Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  After dinner—a meal punctuated by short silences between Louis Passau’s reminiscences—Herbie had dealt with the dishwasher, put on the alarms, then taken Pucky by the hand and made her sit down across the kitchen table from him while he talked.

  “I tell you my own history, eh, Puck. Make my confession to you, so you know what an idiot you deal with.”

  He stayed only with the essentials. There were no details of operations or agents, except Naldo Railton.

  She listened to him, like someone listening to a holy book being read, as he told her of his childhood in Berlin; how his father had died, a Luftwaffe pilot, during the Battle of Britain; how he had grown up hating the Nazis and all they stood for; then, how, after the Fall of Berlin, he had acted as a ferret for the American OSS, going into the Displaced Persons Camps and sniffing out sheltering Nazi officers; and, lastly, how his case officer handed him over to the British Secret Intelligence Service in general, and Naldo Railton in particular. He was fourteen when they began to train him, and the work had been his entire life.

  Later, they talked once more of the shadow that hung over both of them: Maestro Louis Passau.

  “He hid for how long?” she asked.

  “Three, four years, maybe more. All the books make him show up in L.A. sometime around either 1930 or thirty-one, the dates are fuzzy round the edges. But from there on we have a skeleton to work with: Hollywood, the first marriage, the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra, the tragedy, and so on, through the forming of his own symphony orchestra and the vast wealth. We can track him down the years.”

  “I wonder what happened to poor Sophie. I think she loved him very much.”

  “I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Sophie. She was well out of it. Anyway, she would be looked after. Diamonds and sapphires, anything she wanted. Mafia Princess, Puck. In the mid-1930s the Giarre family came into its own. One of the famous five families, the Giarres, and Don Carlo still lives, a year older than the Maestro. You see, I do my home-workings.”

  “So do I, Herbie, and my instinct tells me we should move on soon.”

  “When?”

  “I need to talk to Art in London.”

  “Not from here. Maybe a telephone booth but not from this house ’cuz that might leave a trace. Bloody American phone companies detail every call. The owner would spot it, and it could land old Naldo in the merde. If Art gives the okay, you know where we can go?”

  “Yes. I’ll check with Art tomorrow.” Light was beginning to seep through the drapes, they had talked through the night.

  On the following morning, when Pucky had left in her disguise to telephone Arthur Railton, Herbie sat down again with Passau.

  “So, you went to ground. Whereabouts, Lou? I need it for the record.”

  “Oh, it’s on the record if you know where to look. But I’ll tell you anyway. It was unplanned, but it went like this. …”

  He started to talk again, unburdening his soul of the countless sins that would have killed any decent man.

  BOOK 2

  (CAPTIVA ISLAND. AUTUMN 1991)

  (1)

  THE LITTLE HOUSE WAS made of irregular stone blocks, whitewashed so that the building seemed to levitate over the red rocky outcrop. Three rooms and a kitchen. Quite small, but it stood alone at the edge of a valley, above the small town which looked Mexican, with its adobe buildings and pink roofs, a church with a campanile, a small square with a fountain at the center. Round. Water springing from the mouths of four dull green fish, their heads raised to heaven. When there was a drought and no water, they looked like weird saints at prayer. In jest the local people called them the “holy mackerel.”

  To reach the house, one had to climb for the best part of a mile along a narrow dirt track overlooked, all the way, from the windows. It was perfect. It even had its own water supply, from a well that some settler had managed to drill years before. Apart from the town, there was desert as far as the craggy skyline. One narrow ribbon of road shimmered like a mirage, and a dozen or so huge clusters of brick-colored spiky rock dotted the area: great stalagmitic fairy-tale, or nightmare, buildings. When there was a night wind these graphs of stone seemed to whine as though haunted.

  It was perfect for the man they called the Hermit. He had come in a creaky old truck. He bought building materials, and the vehicle wheezed and spluttered towards the house. They said that Pinto had cheated him by asking so much for the broken-down cottage. It took a year for the Hermit to fix the place. Then he went away again, returning in the truck with furniture, books, and then the piano.

  The townspeople thought he was loco, but it did not stop them cocking their heads and listening, on a still quiet evening, to the sound of the instrument as it filtered down into the square. They all remembered the day he brought the piano and drove up the hill with the instrument roped to the back of the little truck. Halfway up, the truck had lurched and started to slide backwards. It stopped altogether, then seemed to gather strength before inching upwards again. People laid bets on whether the piano would get to its destination.

  The Hermit had come into town that night, and he paid two strong men five dollars each to help carry the piano into the house. After that, he came into town once a week to buy food and other essentials. Occasionally he would drive down at night on a different kind of errand. Nobody ever asked for him, and the mailman brought letters every six weeks or so. The letters were interesting for they had foreign stamps on them. Germany some said, but only old Mrs. Brajos, the postmistress, and Frank Duse, the mailman, ever saw them. “Every man is entitled to privacy,” Duse would say. Sometimes, the Hermit would receive packages from New York. Duse would nod. “More books or phonograph records.”

  It had taken him over a year to find this place—near the Arizona-New Mexico state line—and another year to fix it up. Once he was settled he thought he was safe. When he was looking for the right place he crossed and recrossed many state lines. Later, he admitted that the first year was a nightmare. Twice, he knew they were following him. These were the occasions when he saw two thugs he recognized as Capone hoods inquiring at hotel desks, just as he drove up. Eventually they seemed to give up, but he saw the newspapers and their headlines reminded him of the precarious life he was leading:

  Bloody Angelo Genna shot to death at the wheel of his car after a chase.

  Mike “The Devil” Genna taken for a ride, as they used to say.

  Tony Genna shot five times, in daylight, on Grand Avenue. Died in the county hospital.

  He knew why this had happened and knew he was not safe. Five bucks short. A life short.

  He had got rid of the Stutz and bought the truck shortly before finding the house.

  “What kind of time scale we talking here, Lou?” Herbie asked.

  “Time scale? How can I remember time scale? Mid-twenties. That’s all I remember.”

  “You remember all the other details, why not the dates, Lou? Uncharacteristic of you. Bet you can remember the color of Sophie’s shoes the last time you saw her. Maybe even color of her underwear, yet you …”

  “Don’t ever talk about that kind of thing to me. Don’t ever say things about Sophie like that. Got me?” His hands trembled, and he went a kind of pale gray. Herbie thought he was going to have a heart attack there and then.

  “I’m sorry, Lou. Didn’t mean to …”

  “I don’t care what you mean to … just don’t be frivolous about Sophie. She’s no person to be frivolous about.” Very loud, rising to a shout.

  “She still alive, then, Lou?”

  “No, she … what you asking this for?”

  “You said, ‘She’s no person to be frivolous about.’ Like she was still alive.” A raw nerve there, Herb considered. Raw and still hurting. He had been right. Something else had happened in the Windy City. Something else concerning Sophie.

  “She’s probably dead by now. How should I know?”

  “You’re the fount of all wisdom, Maestro.”

  “Pcha! Fount my ass.”


  “So, what dates we talking?”

  “I told you, time meant nothing to me. I can’t recall what dates. Next date I can recall is … hum! Well, 1930, or possibly 1931. When I went to Hollywood.”

  “And you’re not really certain of that? If you can’t recall the dates, how can I believe anything else you say?”

  “Because you have my word on it.”

  “Word of a killer?”

  “I killed nobody. Genna, and his people, they killed. I killed nobody.” Then a silence like a long and horrible scream. “I killed nobody. Not then.”

  “Later?”

  “Hear me out, Herbie. Listen to the story. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  “You killed later.”

  “I told you, wait. Every man has his little foibles. …”

  “His armadillos, ja?”

  “Peccadilloes, Herbie. Then, with age, the guilt comes.”

  I knew it, Kruger thought. Knew it. The old devil’s a murderer on top of everything else. He wondered if the victim had been Sophie. Aloud, he said, “Okay, well, what happened? I mean, what happened during the time you stayed in this house. Any callers?”

  “Nobody knew where I was. Nobody except my cousins. This was a period of preparation, Herbie. Like a monk. You understand? I lived and worked like a monk. I had money, but I lived a life of abstinence. A simple life.”

  Kruger grunted. He made a mental note to get Pucky to find out the dates of the Gennas’ deaths. Put it in perspective. “So you were like a monk. It was lonely, yes?”

  “Sure it was lonely, but that was the point. I had to be self-sufficient. I did not want to go out into the world again until I had truly mastered my calling.”

  “And you didn’t want to go until you knew it was safe, yes?”

  The Maestro made a putt-putting sound with his lips. “You say I was a coward?”

  “No, I say you had a very strong instinct for self-preservation.”

  “This is true. Sure, I wanted my skin intact, so I withdrew from the world, as it were.”

  “And the letters were from your cousins?”

  “They were the only people in the world who I had outside contact with, yes.”

  “And you wrote regularly to each other?”

  “Of course. It was … well, there were difficulties. Things happened.”

  “Tell me, Lou.” The old man had more than hinted that the strong bond between him and his cousins had been the cause of something serious in his life. “Tell me. The truth. It’s no good, Lou, unless you tell the truth.”

  “Okay, when I got settled, at first I yearned for some human contact. I thought of David, Rachel and Rebecca in Germany. They were on my mind a great deal, particularly when I was cut off and alone, working. So I wrote to them: Long letters, I wrote. Very long. Why not? They were the only real family I had now. Mind you, I enclosed shorter letters they could show to their parents. Funny, I still thought of them as children. Vulnerable children. But I told them more or less the truth.”

  “What was the truth, Maestro?”

  “That I’d had problems.”

  “You didn’t tell them about Chicago?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Herb. No, of course I didn’t tell them. But their letters made me even more stubborn. Made me work harder. Made me miss them even more. Never has a day gone by that I have not missed them. …” He trailed off, as though some sudden emotion had him by the throat.

  “You said that before.”

  “Yea, I know, and I’ll go on saying it. Part of my life, Herb, was catastrophe because I missed them. The letters they sent all brought bad news.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as my Uncle Isaak had died. Such as David had married and his wife had died, in childbirth. Now Rachel was looking after the infant, and her ailing mother—come to that an ailing business.”

  Things were bad back in Passau, from which Louis had taken his new name. He desperately wanted to reach a point where he could bring his cousins over to America.

  “It was not to be, Herb. I was still working on fixing the house, when I got another shock. David wrote to me. I can even remember the words he used—

  “‘Lou,’ he wrote, ‘this is a hard task. For a long time we have all suspected that you have been out of touch with your mama and papa. So it is possible you do not know the heavy truth. Your mama, our dear aunt, died last winter in New York.’

  “That hit me, Herb. I became filled with guilt. Could I have made peace with my father? Should I have tried? Should I have visited them? For many weeks I thought and dreamed about my mother. In my dreams I heard her laugh. I tell you about her laugh, Herb? She had a musical laugh, even though she did not like music. It was a little burst of sound, beginning with a C chord, and rising, then dropping. Distinctive.” He demonstrated, and Kruger heard the opening bars of Passau’s symphony. The Demonic. “I was now saturated in guilt. Even blamed myself for my mother’s death. I was cloaked in sadness.”

  “Very poetic, Lou, but you didn’t go to New York? You didn’t go see how your pop was doing?”

  “What would’ve been the use? I mourned my mother’s passing in my own way. Then I worked, like I have never worked.”

  So, in his midtwenties, the newborn Louis Passau settled down to study his craft. To continue and refine the labor begun with old Aaron Hamovitch in New York.

  He said he was alone, often lonely: working a day of strict discipline. Beginning again at the beginning and moving forward. His investments were the house, the piano, the phonograph with its clockwork motor and the big horn, the recordings, the scores and books on music and technique. The little house was his cell and his studio, and there was money left over for the moment.

  “What moment?” Kruger asked.

  “Wait. For the moment when my career began. Thought you’d read the books. If you’ve read the books, then you know when my career began.”

  “You said the books lied.”

  “Only in some things. The essentials of my career are recorded fact. What you’re hearing is what went on behind the facts. What nobody else ever heard. So just shut up and listen.”

  The days were almost religiously marked. It was as though by strict discipline and hard work he could atone for the evils of Chicago. He rose early—six, six thirty—and performed some brisk physical exercise while the coffee heated on the stove. By seven thirty, breakfast was over and he began to work—either studying the books and scores, or at the piano—until one o’clock. From one to two thirty he broke for a meal and then more physical exercise, even on the hottest desert days. Then, work again until seven. Another meal. More exercise, and at least two more hours at the piano.

  “This was my life, Herb. I learned. I read scores—the major repertoire—as someone else might read novels. I learned them completely. You could have put me in a concert hall and said, conduct the Brahms Fifth, Tchaikovsky Fourth, Beethoven Second, I could have done it. Without the score.” He tapped his forehead. “It was all there. Every note of the repertoire. Operas, symphonies, concertos. Everything.”

  “Mahler Second?”

  “Probably, but maybe not. Mahler wasn’t in the repertoire in the twenties and thirties. Not really. I grew a beard: neat, trim, not like some shaggy mountain man, and I worked. For years, I worked. Like a monk.”

  “Like a real monk, Lou? None of the ladies? You were inviolent?”

  “Inviolate, Herb. No, but I was in Violet, and Patsy, also in a little Mexican girl whose name I forget.”

  “Like the dates, yes? The girls came up from the town with no name?”

  “What do you mean? It had a name.”

  “You didn’t give me any name, Lou. You’re a clever guy, you sin by omission.”

  “How?”

  “You leave things out, Lou.”

  “Okay, yes, the girls came up from the town. Maybe once a month I used to go down to the local cathouse and one of them would come back with me. Stay for two or three days. Yo
u never done that? Go to a girl from a cathouse?”

  “Not in a long time, Lou. How did all the work affect you? You got good at the job?”

  “I told you. In a couple of years I knew a great deal. I was also very fit. Work and exercise. I made the access road safe, and built steps down the side of the rockface on which I lived. When they were built—right down to the desert floor—I would run up and down them. Winter and summer. The piano was difficult. Had to tune it constantly. The weather was not good. But the time passed by, and suddenly all things changed.”

  “You remember the date, when all things changed?”

  “Sure,” casual, like sipping wine. “’Course I remember that. I’d never forget it. October.”

  “That’s a month, not a date. You said you weren’t sure of the date. 1930 or thirty-one, you said, only a few minutes ago.”

  Passau gave a little smile, lips pursed. He nodded. “See, keep you on your toes, Herb. The photographs of me begin in 1931, Hollywood. What led me there started in October 1930. It’s ambivalent in the books.”

  “So you would be twenty-nine, thirty years old.”

  “Age? What is age, my friend? Who said age only matters if you’re a cheese?”.

  “You look younger in the pictures, Lou. You look twenty years old, not nearly thirty.”

  “I have a good bone structure. I always looked younger. Would you take me for ninety years now?”

  “Ninety-five.” Kruger gave a chuckle. This was not getting anywhere. They jogged along. Jaunty, jolly, parry, riposte. Push him. Get him on the ropes. “So tell me about it? Was it like St. Paul on the road to Damascus? A voice saying, Lou, come to Hollywood.”

  The old man lifted a hand, then let it fall on his knee. “No, Herbie. It was the Trout.”

  “The Trout?”

  “Die Forelle. Quintet. Piano and four strings going like crazy. Schubert. Da-da-dada-da-dum-dum; da-da-dadadada-pomp. Die Forelle, fourth movement.”

  “Oh, that Trout. Ja, know it well. This takes you to Hollywood and a life of luxury?”

  “In a way, yes. One morning I wake up. Someone is murdering the Trout below my house. Slowly garroting Franz Schubert’s bubbling piano quintet in A.”