by Gerald Elias
“Anyone else what?”
“Anyone else who might have wanted to harm Hennie . . .”
“Oh, no! Oh, no! Everyone loved them. They were such partiers! They were always throwing bashes. Everyone went. I used to go in the old days. They’d go on for hours. All night! Days even! The food and the champagne. And it wasn’t just polite conversation, if you know what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a lot of, you know, oo-la-la!”
Jacobus felt a sharply pointed elbow almost break one of his ribs. Then he heard a wail that sounded like a dying baby.
“What the hell?”
“Oh, don’t mind Mimi,” Mabel purred, “she’s just my pussy. She’s Siamese. Would you like to pet my pussy?”
“I think I’ll pass petting your pussy, if you don’t mind. But tell me, with all these parties in the good old days, there might have been someone in love with Hennie and jealous enough to kill Allard. No?”
“Oh, no. I’m telling you. Their relationship. They did wild things, but they liked it that way. They were French.”
Jacobus felt a hand on his knee.
“Mrs. Bidwell.”
“Mabel.”
“Mabel,” said Jacobus. He removed the clammy hand, then opted to hold it in his to make sure it stayed put. “Is there anyone else? Certainly with your encyclopedic memory of this building’s history, you can recall something . . . untoward?”
“Let me think,” said Mabel. “Well, there was the girl.”
“But Allard and Hennie never had any children.”
“Not a girl. The girl.”
Jacobus kept silent.
“You know. The girl. The housekeeper. She was Negro.”
“Might the housekeeper have had a name, Mrs. Bidwell?” asked Jacobus.
“Well, there was Bernice, there was Rose, and there was Pearly Mae. I think it was Rose.”
“Rose what?”
“Just Rose.”
“And what happened to just Rose?”
“Rose got fired for stealing from René. I don’t know why she did it. She was always such a nice person. She worked here for years. In those days here in the Bonderman some people had apartments like me, and other rooms were rented just like hotel rooms, and then there were the business offices. Now it’s just the apartments and offices. But getting back to my story, one day when Rose was cleaning 4B she stole some of René’s music.”
“Why would she want to steal music?”
“Who knows? But they caught her red-handed. Ziggy found the music in her purse down in the basement where the help kept their stuff and reported it to the building manager, Mr. Zipolito. He’s been dead many, many years, may he rest in peace. He asked her to explain it and she didn’t have anything to say so she just packed her bags and that was it.”
“Did she steal anything else? Anything valuable?”
“Nope. Just the music.”
“Well, thank you, Mabel,” said Jacobus, extracting her bony claw of a hand from his. “You’ve been wonderfully helpful.”
“Anytime, I’m sure,” said Mabel. “Want to stay for another drink?”
“I’ll pass, for now,” said Jacobus, and fumbled his way to the door as quickly as possible, almost falling flat on his face over Mimi, who had silently interposed herself between his feet, and whose lugubrious Siamese moan followed him in his wake.
He resumed his trip to the stairway that had been interrupted by his visit with Mabel Bidwell, but then changed his mind, deciding it might be worth risking the elevator once more. Beyond having little desire to aggravate his leg with three flights of stairs, he had a question for Fuente.
“Think you can get me down alive, Lon?” he asked, as the door slid open.
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Jacobus. Just fasten your seat belt.”
Jacobus asked Fuente if he could spare a minute to look through the employment records to see if anyone named Rose had worked there when Zipolito was the manager. Fuente asked, “What was the first name?” Jacobus said, “That is the first name.” Fuente said, “Shit,” and some other things in Spanish.
When they got to the ground floor, Fuente put a well-worn PLEASE USE THE STAIRWAY sandwich board in front of the elevator and escorted Jacobus into his cluttered, windowless office. He ransacked the area behind the mops, Drano, Lysol, and Raid in the closet, hauled out a stack of heavy notebooks, and dropped them on the desk. The flying dust made Jacobus sneeze.
“What years?” asked Fuente.
“Between the time René Allard moved here and when they stopped renting rooms like a hotel.”
“Well, that narrows it down to about a century,” muttered Fuente as he rummaged through the files. After twenty minutes, during which hiatus Jacobus smoked three or four Camels, Fuente had found two Roses, but only one in the correct time slot. Rose Grimes had worked at the Bonderman Building from 1950 until her firing on July 22, 1965. The handwritten address listed her as living at 74 West 132nd Street but provided no additional information. Fuente checked the current phone directory, but there was no Rose Grimes listed.
“Almost thirty years,” said Fuente, copying down the address for Jacobus to take. “Lotsa luck.”
EIGHT
As Jacobus and Nathaniel maneuvered through an intractable, inhospitable assemblage lounging with brown bags on the disintegrating front stoop of the shabby brownstone at 74 West 132nd Street, they continued to debate Nathaniel’s insistence that he accompany Jacobus to Harlem. “It’s not exactly a place where an old, blind, Jewish white man would be met with open arms,” Nathaniel had said. Jacobus responded, “So what’ll you do when the gangstas jump me? Eat them?”
But other than a few errant sneakered feet placed with dubious intent in Jacobus’s path as he mounted the stoop, they had not been hassled, though Nathaniel pointedly informed Jacobus that as they made their way through the neighborhood, they had received glances both curious and threatening on this combustibly hot late summer day.
The front door of the tenement had a hole the knob once occupied, its single glass pane had been replaced by plywood in its final stages of decomposition, and it had been so warped by time and misuse that Nathaniel had to lean into it with all his abundant might to push it open.
“Where are we? The urinal?” asked Jacobus, stepping over the threshold. “It stinks.”
“This is the entrance,” said Williams. “There’s a directory on the wall, but all the names have been spray-painted over. Vandalism.”
“This is my lucky day, isn’t it?” said Jacobus. “Shall we ask one of the young lads out front if Grimes still lives here?”
Nathaniel told Jacobus to stay where he was and went outside, shutting the door behind him. Jacobus heard lots of muffled “muthafuckas,” “yo’ mommas,” and suspicious mirth when Rose Grimes’s name was mentioned, but he couldn’t make out anything specific. He heard the door screech open.
“May be your lucky day after all,” said Williams. “She still lives here. Fifth floor.”
“Elevator?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t speak too soon.”
They started up the unmaintained stairs with Nathaniel leading, Jacobus’s right hand reaching out for his friend’s shoulder for guidance. By the third floor, the pain had set in and Nathaniel had Jacobus by the hand, pulling him up step by step.
“Why don’t you get a walking stick for that hip like I told you?” Nathaniel asked.
“You mean a cane? In case you haven’t noticed the last thirty years, I don’t do canes,” Jacobus said, panting.
“Pretty soon you won’t be doin’ walking neither,” replied Nathaniel.
They arrived at the fifth and top floor, sweating and panting, doubled over, hands on their knees, having navigated around splitting bags of garbage, puddles of urine, and a chillingly silent pit bull. There was no fan, let alone air-conditioning, to remedy the stifling heat. The only relief was a rendition of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” b
eing sung by Mahalia Jackson coming from a transistor radio somewhere. When Nathaniel finally got his breath back, he told Jacobus to just let him do the talking at first. “Be my guest,” he wheezed.
Nathaniel knocked. After a moment the chained door opened just a crack, but enough for the gospel music to flow out.
“Who’s there?” asked a resonant alto voice.
“My name is Nathaniel Williams, Miss Grimes. I’m here with my friend, Daniel Jacobus. We were wondering if we might visit with you.”
“Visit? About what?”
“About a young African-American man who might have been wrongfully convicted of a serious crime.”
“Well, there’s lots of them, and most of them deserve it. What’s it to me?”
“This particular young man has set a positive example for the African-American community.” Williams was still trying to catch his breath. “He had been a real role model. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s a violinist. His name is BTower. We promise not to take too much of your time.”
“Yes. Yes, I’ve heard of him. Who hasn’t? One moment.”
The door closed. The chain was slipped off and the door reopened.
“Please come in.”
“Thank you, Miss Grimes,” said Williams. “And you can put down the gun.”
Grimes gave them a once-over and said, “I guess. You two ain’t fit enough to attack an ant. Come on in and sit down. You want some iced tea? I was just making some.”
Nathaniel and Jacobus entered a small one-bedroom apartment, spare but clean. It was cooler than the hallway and Jacobus smelled the pleasant scent of fresh-cut flowers. The upholstered chair creaked under his weight when he sat but was otherwise comfortable.
“Now tell me what it is you’re needing to say to me,” said Rose Grimes, handing them each a glass of tea with fresh mint leaves.
“Just for starters, are we correct you once worked at the Bonderman Building?” asked Williams.
“That was a long time ago. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Did you know René Allard?”
“Why are you asking?”
At that moment Jacobus was startled by a heavy sigh that came neither from Nathaniel nor from Rose Grimes, but from a fourth person in the room.
“What the hell? Who else is here?” Jacobus asked.
“That’s my husband, Mr. Jacobus.”
“Does he ordinarily siesta when company comes?”
“Jake,” whispered Williams, “the man is in a wheelchair.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Williams,” said Rose Grimes. “My husband has been in this condition for a long time. He’s not really sleeping and he’s not really awake. Maybe he can hear us, maybe he can’t.”
“And who takes care of him?”
“Why, I do, of course. ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.’ Ephesians, five, twenty-two.”
“Well, that’s quite devoted of you,” said Jacobus, who had a sardonic view of religion. Any religion. “But have you tried medical care?”
“All we can afford, Mr. Jacobus. I took him to the VA hospital when he came back from Vietnam. That was 1965. But I put my trust in the Lord, Mr. Jacobus.”
“ ‘God helps them that help themselves.’ Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1757,” said Jacobus.
“Jake, please,” said Williams.
“Don’t you believe in anything, Mr. Jacobus?” asked Grimes.
“I believe in doing good, not waiting for voodoo spirits to make good things happen.”
“And what good have you done lately?”
Jacobus scratched his head. “I gave a pretty good violin lesson. Just yesterday. That’s my calling in life, as it were.”
Grimes tsked. “Have you no faith in a higher power?”
“Yes. Bach.”
“Is that all?”
“Sometimes Mozart. Have you ever heard his Symphony Thirty-eight in D? It’s as miraculous as the creation of the world, Mrs. Grimes, and Mozart did it faster than God did. He did have to make a few corrections, though. That’s something God would have been well advised to do.”
“That’s blasphemy!”
“No, it’s true. Mozart did make corrections.”
Williams interrupted. “Jake, I think you’ve made your point.”
“Is there anything else you wanted to ask me before you leave?” asked Grimes.
“Can you tell us of the circumstances surrounding your departure from employment at the Bonderman Building?” Williams asked, placing his iced tea on a doily-covered table next to him.
“I was accused of taking some of Mr. Allard’s music. After I left I found work cleaning homes in Westchester, two a day, sixteen hours a day including the commute, in order to be able to pay the rent.”
“And why did you take the music, Mrs. Grimes?” Nathaniel asked.
“I didn’t say I took it. I said I was accused of taking it. ‘For the Son of man is going to come in His Father’s glory with His angels, and then He—’ ”
“ ‘And then He will reward each person according to what he has done.’ Matthew, sixteen, twenty-seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you take it or not?” asked Jacobus.
“I don’t have to answer to you, Mr. Jacobus. Jesus Christ knows the truth, and He’s the only one that matters. And frankly I don’t see what this has to do with this young man being wrongly convicted.”
“BTower is in jail for killing René Allard,” said Williams. “The only way BTower’s life can be saved is if we find the person who really killed him. That’s it in a nutshell, and I’m sorry if it opens up some of your old wounds.”
“If BTower is innocent, the Lord will protect him.”
“Now that’s a comforting thought,” said Jacobus.
“ ‘Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will—’ ”
“Mrs. Grimes,” said Williams, “I can’t help but notice the violin case by your flowers. Do you play the violin?”
“Let’s just say it’s been in the family a long time.”
“How long have you had it?” asked Jacobus, his interest piqued. The religion lesson had been putting him to sleep.
“As I said, it’s been in the family. It’s all busted up, anyway.”
“May I see it? Both Mr. Jacobus and I are musicians, and we’re always interested in seeing instruments.”
“I have nothing to hide.”
Jacobus heard Rose slowly rise with a soft but labored mhh as she pushed herself up from her chair and shuffled past him and her catatonic husband. Jacobus considered the toll that years of backbreaking housework must have taken on her health, including her mental health, just to pay rent and take care of a chronic invalid. No paid vacation for Rose Grimes. A heavy price for salvation.
“Here. Look at it,” she said. “And if you don’t mind, I have to get ready for church choir.”
“You leave your husband here alone?” asked Jacobus.
Rose Grimes’s husband remained motionless, slumped in his wheelchair.
“He’s not going anywhere,” she said.
Jacobus heard Nathaniel snap open the clasps of the case.
After a moment, Williams said, “Thank you very much for your time, Mrs. Grimes. Jake, I think we’re ready to go.”
“Thanks for the tea,” said Jacobus. “But just one more question. If you have such faith in the Lord, why is it there’s a chain on your door and you kept the gun in your lap the whole time we were here? I heard you put it on the table when you got up.”
“Protection. This neighborhood isn’t the safest in the world, as I’m sure you have already ascertained.”
“No doubt, Mrs. Grimes. No doubt. Just remind me, though. Where in the Bible does it say, ‘Praise the Lord but pass the ammunition’?”
NINE
In the cab, Jacobus and Nathaniel bickered all the way to the Bonderman Buil
ding. Nathaniel had seen instantly that Grimes’s violin was broken and scratched all over. It was useless. He had lifted it up, cradling it in both hands so it wouldn’t fall apart entirely, and had given it no more than a cursory glance. He placed it back in the case and handed it to Rose. The only thing they agreed upon was that at one time Rose Grimes’s violin, surprisingly, had been a good one, made by Ferdinando Garimberti in 1958 according to the label inside it; and if it didn’t look like it had been run over by a fourteen-wheeler would be worth thousands of dollars. Jacobus was apprehensive that the poverty-stricken Grimes could ever have had the financial resources to own a violin of such quality. Nathaniel was offended that Jacobus would be suspicious simply because it was an African American who owned a good instrument.
“It has nothing to do with color,” Jacobus had retorted. “Have I ever had any doubts about you owning a Matteo Goffriller cello? That’s worth more than Brooklyn! What I’m suspicious of is a poor person who owns a good violin, who just happened to have been fired for stealing music from a famous violinist who was later murdered, and just happened to have lived in a building with other famous violinists and violin dealers.”
“I know you’re no racist, Jake,” Nathaniel said. When they played chamber music together as members of the Dumky Trio back in the ’50s, Jacobus had stood up to a concert presenter in southern Ohio who would not permit Nathaniel onto the stage for a performance. Jacobus proceeded to play an impromptu program of what he called “traditional concert favorites,” music made famous by Paul Robeson, George Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, and others. Jacobus, providing off-the-cuff program notes, did not beat around the bush describing the elite group as a conglomeration of African Americans, Communists, Jews, and homosexuals. The offended audience almost tarred and feathered the trio, but that incident cemented their friendship for life.
To resolve their current dispute, Jacobus and Nathaniel agreed to take what meager information they had about the violin and shuttle from one violin dealer to another in the Bonderman Building, hoping they might find someone to whom Rose had at one time brought the violin for repair or maintenance, and from there, to figure out how she got it. Not much to go on, but it seemed reasonable that if she had shown it to anyone it would have been to someone with whom she had been familiar at her place of employment.