Marley Z and the Bloodstained Violin

by Jim Fusilli

  But the Habishaw was still missing.

  As she watched a small boat glide along the gray-green Hudson, its sails striped in yellows and pinks, Marley felt the warm rays of the Saturday morning sun on her shoulders, revealed beneath the spaghetti straps of her bright-green top. A gentle breeze rustled her hair and stroked her cheeks. Hot and cool at the same time, Marley thought. I like it.

  She turned. Ferenc Gabor’s studio was on the ground floor of what looked like a castle, its big, thick stones the color of old copper. From the west side of the drive at the edge of Riverside Park, it looked like it was built long ago to protect the island from invaders from New Jersey. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn there was a cannon on the roof.

  But it sure is beautiful, Marley thought as she looked both ways to cross the drive. When she looked right, she saw a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt, her hand on her chin in a thoughtful pose. Looking left, there was the crown of Grant’s Tomb way off in the distance.

  A breathless young boy with mousse in his hair and a white dress shirt buttoned all the way to the collar answered Mr. Gabor’s inside door, but remained behind the cast-iron gate, which was covered in chicken wire. Marley figured he was about five years old, maybe six. The violin in his left hand was as big as his head.

  Marley noted he was holding it properly, not with the strings against his ribs and belt.

  “Mr. Gabor, please.”

  Before he could answer, a very tall man with flowing blond hair and pale blue eyes came up behind him and put his long fingers on the boy’s shoulders.

  “Thank you, Felix,” he said patiently. “I’ll take over.”

  A few seconds later, Marley heard from somewhere inside the house the sound of a bow raking across strings. She thought it sounded like a lonely cat crying, and though she didn’t mean to, she grimaced.

  “Ah, yes. Well . . . ,” said the tall man, more or less apologizing. “In ten years, who can tell?”

  “Mr. Gabor?” Marley said.

  “I am he.” His blue silk shirt matched his eyes.

  Marley thought she smelled lavender. “My name is Marley Zimmerman. If you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you about my friend Marisol Poveda.”

  “Oh, Marisol,” he said with a warm smile. “How is she? Better, one would hope.”

  Marley wasn’t sure how to reply. “She’s fine,” she said tentatively.

  “Must’ve been the twenty-four-hour flu.” Mr. Gabor scrunched his face. “Her father said she had all sorts of distress. How gross.”

  “The flu . . . ?”

  “Incidentally, I don’t believe for a moment this folderol about the Habishaw violin. Marisol Poveda? Ridiculous. I told the police as much.”

  “Do you know the Habishaw?”

  “Not personally. But, yes, I’ve heard of it. My heavens, it’s gorgeous.”

  “It could be lost forever,” Marley said.

  “Yes, it could. Like all the others. We treat our instruments with care, my dear, because they simply cannot last.”

  Marley frowned.

  “Wood and strings. A violin is but wood and strings.”

  “And beauty,” Marley added.

  As Felix continued to saw and squeal, Mr. Gabor said, “Now, if there’s nothing else . . .”

  “You’re sure he said the flu?”

  “Absolutely. When a student misses a lesson? My dear, I am forlorn. Absolutely forlorn.”

  He winked.

  Then, his voice suddenly raspy, his words New York coarse, he said, “Look, she missed a lesson and she owes me. That’s the deal. Tell her no check, no more lessons. End of story.”

  Then his lofty manner returned. “Good day, my dear Marley Zimmerman. Be well.”

  Mr. Gabor shut his door.

  Marley stood still, her mouth open, arms draped at her sides, the castle walls climbing high above her.

  The flu?

  Marley slumped back across Riverside Drive, found the nearest bench and sat, her hands under the legs of her baggy white carpenter’s jeans, her flip-flops rocking as if she were a child on a swing.

  Marisol didn’t have the flu.

  Why did she lie to Mr. Gabor?

  A lie makes it seem like she needed an excuse so she could be free in the late afternoon of the day the Habishaw was stolen.

  Or maybe Mr. Gabor lied.

  Falling into her own thoughts, Marley was oblivious to the sweaty joggers, determined little kids on wobbly bicycles with their hopeful parents trotting behind them, spry dogs dragging along their owners. She didn’t even notice the small young woman who smiled a greeting and sat next to her, the New York Times on her lap, cold-sweating Starbuck’s frappuccino in her hand. Big huge sunglasses covered half her face, her Life is Good cap pulled down low.

  Had Marley looked, she would’ve seen the woman was a famous actress. She starred in a sitcom that was on TV in reruns at least four times a night. The characters lived right here in New York City.

  The flu?

  Obviously so not true.

  But, if Mr. Gabor is telling the truth, why would Mr. Poveda call and say his daughter was sick? Would Mr. Poveda . . . ?

  Mr. Poveda.

  Mr. Poveda, who hardly speaks English.

  Could he call to say she had the flu? That she had “all sorts of distress”?

  No, Mrs. Poveda would make that phone call. Or Marisol, no matter how ill.

  So either Mr. Gabor was lying . . .

  Or another man called him and said he was Marisol’s father.

  A man who speaks English.

  “Excuse me?”

  Marley heard a voice. When she turned, she saw her reflection in the actress’s elephant-ears-sized sunglasses.

  The famous actress said, “Who doesn’t speak English?”

  Marley thought she seemed familiar. But she was too excited to try to figure out why. “Marisol’s father.”

  “Oh.” She sipped the cold drink.

  “I mean, he has a little English,” Marley continued, “but he can’t say ‘all sorts of distress.’ That’s an odd figure of speech, right?”

  “Right.” She returned to her Times.

  Marley stood. “See ya,” she said with a little salute-wave.

  “Bye,” the actress replied.

  Mom,I can’t meet you. Going to see Marisol. I’ve go tanidea. Call if you want. Bye.”

  Up early, Marley’s mom had gone down to her Wall Street office for a few hours, and had invited her to a quiet Saturday lunch at the World Financial Center and then to shop for clothes at Century 21 over on Cortlandt Street. Althea Zimmerman had one minor complaint about her daughter: Marley had the same fashion sense as her father, and Zeke dressed himself with no thought at all of what to wear: stripes with checks, checks with stripes; and he mixed colors that hardly spoke to each other. He had jeans older than Marley, and his faded and ragged rock T-shirts were original issue, some a quarter-century old!

  Marley hurried east, the sun rising high over Central Park flooding the side street with brilliant light, its rays ricocheting off car hoods and windshields. She crossed West End Avenue— since Hand went to bubble-headed Man just as she arrived, there was no reason yet to zigzag on her way uptown and over to Columbus—and pressed on toward Broadway, which was crowded with morning shoppers, some in a groggy-eyed search for bagels and breakfast.

  At Broadway, she stopped at the curb to peer around a UPS truck that had double-parked near a row of cars at the meters. On the island in the center of the big, wide street—“It is a broad way,” Teddy once observed—a couple in their eighties sat on a bench. At their feet were maybe a hundred pigeons bobbing at the seeds and bread crumbs raining down on them. When the jaunty, wrinkly man put a few seeds on the brim of his old brown fedora, he suddenly found himself wearing a pigeon hat. He stood carefully then did a little jig—the pigeons on his head and at his feet didn’t stop their cooing and pecking—and his wife laughed in delight. Taxicabs slowed down to watch.

>   Marley wasn’t thinking about pigeons. Her mind was trying to catalog the adult males who knew Marisol took lessons on Tuesday afternoons with Ferenc Gabor. One of them was the man who made Marisol the unwitting agent in the theft of the bloodstained violin.

  Marley was sure of it.

  The thief had made a big mistake.

  He didn’t know Marisol’s dad was still learning English, and that he spoke with an accent.

  Mahjoob?

  Mahjoob somehow tricked Marisol into believing she had attended her lesson. That was an essential part of his scam— Marisol not realizing she had been coerced into taking the Habishaw.

  But no, it wasn’t Mahjoob. Or Crum, as he was born.

  Crum didn’t have any mystical powers. He was a creepy petty thief.

  Besides, Sgt. Sampson had spoken to him, or said he was going to.

  Marley thought, Maybe I should go to the 20th Precinct and tell Sgt. Sampson what Mr. Gabor said. The precinct house was on 82nd Street, not far from where she was right—

  “Marley.”

  She didn’t immediately turn.

  “Marley!”

  Wendell Justice was walking toward her.

  Actually, he was trying to run, but his shins kept bumping into the laundry cart he was pushing.

  “Hey, Wendell.”

  He wore the same white shirt as Mr. Gabor’s Felix, though his top button was open and the tails flapped free. She noticed Wendell’s khaki shorts had been pressed.

  She looked into the cart. “Laundry, huh?”

  “My mom has us checking out every place in the neighborhood for the best prices,” he said sheepishly. “I tried to convince her that it’s a cabal of some sort, but I don’t think she believes me.”

  “Price fixing in the laundry business,” Marley said with a shrug. “It’s a fact.”

  In the cart, a plump hamper filled with freshly laundered clothes was topped with a smaller, rectangular brown-paper package.

  “You get your school shirts laundered?” Marley asked. That could be expensive.

  “No, no,” he said. “Those are my uncle’s—to go with his uniform. My mom does my shirts.” Suddenly, his cheeks flushed red. “Actually, the laundry cleans them and then my mom presses them.”

  Marley was thinking of Marisol, Mr. Gabor, Sgt. Sampson . . . “You know, Wendell, they sell washer-dryers that fit in a closet.”

  “We don’t have a closet,” he said. “Not an extra one. It’s a pretty tiny apartment.”

  Wendell seemed embarrassed, and Marley suddenly realized she had been insensitive. She felt bad for her friend.

  Apologizing, she realized, would only make it worse.

  Marisol would have to wait a few minutes, and Sgt. Sampson too.

  But only a few . . .

  “Mind if I walk with you?” she said. “I’m going uptown . . .”

  “Great,” he said. “I just have to stop at my uncle’s building.”

  He tapped the brown-paper wrapping.

  “No prob,” she replied. “Tell me about how you learned to play the drums. You’re pretty good, you know.”

  Wendell nudged the wire cart onto its back wheels, and he and Marley continued north on Broadway, his heart fluttering nervously inside his chest.

  Maybe Marley would like to share a couple of slices of pizza.

  Or Chinese egg-drop soup.

  chapter 11

  Outside the stately apartment building on West End Avenue where he worked, Nicholas Justice struggled as he hauled two huge pieces of matching luggage toward a waiting taxicab. His fists gripped their handles, and he wheezed and grunted as if each bag held cinderblocks. His uniform hat teeter-tottered above his red face.

  As he hoisted the bags into the taxi’s trunk, he seemed to be getting a lecture from a young, radish-shaped man in a pink Izod shirt. The man pointed toward downtown, snap-jabbing his finger.

  The doorman adjusted the luggage until it fit snug in the trunk, then flexed his crumpled fingers as he stood upright. Radish man continued to hassle him.

  “Uh-oh,” Wendell said, slowing his pace.

  A too-thin woman who appeared to be the man’s wife tapped her wristwatch impatiently as she waited at the taxi’s backseat.

  Mr. Justice squeezed past the barking man to open the yellow door.

  “I bet it’s nothing more than the taxi is facing the wrong way,” Wendell whispered.

  Marley thought, So what? Just make a U-turn. Looking at the man in the pink shirt, she said, “What a creep.”

  The woman slipped inside the taxi, her silk slacks slithering across the broad seat, and Mr. Justice closed the back door. As the taxi pulled away—and made a U-turn—Mr. Justice removed his burgundy hat and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Walking toward the shadows under the building’s awning, he looked up and spotted his nephew and his friend.

  Marley expected he’d be embarrassed—the man in the pink shirt had clearly bullied Mr. Justice because he knew the doorman couldn’t really argue in return. If he did, he might lose his job.

  But Mr. Justice suddenly brightened, and the tension vanished from his face as they approached.

  “Wendell, is this your good friend Marley Zimmerman?” he asked with a broad grin. “Marley Zimmerman? Daughter of the famous 3Z. And of Althea Fontenot Zimmerman, senior vice president at—?”

  “Yes,” Marley said. “That’s me.”

  He thrust out his hand.

  She really didn’t want to shake it—she knew he was playing her, acting like a grown-up version of the 3Z scruffs who’d hang outside her family’s brownstone—but she did.

  “Sorry I didn’t recognize you, Marley,” he said, as he adjusted his burgundy jacket. “It’s been one heckuva day. Say, you go to Beacon, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Your friend Marisol, she’s in some kind of trouble, isn’t she?”

  “Uncle Nick,” Wendell said as he steadied the laundry cart. “She didn’t do it.”

  “No, I’m sure she didn’t,” he replied. “Seems like a fine young lady—”

  “Hey, Wendell,” Marley said suddenly. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Oh. You sure?”

  She patted him on the back. “People, places . . . You know.”

  “You tell your parents Nicholas Justice said hi,” Wendell’s uncle exclaimed. “Would you do that?”

  She nodded.

  Backing away, edging uptown, she looked at Wendell.

  She said, “Later.”

  Wendell’s face turned beet red. Tomato red. Cherry red.

  Something like that.

  Marley was still miffed at Mr. Justice’s insincerity when she arrived at the busy 20th Precinct. A harried cop at the desk told her Sgt. Sampson was out. Marley thanked her, left her cell phone number and marched out, putting the sergeant’s card back in her pocket when she returned to 82nd Street.

  Standing amid the white-and-blue NYPD patrol cars parked like check marks at the curb, she looked east, then west, all the while considering what she’d do next. It was too late to take the subway downtown to have a mellow date with her mom.

  She speed-dialed Marisol.

  Voice mail, the greeting in two languages.

  "Marisol, it’s me. Call right away. Bye.”

  She double-checked her cell. No, she didn’t have Marisol’s home phone number.

  Maybe she’d walk over to the building where her father was one of the supers. No, his shift had ended. He had either just gotten to sleep or was out with his family.

  Go to the boutique where Mrs. Poveda’s employed? It wasn’t far from here. No. No sense in upsetting her—working among all those colorful clothes, great fragrances, and inquisitive customers probably gave her a chance to think about something other than what had happened.

  What next?

  “Teddy, I know you’re with your sister and cousin, but give me a call. Bye.”

  She needed to figure out who pretended to be Marisol’s fa
ther when he called Mr. Gabor.

  That man was involved.

  That man took Marisol out of her routine.

  Turned her into a zombie who didn’t remember she’d missed her lesson.

  That man who had her under his control when the Habishaw was taken.

  Who could it be?

  What’s up?”

  Marley’s father was absolutely drenched in sweat. Which is what happens when you jog five miles around the Central Park Reservoir in sneakers, cut-off denim shorts, and a sleeveless flannel shirt. With Skeeter up front in a stroller.

  Skeeter in her little canvas hammock, bouncing, jiggling, laughing. In her Time Traveler bucket hat, Hawkgirl T-shirt and diaper.

  “I’m thinking,” Marley replied. “Hard.”

  She was on a stool at the kitchen island, blowing on her spoon, sipping the stracciatella Mr. Otto had given her and she’d reheated when she returned home from the Two-Oh.

  “It’s, like, 142 degrees out and you’re having soup?” he asked.

  Poor Skeeter. Resting in his sweaty, bony arms. Not that she minded. She tossed off her hat and kept giggling.

  “Almost as dumb as jogging at noon when it’s 142 degrees,” Marley replied.

  “Ouch,” he said. “I have been put down.”

  "I’m sorry,” she said quickly. "My mind is, like, really, really throbbing.”

  “Unwitting agents and all that?”

  “Liars and thieves and somebody who would trap a sweet kid like Marisol.”

  He walked gingerly around the island and placed Skeeter in her playpen. “Okay if I shower first?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if you can help, Dad. It’s a big mess, and I’m nowhere.”

  He ventured back toward the sink to wash his hands. Over the rush of water, he said, “I’m really sorry, Marley.”

  “I know.”

  Carrying a damp facecloth, he returned to Skeeter, who had already started organizing her blocks.

  “You’ve done a lot, Marley,” he said. “The police believe you, and your vice principal does too. I’m sure Marisol would be in a lot more trouble if it wasn’t for you.”

  Skeeter scrunched, squinted and smiled as her dad wiped her hands and cheeks.