Frame-Up

by John F. Dobbyn

  “He’s not here.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  The pause indicated the answer was yes.

  “Who are you, Mr.—?”

  “Knight, Michael Knight.”

  I gave her a very brief explanation of what brought me to the professor’s door, leaving out the sensitive details, but giving her enough to conclude that I was one of the good guys.

  “He’s in London. He had a call two days ago from a man with a Russian accent. He practically demanded that the professor meet him in London. I thought that the professor would ignore the message, but he cancelled his classes for the week and left that evening.”

  “Do you have any idea where he might be staying in London?”

  “He’s gone to London several times before this year. He always stays at the Grisham Hotel. It’s a few blocks from Tottenham Court Station. I’m not sure of the address.”

  “No problem. If I get that close, I can find it. Did he say how long he’d be there?”

  “No. He has classes next week.”

  I started to “depart,” when she stopped me.

  “Mr. Knight, there’s another thing. Just after the professor left for the airport, there was a call from a second man with a Slavic accent. I’d say this one was from Belarus.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Good ear for dialect. My mother was from Minsk. In any event, this one demanded to know how to find the professor.”

  “And you said?”

  “The Grisham Hotel, London. I didn’t realize at the time—”

  “Did either of these Russians call before?”

  “Yes. The man from Belarus called twice during the past term. He never left a name. Each time, the professor asked me to make arrangements for him to fly to Amsterdam.”

  “Did he say what for?”

  “No. But each time the professor seemed to be under a great strain. Particularly the last time. The other man, the one he’s meeting in London now, is an art historian, Alexei Samnov. The professor’s known him for years.”

  I knew there were more questions to ask, but they didn’t occur to me.

  “Thank you, Ms. Swenson. You’ve been very open with the information I needed.”

  “Yes, I have, young man. And it has nothing to do with your needs.”

  Somehow that did not surprise me.

  “I spoke as I did because I’m concerned about the professor. I thought he might have a stroke. He was beet red when he went through that door. My point is this. If — when you find him — may I assume you’re going to try?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Good. Please notify me. I just want to know that he’s … well.”

  She turned back toward the desk before that last word.

  “I owe you that. One last favor. If there are any more calls, it might help if you didn’t mention my being here.”

  She just nodded.

  It was late afternoon when I crossed the Charles River on the way to my apartment. I called Julie on the cell.

  “My goodness, Michael. This is twice in one day. You’re becoming a regular around here.”

  “Next thing you know, I’ll want to be paid. Listen, Julie, no badgering. Go into your super-efficient Girl-Friday mode.”

  “I’m always in that mode. What’s up?”

  “I need you to book me on a late-night flight to London. Anything that gets me into London early tomorrow morning. Second, I need a hotel room. Something around Tottenham Court Station. Anywhere except the Grisham.”

  “What’s wrong with the Grisham?”

  “Nothing. I just may need neutral ground for a retreat.”

  “Should I know what that means?”

  “No. And speaking of which, let not one word of this pass through your rosy lips to Mr. Devlin.”

  “My rosy lips are sealed.”

  “Good. Would you call me back with the flight and hotel information at my apartment as soon as you’ve made the reservations?”

  “All right. When should I make the return flight?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Make it one way. I’ll make the return reservation. I have to be back in a couple of days anyway.”

  I was thinking about the five-day deadline we had from Mr. Santangelo.

  I had packed lightly in a small case when I got Julie’s call. I was set on the eleven thirty flight and booked into the Chesterfield Hotel.

  Just when I needed a shot of assurance that life holds good things, I listened to a call on my answering machine from Terry O’Brien. She sounded wonderful. She was just checking to see if I’d been shot since our last meeting.

  I called her back, but there was no answer. I actually enjoyed listening to her voice lilt through the answering machine message. I left word that I had to be out of town for a few days, but I’d love to see her. If she was free, I’d be spending my last few evening hours before the flight at Big Daddy’s on Beacon Hill.

  I also remembered my agreement with Aiello to let Benny tag along. Much against my will and better judgment, I left a message on Benny’s machine to the effect that I would be shipping out directly from Big Daddy’s. It was somewhat stingy on details, but I figured that covered my obligation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A shower and a well-above-average lobster thermador at The Federalist just above the State House on Beacon Street brought me back to the world of the almost normal. I had a few hours before heading to Logan Airport, and I knew exactly where I wanted to spend every minute of them.

  Around half a block below the State House on Beacon Street lies a stairway that winds down to my personal conception of heaven. It’s small and so dark that after dozens of Monday nights spent in attendance, I could no more describe the decor of Big Daddy’s Jazz Club than that of Buckingham Palace. But when I slip up onto the second barstool from the door, and Nate, my personal favorite bartender, splashes four or five fingers of Famous Grouse Scotch on the rocks, I’m halfway to the pearly gates.

  But what lifts me the rest of the way through those gates and immerses me totally in heavenly raptures is the heart-driving sound of a stand-up bass in the mammoth hands of one Big Daddy High-tower.

  One never knows who’s going to be crowded onto the miniature stage with Daddy on any given night. No jazz musician worthy of recognition from New York, Chicago, New Orleans, or San Francisco would consider passing through Boston without paying a call at Daddy’s with the hopes of sitting in with the big guy. In his day, Daddy was a regular at such New York clubs as Birdland, the Blue Note, and the Village Vanguard, as well as being a welcome drop-in at such soul-deep jazz clubs in Harlem as the Lennox Lounge and St. Nick’s. When headliners on any jazz label in those days were planning a recording session, Daddy was frequently the first sideman they called.

  But that was a while ago. At some point, Daddy’s calling as a musician fell victim to the surge of rock music that squeezed out of business many of the venues and record labels that provided Daddy with a living. When he couldn’t earn an income on his talent, he did it with his size. He became a bouncer in one of the rock clubs in Boston’s South End, a bit of a dicey neighborhood in those days. His efforts to break up a broken-bottle fight resulted in severed tendons in his hands that prevented him from playing bass with the varsity team.

  At some point, a group of the musicians who knew him in the old days staked him to the establishment of Big Daddy’s on Beacon Street in Boston.

  While my eyes were adjusting to the dark, and that first sip of the Famous Grouse was startling my taste buds into blissful consciousness, I recognized the sweet, gentle brushwork of Paul Maxwell, one of Boston’s elite jazz drummers, behind Daddy’s driving bass. A saxophone player whom I recognized from several visits to a Harlem club called “Smoke,” but whose name I couldn’t bring back, was weaving imaginative webs around an old Jimmy Van Heusen tune called, appropriately enough for the moment, “It Could Happen to You.”

  By the time I took the level of
the Grouse down to two fingers and let Daddy’s pulsating bass massage the knots out of nerves strung like piano wire, the world was taking on the deceptive glow of normalcy.

  After the set ended, I felt a mammoth hand on my shoulder. I could sense the six-foot-five, heaven-knows-how-many-pound mass of Big Daddy behind me.

  “Missed you Monday night, Mickey. I assume you were out savin’ the world.”

  “Right, Daddy. Otherwise I’d have been here. What is that, the second Monday night I’ve missed in six years?”

  “Yeah, you gettin’ to be a regular, son. I expect we should make up for lost time.”

  “I don’t think so, Daddy. I have to catch a plane later tonight. Actually I’m kind of expecting a young lady.”

  “Well now, I think we can take care of that.”

  A hand the size of a catcher’s mitt slipped off my shoulder and under my arm. I found myself rising off the barstool and threading a path between the tables toward the well-worn piano stool on the stand. Daddy turned back to Nate on the way.

  “Anyone comes in looks like she might be lookin’ for Mickey, table two, up front.”

  I slid up onto the stool and felt for the keys of the old but well-tuned upright piano. The only illumination was a two-watt bulb down close to the keyboard. Daddy liked it almost pitch-dark during the sets to induce a focus on the music and dampen any inclination of the audience to chat.

  Daddy started something on the bass and yelled over, as he frequently did, “Hey, Mickey, you know this one?”

  I let my mind ride with the eight-bar introduction Daddy was thumping out. I picked up the delicious chord structure that Hoagy Carmichael wove into his exquisite “Skylark.” On the ninth bar, I came in on the melody with Daddy carrying me on the bass as solidly as he carried me to the stand. I noticed his grin when he caught my first few notes and knew we were on the same frequency. I always looked for that grin.

  We did exchanges of somewhere between ten and twelve choruses before Daddy gave the fist up signal to bring it in for a landing. A round of applause reminded me that other people were in the room.

  I glanced down at the table just off the stand, and my breath caught. An aberrant beam of light traced a familiar figure at one of the two seats. I’d have leaped off the stand to join her if Daddy hadn’t launched into his particular favorite, “Cherokee,” at full ramming speed, and I couldn’t abandon ship.

  When the set ended, the lights came up slightly, and Terry was still there. It was my first chance to do more than phone her since what could justifiably be called an unusual first date.

  “Michael, that’s great what you were doing up there.”

  “Thank you.”

  She touched the edge of my eye that still showed the imprint of her elbow.

  “Ouch. Is that new?”

  I had forgotten that the black eye blossomed the morning after our last meeting.

  “Actually, a young lady did that.”

  “Oh?”

  “She has a dynamite elbow, but only if you pull her off a cliff.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You mean I did that?”

  “Not to worry. I took it in the spirit in which it was intended. Thanks for coming tonight. I’ve missed you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “I wanted to see you right away, but things got a bit out of control.”

  “You mean work?”

  I couldn’t find it in my heart to classify the lunacy of the last week as “work.”

  “This one’s a special case.”

  “If it’s all right to ask, does this have anything to do with that key I gave you from John?”

  “You could say that. That little sucker’s tied me up with a biker gang, a Mafia thug and his goons, and whatever form of human mutants deal in stolen art. I’ve survived two murder attempts, and I’m now in partnership with Fat Tony Aiello, the Prince of Pain.”

  That was what leapt to mind. What I said was, “Only indirectly.”

  “I’m sorry if I got you involved.”

  “You didn’t. I was involved from another angle. It’s just something—”

  I realized that Terry’s eyes were locked on something across the room.

  “What, Terry?”

  “That man who just came in. I’ve seen him. One night that last week, I was at dinner with John. He came up to us in a restaurant. He started whispering. Then suddenly he started yelling at John.”

  I followed her focus, and what should appear at the bar but the rumpled sack of laundry that was Benny Ignola. He apparently got my message.

  “Excuse me, Terry. I’ll be right back.”

  I moved over next to Benny at the bar. I noticed he’d taken on an additional five hundred pounds in the form of two accompanying goons.

  “Benny. We keep meeting. How delightful.”

  “Yeah, smart-ass. We’re gonna keep on meetin’. I got orders from Tony. I don’t let you out of my sight. So where we goin’?”

  “That accounts for you. What about Bevis and Butthead over here?”

  “They go too. You might say they’re security. Where we goin’?”

  I had trouble visualizing a meeting with Professor Denisovitch with Benny attached at the hip. Benny plus two water buffalo? Not a chance.

  “You wait here, Benny. I’m going to play one more set before we go to the airport. Keep Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber here with you.”

  “The hell, you say. I ain’t lettin’ you get two feet away from me. That’s what Tony said.”

  “Benny, open your eyes. There’s the stage. Here’s the door. You and the Bobbsey Twins are in the direct path. Sit. Stay.”

  Benny analyzed the situation and settled back on the barstool.

  “All right, Knight. Make it quick.”

  “One set.”

  “Hey, Knight. Where we goin’?”

  “Paris.”

  I picked up Daddy and brought him to the table for a quick introduction to Terry. I explained to both of them that it would be the best thing for all concerned if Terry and I could be on the outside of Daddy’s Club while those three at the bar were still on the inside.

  Daddy nodded, and Terry looked puzzled.

  I explained what I had in mind, and Daddy and I stepped up on the stand. Paul and the sax player, Freddie, were already there. We settled in, and Daddy called the tune. Never let it be said that he lacked a sense of humor. The tune was, “Get Out of Town.”

  The lights came down, and Daddy provided eight bars of intro at a medium clip. It must have been a good fourteen choruses later when Daddy brought it to a close. I’d have given my two seats at any Bruins playoff game to have seen the expression on Benny’s face when the lights came up, and he saw that the piano player was little Julio Gianotti and not me. When the lights had gone down to darkness, Julio had accepted my invitation to sit in, and Terry and I slipped out through Daddy’s office in the back of the club.

  I put Terry in a cab with the promise that when I got back, we’d go out on a date like two normal people, whatever in the world that might be like.

  Before I closed the cab door, a thought occurred. I asked Terry if she could remember any of what Benny said to John the night she and John were having dinner.

  “Yes. The important part. They whispered for a while, then that man pulled back and yelled, ‘You ain’t gonna get away with it. I’ll stop you cold.’ ”

  Interesting. Just like that, Benny joined the list of suspects for John’s death. I was surprised that I hadn’t mentally added him earlier.

  I saw Terry off with a kiss and a promise that I prayed God I’d live to keep. I caught a cab for Logan airport, and a plane for London. As far as I knew, Benny and the boys were at some other counter at Logan, scrounging three fast tickets to Paris. I only wished I’d told him Singapore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Tolstoy Club, as it was known in translation of the Russian, was located three blocks from the small Grisham Hotel in the Tottenham Court Square district o
f London. Its membership included not only authors, but practitioners of all of the fine arts. The only requirement for membership, other than an initiation fee, was a heritage from one of the former Soviet republics. That rule was self-fulfilling since the only language spoken within its walls was Russian.

  Alexei Samnov rose quickly from his seat in the large library when he saw Leopold Denisovitch appear in the doorway. They greeted with the embrace of old friends, followed by habitual quick glances around the room to see who might be taking note.

  Alexei led his friend to chairs in a far corner. Although they had the room to themselves, nothing was said by either until they were seated close to each other, and then only in hushed tones.

  “I knew you’d come, Leopold.”

  The smaller man leaned closer.

  “Did you leave me a choice, Alexei? I had no idea what to make of your message.”

  “I know. There was no time for invitation, refusal, persuasion. You correctly read the urgency of my message.”

  “And so I’m here.”

  A waiter in a white jacket approached with an offer of tea or vodka. Both declined, and waited for him to leave the room before speaking. Alexei sat stiffly forward on the leather chair.

  “Leopold, this is uncomfortable. I don’t know how to begin. Time doesn’t permit delicacy. So I’ll simply say it. What are you doing?”

  There was silence for several moments while Leopold looked blankly at Alexei.

  “I have no idea how to respond. You bring me across an ocean to ask a question like that?”

  Alexei leaned closer still. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, at a loss for the words.

  “Leopold, I’ve come a long way too. I think you know what I’m asking about. If I let this go with a coy denial — Leopold, I can assure you that you are in serious danger. You remember how it was in the old days? This is worse.”

  “The old days? You mean the Soviets? What does that have to do with me? I’m an American citizen now.”

  “And you believe that will protect you. Your American citizenship. Your comfortable position at Harvard.”

  Alexei shook his head. Leopold looked in his eyes.