Devil's Trill

by Gerald Elias

  “And second?”

  “Second? Oh, yeah. Second, if for some reason I had been wrong—and it looks like I was, doesn’t it?—well, I wouldn’t have wanted to scandalize your name out of error, or Max’s name either. Y’know, when he told me that Yumi was his last student, for a moment I thought there might have been a reason for that which I really didn’t want to know. That he might have been involved also. I hadn’t considered that possibility, and it shocked me for a while.”

  “How did you determine he wasn’t involved?”

  “If he had been, he never would have led me to you, right? He would have sent me on a wild-goose chase to protect you.

  “You know, Kate, that violin has ruined too damn many lives. You were concerned enough about the repercussions to wait through two husbands before trying to make the world a better place. What good would it have done for me to tell Furukawa that the whole HashimotoShinagawa clan stole the Piccolino Strad? The least I could do was respect your desire for anonymity.”

  “Jake, you’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about me. But what’s to become of you? You’ve got to go back and face the music for something I’ve done. Couldn’t you give them your cooperation from here?”

  Suddenly he felt hotter than the water. There was an exquisite ache between his legs that he refrained from defining, though he knew he hadn’t felt it for a long time. He drained the sake in his cup.

  “Are you propositioning me, Kate?”

  “We’re a little too old for that, aren’t we? Let’s simply call it an open invitation.”

  Jacobus sat in silence, for once not knowing how to break it.

  “Jake,” Kate said. Her voice had changed; it was lower, even in its whisper. Was she making an effort to stay in control of it? “I saw how you touched that violin earlier this evening.”

  He was ashamed of himself for that display and had hoped it would never be brought up. Was she going to rub it in now?

  Kate continued. “I have to admit, it made me horrifically jealous.” She paused. “Do I get my turn?”

  Suddenly Jacobus felt momentarily sober. He said hoarsely, “You know, my old teacher, Dr. Krovney, used to say—”

  “No violin lessons now, Professor Jacobus. Please answer my question. Would you care to know what I look like?”

  “ ‘Care’? Would I ‘care’? Why would I ‘care’?” asked Jacobus.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. That’s part of the invitation.” Kate took Jacobus’s hands in hers and placed them on her face.

  With the fingertips, uncharacteristically reluctant and fumbling, that had taught him how to see, Jacobus explored her face. As his fingers moved, gradually more and more analytically, by fractions of an inch, Jacobus’s inner turmoil threatened to tear him apart. There was no way that Kate, immobile, could comprehend the full force of his will to continue, to keep his trembling hands from recoiling. He touched her skin, her eyes (green, no doubt), her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her cheeks, her nose, her ears, her lips, her chin, her jaw, her hair, her forehead, her temples, back to her eyes for a moment, interpreting every feature, picturing her in his mind’s eye, assimilating this new data with the composite image he had based only upon her voice, her handshake, and her story. He put his hands around her neck and traced the line of her collarbone. He halted at her shoulders, indecisive. Kate remained motionless, breathing slowly. He finally withdrew his hands, placing them on his own thighs in the steaming water.

  “Huh,” he muttered.

  “That’s all?” asked Kate.

  “Okay, so you’re more beautiful than I thought,” stammered Jacobus.

  “That’s quite flattering for an old lady to hear, though from the way you say it I can’t tell whether it really is a compliment or whether you’re just peeved you might have been mistaken,” teased Kate.

  “The former, I suppose.”

  It was Jake’s turn to pause.

  “There was a tear on your cheek,” he said.

  Kate suddenly lunged forward, sobbing. She put her arms around Jacobus’s neck, pressing her forehead against his. Jacobus felt her breasts cling to his chest, wet from perspiration and the steamy mist rising from the furo. He tried to ignore the sensation, and though he knew he should, he could not put his arms around her to console her.

  “What have I done, Jake?” Kate cried. “What have I done? I’ve spent my life raising and training a daughter and a granddaughter to satisfy my revenge. I’ve taught them to steal. I’ve poisoned them. I’ve made you suspect your closest friends and they suspect you of theft and murder. I’ve—”

  “Nonsense! I can’t think of anything better that’s happened to me . . . Yumi . . . and you. Nonsense!”

  “But how can I ever forgive myself?”

  “Hey, honey, don’t give yourself too much credit. It’s me you should forgive. All your plans would have worked out if it wasn’t for me being such a royal pain in the ass.”

  Kate sniffed. “Jake, thank you for making me smile.”

  What am I supposed to say now? he thought.

  Her hands were still around his neck. He could feel her tears on his cheek, her warm breath on his skin. Hope her nose isn’t running. Ah, who gives a shit?

  Kate pulled herself closer to Jacobus. Her mouth was next to his ear. The pace of her breathing changed.

  “May I ask you another question?” Kate said.

  Jacobus swallowed.

  “Could I tell you what you look like? The same way?” asked Kate.

  Jake felt Kate’s fingers on his face. He sat very still.

  Her fingers began to move.

  “Stop,” said Jacobus abruptly.

  “But Jake,” said Kate.

  “I said stop.”

  Kate remained motionless, then moved away.

  “You are a sweet man, Mr. Jacobus, and I owe you a great deal. But now I should leave. You have taken advantage of an elderly woman quite enough. Good night.”

  “Good night, Miss Padgett.”

  Jacobus remained in the furo for . . . he didn’t know how long, though the Suntory bottle was now empty. It was so quiet. His life had come full circle. A completed pattern? Why go back and be imprisoned? MAP would continue—or not. The true thief would be found—or not. The killer would be found—or not. It didn’t really matter. He had found Kate Padgett, yes, but with that he had confronted himself. There was nothing left for him to know.

  Slowly he let himself slide down into the water until his entire body, head and all, was submerged. He held his breath. The warmth enveloped him. Whether he came up again or not did not concern him.

  The ivy embraced him, pulling him down, as the eye watched impassively. This time he didn’t resist. With his abused lungs, he knew it wouldn’t take long. Even when, as if seeing something in front of him that had been there all along, he understood with clarity who Victoria’s killer was, he let the ivy have its way. All he needed to do now was open his mouth. Let the air out. Let the water in. He had struggled all his life. This would be easy. He opened his mouth.

  The ivy, abruptly entangling in his hair, painfully yanked Jacobus upward. With an unrelenting grip, it pulled and pulled and he spun around like a small fish on a large hook. He was being lurched in odd directions. Still he did not resist though the pain on his scalp was intense. He was on his back and the ivy pressed with immense weight upon his chest, like a python, over and over again, constricting and releasing. Suddenly, out of his open mouth spewed a torrent of vomit, whiskey, and water. He coughed out some more of it and then wheezed in a rush of air.

  “If this is another of your Japanese traditions,” said Nathaniel, easing the pressure of his hands off Jacobus’s chest, “you can count me out.”

  RECAPITULATION

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Sitting at his desk, a CD of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony playing in the background at low volume, Lilburn read Rachel’s notes from yesterday’s MAP meeting one more time. He had asked for the meeting after he found out h
is initial information about Jacobus’s arrest was incorrect, or as the Times later informed its readers in its retraction, “premature.” Rachel’s notes, more a litany of questions and doubts, reflected the palpable swirl of confusion that engulfed them.

  1. Jacobus killed Victoria? (General inclination to assume.)

  2. J. alive?

  3. If not, did someone kill both V. and him?

  4. If alive, where? And if so, plotting to kill other MAP members?

  5. Where are Williams and Japanese girl?

  6. Did he kill them too? Or are they accomplices?

  7. What about Piccolino? J. runs off with it?

  8. How does all reflect on MAP? Deeper trouble? No trouble at all?

  Lilburn then reread his own brief reflections: “Not going well. Not at all. Failed to make them see light.”

  It had been Strella’s idea for Lilburn to write the last-minute story about MAP’s shock over the murder and to mention the “memorial fund” set up in Victoria’s memory. Strella pointed out the opportunity to obtain positive media spin and contributions—tax-deductible, of course.

  What Strella had not bargained on, though, was Lilburn’s insinuation of MAP’s financial impropriety in the story. Lilburn had added that tidbit right before it went to press, making any retraction impossible. This issue had become the main subject of the meeting’s agenda.

  “I think it was a big mistake, Martin,” Strella had said. His tone implied, “I am now about to cut your balls off.” What Lilburn kept in his back pocket, figuratively and literally, was a tape recording addressed to him that he had found sitting on his desk the day of Victoria’s murder, a tape recording about Victoria and Cynthia Vander, as told by Anthony Strella to Daniel Jacobus.

  This tape was the lit fuse that could cause MAP to implode. The implications of this conversation in regard to Victoria’s murder, whether founded or not, had ramifications that would reduce MAP’s deceitful financial foundations to rubble. And Lilburn had no doubt that Jacobus, wherever he was, would make that tape available to the authorities even if they were strapping him into the electric chair. Seeing the inevitability of this outcome, Lilburn had chosen to make his first step toward exoneration by putting himself on record in the Times before he could be dissuaded by anyone.

  In his notes, Lilburn had written: “Boris terribly shaken. Shrunken? Ill? More by Piccolino than Victoria? Possible? ‘Oh, to mourn the theft more than mere mortal’s death!’ ”

  Lilburn retrieved the key under his desk blotter and unlocked the bottom drawer, from which he removed a locked diary. His wallet was in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. In the wallet, behind his social security card, was another, smaller key, with which he opened the diary. He reviewed his latest entry:

  Jacobus, of course, had been right. I suppose I had known that all along. That was the essence of it. How had it been possible for me to have lost my way so badly? What was the point at which my intentions became corrupted? Was there any one point? Even if it hadn’t been for money, my opinions would still have been unethical, wouldn’t they? Have I used my position, glibly dispensing life-affecting judgment upon true musicians, simply to provide fodder for my egotism? Have I been crucifying others to assuage my own failure as a musician?

  He began writing.

  I feel like one of New York’s magnificent old stone buildings—Carnegie Hall, perhaps—which, over generations, accumulated layer upon layer of grime, of soot, of pigeon excrement, which, heedless of the rock’s hardness, seeped into its very pores, changing its color from sun-warmed umber to dripping funereal black. There was no single moment of transformation when the stone was clean and then not clean, but it became covered in filth for so long that that is what people thought the building was supposed to look like. Only when the building was sandblasted—as I had been sandblasted by Jacobus—did the vibrant stone return to life.

  But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes the stone is marred irreparably by the corrosive chemistry of acid and mineral, an intermingling so debasing and destabilizing that no amount of restoration can return the building to structural health. Sometimes the building, in the interest of safety, has to be razed to the ground, leaving a gaping emptiness in the horizon where a glorious monument to human achievement once stood.

  Is it too late for me to extricate the filth from my soul?

  After the second MAP meeting, Lilburn had made a stealthy incursion into MAP’s computer banks, obtaining financial data reserved for the accountants and lawyers. He had pored over the numbers, summarized them, translated them into comprehensible form. “Scrutinized them up the ass,” as Goldbloom had said. He had not slept.

  His presentation at yesterday’s meeting, painstakingly prepared, diplomatically worded, had moved only Dedubian. Grimsley, trembling from anxiety and drink, morbidly concerned with being assassinated by Jacobus, still didn’t seem to comprehend. Rachel was cold, unresponsive, predictable.

  Strella understood immediately. He hadn’t needed Lilburn’s numbers. He knew them all by heart. Strella’s initial advice “to play it by ear until this all blows over” was accepted by the others but rejected by Lil-burn and, haltingly, by Dedubian.

  That’s when Strella’s threat came, calmly delivered.

  “If you pursue this, Martin, you’ll wish you got off as easy as Victoria.”

  Lilburn turned up the volume on the Bruckner symphony, whose plodding predictability had always facilitated his ability to concentrate on meaningful things without distraction. His story—his most important story—was almost finished and he did not want the errant noises of the office surrounding his cubicle to deflect his concentration. He had commanded the receptionist to block any calls from getting through to him. It was essential that he get the wording exactly right.

  The phone rang.

  “Dammit,” he said, growling into the receiver. “What do you want?”

  Silence.

  “I repeat, what do you want?”

  A voice at the other end said, “Bruckner Fourth?”

  “Jacobus!” Lilburn’s story immediately left his thoughts.

  Jacobus said, “What do you listen to that shit for? I thought you had taste.”

  “Wait! Wait! Let me turn it down. I can hardly hear you.”

  Lilburn spun on his swivel chair and lunged for the volume control, the centrifugal force almost causing him to be boomeranged out of the office. Adjusting the volume, he returned to the phone with greater caution.

  “Where are you, Jacobus? The entire NYPD is after you,” Lilburn said as he rummaged frantically for a clean pad and a sharpened pencil.

  “I need some information,” said Jacobus.

  “Why?” asked Lilburn. “I’m the reporter. I should be getting information from you.” He got his pencil ready.

  “Is there going to be a reception after Vander’s concert on Sunday?”

  “You don’t know? It’s in all the papers. Where are you?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Yes, of course. There was a big story in—”

  “MAP bastards going?” interrupted Jacobus.

  “Really! Shall we go around the mulberry bush once again?”

  “Yes or no?” Jacobus shouted at him.

  “Yes.”

  “All of them? All?”

  “What’s this about? Mr. Jacobus, you need to give me something. If you don’t, I’m going to hang up immediately.”

  There was a brief silence on the line.

  “I know who the murderer is,” said Jacobus.

  Lilburn’s lips tightened.

  “Hold on a minute. Let me turn the music up so no one can hear me talking about this.”

  Lilburn carefully adjusted the volume so that the Bruckner was loud enough to allow him to talk without being overheard but not so loud that he couldn’t hear Jacobus.

  “Jacobus, you’re the one they’re after.”

  “Don’t you think I fucking know that?” hollered Jacobus. Then calm again. �
��Lilburn, I want you to write a story, play up the return of the Piccolino.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You wanted me to give you something. I’ve giving, schmuck. Now listen. Play up the return of the Piccolino. Vander’s performing Paganini, right? Make sure you mention Paganini. And that she loves playing the Paganini on the Piccolino.”

  “Considering that you’ve only recently accused me of journalistic prevarication, that you would make such a request fills me with chagrin. How do I know for a fact what you’re telling me is true? I’m not going to make that up,” said Lilburn.

  “Why not? That wouldn’t be anything new for you,” Jacobus snarled.

  Lilburn almost hung up. Instead, he pressed the phone to his forehead, not saying anything.

  “Sorry, Lilburn,” said Jacobus. “Write what you can. I don’t give a shit. Just be at the reception and make sure they’re all there—all—and you’ll get the biggest story you’ve ever had.”

  Suddenly the door to his office swung open. It was Jack Redmond, a third-string sports writer, whose gut was threatening to rend the seams of his ten-year-old New York Giants T-shirt. Lilburn, frowning, placed his hand over the phone receiver.

  Redmond said, “Hey, Lilburn, turn down that racket you call music. We’re trying to work here.”

  “Get out of my office right now,” Lilburn bellowed, “or, damn you, I’ll have you reassigned to the Pro Bowlers Tour!”

  Redmond’s eyes opened wide in surprise, and he sheepishly retreated. Lilburn, no less surprised, forced himself not to smile.

  He picked up the receiver and said, “Tell me, Jacobus. Who is the murderer?”

  But the only response he heard was the dial tone.

  THIRTY-SIX

  There was more than the usual preconcert effervescence among the packed crowd in the Carnegie Hall lobby. The sudden reappearance of the Piccolino Strad the previous day had created almost as much sensation as its disappearance. Kamryn Vander’s concerto performance with the Grimsley Competition Symphony Orchestra, which had been on hold, was now on go.