Playing with Fire

by Gerald Elias

  ‘And you’re going to do that how?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘One match at a time, if that’s what it takes.’

  Roy Miller insisted that Jacobus, Nathaniel, and Yumi come to his house and stay as long as they wanted. When they arrived, Miller’s wife, Martha, had already put steaks on the grill and reiterated her husband’s invitation. Jacobus and Trotsky would stay there until he was back on his feet, and she wouldn’t accept any argument.

  At first, conversation was light, even gossipy. It floated around Jacobus, who ate little and responded even less. No one wanted to face the enormity of his loss. At least not yet. But with dinner finished, the talk and the adrenaline disappeared along with the dishes, and Jacobus’s mind wandered from the unbearable present to the unimaginable future. Martha helped him to his room and made him as comfortable as possible, giving him an extra pair of Miller’s pajamas, which billowed on his sunken frame. Jacobus, disoriented and not caring, soon fell into a surprisingly deep sleep, Trotsky at his bedside.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Friday, January 6

  Jacobus awoke in a panic, clutching at his suffocating blankets.

  Where am I?

  The sounds and smells were faint and unfamiliar. He flailed in all directions and touched nothing. His breathing became stertorous as he gasped for air.

  Is this a hospital? A prison? An insane asylum? What time is it? Why am I here?

  Recollection returned piecemeal, isolated fractals of events. The more he remembered the worse it got.

  As he lay panting, Jacobus heard the clink of Trotsky’s ID tag at the foot of his bed. That comforted him for a moment, but then full consciousness suddenly flooded back and he was consumed by uncontrollable rage. Rage at Falcone for violating his life. His sanctuary. Rage at himself for being the cocky instigator of his own disaster when he pressed Brooks to intimidate Falcone. His urge to destroy anything within reach was tempered only because he was in Miller’s house and not his own.

  Visitors had laughed at his house. ‘Your traditional Berkshire hovel.’ ‘It needs a little TLC, but TLC doesn’t need it.’ And on and on. He let them laugh. Joined in on it. He hadn’t given a damn. What they hadn’t understood was that over the years, piece by outmoded piece, he had assembled his surroundings so that he knew exactly where everything was. It didn’t matter what it looked like, God damn it! He was a goddamn blind man! He had lights in his house only so his goddamn friends wouldn’t fall down. He had a gardener tear down the ivy climbing over his windows only so his goddamn visitors could see out them! He could navigate from his living room, with his LPs scattered everywhere, where he knew that Mischa Elman’s recording of the Mendelssohn violin concerto was the fourth one down in the pile underneath the second window from the left; to the kitchen where he could make coffee by himself from the pot in the cupboard above the sink next to the can of Folgers instant; up the eleven-and-a-half steps, yes eleven-and-a-half, that people with goddamn sight tripped on and he didn’t even need his cane, up to his bedroom where he had been comfortable in the bed that everyone said was too soft and would hurt his back, which it did but which he would never admit to anyone and would never sleep in again.

  But now it was gone. His sanctuary was gone. His detractors would laugh no more. The comfort of the second movement of Vivaldi’s ‘Winter,’ ‘resting contentedly by the hearth,’ was over. The gracious violin cantilena, over. He was now living the third, the final movement. Troubled. Dangerous. Unsafe. Jacobus was now on the outside, exposed to the elements.

  ‘We tread the icy path with greatest care for fear of slipping and sliding. With a reckless turn we fall crashing to the ground and, rising, hasten across the ice lest it should crack.’

  For Jacobus, the ice had cracked.

  Proving people wrong about him had given meaning to his life. Proving that a blind man could live among those with sight. Proving that a blind musician had more to offer than those with superior eyes but inferior ears. In the country of the blind, he had been king. The unending effort had hardened him. He reflexively confronted every challenge with an obsessive, relentless determination to prevail. It wasn’t even a thought. It was his being. Now, he had been cast adrift.

  But that was not the worst. No. The worst was that he had lost his violin. It would have been much easier to lose a leg. Both legs. His true voice was not the ugly, nicotine-scarred croak that came out of his mouth. His voice had been his violin. With his violin he had been able to connect to his true self, to reach far deeper than thought or consciousness could take him; and what emerged were emotions more complex and profound than the ones that he could express with mere words. If the words – even when partially disguised by dry humor – that spewed from his mouth reflected bitterness toward an amoral world; if they occasionally hinted at, but never admitted to, love for Nathaniel and Yumi; if from time to time they disseminated well-considered truths or half-truths or non-truths, the sounds he had made on his violin had cut through his façade, his protective armor. His violin was the only thing that could. There is no deceit in a C-major chord. In Bach, there is no cynicism. With the loss of his violin he had lost the connection not just to the world, but also to his own soul.

  I’m going to kill him. Jacobus spent the rest of the day in his room. His only human contact was when Yumi had to drag Trotsky from Jacobus’s bedside for a walk, and when Martha brought him food, which he didn’t eat. He turned his back on both of them.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Saturday, January 7

  Someone knocked on his door. Jacobus didn’t respond, but someone opened the door, anyway. Along with that someone, through the opened door, wafted the smell of wood smoke from Miller’s stove downstairs. It made Jacobus want to throw up, and if he could have remembered where the bathroom was, he would have.

  ‘Jake, sorry to disturb you. But we got some news we thought you might want to hear,’ Nathaniel said.

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Saturday. Saturday morning.’

  Jacobus uttered no response.

  ‘Brooks got a positive ID on Falcone,’ Nathaniel continued. ‘Someone went to the emergency room at Harrington Memorial Hospital in Sturbridge the night of the fire with a leg wound. He refused to give his name. They stitched up his left leg and gave him a rabies shot. They wanted him to stay overnight because he was bitten pretty badly, but he paid cash and left immediately. Brooks’s guys showed Falcone’s photo to the on-duty physician, who said it was him.’

  ‘Get me some water.’

  Nathaniel returned with a glass of water. Jacobus sat up and drank a quarter of it.

  ‘There’s some other news.’

  Jacobus held out the glass. Nathaniel took it.

  ‘That informant. Sammy Rocchinelli?’

  Jacobus shrugged.

  ‘He’s dead. A single bullet to the head.’

  ‘Falcone?’

  ‘Probably. They think Falcone suspected Rocchinelli was on G-BAT’s payroll. But they don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Where’s Falcone now?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘They don’t know. He hasn’t returned to his house, but even before he left the hospital, his wife bundled up the kids and left their condo for Logan Airport. They got on a plane to LA. Brooks put one of his men on the plane with them.’

  ‘Falcone headed toward Boston?’

  ‘At least to Sturbridge. But from there, they lost the scent. He could’ve gotten on to I-84 and headed to New York. It’s their working theory that he’s going to meet his family in California.’

  ‘Eh. Leave me alone.’

  Jacobus lay in his bed, fluctuating in and out of consciousness. How would he get from his present position as a helpless invalid, Point A, to Falcone dead, Point B? His mind wandered, devising one scenario after another, embellishing then irritably discarding each, like a losing hand in poker. Working with law enforcement would be impossible because that meant his plan would have to be legal. No. He would design a secret plot. At times h
is wild ideas had such a bizarre logic he thought they must have come to him in dreams, as when he hallucinated that he had trapped Falcone in a dark room, slit his throat with Borlotti’s woodcarving knife and stuck a lit candle in the gaping wound.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sunday, January 8

  After a sleepless night Jacobus lay in his bed, his back propped against a pillow. Barely able to lift his head, he was emotionally and physically spent. Yet his mind had a mind of its own and spun at an uncontrollable pace.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s me,’ Yumi said. ‘I’ve brought you a new wardrobe. It’s about time you got some new clothes. I’ll put them next to your bed. You can try them on when you feel like it. I think you’ll like them. Some nice flannel shirts and corduroy pants.’

  ‘New wardrobe.’

  ‘And Nathaniel has set up an office in Roy’s basement. He’s been doing a lot of research on the violins Borlotti bought and sold. And he’s started the claims process for you with the insurance company. Your house should be totally covered.’

  ‘Totally covered. You mean all fifty bucks?’

  Jacobus coughed and his head sank deeper into the pillow. He felt Yumi take his hand in hers.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jake,’ she said. ‘Everything will be all right. You’ll always have Nathaniel and me.’

  Jacobus didn’t respond. His future seemed as blank as his eyesight. Nothing.

  ‘Do you think we should get you some grief counseling?’ Yumi asked.

  He would have laughed had he been able.

  ‘Too late for counseling,’ he said.

  Yumi squeezed his hand more tightly.

  ‘Get me Father Gallivan,’ he said so quietly that Yumi had to ask him to repeat it.

  ‘Father Gallivan. Get me Father Gallivan.’

  ‘No, Jake, no!’ she cried. ‘It’s not your time yet. You’ll get better. I promise!’

  Jacobus laughed but it came out as a sputtering cough.

  ‘Gallivan was Falcone’s priest. I need to talk to him so I can nail that motherfucker.’

  Yumi’s laugh mixed with her sobs.

  ‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to hear you talk normally again,’ she cried. ‘I’ll call Lieutenant Brooks and find out what he can do.’

  ‘You do that.’

  ‘I’ll let you rest now,’ Yumi said, and got up from Jacobus’s bedside.

  Before she left the room she said, ‘And I just wanted to let you know, I took Trotsky to the vet. He’s fine.’

  ‘Great, but how’s Trotsky?’

  Jacobus felt Yumi’s arms around him.

  ‘I’m so glad to hear your bad jokes again,’ she said, and he could feel her tears on his cheek.

  ‘What do you mean bad?’ he said.

  ‘We’re so worried about you.’

  ‘Nothing to fret over. I’ll emerge from the ordeal miraculously scathed. Any day now and I’ll be as crepit as I used to be.’

  Once Yumi left, Jacobus went to the bathroom, the path to which he had become well-acquainted, and threw up.

  Jacobus couldn’t be dissuaded. He threatened to walk to Springfield if someone didn’t drive him there, so they had no choice but to bundle him up and help him into Yumi’s car, since that was the most comfortable one.

  Lieutenant Brooks had traced Father Gallivan to the St Thomas of Loyola Convalescent Home, where he had been a resident for over a year. Brooks gave Jacobus a heads-up that Gallivan was reportedly showing symptoms of dementia. They said his behavior started to become erratic during the final years he shepherded his flock at St. Ignatius, which might have been one reason the lambs wandered off. Gallivan might well have no recollection of Falcone at all. Brooks again questioned the wisdom of Jacobus going out into the bitter cold for what seemed a fool’s errand.

  ‘The bad news is, it won’t be my first,’ Jacobus said, ‘and the good news is it’ll likely be my last.’

  Brooks finished their conversation by informing Jacobus that Falcone’s wife, Nadine, had arrived in Los Angeles. G-BAT agents had searched Falcone’s now-vacant North End condominium. Though they discovered nothing that could tie him to the recent crimes, it was Brooks’s prediction that the wife would lead them to Falcone.

  ‘Was there any food in the condo?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘We haven’t checked yet. Why?’

  ‘Might tell you whether she plans on it being a long trip. You and I, we’re men. We might not give a second thought to letting the milk turn green in the fridge, but you know what women are like.’

  ‘Good point. We’ll check.’

  Sweet Sister Agnes ushered Jacobus into a common room that smelled of Mr Clean. It was warm and quiet and the chair was comfortable, and Jacobus thought, this wouldn’t be such a bad place to die. In the background, the PA softly played a medley of Bing Crosby favorites and Jacobus changed his mind. Sister Agnes cautioned Jacobus that although Monsignor Gallivan was in good physical health, from time to time he spontaneously combusted into language not representative of his holy calling.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Jacobus said. ‘We’ll get along just fine.’

  A door opened. Long strides approached him.

  ‘Ah! And it’s Mister Daniel Jacobus, is it?’ came the Irish-inflected voice. ‘Don’t get up! Don’t get up! No formalities here!’

  Jacobus, who had neither any intention of getting up nor energy to waste words, came straight to the point.

  ‘Tell me about Falcone.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Young Francis. They told me you were curious about our young Francis.’

  Yes. I want to kill young Francis, Jacobus thought, but said nothing.

  ‘Francis was only far and away the finest boy soprano in the history of the Saint Ignatius parochial school choir, wasn’t he?’ Monsignor Gallivan clucked, with as much paternal pride as was publicly permissible for a priest. ‘Only the angels themselves could sing Panis Angelicus sweeter than our young Francis.’

  ‘The Cesar Franck version?’ Jacobus asked, referring to the noted nineteenth-century Belgian organist and composer, whose tear-jerking Panis Angelicus was one of his most beloved compositions.

  ‘Surely! Would there be any other?’

  Gallivan began to recite with fervor: ‘The angelic bread becomes the bread of men. The heavenly bread ends all prefigurations: What wonder! A poor and humble servant consumes the Lord. We beg of You, Triune God that you visit us, as we worship You. By your ways, lead us who seek the light in which You dwell. Amen.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Jacobus. ‘You’re giving me this image of a cherubic, squeaky clean altar boy. What happened to dear Francis?’

  ‘He was a beautiful boy, was Francis. But his voice and his comeliness attracted the attentions of others. Francis became addicted to fame and adulation and he led others into temptation. It would forever stamp his character, poor boy. Nadine Esposito, girl of his wet dreams with the peaches and cream complexion, followed him everywhere. Even let Francis feel her up for free.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because she made me pay!’ Gallivan blurted out, as if it were an oft-repeated punchline. ‘Sorry, that was only a joke. Truly. It was at her confession she told me, I must confess.’

  Gallivan fell silent. For some reason, Jacobus had the sensation that Gallivan had fallen asleep. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Next chapter, padre?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Pardon me for ruminating. At thirteen, young Francis’s voice broke according to the dictates of God and nature, and his voice was transformed overnight from the dulcet tones of a prince to the raucous croak of a frog. His musical aspirations plummeted from heaven to the realm below. But young Francis was undeterred and made the smoothest of transitions into his second passion.’

  ‘Lighting things on fire.’

  ‘Just so, Mr Jacobus.’ Gallivan sighed. ‘It wasn’t long before Francis began accepting money to convert buildings into piles
of ash. He was soon recognized to be as talented in his new field as his old, though my heart broke to think of the fuzzy-cheeked lad he had been not so many years earlier. He stopped going by the Christian name he was baptized with.’

  ‘His preferences being Frankie the Flame and Saint Ignitius,’ Jacobus prompted Gallivan.

  ‘Yes, the latter in fond memory of his choirboy days. I was not pleased by the association, to be sure. By twenty-one Francis had saved enough cash burning down the pizza joints, the paint stores, and the pool halls to marry dear Nadine, the lass with the ass, who bore him four cherubic children in his image. It was that she-devil who took him from me.’

  ‘From you?’

  ‘As representative of the congregation, I mean. And a devoted couple they are to this day. They deserve each other.’

  ‘Did Falcone continue to attend church after finding his true calling?’

  ‘Only until the day of their wedding. Francis, alas, chose to follow the flaming path of the devil. Rest assured, Mr Jacobus, though he may have parted ways with the great Almighty, the Almighty will never abandon Francis, or anyone else.’

  That gives me a great deal of comfort, Jacobus thought.

  ‘It pains me still,’ Gallivan said, ‘from my heart to my aching … well, from my heart, to think that such an angelic voice would sing the song of a sinner. If only he could have kept his God-given gift, who knows what might have been? Who knows?’

  ‘If every boy whose voice changed left the church,’ Jacobus noted, ‘there wouldn’t be too many men in the congregation, would there? But, then again, maybe you preferred the boys.’