Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  He wandered away from the others, along the passage, glancing to his left through the windows, then down the stairs, into the rear of the balcony, flashing the laminated plastic I.D. Boomer had given him the night before.

  In the bad old days, Big Herbie Kruger had been considered the most visible of field agents: his size, the shambling gait, his great head with the crapulous features of a peasant; the idiosyncrasies of speech; the dumb, oxlike look; the stupid questions. Herbie had trapped the unwary with his idiot look and the seeming folly of his queries; used his height, weight and Farmer Schmitt attitude to blind his victims. Under all the doltishness, the man was overloaded with street savvy, as astute as the wisest interrogator, and ruthless as a black mamba—that extraordinary snake which will chase its prey for miles. Over the years, they said, he had developed an intuition second to none in the trade.

  It was not until he was actually inside Avery Fisher Hall, with its plush beige seats, the great curve of a balcony and the acoustic baffles, that Herbie realized he had come to view the major protagonists.

  The scene from the rear of the balcony would, he knew immediately, be overdescribed in the media as “glittering,” “international” and “sparkling.” His eyes were first drawn to the left side—concert platform right—a portion of which was usually reserved for the conductor’s friends. Tonight, they had taken the entire left-hand section.

  “If that collapsed, we’d lose just about every great living musician, eh, Herb?” It was Charlie Laurence, standing just behind him.

  Herbie looked him up and down. “You rent the penguin suit by the hour, Charlie?”

  “Very droll, Herb, but, no. You, on the other hand, obviously hired that one ten years ago and forgot to return it.” Inevitably, in the bespoke dark worsted two-piece, Kruger looked as though he wore crumpled sackcloth.

  “Ja, a decade. Let me tell you, Charles, this suit has seen many good days. Wore it at my wedding where, you should know, there was much blubbings from the women who failed to entrap me. It is good cover.” He smiled his daft smile. Then—“Look,” his eyes lifted towards the luminaries to their left. “Here comes Maestro Giulini with a gang of people. He bring a whole symphony orchestra, you think?”

  “Possibly.” Laurence was feasting on the great—Maazel, Solti, Rostropovich, Tilson Thomas, Ashkenazy, Previn and more.

  “So who’s here would interest me?” Herbie asked, scanning the curving rows below him.

  “Maestro Passau’s wife, and his lawyer just came in.”

  “Her I’ve already seen. Don’t know the lawyer.”

  “Spinebrucker. Harold Spinebrucker. Spinebrucker, Havlish and Gold. Megabucks legal eagles.”

  “So? Anyone else?”

  “The writer.”

  “What writer? No, you mean the dumb historian. Him of the I Spied for the Führer?”

  Laurence nodded. “Down there; third row, dark curly hair trying to get his mouth into the blonde’s earhole.”

  “Mr. Stretchfield is well-known for getting various things into ladies.” A new voice. Herbie turned to see the plump, cheery-faced, almost Pickwickian form of Chuck—one of the FBI Special Agents who had been at the briefing, then, again, in Passau’s dressing room. Chuck, they said, was the Bureau’s music critic.

  “Chuck. Charlie.” Herb flapped a hand to and fro as introduction. It was the movement of a fish’s tail.

  “Oh, I know who Mr. Laurence is, Herb. My job after all.” Chuck gave his beaming ruddy-cheeked smile and shook hands with Charlie Laurence.

  “You expert on music, literature, both?” Herb asked in his usual tangled way.

  “I’m an expert on most of this one.” He laid his finger alongside his nose. “You want to see a real celebrity?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Eight rows back, right-hand side, seventh seat in.”

  “A brunette. Dark hair. Got her.” Herbie screwed up his eyes.

  “La Tempesta.”

  “No?”

  “Yes. Take a good look, Herbie. It’s her, Constanza Traccia. One of the great sopranos of our time.”

  “Yesu!” Herb craned forward. “I saw her—heard her—sing Tosca and Aida. Magnificent; the greatest Aida of our time and there’s no recording.” He paused, and then softened his face into the stupid dumb-ox look. “Also there were rumors, Ja?”

  “More than rumors.” Chuck gave a lecherous smile. “Passau even had a yacht named for her. La Tempesta. They were inseparable. Trust me.”

  Constanza Traccia, known, for obvious reasons of temperament, as La Tempesta, had been the soprano cornerstone of Passau’s opera company for almost a decade. Feted wherever she went, and undoubtedly Passau’s beloved mistress.

  Nobody would say why it suddenly ended, nor why Signorina Traccia had given up a meteoric career, but it was the start of the mystery period of Passau’s life. The affair was suddenly over and, just as suddenly, Passau was missing. Gone. It was three years before even the press tracked him down to Greece. Nobody close to either Passau or Constanza Traccia would even hint at a reason for the breach. It remained one of the great social mysteries.

  He watched as La Tempesta turned her head. Even at this distance, and taking her age into consideration, you could sense the wild, animal quality which had drawn audiences and critics alike. Herbie thought there was a bit of a gypsy look to her—raven hair, wide mouth and a slightly hooked nose. In the collective public mind she remained part goddess, part untamed passionate bitch, part whore and wholly professional great diva.

  Herbie tore his eyes away, scanning the rest of the audience. It was not his imagination, there was static in the air, that particular electricity that hums through a crowd gathered to see, or hear, some event so spectacular that each person knows they will be able to say for years to come, “I was there that night.” It was, he thought, the same feeling which he had experienced earlier in the year, when the Gulf War played live on the world’s TV screens. The same response that must have been present when Christians were thrown to the lions, or at public executions.

  “Well, lookie-lookie, what have we here?” Chuck seemed to be mumbling to himself. “I know they’re all supposed to be great opera lovers, but …”

  “Was ist?” Lord knew why he had suddenly lapsed into German. Even Herb could not explain that. The famous Passau Symphony Orchestra of America was all but assembled on the platform, together with the Marine Corps Band, who were there to add body to the second movement of Charles Ives’ New England Holidays tone poem—“Decoration Day.” Now the audience appeared to be settling, waiting for the arrival of the concertmaster and then the Maestro himself.

  Chuck’s eyes were glued to a party of men, four of them, and one woman, making their way into the far side of the balcony. One was old, short, and sagging with the weight of his years, but walking with a kind of presence—a man who knew he was a king, desperately trying to straighten his back: silk evening suit magnificently cut, as though the tailor had used some black art to remove a decade or two from the man, who still retained a full head of dark hair. For an instant gold flashed at his wrists. Just by looking at him, anyone would know this man held a key to power. To look into his face was to look into a kind of horror. The left cheek was scarred, livid and pockmarked, as though at some point in his life it had been scoured by thick steel wool.

  Holding his arm was a young woman, Italianate, proud, with olive skin and a figure and carriage that was enough to hoist danger signals to a conclave of monks. Behind them came three larger men. All well-tailored and barbered, their eyes moving constantly, as though they were heirs to the old man’s power.

  “Who?” Herb asked again, and when the answer came Chuck’s voice sounded almost shocked—

  “Carlo Giarre. Don Carlo Giarre. Carlo ‘The Squeeze’ Giarre.”

  “As in the Giarre family?” Even Herbie who, they said, lived his life on two planes and would never share either of them with anyone, knew of the Giarre family. Don Carlo, last of the old Ma
fia Dons.

  “A criminal legend,” Chuck said. “Goes way back. Learned to love Puccini from his old boss Big Jim Colosimo. Real Mafia history, Herb. That guy knew Capone, Colosimo, all those Chicago people.”

  “A fan, perhaps?”

  “Sure, why not.” Chuck was a hundred light years away as the concertmaster came onto the platform, and the orchestra began that atonal fugue which is the prelude to any concert.

  Then Louis Passau was striding to the podium. Not the man whom Herbie had seen slumped in the dressing room, but a tall, distinguished figure, walking with no concession to his years, the lion’s mane of thick hair swept back, iron-gray, the face composed, and looking, for a moment, only half his true age as the applause rose and swept over him.

  In the dressing room, Herbie had marveled, for the face was relatively unlined: tanned and hard as leather, the eyes clear blue—a color never captured by the photographers. Contact lenses, naturally—Herb knew, having read the medical reports. Almost as old as the century: a life which certainly reflected the history of their times, from war to peace and back again, together with all the incredible changes in between—and all the horrors. Passau had seen so much and remained a vessel containing man’s progressions and regressions through the twentieth century.

  Not in a million years, Herbie Kruger considered, would you have put this erect, arrogant-looking man at ninety years of age. The doctors had spoken of a truly unimaginable physique; the body of a man of sixty in good health. Passau neither smoke nor drank, kept to a strict regimen, still exercised daily. A body which remained prime and full of power, and a mind seemingly untouched by age. Untouched also, Herbie thought, by conscience, but he would make the journey of discovery with this man and, maybe, find the well-spring of his health and vitality.

  As was his custom, Passau did not, at first, acknowledge the audience, standing and giving his orchestra three low bows—left, right and center—before he turned to face what he always called “The paying customers.”

  The applause went on and on until, finally, Passau turned, sweeping the auditorium with his eyes, putting his finger to his lips in good humor, then damping down the ovation with his hands, orchestrating his own reception.

  At last, silence. The odd cough and clearing of the throat as Passau, erect, faced his orchestra and raised his baton.

  The program had been carefully chosen. Copland’s Fanfare For The Common Man, followed by the same composer’s El Salón Mexico; Charles Ives’ New England Holidays; the Gershwin Piano Concerto (Ashkenazy was to slip away from the audience to perform with the orchestra); while the conclusion would be Louis Passau’s own Symphony Number 1—The Demonic—the music he had written during his self-imposed exile in the Greek islands. A huge, towering tone poem that spoke of laughter and pain, life and death, with a final movement involving a massed choir, extra brass and a setting of the “Dies Irae.” The critics had said it was Mahler crossed with Shostakovich; that this symphony had its roots in Europe and not in the American experience, but Herbie—who owned the spectacular recording with the composer and his own orchestra—felt there was little Mahler and less Shostakovich. This was all Passau: an original, exorcising his private demons in the only way he knew.

  “A program to suit all seasons and conditions of men,” Passau was reported to have said at the rehearsal for the Birthday Concert, adding, “Fucking patriotic as well.” On his doctor’s advice, the concert was to play without an intermission. Even though, at ninety, Passau was an ox, it was known that, while he seemed to draw strength from live performances, he had a tendency to flag once he stopped. Everyone wished to avoid the possibility of a slackening of pace during the second half.

  Silence came, like sudden nightfall in the tropics. Passau raised his hands, and so it began, with those first clear brass chords of the Fanfare, which seemed almost to crack open the roof of Avery Fisher Hall.

  Nobody could deny the emotion, the heightening of the senses, the drama and passion of that concert. Later, many said it was as though they were hearing all the music for the first time—which was something Passau had the ability to do in his moments of greatness. “It is always my aim, with an orchestra,” he often was quoted as saying, “to bring out that which every great composer intends. For the music to shatter the time barrier; to be classic, which means to have something new to say each time the work is performed. It is a question of love. A four-sided affair between composer, orchestra, conductor and audience.”

  That was what happened on Friday, September 6, 1991, in Avery Fisher Hall. Even familiar works, like Fanfare, El Salón Mexico, and the Gershwin Concerto in F came into the senses as though they had been written in that instant, in the second before each note was played. The effect was overwhelming, though Big Herbie Kruger, so easily swayed and shot through by great music, managed, for a time, to remain apart. That area of his being which lived in the professional world of secrets took control and he spent the first two thirds of the performance scanning the audience, putting names to faces seen only in photographs, checking on Passau’s past as the music thundered through the hall.

  He noted Veronica Passau, the maestro’s second wife who had successfully sued for divorce—her lawyers dragging the names of at least a dozen female musical luminaries into the open as well as that of the principal correspondent. Tonight, Veronica still looked handsome, almost a sister to her daughter—Passau’s one living child, May Cosima (named for the month of her conception and after Wagner’s lover/wife).

  He saw others who owed much to the aged Maestro; the cellist Yevgeny Khavenin, defector from the Soviet Union in the late sixties, given succor, and the first boost to his wondrous career in the West, by Passau. Khavenin’s name appeared on a number of the classified documents Herb had committed to his prodigious memory; as had the name Lien Yao, pianist who had been linked for a season or so with Passau. Now, she sat in the balcony, near the other great musical figures, her face inscrutable, yet her loveliness, which matched her talent, clear and still, displayed for all to see.

  At one moment, as the music slowly started to pull Herbie into its orbit and away from his job, he thought, “This man; this Passau, he is a freak; abnormal; a man of ninety with such poise and vigor, such command.” It smacked, Herb considered, of some kind of warp in nature; against all reason. Louis Passau, whom he had idolized as the greatest living man of music, was an aberration.

  Then the music washed over him, finally swallowing him alive—Passau’s own symphony with its hammer blows of timpani to the almost shouted repetition of the “Dies Irae” of the finale, growing and growing so that the damned spirits which seemed to whirl in the harmonies became almost tangible. It was the first time in his own, not insubstantial life, that Big Herbie Kruger felt he could stretch out a hand and touch music. At the emotionally draining finale, he found himself giving a quick choking sob, for Passau’s symphony reflected so many of his own private agonies.

  As the applause exploded around him, Herbie felt a touch on his arm. Chuck inclined his head towards the exit, whispering—in reality shouting against the din—that it was time to go. Herbie blundered out, his senses in turmoil from the battering of the symphony, his brain whirling with the names and faces, many of whom would play a large part in his interrogation of the old man.

  IT TOOK ALMOST two hours before they had Passau ready to leave. First, the audience would not let him go; then the celebrities swarmed into his dressing room. They had arranged with Angela Passau that she should plead her husband’s fatigue, and get visitors away as quickly as possible. She did her best, and after what seemed an interminable wait, the FBI took over.

  Passau himself seemed calm and dignified. He looked tired, hardly spoke, but remained a figure of great power, demanding respect, and walking with an enviable, relaxed ease.

  They went with him along the passageway to the elevator which would take them down to the 65th Street parking lot.

  The entrance and exit of the official employees’ pa
rking lot of Lincoln Center leads off and onto 65th Street. The lot itself is below ground level, but there is a long curving sweep, down to the doors near the elevator, and then up an incline to the exit. Both the entrance and exit are closed off simply by single red-and-white drop poles. There is nothing substantial to keep unwanted visitors or car thieves out—except for the excellent security.

  Passau was flanked by two FBI men, while Mickey Boomer, Chuck, one unidentified CIA operative, and Big Herbie walked directly behind the Maestro, who had said farewell to his tearful wife in the privacy of the dressing room. The official car, a large unmarked Lincoln, had already drawn up, its FBI driver at the wheel and a young agent beside him, riding shotgun.

  A NYPD black and white led the lineup, then an FBI communications vehicle, parked in front of the Lincoln, and a further car, a dark blue Chevy, bringing up the rear. The arrangements were that Boomer and the CIA man would ride with Passau while others, including Herbie, would follow up in the Chevy.

  Everyone seemed to be milling around the cars for a moment, as though there was some indecision. For once, at the start of this operation, the organization appeared to be falling apart.

  Swiftly, Mickey Boomer took control, moving forward and taking Passau’s arm, smiling and gently pushing him forward. “The Lincoln, here, Mr. Passau. If you would get into the car please.”

  In the small jostling for position, Herbie found himself almost up against the Lincoln, close to Passau as the Maestro began to stoop and enter the rear of the vehicle.

  The roar and crash came from the parking lot entrance. Herbie turned, just in time to see the black Porsche smash savagely through the entrance pole, its tires burning rubber as it hurtled down the incline. The car seemed to have a superstructure, like a small box of metal scaffolding forward of the windshield, and another at the front of the hood.

  He heard Boomer yell, “Get down! Get down!” and saw the first flashes of automatic fire before the echoing rapid shots, magnified in the enclosed area, began to deafen him. His pistol was in his right hand, but instinctively he leaped towards Passau who, at the din, had half straightened as though about to reverse matters and exit the Lincoln.