The Violet Crow

by Michael Sheldon

  Bruno rolled his eyes. “Can I look at my notes? So many things happened. I can’t remember all of them.”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  Bruno removed a tattered sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and started to read. “Let’s see. The Quaker connection and SBGN. Those came to me in a dream. As it turned out, the dream was uncannily accurate, but I didn’t know how to interpret it at the time. Alison was at Penn, and SBGN came from the score of the game. I used the basic Hebrew technique of translating numbers into letters.”

  “But that didn’t get us anywhere because it came out backwards, right?”

  “Yeah. I stupidly forget that you read Hebrew from right to left. I didn’t figure it out until I saw Jurevicius’ license plate in the rearview mirror. Speaking of which, it was good to see everyone again today. Biff, Gary, Michelle, Harry, Nancy. I was really glad to see that Randy’s arm is healing.”

  “He’s a tough guy,” said the Chief. “You earned his respect, the way you faced Jurevicius …”

  “We got lucky. The choppers showed up just in the nick of time.” Bruno flushed. “Anyway, let’s just stick to the psychic stuff, OK?”

  “Sure, what’s next?”

  “Gussie Parker. I found him using psychometry.”

  “Right.” The Chief wrote down “psychometry.”

  “And don’t forget, that’s where you met Dora. So you owe me for that, too.”

  “We’ll see. If things keep on the way they are right now, you’ll be owing me. What’s next?”

  Bruno consulted his list. “Remote viewing of Fischer.”

  “Check.”

  “Remote viewing of Jurevicius.”

  “Check. That’s where you saw his wife, right, but didn’t figure out who she was until later.”

  “Yeah,” Bruno admitted. “You’re right. You have to understand that I can only see what the subject is thinking. If Jurevicius had been thinking, There’s my sick wife who I’m cloning, then we’d have solved the whole case right then and there. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.”

  “Right. Anything else?” He scanned his notes. “Let’s see, remote viewing and ongoing surveillance of Alison Wales …”

  —“OK, OK,” grinned Bruno. “Let’s move on to the discovery of the Underground Railroad tunnel, although I have to admit that was just luck.”

  “It was an important find, anyway,” the Chief noted. “I’ll put it down as a value-added service.”

  “Fine.”

  “By the way,” said Chief Black, “did you hear about what’s-his-name? Mr. Shmendrick—the curator at the Lenape King? He’s famous.”

  “No kidding? That’s great. He deserved a break.”

  “He’s miserable now.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Remember how he was always complaining that he didn’t have help there?” explained the Chief. “Now he’s got a huge staff, but that means he’s always busy doing administrative work. There’s nothing hands-on and he hates it.”

  “Poor guy. I like him.”

  “Me too.” The Chief was scribbling more notes. “Lucky for you, I like administrative work. What’s next? How about finding Jurevicius parked by the Mullica River? Was that luck or skill?”

  Bruno had to think about that one. “The boardwalk psychic, Madame Celeste, said it was my lucky day. But nothing about that afternoon seemed that lucky at the time. Looking back, I guess I’d say it was more like destiny.”

  “Hmmm.” The Chief frowned. “There’s no category for ‘destiny’ in our personnel database. Do you mind if I call it ‘value added’ too?”

  “Go ahead.” Bruno yawned and stretched. “I guess that’s it.” He started to get up.

  “No way,” said the Chief. “You’re not getting out of here without explaining what happened between you and the receptionist. You should have a TV show called Channeling Rhonda.”

  “Very funny.” Bruno tried to look away. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me about that. I’d never had an experience like that before. I didn’t even know I could do it.”

  “What was it, like a mind meld or something?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. It was incredibly intimate. I felt like I was breaking into somebody’s house at night and rummaging through all their possessions …”

  “Go on,” urged the Chief. “What is it?” He could see that Bruno was hung up on something. The psychic wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words.

  “I couldn’t see everything,” he said at last. “The whole story about Ginnie Doe, or Maria, was laid out like a suit of clothes on a bed, waiting for you to put them on. But there were other places …”

  The Chief waited patiently. Bruno collected himself and started again. “I said it was like being in somebody’s house … Anyway, there were other doors in there that I couldn’t open. There was a lot of fear connected with them. I don’t know if it was coming from her … or from me.”

  The Chief remained silent, waiting for Bruno’s emotions to settle. “Maybe that’s normal. To have private places that you guard even in your most unguarded moments.”

  “Maybe. Like I said, I never did anything like that before.”

  “What about what you did with McRae’s daughter? Wasn’t that sort of the same thing?”

  “Mimi? No way. Not at all. With Mimi, I was just seeing the general outlines of what she remembered. With Rhonda, I was mirroring every detail of what she thought and felt.”

  “Mimi was the big breakthrough, wasn’t she? Good thing you didn’t pay too much attention to Bill McRae.”

  Bruno grinned sheepishly and rubbed his forehead, still tender from that encounter. “Is that it? Are we done?”

  “Not quite. I have to talk to you about the way you handled Peaches. That was not so hot, to put it mildly.”

  “What could I do?” Bruno protested. “She had her own agenda. Everything she wrote was tipping off Jurevicius to our next moves. We had to stop her.”

  “I told you to steer clear,” the Chief insisted. “You wouldn’t listen.”

  Bruno hung his head.

  “Don’t get down. It’s constructive criticism.” The Chief jostled his shoulder. “Just look at it this way. Public relations is not your job. Let somebody else do it. End of story.” The Chief paused for emphasis. “Bruno, anybody asks for a psychic, I’m recommending you. You did a great job. Thanks.”

  “Thanks, Chief. I appreciate that.” They shook hands.

  “Speaking of Peaches, I brought something I figured you’d like to see.” The Chief tossed a recent issue of the Pest onto the bar. “It has her final article on the case.”

  Bruno scanned it rapidly. “She credits Littlejohn for saving Alison’s life. Unbelievable. He says even if he can’t speak, it won’t stop him from teaching. He’ll just use American Sign Language, ‘which everyone ought to learn anyway.’ Great idea.” Bruno read further. “Hey, what’s this about the Feds looking into the case? What’s that about?”

  “Does that seem strange to you?” replied the Chief, his voice rich with irony. “I guess because Jurevicius is French, it’s being treated as some kind of international incident. National security concerns. It was supposed to be classified information, but somehow Peaches got wind and printed it anyway.”

  “Unbelievable!” Bruno put down the paper. “I wish ’em luck. Maybe they can track down Jurevicius and extradite him.”

  “That’ll be a miracle, if he’s back in France. They’re more likely to name a street after him than send him back here for trial.”

  Bruno’s attention was drifting. He couldn’t help recalling his final exchange with Jurevicius as the cigarette boat roared across the bay and disappeared.

  “But look at this, Bruno.” The Chief was shuffling the pages of the Pest until he found the place where Peaches’ article continued. “This is the part I wanted you to see,” he said excitedly. “Read it out loud.”

  “For me, the part of this case that’s most extraordinary,” Bruno
read, imitating Peaches’ overeducated drawl, “is the spiritual aspect that permeates it from beginning to end. Maria Jurevicius, aka Ginnie Doe, was found in the Quaker meeting house; the Kabbalah was partly responsible for solving the case. What do these two disparate traditions have in common? Light. In Kabbalah, light is everywhere and everything. Divine sparks inhabit every living being. Is this so different than the Quaker’s inner light? I think not. There are no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason.”

  They were both laughing uncontrollably by the time Bruno finished the recitation. “I never realized, Jews and Quakers … are exactly the same. Chief, why’d you do this to me? I can’t control myself. I think I’m gonna plotz.”

  But the Chief showed no mercy. “I’m catchin’ on to this Jewish shtick,” he announced with considerable pride. “I made something up especially for you.”

  Bruno sensed that this was an important moment. “Let’s hear it, Buddy. Show me what you got.”

  Chief Black warmed to the task. “I think you’ll like it because it’s about Peaches …”

  —“Skip the prologue. If you got something to say, say it.”

  “Right,” said the Chief. He was a little bit nervous. “There’s a lot of women you could say …” and he put on a voice that was a pretty good imitation of Bruno’s, “‘with a tuchus like that, who needs brains?’” He paused for effect. “But Peaches is different. With her it’s: ‘With a brain like that, who needs a tuchus?’”

  Bruno looked at him in astonishment. “Chief, that’s incredible.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yeah, I love it. There’s just one problem.”

  “Uh-oh. What’s that?”

  “Generally, people don’t makes up new jokes. They either buy them, or steal them from somebody else.”

  “But … I sort of stole this. You see …”

  —“Chief! I’m sorry. It’s a rule … carved in stone.”

  “But where do new jokes come from, then?”

  “Chief, really. A man your age ought to know …” Bruno stood up and assumed a theatrical pose. “This mystery was only revealed one day when I was at the seashore,” he quoted. “That’s from the Zohar and, as you can see, we are down the shore.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  Bruno continued his exegesis. “Elijah came and asked me, ‘Rabbi, do you know the meaning of Who created these’?”

  “Who created these?” The Chief repeated, somewhat perplexed.

  “By that, Elijah clearly means, ‘Who created these jokes?’” Bruno opined. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I answered”—and don’t forget, I’m speaking as the Rabbi here—“I answered, ‘There are the heavens and their array, the work of the blessed Holy One. Human beings should contemplate them and bless Him.’”

  “So you’re saying jokes come from God?”

  “Yup. The funny ones, anyway.”

  The Chief thought it over. “Let’s try something different,” he suggested, standing and beckoning for Bruno to follow. “There’s an area where they still have ‘vintage’ slots, actual one-armed bandits where real money comes out if you win.”

  “Sounds good to me. I don’t get these computer games anyway …”

  They fought the crowds milling about between the gaming tables and the machines, the televisions, bars and restaurants, the boutiques, and all the other distractions. Eventually, the Chief stopped in front of a slot machine decorated with a trio of Egyptian sphinxes. “Think this is a winner?” he asked.

  “Sure. Why don’t you play it?”

  The Chief put the coin in the slot and pulled the handle. Wheels spun, flashing brightly colored fruits, brass bells, and black bars. Then a red light on top of the machine began throbbing. Mechanical bells rang and sirens sounded wildly. Finally, a cascade of dollar coins spewed out. The silver flowed and flowed, dazzling and brilliant, overflowing his lap and spilling onto the floor.

  He and Bruno fell onto their knees and scooped up coins by the handful; they stuffed them into their pockets and tossed them into the air, laughing and carrying on like children.

  Afterword

  First, I want to acknowledge some deliberate geographical distortions and anachronisms in The Violet Crow that could upset a few people who are familiar with South Jersey—but won’t matter much to anyone else. There is a town called Haddonfield and it is remarkably similar to Gardenfield. It has a school like the one I’ve called Gardenfield Friends with a meeting house in easy walking distance. I attended that school from kindergarten through sixth grade, including Meeting for Worship every Wednesday morning from third grade on.

  “Why didn’t you just call it Haddonfield?” my friend Jim Lyons once asked.

  The answer is that I needed to take some liberties to make my story work. The tunnel and the biotech complex are a couple of examples. Also, there are some features of the region that don’t exist anymore, but I couldn’t let go of them: the racetrack and Tano’s Deli come to mind. So I called the town Gardenfield—just to remind hometown readers that I am taking license to alter reality throughout The Violet Crow.

  I haven’t lived in South Jersey in decades, but the region’s unique character shaped my outlook and I still follow the sports teams and the local news, albeit at a distance. I regret some of my antics as a teenager, so I tried to portray the Gardenfield police as positively as possible—a belated “sorry about that” and “thank you.”

  While I’m apologizing, I might as well get this off my chest—Rhonda’s South Jersey accent. Elmore Leonard’s seventh rule of writing is to use regional dialect sparingly. I probably should have followed his advice. However, I broke all his other commandments, so it seemed a shame to leave out number seven. I love hearing all of the regional accents of the U.S. and trying to identify where the speakers come from. I get especially excited when I hear the distinctive, clipped “o” sound from the mid-Atlantic states. Here on the West Coast, when I tell people where I grew up, they often reply, “Oh, you’re from Joisey.” And I say, “No, that’s a Brooklyn accent; in South Jersey we say “aw,” not “oi.” Mea culpa.

  Attending Haddonfield Friends had a lasting impact on me—and also on many of my classmates. We still meet for occasional reunions of our sixth-grade class, lo, these many years later. The ritual of silent worship strikes a deep, resonant chord.

  We also had the example of headmaster Reed Landis. As I began thinking about The Violet Crow, I recalled an incident in fourth or fifth grade when one of our teachers told us that Master Reed was out sick for a while due to a recurrence of malaria, which he’d contracted as a conscientious objector during World War II. None of my classmates remembered that but, thanks to Reed’s cousin, Sarah Johnson, I was able to locate him in Arizona and speak with him on the phone. He talked freely about his experiences as a CO, which, in the book, I assigned to Master Quentin and described as accurately as possible—with the exception of placing those events in the Vietnam War era rather than during World War II.

  Unfortunately, Master Reed passed away a few years after I spoke with him. I’m honored to be able to tell his story in The Violet Crow. At a time when what he experienced would be widely viewed as torture, it’s remarkable how conscientious Reed Landis and his fellow Quaker COs were in their approach to non-violent protest.

  You would probably not be reading The Violet Crow without the vision and intelligence of Adam Bellow and David Bernstein, who founded Liberty Island and rescued my work from oblivion. When they posed the old question from A Tale of Two Cities, “I hope you care to be recalled to life,” I said, “What! Are you kidding me?” They’ve earned my eternal gratitude.

  Friends and advisers who also helped by reading, commenting, and improving the story include Hallie Gay Walden-Bagley, Charlie Barnett, Gary Carr, Don Chew, Dan Grossman, Ian Lamberton, Don Lippincott, Pat McCarthy, Don McQuinn, Jay Merwin, Manette Moses, Jan Murphy, Francoise Perriot, Thomas Perry, Giuliana Sheldon, E
lena Vega and Janice Willett.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Michael Sheldon

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1409-0

  Liberty Island Media Group

  New York, NY

  www.LibertyIslandMag.com

  Distributed by Open Road Distribution

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  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com