by Gerald Elias
“So let me tell you the second thing in fifty words or less before the quartet starts rehearsing,” said Nathaniel. “Lenskaya has a garage attached to her house. Coming from inside it I heard one of the songs from ‘Winterreise.’ I think it was the recording of Goerne singing and Brendel on piano.”
“Someone has good taste. So what?”
“Jake, it was Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ coming out of a garage! In Queens!”
“Which song?”
“Not sure. There are twenty-four in the cycle. It’s hard to remember them all.”
“Sing the melody.”
“All right.” Nathaniel cleared his throat and discreetly hummed a plaintively despairing melody in a lustrous tenor, beautifully in tune, with a mellow, deeply felt vibrato.
“My, you’re in fine voice.”
“I’ve been singing in a gospel choir,” said Nathaniel.
“Since when?”
“Since we got to know Rose Grimes. She really loved her choir so I thought I’d try it out. I go every Sunday morning.”
“You really like that stuff?”
“No, I just sing it because I’m an oppressed, six-figure–earning black man. Actually I hate it. Any more stupid questions?”
“That was pretty dumb, huh?”
“Uh-huh. For your information, I’ve also been teaching cello and music theory at the Rose Grimes School.”
“No shit. I thought you locked your cello in the closet for good, years ago.”
“I did, until Yumi and BTower talked me into dusting it off and giving some of those Harlem kids lessons. BTower was right; between him on violin and me on cello, that’s about half the professional black classical musicians in the city. He said he thought I’d be ‘an inspiring role model.’”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be the one to talk, then, neither. So do you know the song or not?”
“‘Einsamkeit,’” Jacobus said, “loneliness,” whereupon he immediately supplied the text in German, then in English: “‘As a dark cloud passing through serene skies, as through the fir tops a feeble breeze blows: Thus I wend my way with heavy tread through bright and joyous life, alone and ungreeted. Must the—’”
“Well, I’ll be amazed and blessed!” said Nathaniel. “How did you know that right off the bat like that?”
“When we were students at Oberlin?”
“Yes?”
“There was this girl I was trying to impress.”
“Helen?” Nathaniel guessed, thinking of Helen Kaufman, who had been the pianist in their trio for many years.
“Nah, another one, a singer,” said Jacobus, already ruing having brought up the subject. “Paula something. She loved Schubert.”
“Nice voice?”
“Big tits.”
“Oh!” said Nathaniel. “So did you impress her?”
“Not enough.”
Like a vicious saber cut, the first five notes of “Death and the Maiden” sliced through their conversation, bringing their ability and desire to talk further to a swift halt. Jacobus could tell from the first extended phrase that Ivan Lensky was a violinist to be reckoned with, adept at combining virtuoso technique with musical personality. He could tell from the second phrase, however, the truth of what had been said about Lensky as a chamber musician. Lensky seemed to have little notion that center stage was no longer his, refusing to allow the inner voices, the second violin and viola, to take over the reins when the music called for it. Was this a case of inflated ego, or, Jacobus wondered, was it simply artistic intransigence? As the music progressed, Lensky seemed to be trying to make the point that he was the star and the others the supporting cast. Not only was that kind of musical narcissism the kiss of death for the psyche of a quartet, it made it almost physically impossible for the musicians to hear what they needed to in order to play together. Butting heads with Kortovsky, the reputed archmanipulator, would have created a combustible relationship. Jacobus now understood the wisdom of the selection of Yumi over Lensky for the second-violin position, even though as a soloist the latter might be able to pull off the Tchaikovsky Concerto with greater dazzle and panache. But Lensky apparently couldn’t tell the difference between a concerto and a quartet.
Extrapolating from Lensky’s playing, which combined raw power with less enviable unrefined musical gloss, Jacobus pictured a young, strongly built man, maybe late twenties. From his ostentatiously confident facility combined with blatant disregard for the other musicians, Jacobus envisioned someone of overt egotism, someone who liked—Jacobus corrected himself—someone who needed to be noticed above others, so to his mental image Jacobus tossed in a black turtleneck and a gold Rolex.
At first, what little discussion among the quartet that was audible to Jacobus was perfunctory, limited to very basic issues of ensemble and intonation. Jacobus could think of several reasons for the laconic exchanges: One, they were simply sticking to the game plan of coordinating the music with all the “enchantments”; two, they knew that as soon as Kortovsky returned they wouldn’t have to bother with Lensky anyway; three, it was a wasted effort to get Lensky to change; and four, they didn’t like talking to each other to begin with.
Little by little the comments among the quartet became more and more pointed and animated, and as a result, louder. Most of it was between Haagen and Lensky. Yumi said little. Lenskaya nothing at all.
“Why you make ritardanda?” argued Lensky, finishing off the Italian words that ended in o with a heavily inflected Russian accent, so that ritardando became ritardanda. “Is impossible to play spiccatissima when you make ritardanda.” To Jacobus’s ear, the comment was not so much belligerent as it was surprise that the three others weren’t doing Lensky’s bidding.
“Ivan,” said Haagen, “we’ve decided to play that on the string. We like the notes a bit longer so you can actually hear a tone. That might be why you thought it was getting slower, but that’s the way we’ve done it for years. After all, it’s Schubert.” There was a moment of dramatic silence. “It’s not Rossini.”
Ah, thought Jacobus, actually rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Now it begins! Throwing down the gauntlet, and so soon! He knew that “It’s not Rossini” was a thinly veiled and no doubt intentional insult to Lensky’s musicianship, suggesting he didn’t understand the difference between Schubert’s dark profundity and Rossini’s opera buffa congeniality. Haagen had probably taken that brief pause to decide whether or not it was worth firing the shot off the bow. Would Lensky take the bait or would he respond diplomatically? If the latter, the rehearsal could probably proceed constructively, but Lensky would lose face. From what he’d constructed of Lensky’s personality, if the other three musicians had been men, Lensky might have been inclined to back down, but …
“I see,” said Lensky. “What you say is, Schubert is Schubert. Rossini is Rossini…”
Maybe I was wrong, Jacobus thought.
“And shit is shit,” Lensky added.
Ah.
Distracting Jacobus from the main event was the approach of the cosmetics counter from Bloomingdale’s.
“Mr. Jacobus?” He felt a light touch on his shoulder.
“Yeah.” His eyes began to tear and his tobacco-frayed lungs began to wheeze. Even his congested nose was no match for the excessive perfume that was now giving him an allergic reaction from hell.
“I’m Sheila. Sheila Rathman. InHouseArtists.”
He regretted having to turn his attention from the rest of the quartet’s love spat, but he could predict a stalemate. In any event, he needed information from Rathman.
“May I have a seat?”
“As many as you want.”
Rathman’s polite titter conveyed some uncertainty whether his intent had been facetious; regardless, he did detect her fragranced self waft to the seat in front of him.
“I just wanted to find out if you’ve made any progress finding Aaron,” she said, with more than a little concer
n. Must’ve just heard the exchange between Lensky and Haagen, thought Jacobus, which would inflame any manager’s ulcer.
“Not really.”
“None at all?”
“What do I look like, Have Gun, Will Travel?”
“Well, is there anything you can tell me?”
“There are some things you can tell me. Number one, you told Nathaniel that the last you heard from Kortovsky was at the end of the tour.”
“Yes.”
“When at the end of the tour?”
“After the last concert. The one in Lima.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t really say anything.”
“Then what didn’t he really say?”
“It wasn’t a phone call. It was an e-mail. Two e-mails.”
“Whatever. Honey, you want to obfuscate, fine. But go waste someone else’s time. I want to listen to a little Schubert.”
“Let’s just say they were personal messages, then,” said Rathman. “But Aaron indicated he was planning on being back by now.”
Jacobus, well-disposed to stubbornness if not patience and sensing there was more Rathman had to say, persevered through an increasingly uncomfortable silence. He became aware that the quartet had stopped playing sometime earlier. Either they were taking a short break or, possibly, a permanent one.
She gave in and filled the void. “But I’ve deleted the messages.”
“Well,” said Jacobus, “I don’t know anything about computers or these e-mails, but I presume in this day and age they can be undeleted. After all, this ain’t Watergate and you’re not Rose Mary Woods. So we’ll need to see the e-mail, and we’ll need to find out if he sent or received e-mails or phone calls to or from anyone else after his little love note to you.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” said Rathman.
“What don’t you think’s possible? That they can be undeleted, or that there were communications after his little love note?”
“Please don’t refer to it that way,” Rathman asked. Jacobus could almost feel the heat from Rathman’s cheeks leach through and melt her makeup. “It really wasn’t like that. But what I mean is that we don’t know his user names or passwords to get into his server. Maybe we could figure these out—”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but you better get someone on that right away.” Nathaniel. Yes, he was the one who could do that task.
“Hey, Nathaniel,” Jacobus shouted, but his voice echoed in the hall with the only response being an anonymous voice shouting back, “Quiet!” When the hell had Nathaniel left?
“Is there anything else, Mr. Jacobus?”
“You need to open Kortovsky’s instrument trunk.”
“I’m sorry. We can’t do that.”
“Hey, do you want to find out where he is, or are you trying to make sure he stays MIA?”
“It’s just that we don’t have the combination—”
“Drill.”
“The insurance company won’t let anyone other than the owner open the trunks. It will void the policy, and if the instrument has been damaged … And it’s an Amati!” she said, as if that explained everything. “Why do you need that, anyway?”
“According to Haagen—you know, his wife—if the members of the quartet were planning on vacationing at the end of the tour, they would put their instruments in the trunk to be picked up upon their return. If they were planning on coming back right away, they would more likely take the instrument with them on the plane. So if Kortovsky’s fiddle is in the trunk, there’s a greater probability that he actually did go off rock climbing. If it’s not in the trunk it might be more likely that he’s holed up in this neck of the woods because he would have taken it on a plane with him.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You do that. One more thing, since you’ve been so helpful.”
“What’s that?”
“What hotel was Kortovsky staying at in Lima?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, please.”
“Really. I don’t. The musicians book their accommodations themselves and send me the bill for reimbursement later.”
Jacobus fumed, trying to figure how he was going to tell Ochoa Romero he couldn’t discover even the simplest information, but apparently Rathman thought his silence meant he wasn’t buying her answer, so she added, “I can tell you where the other three stayed because they sent me their receipts, but I can’t tell you Aaron’s.”
“Thanks. You’ve been a doll.”
Suddenly someone grasped the back of his neck with extraordinary strength and twisted it in directions Jacobus didn’t think anatomically possible, reminding him why he would never go to a chiropractor.
“Ha!” laughed the voice that belonged to the hand that now released its powerful grip.
Jacobus recombined the voice, the accent, the strength, and the attitude.
“Ah, Lensky,” said Jacobus. He rubbed the back of his neck. “What a pleasure.”
“So, Mr. Jacobus, you like Sheila? She can make a man happy. Ha-ha!”
“I have to go,” said Rathman.
Jacobus heard the seat on which Rathman had been sitting spring up with a thump and her footsteps retreat with far greater alacrity than when she had arrived.
“So, how you like qvartet?” Lensky continued, with the accent on the qvar. “Schubert, what great composer! Like Shostakovich. You and I know this. We are colleagues. We are moo-zee-shns. I know all about you. You understand this.” He slapped Jacobus on the back hard enough to leave fingerprints and laughed. Jacobus checked his dentures to make sure they hadn’t fallen out and prayed he might survive Lensky’s sense of humor.
Jacobus had no idea what Lensky knew “all about” him, but he let that pass, along with his chutzpah to refer to Jacobus, about forty years his senior, as his colleague.
Rather, he asked, “Seems you had a slight disagreement with the violist.”
Lensky laughed again. “Bah! What they know about ar-teek-uh-lay-shn? Schubert, he writes dots. Da! Da! Da! Staccatissima! This is important. They play woo-woo-woo. This is not staccatissima. This is borscht. My mother, she knows right way, but doesn’t play.”
“Why not?”
“Because then she lose her job. This is the way things work. I say you more but now I go work.”
“Yeah, what you say me?” asked Jacobus, testing how far he could push Lensky’s insensitivity.
“Ha!” said Lensky. “You have accent too! I know, for example, where is Kortovsky.”
“Really?”
“Sure, but you meet me later. Seven o’clock.”
“Sorry. Have to walk dog.” That was a lie, but he wanted to talk to Nathaniel before meeting Lensky. “Make it nine. Where?”
“My friend, he has place for drinking. Private. Musicians only. Guys. Forty-eighth Street and Ninth Avenue. Downstairs. Name Circle of Fifths. My guest.”
Before Jacobus could respond, a massive whack on his back propelled him forward. If he hadn’t instinctively put his hands in front of him, his head would have been driven into the back of the seat so recently vacated by Rathman.
Forceful though the shove was, in Jacobus’s mind it wasn’t close to being sufficiently violent to have elicited the scream that immediately ensued. From his limited experience with screams, they meant one of three things: pain, fear, or revulsion. This one, from the vicinity of the stage, didn’t sound like pain. Rather, it seemed to contain equal parts fear and revulsion. Maybe more revulsion. He heard footsteps approach him down the aisle, first walking fast, then running, then slowing down to a walk again.
“Mr. Jacobus—”
It was Ramsey.
“Please come with me,” he said, apparently forgetting, or ignoring, Ivan Lensky. “Yumi has found something in Annika’s case.”
“What? A dead viola?”
“No,” said Ramsey, as if Jacobus’s suggestion was serious. “No, it is something dead.
That’s true…”
“Come on, Power. You’ve got the gift of gab. Spit it out like a good boy.”
“It’s an appendage…”
No. It couldn’t be, thought Jacobus. It just couldn’t.
“What kind of appendage?”
“It’s a finger.”
It could.
ELEVEN
“All I wanted was to hear a little Schubert,” Jacobus lamented. And where the hell was Nathaniel? Momentarily disoriented, he felt a strong grip on his arm. “Let’s go,” said Ivan Lensky, “we go see what was,” and ushered Jacobus through the burgeoning chaos toward the backstage area. Panicked dancers from The Movement flitted around them, careening into each other like so many leotarded bumper cars. One of them, maybe it was Fern, whispered to another that she had been told “by Conrad” that Power Ramsey had planned the whole scenario with a fake finger in order to put everyone on edge for the performance. “You know, like bring us closer to the d-word.” Wishful thinker, Conrad.
By the time they arrived backstage, the police, amazingly enough, were already there. Lensky deposited Jacobus in a chair against the wall in between the curtain ropes and sandbags and departed to find his mother but reminded him to meet him later at the Circle of Fifths. “This,” he said, meaning the current chaos, “is all part of Kortovsky big plan. I say to you tonight.”
The next voice directed at him was all too familiar, and though Jacobus would have chosen to ignore it, he knew that was futile.
“Why am I not surprised to see you here?” the voice said, with a combined inflection of Manhattan, Jewish, and cop.
“Perhaps, Detective Malachi, because nothing would surprise an investigator of your talents.”
“Do I detect a note of sarcasm?”
“You’re the detective. You figure it out.”
“Lieutenant,” a young Hispanic voice interrupted. “We’ve got the lady that found the finger.”
Jacobus jumped in. “Was it a real finger?” He immediately knew he sounded like an idiot.
“No, Jacobus. It was a pretend finger. That’s why we’re here on this pretend assignment.”