitors here to talk to. But I am almost at the end of my story.”
Jacobus grunted. Malachi sipped his cold tea and didn’t say anything.
“I had been at my new job about a month, and I knew everyone in the building. At least I thought I did. One night, shortly after I began my shift, I opened the door at the lobby and who entered but René Allard. This man who was my hero.
“Here I must tell you something of my appearance. Not that I was handsome or am showing off. Quite the opposite. Looks mean little to me. But I was short—not as short as I am now—and began to lose my hair at an early age. Other than that, you could say I was not ugly. René Allard, on the other hand, could have been—was—”
“A matinee idol?” Jacobus suggested.
“Just so. A matinee idol, as they used to say. He was tall. He had that wavy hair. And for some reason, Americans always have an attraction for Frenchmen. I maybe had better posture than Allard.
“Of course, we were both relatively young then, in 1946. I was sixteen and Allard was I think thirty-five. So he was already on top of the world, and I was going up and down in an elevator. You can’t understand how well known he was then. These days, you think classical musicians like Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma are famous. They were nothing compared to Allard. Everyone in the world knew his name—like the singer Frank Sinatra or that Negro baseball player Jack Robinson—and the women were crazy for him.
“He had left France for America shortly after the beginning of the war, and I left, of course, when it was over, but I had no idea where he lived, so, as I say, it was a shock to see him in my elevator, but it was not such a shock to see him with a beautiful woman on his arm. They were both very elegantly dressed and Allard was carrying his violin case.
“Without looking at me he said, ‘Fourth floor, please,’ in his French accent, and I said, ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Allard,’ in my German. He turned to me and said, ‘You are new here, are you not?’ and I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Allard.’
“Allard paused for a moment, inspecting me, then said, ‘Well I wish you well in your new job,’ and I said, ‘Thank you, Maestro.’ That was all. By the time we arrived at their floor I gathered from their conversation that they had just returned from one of his concert tours. As they left the elevator, Allard turned to me and said, ‘By the way, our bags arrive tonight sometime. Would you kindly make sure they are delivered to 4B immediately?’ ‘Of course, Mr. Allard,’ I said. He said, ‘Thank you. Good evening, Mr. . . .’ You see, he didn’t know my name, so I said, ‘Gottfried, sir. Sigmund Gottfried.’ And Maestro Allard said, ‘Then good evening, Ziggy.’ And that, Detective Malachi, is how I was named.”
Malachi finished his tea.
“You were the last one to see him alive,” he said.
“You were?” asked Jacobus, who until that moment had been more interested in finding a way to drink himself out of his grief.
“Ja. That is a terrible honor, gentlemen,” Gottfried said in a low, slow voice. “A most terrible, terrible honor.”
“That puts you in a rather uncomfortable position, doesn’t it?” said Malachi.
“I understand what you are saying, Detective. If that is my fate, so it is one I must bear, and I must learn to live with it.”
“Tell me about how you left him.”
“Of course, Detective. It was around midnight that he entered my elevator. He was very, very happy. As everyone knows, this was the fiftieth anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut. He said to me that he thought this one was better than all the others. Would you agree, Mr. Jacobus?”
“Better? Who knows? He’s played that same program there every ten years at Carnegie. I haven’t heard all of them. But the ones I’ve heard, they’ve all been great.”
“Did he mention any problems with anyone?” asked Malachi. “Muggers? Critics? Anyone at all?”
“No, no. Only that at the same time he was happy about the concert, he was sad that it was a farewell also. You see, he and Hennie—Miss Henrique—were planning on leaving for Paris tomorrow. When he said good night to me tonight, it was also good-bye. When he said, ‘Good-night, Ziggy . . .’ ”
Gottfried covered his face with his hands and shook. Neither Jacobus nor Malachi said anything.
“This is very unmanly,” said Gottfried, recovering.
“Don’t give it a second thought,” said Malachi.
Gottfried took a deep breath. “So I said, ‘Good-bye, Maestro. It has been an honor.’ And he stepped out of the elevator. That was all. I went back down to the lobby and waited for the late-night Halloween crowd to return. About fifteen minutes later, Mr. Fuente, the building manager, came running to me. He told me that Hennie, who was worried that Maestro was late for their party, went into the corridor and saw Maestro on the ground. She called 911 and Mr. Fuente. She will take it very bad, I am sure. So Mr. Fuente and I went back up. I’m thinking, Is this some kind of Halloween trick? I do not like this Halloween. It is too wild. When the elevator door opened, I could not believe my eyes. Mr. Fuente was very kind. He told me, ‘Ziggy, I’ll take care of the elevator. You’re in no condition.’ And he was right.”
“Tell me about the photos on your wall,” said Malachi.
“Photos? Oh, just these old snapshots. Thank you for trying to take my mind off my troubles. Papa gave me his Leica before he went off to the war. I still have it. It takes wonderful pictures.”
“German technology,” said Jacobus.
Gottfried proceeded to describe each photo, starting from the upper left and ending with the bottom right of all six rows. There were a few wintry photos of him with Seglinde and Mama before leaving Germany and some others with his sister after arriving in the United States. With each photo, his spirits seemed to lift.
“Who’s older, you or your sister?”
“Neither, Detective Malachi! We are twins. Not identical, of course. You see, Schatzi is much taller than me . . . and much prettier.”
“No kidding,” said Malachi. “She could be Ingrid Bergman’s sister.”
“Yes, and I am more of the Uncle Fester type from the TV show. Schatzi got her looks from Mama. I unfortunately got mine from Papa.”
There were several snapshots of people standing outside the elevator with him, many of them musicians of varying degrees of renown. Malachi had no difficulty singling out Allard in the photos. His continental flair was a magnetic presence even on a black-and-white snapshot. Some of the musicians held their instrument cases. Others had an arm around Gottfried. Some had signed the photo, meaning there had to have been a second encounter after the film was developed. All of them were smiling next to the obviously proud little man.
“I recognize some of these,” Malachi said. “Yehudi Menuhin, Ricci, Francescatti. Hey! Look at this! Could this be the young Daniel Jacobus?” He showed the photo to Gottfried, who confirmed that it was.
“Well, who would’ve guessed you were such a handsome fella?” asked Malachi.
“Up yours, Malachi.”
“And here’s one of Isaac Stern before he added the avoirdupois. When I was still
a violin student I went to the Ninety-second Street Y to sit in on an Isaac Stern master class.”
“Yeah, you and two million others,” said Jacobus. “Is that why you quit?”
“Believe it or not, Jacobus, there’s some truth behind your dismal effort at humor. I realized the world would be much better off with me not playing the violin.
“So, Ziggy, what about the missing photos?”
“Missing photos?” asked Gottfried. “Ah! I understand! You are very perceptive, Detective Malachi. You see the blank spots on the wall. Let me get them for you.”
Gottfried went to his desk, opened a side drawer, and removed some more snapshots. “They’re just copies of the family photos, with dates on the back. I think you’ve seen them all.” He handed them to Malachi.
“May I keep these for a while?” he asked.
“Of course. They’re just more of the same. That’s why I took them down.”
There was a knock at the door, rousing Yumi and Nathaniel from their slumber. Gottfried said, “Excuse me, please,” and went to answer it.
“Ah, Mrs. Bidwell!”
“Ooh, it’s creepy down here. They told me I should come here for the policeman.”
Malachi introduced himself.
“I’m Mabel Bidwell,” Mrs. Bidwell said. “4C?”
“Well, Mrs. Bidwell in 4C, can I help you?” he asked.
“Can you help me? That’s a good one. I’m here to help you.”
“Okay. How can you help me?”
“Only that I saw the man that killed René Allard.”
THREE
The “Two Maestros,” as the media had dubbed it, had all the buzz of the Scopes Monkey Trial. A murder in which either the accused or the victim was a celebrity was always enough to get the public’s juices flowing, but in the case of the murder of René Allard, with BTower, arguably the world’s most famous—as well as physically appealing, controversial, and eligible—living musician as the defendant, the public couldn’t get enough. Newspapers, selling as fast as they could be printed, were saturated not only with coverage of the protagonists but also with stories scouring the lives of the lawyers, the judge, the jury, the police, the witnesses—anyone remotely connected to the trial.
Nielsen ratings of the hard-hitting weekly news program Op-Ed went through the roof when moderator Ed Fallon interviewed the attractive young prosecutor, Michelle Brown. “Pit Bull” Brown, so dubbed by Fallon for her dogged determination to seek the death penalty for BTower, aka Shelby Freeman Jr., became America’s most beloved darling since Shirley Temple. A recent summa cum laude graduate of Fordham University Law School, Brown had aspirations of ascending the political ladder, and she had already mounted the first rungs with swift tenacity. This was her first capital case, and it was as big a plum as she could ever hope for.
“Will the defense play the race card?” asked Fallon, knowing that it was what America wanted to hear and also knowing the answer.
“Race has nothing to do with this case,” said Brown. “Only guilt or innocence.”
“Is it true, Michelle Brown, that you’ve been handed this case by your mentor and former professor, District Attorney Adrian Garn, because you’re having an intimate relationship with him?”
“Again, that has nothing to do with this case.”
Only two people refused interviews. One was BTower, whose attorney, Cy Rosenthal, shielded him from all publicity, which undoubtedly would have been negative. The other was Daniel Jacobus, who took his phone off the hook.
Now, on the first day of the Two Maestros trial, Jacobus was ensconced in the packed courtroom. His turn as a witness for the prosecution was some time off, but he felt compelled to be there. Nathaniel and Yumi hadn’t needed to haul him into the city as they did the year before to hear Allard’s last performance. He was so eager to see justice done that when Brown interviewed him to determine whether to call him as a character witness, he ended up coaching her on the finer points of the classical music world.
As he leaned forward to listen intently, the eyes of the courtroom and the world were focused on Brown. Conservatively dressed in a gray wool suit with a midlength skirt and white silk blouse, all of which managed to highlight the curves of her figure, she began in practiced understated fashion by summarizing the accomplishments of the great violinist and humanitarian, René Allard, in the unlikely event anyone might not have been aware of them.
“There is no need, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to go into detail how, even after René Allard’s perilous Casablanca-like escape from France to the United States in 1941, he continued his heroic work for the liberation of his native land. Or how in 1961 he was invited to the White House by John and Jacqueline Kennedy to perform the Brahms Double Concerto with Pablo Casals. Or how in 1968 he was named the first Ambassador of World Peace by UN Secretary General U Thant. The list, ladies and gentlemen, goes on and on.
“One day, René Allard spotted a young man, alone and virtually penniless, on the streets of New York. That young man, Shelby Freeman Jr., now known to the whole world as BTower, was just one among thousands of poor, listless youths from Harlem, lacking direction and a future. The one thing Shelby Freeman Jr. could do differently was play the violin. Shelby Freeman Jr. had the good fortune to be busking with an open violin case lying on the sidewalk on a day that was so sunny and pleasant that René Allard decided to walk from the UN to Carnegie Hall. Hardly anyone passing by noticed Shelby, and even fewer tossed a coin or two into his case. But it was Allard who immediately recognized his raw talent and admitted him to be among a select number of his students. It was René Allard who gave free lessons to Shelby and made him a part of his family. It was in fact Allard who inspired Shelby to change his name to BTower, when one day at a lesson Allard turned to his pianist, Virgil Lavender, and said, ‘It looks like we have here a young Bridgetower,’ referring to the nineteenth-century black virtuoso George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, for whom Beethoven’s monumental Opus 47 Violin Sonata was composed.”
Brown took the comparison a step further. She likened Bridgetower, who had a permanent falling-out with Beethoven (so that Beethoven ultimately dedicated the sonata to the French violin pedagogue Rodolphe Kreutzer, who incidentally never performed the piece, thinking it too difficult), to BTower’s estrangement from René Allard.
“No one knows exactly what transpired between Bridgetower and Beethoven, but be assured, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we do know what accounted for BTower and Allard’s irreconcilable differences. Allard had demanded hours of hard work every day, hours devoted to the practice of scales and études, and the study of solfège, and music theory, and composing fugues. This was the way Allard had learned when he himself was a student in the Paris Conservatory. He knew in his heart it was the only way to true greatness.
“René Allard taught everything he knew, in the only way he knew, to help ensure the success of Shelby Freeman, but Shelby Freeman Jr. decided he didn’t want to put in those hours of drudgery. Shelby Freeman Jr. chafed under the bit of disciplined hard work. Shelby Freeman Jr. rebelled, and ultimately—personally and professionally jealous of René Allard’s stature as a musician and humanitarian, which he realized he could never achieve—Shelby Freeman Jr. repaid René Allard’s efforts with death.
“Shelby Freeman Jr. needed to do it his own way. He needed to create a new style. But even though relations with his former mentor turned icy, isn’t it ironic that when Shelby Freeman Jr. transformed his persona he remembered René Allard’s compliment and changed his name to BTower, and often performed the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, which he had learned under the tutelage of René Allard?
“But he did more than just play the violin, as the world knows. Strikingly handsome, a Muhammad Ali look-alike some have said, Shelby Freeman Jr., now BTower, grew his hair into dreadlocks and dressed unconventionally in tight black jeans and tight black T-shirts for performances. He danced around the stage with a light show going on behind him, even when he performe
d Bach sonatas. He was the only person in history ever to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and The Strad. Indeed, BTower was so popular, especially among young and African-American audiences, who had been awakened to the greatness of classical music, that he was the only performer who could command a fee close to Allard’s.
“Let me remind you that there is nothing necessarily wrong with what BTower called his concert ‘enhancements.’ I myself share with millions of people open admiration for what BTower has done on the concert stage. I readily admit that I had never enjoyed classical music until going to a BTower concert. His innovative style refreshed what was perceived by many as a stodgy, white bread art form, so please, jury, do not consider what René Allard, renowned for elegance and good taste, might have thought about BTower’s style. But I must also caution you, do not be deceived by BTower’s good looks, or by his indisputable flamboyance and personal magnetism. Consider only that a rivalry had been created, a pernicious rivalry not only between two people but also between two worlds, and as time progressed that rivalry intensified into hatred . . . and into murder.”
Jacobus, content with Brown’s opening statement, leaned back in his seat, but only briefly as at this point Brown suffered her only minor setback. At the defense’s request, the judge refused to permit her to show the jury the grisly police photos of Allard’s body, declaring them too inflammatory. She was not, however, barred from reading Detective Malachi’s report. Undaunted, she feigned poor eyesight, and donning fake glasses to focus the court’s attention on the words she was about to read, Brown proceeded to recite the report’s goriest details, slowly.
Brown concluded her opening statement by summarizing how the State would prove, with eyewitnesses corroborating every step, that BTower had gone to Carnegie Hall the night of October 31 to hear René Allard perform. Afterward he accosted Allard backstage, and then, unsatisfied with the results of their confrontation, stalked him to his apartment in the Bonderman Building, where he was recognized standing above the body with blood on his hands before fleeing the scene of the murder. Jacobus, reassured by Brown’s confident delivery, was able to relax again.