Danse Macabre

by Gerald Elias

  So they started at the Martelli shop on the second floor, then up to Bamberger on six and Lifschitz on seven. No one recognized the name or description of Rose Grimes, or had any recollection of that particular violin. Going up to Dedubian’s on the top floor, Alonzo Fuente, who had been their chauffeur in the elevator, joked that they had just become eligible for frequent flyer miles. “Very funny, Lon,” said Jacobus. “Maybe you should consider comedy since you still don’t know how to operate this contraption.”

  It was nearing the end of the business day as they entered the elegantly plush nineteenth-century-styled penthouse showroom. Boris Dedubian, the third generation of Dedubian et Fils Violins, Inc., was on his way out the door. A few years earlier, as a result of the Piccolino Stradivarius violin scandal, Jacobus had almost put Dedubian out of business and into the hoosegow, but ultimately he offered Dedubian a way to save face, which earned Dedubian’s undying gratitude. Though retirement to his beloved condominium in Montreux had been postponed, he at least retained his prestige in the violin community as one of the world’s most authoritative dealers. The millions of dollars’ worth of violins, violas, cellos, string basses, and their bows, instruments on display behind climate-controlled glass cases, as well as the fastidiously tailored herringbone suit he was wearing, bore testament to his continued success.

  “My dear Jake and Nathaniel!” Dedubian said in his cultivated generic European accent. “What a pleasure it is to see you both again. It has been too long!”

  “Probably not long enough, you mean,” said Jacobus. “You seem to be back in the swing, though.”

  “Well, you know the old axiom, ‘Where there are violinists, there are violin dealers.’ ”

  “And money.”

  “Well, yes. That too. What can I do for you today? I was just about to close the shop, but for you the lights are back on. It just so happens an amazing G. B. Guadagnini, Turin, 1781, arrived today. Mint condition! Perhaps you’d care to try it?”

  “Maybe another time, Bo. We’re actually just shopping for a little information.”

  “Oh?”

  Nathaniel asked Dedubian if he had any recollection of an African-American woman named Rose Grimes ever buying a Garimberti made in 1958. He tried to imagine what Grimes looked like back in the day in order to describe her to Dedubian, but it was difficult to imagine the wrinkled, hunched-over, almost toothless elderly woman as anything but. Instead, he described the Garimberti: the golden orange color of the varnish, the distinctive corners, and the back, which, before it was broken, was a beautifully grained single piece of bird’s-eye maple. The problem was, if Dedubian had seen it, it could have been more than thirty years ago.

  “Gentleman,” Dedubian reminded them, “with the number of customers I have every day, let alone over a quarter century, it is impossible to remember every single instrument. Impossible. Even if the merchandise had been of superstar quality, who can recall them all? Garimberti, an excellent luthier, yes, but he was no Stradivari, and there were so many contemporaries—dozens I could name you—building instruments with solid craftsmanship and beautiful sound quality.”

  “Maybe,” said Nathaniel, “since this particular violin was all busted up you might have repair records even if you didn’t sell it.”

  Dedubian asked his secretary, Mrs. King, who was still in the office, to check their back data. While they waited, he brought out the Guadagnini violin that he had just obtained on consignment. Made in Milan in 1754, it was considered one of Guadagnini’s greatest instruments. It was nicknamed the “ex Ysaÿe,” meaning it had been owned at one time by Eugène Ysaÿe, the great Belgian violinist at the turn of the twentieth century, and who had been, incidentally, the teacher of the young René Allard. The current owner wanted $800,000 for it, so Dedubian was putting it on the market for $925,000 with a willingness to haggle with both the potential buyer and seller. He handed it to Jacobus along with an equally superior French bow and asked him to play a few notes.

  Jacobus put the instrument under his chin. He had a fine ear for tone—he could almost unerringly name the maker of any good violin from the sound and feel of it—but the basic intrinsic tone of the instrument, and even less its market value, was of minor importance to him. It was what the musician could do with the sound that counted. “Anyone can get good paint,” he would say to his students, “but only Leonardo could make the Mona Lisa.”

  Jacobus played the beginning of the Allemande from the Bach Partita in D Minor. With a melodic line that crosses all the strings he could obtain a sense of the violin’s capabilities within a few measures. The sound was resonant, full-bodied, and evenly blended from one string to the next, and at the same time, as he varied the bow speed and pressure on the string, responsive to subtle color changes.

  “No wonder they call Guadagnini the poor man’s Stradivarius—if you call under a million ‘poor.’ Definitely a Guad,” he said as he felt the dimensions of the instrument, tracing his finger around the purfling. “It’s got his typical sound and the broad pattern in the middle. Bo, you’ll have a sucker paying that type of dough within a week.”

  “No doubt, but of course we prefer to call them clients,” said Dedubian. He reclaimed the violin as Jacobus handed it back to him. “Ah! And here comes Mrs. King.”

  Mrs. King reported bad news and good news. The bad news was that Rose Grimes had neither bought a violin there nor brought the Garimberti in for repair. The much better news, however, was that Dedubian had in fact written an insurance evaluation for it in 1965. As was typical for such evaluations, he had given a brief description of the instrument and of the inscription on the maker’s label inside it, and went on to state that in his opinion the violin indeed was what it purported to be. At the time of the evaluation, Dedubian had appraised it for $1,000. Had it still been in good condition it would have been worth anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000, such was the appreciation of good modern Italian violins. With the damage it had suffered, though, its real market value was nil.

  “Are you sure she was the real owner, Bo?” Jacobus asked.

  “Hey, Jake!” interrupted Williams. “There you go again. Just because a black woman—”

  “Black, shmack,” said Jacobus. “If she was guilty of stealing Allard’s music, and I say ‘if’ surrounded by brackets, then it’s possible—”

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” interrupted Dedubian. “Excuse me, but it doesn’t help to argue because in any event I don’t know the answer to the question. When clients with violins come into my shop, I don’t ask who, where, what, or how. It’s not my job to be a policeman. If they say it’s theirs, unless it’s an instrument I know for a fact to be illicit, I take my clients at their word.”

  “Then any idea who she insured with?” asked Jacobus. “Seems that if she went to the trouble and expense to get the valuation, she would have insured it.”

  “I have no idea about that either, Jake,” said Dedubian. “That’s totally up to the client, though an instrument like that really should have been insured.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Jake” said Nathaniel. “If Rose Grimes had insured the violin and then broke it intentionally, she could have made a claim for the insurance and collected the cash, never intending to repair it. Seeing how she’s struggled all her life, that is something to consider, isn’t it?”

  “And if she needed that cash fast, like to take care of an ailing husband, she might have been desperate enough to have stolen for it,” said Jacobus.

  “Well, I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” said Nathaniel, “but I’ll grant you it’s a possibility. In the meantime I can check on some of the main companies that sell instrument insurance—Intercontinental, Counselors, Vermont Mutual—and see if I can track down her policy.”

  “While you’re at it,” said Jacobus, “try to find out more about poor old Mr. Grimes, will you? She was hiding information about a broken fiddle; maybe she’s hiding information about a broken man. All we’ve got is his address an
d when he came back from Vietnam.”

  “I’ll buzz my contacts with the insurance companies and the VA hospitals,” said Nathaniel, “and see if I can get some kind of dossier going. They won’t give me his medical records, for sure, but at this point anything we can get couldn’t hurt.”

  “In the meantime we just sit on our thumbs and study the police reports?” asked Jacobus. “We’ve gotta get a move on. There are only, what, four days left.”

  “Well, actually I was just thinking of something more adventurous,” said Williams.

  What he had in mind, he explained to Jacobus, was to fly out to Salt Lake City. Jacobus once again balked at this prospect. “I’m not Yumi’s nanny,” he complained. It was annoying enough for him to have to be drawn from his seclusion in the Berkshires to come to New York. But Salt Lake City? Nathaniel reasoned it was not just to hear Yumi perform. It would also be to meet with Virgil Lavender, who was such a close colleague and confidant of René Allard, and with Sigmund Gottfried, who had moved there to be with his sister and who had been the one to notify the authorities that Rose Grimes had stolen music from Allard. Maybe he knew something about the violin, Williams postulated.

  “Ziggy in Salt Lake City?” interrupted Dedubian. “I miss the little man so! I think he actually brought me business over the years—he was like a tourist attraction. Every violinist in the world must have chatted with Ziggy! Jake, go to Salt Lake City! And please make sure you give Ziggy my best.”

  TEN

  “You what?” yelled Malachi.

  “Careful, Malachi, or you’ll choke on your kishke,” said Jacobus. Because Nathaniel had booked their flight to Utah first thing the next morning, Jacobus had invited the detective to bustling Carnegie Deli for a late snack. The pair wanted to break the news gently that they had taken up the reinvestigation of René Allard’s death and that, if they were successful, they would be undoing all of Malachi’s investigative work that had led to the conviction of BTower.

  “Look, Jacobus, just because you were right once before—” Malachi said.

  “And you were wrong and almost got me a life sentence.”

  “There was nothing wrong with the police work,” said Malachi. “Everything pointed to you stealing the Piccolino Strad and killing Jablonski.”

  “Everything except that you pegged the wrong guy. Me.” Jacobus had about as much regard for police work as he did for pastrami on whole wheat.

  “Keep your voice down, Jake.” Nathaniel placed one of his big hands on Jacobus’s forearm. “You’re yelling even louder than the waiters.”

  “Just like you may have with BTower,” continued Jacobus, a half decibel softer. “I’m not saying he didn’t do it, but the least you can do is give me what I need to find out for sure. Pass the pickled tomatoes, please.”

  “Jacobus, you’re being a pain in the ass. But why should this night be different from any other? Let me say it one more time so you’ll understand. You were exonerated. You never had to go to trial. You found the thief and the murderer. But BTower is different. This guy was tried. He was convicted, and he was sentenced to death. This time, there is no doubt. No question. Case closed.”

  “No question? Nathaniel and I have already discovered that one of the maids who’d worked at the Bonderman Building stole music from Allard, and might have stolen a violin and committed insurance fraud.”

  Malachi applauded.

  “Well, mazel tov to you, Sherlock!” he said. “Who figured you’d ever be Boy Scout of the Year? Please, though, be kind enough to inform me, what does this have to do with BTower murdering René Allard? How’s your corned beef? Even if she had stolen the Mona Lisa it still wouldn’t have anything to do with my case.”

  “Needs more mustard,” said Jacobus. “So why should it bother you if we keep looking? Rosenthal says D-day’s next Wednesday. What would it hurt to give us what we need?”

  “You’ve got the report, Jacobus. What don’t you try reading it? Everything we copied to Rosenthal for the trial is there.”

  “Not quite. Rosenthal doesn’t have the photos of Allard’s body.”

  “Believe me, Jacobus, he was dead,” said Malachi. “Or do you need us to dig him up to check his pulse?”

  “You certainly bolster my faith in the criminal justice system, Detective. But what about that strange pose you wrote about in your report? Your ordinary stiff doesn’t do a Rodin when he croaks, now does he? I’m sure your corpses come in all sorts of artistic configurations, Al, but lacking any other hard evidence, I’d think something as surrealistic as Allard’s contorted disposition would jump right out at you. And what about those ‘superficial lacerations’ and the missing bits of scalp and hair—”

  “They were obviously left on the murder weapon—”

  “Which you never found. What kind of hack detective work is that?”

  “Back off, Jacobus.”

  “And,” Jacobus pushed, “in the report you mention Gottfried’s photos.”

  “Jacobus, you’re wasting my time, and I’ve had enough of your meddling. When I write a report I include everything. That’s my job. Those photos were just family snapshots of happy Germans in lederhosen. Duplicates of what were on his wall. You were there! He didn’t even ask for them back after the trial. What the hell good are photos going to do for you, anyway? You’re blind as a bat.”

  “Just be a good boy, Malachi,” said Jacobus, “and pretend I’m your Yiddishe mama asking—”

  Jacobus felt his collar suddenly tighten around his throat. He was yanked out of his seat, his dark glasses flying off his face. Jacobus heard the conversation in the restaurant come to an abrupt halt.

  “You’re a crusty old fart,” Malachi said, choking Jacobus. “That doesn’t bother me. You insult my work. That doesn’t bother me, either.” Jacobus grabbed at Malachi’s hand around his throat, gasping as he futilely tried to pull it away.

  “But after a while, when you get personal your act gets old, and you just crossed the line.”

  Jacobus felt another hand on top of his. A big one. Strong but not aggressive. Nathaniel’s.

  “Please, Detective,” Nathaniel said with quiet insistence.

  Malachi threw Jacobus back in his seat, the cue for the chatter in the restaurant to resume.

  Williams said, “Jake, why is it you always have to go antagonizing everyone we need help from?”

  “Hey, friend,” Jacobus said to Nathaniel as he massaged his neck and fumbled for his glasses, “you don’t like the n-word. I don’t like the b-word. Chances are Mr. Sensitive here missed the boat somewhere. There’s more to a photo than smiling faces, and I think it’s worth finding out if there’s anything there.”

  Williams, the mediator, asked, “Detective Malachi, what harm would it do to provide us with these materials?”

  “Harm? It wouldn’t do you any harm,” said Malachi, “but it would be the end of my job as a cop. Pit Bull Brown is gunning for DA. If she were to just smell that I was trying to futz with her Two Maestros triumph in any way, shape, or form, she’d have my balls on a silver platter.”

  “Y’know, Malachi,” said Jacobus, “there comes a point when career has to take a backseat to justice.”

  “That’s awfully high and mighty of you,” said Malachi, “but that’s not the way I see it. What I see is that in our society we’ve got plenty of rights. They’re written out chapter and verse by the founding fathers. BTower has a right to get you to traipse all over to help him dodge the hereafter. But we also have responsibilities, Jacobus, even if they’re not spelled out so tidily. BTower had a responsibility to stick a sock in his ego before he went out and murdered. I’m glad BTower got what was coming to him. I’m glad he is where he is.

  “So I don’t need a lecture on integrity from you, Jacobus,” said Malachi, “but thanks for the kishke. I’ll see what I can do.” He threw down his napkin and got up. “Bon voyage.”

  ELEVEN

  DAY 3: SATURDAY

  With BTower’s executio
n date at the forefront of their thoughts, Jacobus fought off his mounting fatigue. By taking the early morning nonstop Delta flight from JFK, he and Nathaniel arrived at Salt Lake International Airport before noon. Sigmund Gottfried, who had learned to drive since moving to Utah, and his sister, Seglinde Oehlschlager, were waiting to greet them.

  “Thanks for coming,” Jacobus said, as he and Nathaniel were escorted to the car. Jacobus hobbled, his arthritis acting up after the long flight. “And for being on time.”

  “My father always told me,” said Gottfried, “‘Better an hour early than a minute late.’”

  Jacobus eased himself into the plush, comfortable backseat, which soothed his aching hip. “Nice car,” he said, inhaling the satisfying “new car smell” mixed with somewhat nauseating pine-scented air freshener.

  Gottfried confessed to some embarrassment being behind the wheel of the luxury Avalon in which he would now chauffeur his old friends to their hotel. Jacobus joked that it was the first time he had ever encountered Ziggy moving horizontally. With the windows up and the air conditioner on full blast, Jacobus could neither see nor feel the effects of blinding sunshine and searing August heat that he had fleetingly encountered walking from the terminal to the car. On the twenty-minute drive along North Temple to the Waltz Rite Inn where Jacobus and Nathaniel were staying, Gottfried filled them in on his life since leaving New York.

  “When my elevator broke down,” Gottfried said, “and I lost my job and my home, I felt as if my life was over, and then Seglinde invited me to stay with her and Mr. Oehlschlager until I got back on my feet. So what else could I do but pack my valise and come here? What is it they say? ‘Go west, young man!’ Except I’m not so young anymore.” Gottfried chuckled.

  “You packed all your belongings in one suitcase?” asked Jacobus.

  “Not quite so, Mr. Jacobus,” said Gottfried. “Most of it I left behind in the apartment. You see, I thought of this change the same way as when Seglinde and I left Germany. It would be a new life, a time to leave the old life behind. They were covering up my basement apartment for good. Sealing it away forever. In a way it was like a burial. It was symbolic.