Fiddle Game

by Richard A. Thompson

  The proph looked at me hopefully.

  “Leave Evans his badge and gun,” I said.

  “That works,” said Wilkie. “Cops get vicious as hell, you take that stuff away. Better leave him his wallet, too.”

  “I am not leaving him any bullets,” said the proph.

  I was impressed. Pearls of wisdom come out of the oddest shells, sometimes.

  “Throw the rest of the stuff back in the briefcase,” I said. “I’ll hang onto it for now. Maybe there’s a clue in there somewhere.”

  “So that’s it?” said Wilkie. “Are we done for now?” He hoisted his bulk up from the back seat and started making departure motions.

  “One other thing,” I said. “Ever hear of a Rom?”

  “You mean, like a computer thing?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s some kind of a person.”

  “Never heard of the bum. I’m out of here, okay?”

  “Later,” I said. I watched him walk down the alley, then looked back over at my new Chevrolet owner, who seemed to be pondering some deep truth.

  “It’s not a person,” he said, “it’s a scourge.”

  “You mean Wilkie? He’s okay, when you get to know him.”

  “Not him. The Rom. If they are here, then truly, the barbarians have breached the gate.”

  “Would you care to elaborate on that?”

  “I’m in the elaboration business, Pilgrim.”

  “Call me Herman.”

  “Then, let me tell you how the world will end, Herman.”

  “Is this going to take long?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How about a short version?”

  “Okay. If you meet a Rom on the road, kill him.”

  Chapter Four

  High Road to Chinatown

  I wanted to hear what the Proph had to say about the Rom, but I really didn’t have the time. I suddenly remembered the phone message I had left with Agnes, and I could think of a hundred good reasons why I wanted to stop her before she acted on it.

  “Listen,” I said to the Proph, who was still behind the wheel, “I need a quick lift back to my office. You think you can come down from the mountain long enough to handle that?”

  “Chauffeuring is not a path to spiritual enlightenment. It’ll cost you.”

  “In a Buddha’s eye, it will. I already gave you forty bucks and a car. You can afford to spot me a freebie.”

  “Your karma must be high. You are profound.”

  “I’m also right.”

  “That, too. Pull in your feet, shut the door, and navigate.”

  He was off before I had time to do any of those things. He drove like a kid playing a video game of the kind where you get three free crashes before you’re really dead. But I noticed that he also checked his mirrors a lot and kept his hands on the two-and ten-o’clock positions on the wheel. In some ways, at least, he was not the lunatic he seemed. I gave him directions and advice which he mostly ignored, and three minutes later, we were in front of my office. I was ready to leap out, commando-style, in case he forgot to stop, but he came to a normal halt and even waited around for a minute and talked to me through the window.

  “Do you really want to know about the Rom?” he asked.

  “You tell me. Do I?”

  “A good answer. The true pilgrim does not know the name of his own quest. Yes, you do want to know. But you don’t want to mess with them, no, no, no.”

  “Exactly how would I go about learning without messing?”

  “You would need a guide,”

  “And I’ll just bet I know where I’m going to get one, too, don’t I?”

  “It’s possible I know somebody. Only possible. Give me a day to see if I can set up a meeting.”

  “All right. Do I check back with you in the alley, or what?”

  “I will find you.”

  I thought about the undead body in the trunk and what it might do when it became reanimated. “In a day, I may have to be making myself hard to find.”

  “Yah! will tell me where you are.”

  “Silly me. How could I have forgotten?”

  “Keep the faith, Herman.” And he was gone in a cloud of very nonspiritual exhaust. I think he was aiming for a lightpost in the middle of the next block. I wondered what faith it was he wanted me to keep.

  I turned back to the office and saw Agnes standing in the doorway, her face the image of sisterly concern and possible disapproval. It’s not always her most attractive expression, but this time, it looked terrific. Or maybe I was just glad to be alive to see it.

  “Is everything all right, Herman? There were two detectives here looking for you earlier. Pushy, nasty types. I told them I thought you were gone for the day.”

  “I thought I was gone for good, for a while there. I take it you haven’t listened to your voice mail?”

  “Not lately. Should I? I always check the email first. It’s so much easier to sort.”

  “I left you a message, telling you I was in a lot of trouble.”

  “You should have left me an email. You can highlight the urgent messages with a little picture of a red envelope, you know.”

  “I’ll remember that next time I’m stranded in the jungle. Erase the voice mail, okay?”

  “Should I listen to it first?”

  “Probably not. It would just upset you.”

  “Then I’ll erase it tomorrow, if it’s all the same to you. I was just going to lock up for the day. I’m late as it is.”

  I gave her a raised eyebrow that said, ”You have a date?” and she gave me one raised even higher that said, “None of your damn business.” Did I mention that I don’t cope all that well with the fairer sex?

  “You go on, Aggie. I’ll close up shop. Wide Track Wilkie will be in sometime tomorrow, by the way, and…”

  “You mean Wendell?”

  “He’s a Wendell? Wow. All these years, I never suspected him of anything of the sort.”

  “I really am late, Herman.”

  “So you said. Okay, Wendell, if you insist, will be by tomorrow. If I’m not around, give him two hundred dollars, cash, and copies of all the stuff we got from Amy Cox.”

  “Including the ID?”

  ”Especially the ID.”

  “What’s going on, Herman?”

  “That’s what he’s going to try to find out. Go keep your appointment, why don’t you? We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  We said good night and she headed down the street towards the Garrick Ramp, where her Toyota waited to thank her properly for keeping it out of the rain. I went inside the office, locking the door behind me and throwing Stroud’s briefcase on the desk. Suddenly, it was feeling like an awfully long day, and I killed the main lights, closed the safe, and headed for the cot in the back room. I think I got my whole body on it before I fell asleep. If not, it was close enough.

  ***

  It was more like falling into a bottomless hole than sleep. When I woke up, it was full-blown night, and the room was lit only by a bit of spilled light from the neon sign in the front office. It took me a while to remember where I was, even longer to remember why. As the pieces of the day came back, first grudgingly and then with greater ease, I went to the sink and washed my face, then changed out of my rumpled clothes and thought about what to do next. Going home seemed like more trouble than it was worth, and there wasn’t anybody waiting for me there, in any case. I went into the front office to see if Agnes had shut down her computer for the night. Stroud’s briefcase was where I had left it, and I flipped it open and rifled idly through the contents, looking for some inspiration. Not finding any, I put the phony badge in my pocket, to look it over later, and went over to the computer.

  The screen on the monitor was dark, but when I fooled with a few keys, it came to life, showing the in-box on the email. It reminded me of what Agnes had said, and I wondered if we might be on the brink of an age when an arres
ted criminal will demand a laptop, rather than a phone. Brave new squirrels.

  There were several unopened new messages. As far as I was concerned, they could stay that way until morning. Except for one, that caught my eye because it had the little red envelope-picture that Agnes had told me about. It also had a return address that included COX in the middle of a lot of other jumbled letters. I sat down in front of the monitor, grabbed the mouse, and did a double click on that line. I don’t know how to do much on Agnes’ machine, but what I do know, I know all to hell. The incoming message, what little there was of it, filled a new window.

  mr. jackson,

  i believe you are in possession of a certain valuable musical instrument that is the rightful property of my family.

  i understand that you acquired it in good faith, and i am prepared to reward you handsomely for its return.

  can we talk?

  That was it. No name, no phone number, no particulars at all. It didn’t even come right out and say the word “Amati.” From whom were we keeping secrets, I wondered? I stared at the message for a while, not sure how to react. My first instinct was that it had “Phony” stamped all over it. But my instincts have been wrong before, so I decided not to erase it just yet. I might decide later that I wanted to reply to it, after all, so I left it where it was and shut down the machine. I forget why. Agnes must have told me once that it was a good thing to do.

  By now, my stomach was waking up also, reminding me that I hadn’t had anything to eat since the half hamburger at Lefty’s, about two years ago. It was pushing eleven-thirty. Joe Bock’s hot dog cart, which he fondly referred to as “Bock’s Car,” would have been rolled away for the night a long time ago, and Lew’s Half-Deli and C-store down the street and The Downtowner Café would likewise be closed. There were a few bars downtown, besides Lefty’s, where you could get a sandwich or a microwave pizza, but I didn’t feel like bar food. And I definitely didn’t feel like Lefty’s. I decided to take a walk. This isn’t a big enough city to have a Chinatown, but we do have an area of mixed Asian, Italian, Irish, and Unaligned Redneck, where some of the joints are open late, and I thought a stroll in the night air might clear my head. I put on a light windbreaker and left, locking the door behind me.

  I headed west, past the Courthouse and the County Jail, past high-rise offices with selective blocks of floors lit up for the night cleaning crews, past the Central Library that looks like the Bank of England and the Catholic soup kitchen that looks like nothing at all, towards the oldest part of the city. The semaphores got farther apart after a while, the street lights were replaced by antique replicas that worked just as badly as the originals, and the canopy of dark sky got closer to street level, trying to take over completely. Past Seven Corners, it had almost succeeded. But then an island of light appeared in the distance, a jumble of color and glitter, like a beacon across a dark sea. West Seventh, calling to all the wandering barks of the night, all the lost vessels laden with the pilgrims of the square world. Jesus, I was starting to sound like the Proph. So much for the night air clearing my head.

  The jumble of lights resolved itself into a strip of shops and restaurants, and my stomach urged me to up my pace a bit. I didn’t have a favorite place here, but I wasn’t feeling all that fussy. One that was open for business and served food would be good. If the food was good, that would be even better. The nearest one had a red-painted storefront with curtained windows and a neon sign that proclaimed it to be Shanghai. And it had seemed like such a short walk. Across the street was a place with only incandescent lights and a no-color front. It was called the Happy Dragon, and it had several hand-lettered signs in the windows:

  Cantonese, Viet Namese, and American

  Breakfast All times, bacons and eggs

  No Sushi, Thank You Please

  No wonder the dragon was happy. I was about to follow the wonderful smells of hot oil, soy, and ginger across the street, when two cars, one a regular police prowl car and the other an unmarked sedan, came tooling up from behind me and did an assault-landing at the very curb I was headed for. Doors flew open and bodies piled out, some with and some without uniforms, all very full of their own importance. They left the car doors hanging open and pushed each other into the restaurant, like a bunch of frat boys who heard a rumor of free beer. One of the without-uniforms was a big figure in a baggy topcoat and a wide-brimmed hat. I couldn’t tell for sure if it was Evans, but it definitely could have been.

  Since I didn’t see any jackets with INS written on them, the most likely explanation was a raid on an illegal gambling operation in some bean-curd cellar. Our current mayor was very big on cracking down on crimes that the people who elected him never indulged in, like cheating at mah-jong. But I didn’t feel like finding out. Even if the Proph was right about my karma being high, the stuff could have worn itself out by now. I did a one-eighty without breaking my stride. At the first cross street, I headed away from West Seventh, as fast as I could walk without looking like a fugitive.

  Two blocks later, I started changing direction at every corner. Half an hour after that, I decided I was alone, and I slowed to a more casual pace and tried to figure out where I was. Somewhere in an area of mixed blue-collar housing and assorted old industrial buildings. The neighborhood hadn’t been “discovered” and gentrified yet, so it didn’t have a name, but I vaguely recognized it. There were streetlights only at the intersections, and the dark sidewalks and streets in between were deserted, except for me. This was good.

  With my adrenalin back to maintenance levels, I could again afford to think about my stomach, which was becoming vocal in its complaints. Somewhere nearby, a commercial bakery was saturating the night air with the smell of fresh bread, making me giddy with longing. Maybe they had an outlet shop. If not, I might have to catch an alley cat and roast it over my cigarette lighter soon.

  The street dead-ended into a five or six-story brick building that could have been built as a factory or an office. Now it was occupied by a lot of small businesses, each with its own logo or lighted sign. A lot of them had their lights on, and a tattoo parlor on the second floor had a neon sign that actually said, “OPEN.” If it was, the building had to be, too. I decided to go in and look for the Keebler elves or the Tastee bakers, whichever came first. Before I got to the front door, though, something caught my eye down at one end of the building.

  Under a harsh, sodium floodlight, a truck was backed up to a loading dock, and some guy with a gray uniform was wheeling pallets of flat, openwork, plastic crates into it. Crates of fresh bread that smelled like heaven. As I got closer, I could read “Cottage Bakers,” on the side of the truck. The guy with the pallet jack stopped and gave me a pained look.

  “We don’t sell out of the truck,” he said.

  “That’s too bad.” I reached for the phony badge in my inside pocket. I was debating whether to impersonate a health inspector or a cop when the doughboy made up my mind for me.

  “Oh, a cop, huh?”

  “Well, see…”

  “Yeah, I see. Undercover. You should’ve said something.”

  “We don’t like to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Got you.” He gave me an exaggerated conspiratorial wink that made me want to smack him one, just for being so insufferably cute. But I managed to keep my mouth shut and my hands to myself, and he pointed to a stack of blue crates in the corner of the truck box.

  “Frosted cinnamon rolls and filled Danish,” he said. “Help yourself.”

  “Right.” I stopped myself short of saying, “thanks.” If I had, I figured he’d know for sure I wasn’t a real cop. I was finding this impersonating business a lot easier than I had ever imagined. I took a plastic-wrapped package of something warm out of one crate. Then at the urging gestures of Mr. Wink, I took two more out of another crate. Maybe the Proph had been right about my karma, after all. I headed into the building to look for a coffee machine.

  Over my shoulder I heard
, “You part of the stakeout, then?”

  “I guess you figured us out, all right.” What stakeout?

  “Share some with the guys in blue, hey?”

  “You got it.” I hoped the man was hallucinating.

  The main lobby was half a flight above the loading dock, and almost a full flight above street level. It had no reception desk, just a tenant directory, a pair of elevators, and signs directing people to the restrooms and phones. I decided the vending machines, if any, would be near an easy source of water piping, and I followed the signs. A wide corridor had storefront windows looking into some of the tenant spaces, and as I passed one of them, I did a double-take, backed up a half step, and stopped altogether.

  The sign said “G. B. Feinstein, Luthier: Fine Musical Instruments.” Did I know that name from somewhere? Inside, a man was carving a large piece of wood that was attached somehow to a pedestal. He was peeling off long, curly shavings as if he had a plane, but he used only a large chisel or gouge, pushed with one hand and guided artfully with the other. Must have been one hell of a sharp chisel, I thought. The piece he was working on was the face or back of a bass fiddle, and he bent over it with total intensity and focus, a dead cigarette hanging from his mouth and drops of sweat clinging to his forehead and eyebrows. He would be tall if he stood up, I thought. He had bony elbows and shoulder blades poking out in every direction, a nose that may have extended further than his cigarette, and wire spectacles perched on top of it. Ichabod Crane with a leather apron. And quite possibly, just the man I wanted to talk to.

  I knocked on the door, but he didn’t look up from his work. A louder knock worked no better. I tried the knob, found it unlocked, and let myself in. I walked past formal glass display cases and walls lined with dark, gleaming violins. Toward the back, the space got more shop-like, with heavy wood benches cluttered with tools and strange-looking parts. I went up to the chisel-master, who still had not acknowledged my presence. As I got closer, he spoke without looking up.

  “I don’t sell out of the shop,” he said. He must have belonged to the same union as the bakery-truck driver.