Killer on the Keys

by Michael Avallone

  "Damn the woman," Gregory suddenly blurted as if he had been reading my thoughts, But he wasn't talking about La Belle Manhattan, of course. He was still dwelling on Madame Alarma, whoever the hell she really was, in this enlightened Age.

  "You realize," I said, "that palm-reading and tea leaf forecasts and beer suds divination has kind of gone out as standard Sciences?"

  "Do not joke, Edward. I pay no tribute to this character. As I said, she merely caught me off balance."

  "It would seem so," I said, copying his formal dialogue. "Gregory, Gregory, talk to me some more. Tell me about your dream or tell me a dirty joke. Either, or. I don't want to hear another word about a society magician who was probably brought to Lady Dunley's for the express purpose of turning you on. Okay?"

  For a moment, he seemed about to get sore again. Checking his headlong stride, he flung me a glare but then he recognized the man he was dealing with and nodded soberly. Picking up his brisk pace again, for I had kept on walking, he launched into the rest of his uneasiness without further prelude. As a trained musician, he knew when to get on with the libretto and when to switch playing sections.

  The dream, call it Nightmare For Violins, was a screaming Fun House of your hangups and my hangups and everybody's hangups, no matter who we were, are, or will be. Dreams must be the most democratic art form in the universe. Gregory's fantasy, the very night of his bad time with Madame Alarma, was a three-ring circus of subconscious wall-to-wall weirdness. Walking along the Park with him, en route to Carnegie Hall, I listened with mingled wonder and amusement as he dramatized his fantastic trip into Dreamland, with jabbing cane gestures, excited verbal descriptions and rising tempo. An oral Night On Bald Mountain.

  It was a beaut, all right. Something for Color TV.

  According to Gregory, he had envisioned himself playing a Stradivarius in a theatre-in-the-round in Hell. Surrounding him on all four sides were nude, writhing men, women and children and none of them seemed to care very much for his performance. They hooted, wailed and tore at their hair, most of which seemed to resemble snakes and scorpions and spiders. He remembered that he was naked himself and the Strad suddenly grew enormously large in his hands, dwarfing his own body so that his fingers were no longer able to reach the strings. He also vividly recalled an intense heat that had made the perspiration run off his body like Niagara Falls. And oddly enough, the torrent of sweat became a tidal cataract of water, with the accompanying sounds to match. He felt himself engulfed, the gigantic Strad floating away from his straining fingers like the Nina, the Pinta or the Santa Maria. And all the while, the audience of ghouls swam toward him, screaming, cursing, trying to claw at him, the hair on their skulls still literal serpents of the distorted imagination. It was while Gregory was drowning, going down in that sea of lost souls and terrifying madness, maybe for the third or fourth time, that he woke up. Woke up to panting, hoarse-throated horror in his own bedroom in his private bachelor quarters in Kips Bay Plaza. He stayed up the rest of that night until the dawn scratched at the French windows. Stayed up, smoking one cigarette after the other, thinking of one thing after the other, wondering how he could have had such a ridiculous nightmare. He—the Great Gregory. Master of Music.

  "For a man," I said, when he had run down, waiting for me to say something, as we reached the well-lighted corner of Seventy-Second, a coin's toss from the dark and stately Dakota, "who didn't sleep a wink last night, you look just fine."

  "Really, Edward?"

  "Really."

  "And my dream—"

  "A nightmare. Rarer than most I will admit but we all get them. Especially we adult, sophisticated males. Did I ever tell you about the dream I had where I was locked in a hall closet with Vera Miles, Sophia Loren and Claire Bloom and all we were up to—in the buff, mind you—was playing Charades and I woke up just as I started doing my impression of Washington Crossing The Delaware? Go solve that one, Maestro."

  We got across the street on the green light just before it turned a hellish red. Gregory chuckled softly. A lighter, happier sound.

  "You are joking. But you are trying to cheer me up. I appreciate that. You and your eternal good humor."

  "Is it working, that's all I want to know?"

  "A little."

  "Good."

  "Then you insist Madame Alarma is nothing—my dream is nothing?"

  "Something like that. You wouldn't want to go to the bank with odds so crazy, would you? Parlor tricks, a bad scare and then a bogeyman dream brought on by the power of the suggestion. Grow up, Maestro."

  "Strange you should tell me that. You of all people. The only true child I know. A man, who despite much cleverness and ability and genuine experience, has remained a believer in Heroes and Goodness."

  "I believe in you, Gregory."

  "For that I always thank you. And bless you. Come—you have cured me, I think. I can now tell Madame Alarma to go fornicate herself. Damn the old witch. She will not do Gregory in."

  "Play that again, Mr. G. And again."

  "No. I will discuss it no more. It is ended. Done. I put my coda on the whole affair and am my old self again."

  "Good show. Half the battle that. You stop thinking about a thing and it vanishes in thin air. Fortune-telling isn't worth the dab of resin you put on your bow."

  We did indeed drop the subject right after that and walked in silence until we reached Columbus Circle. By the time we hit West-Fifty-Seventh, a long loud line of standees and musical devotees was clearly visible. Gregory's dark face warmed at the sight. The hum of the crowd, the tingle of great events in the making, was generating that Show Biz electricity which must charge the batteries of any performer, big and small, talented and mediocre. For a Tadeusz Anton Gregory, it had to be a pure drug. The opium and heroin of Success, with its stunning, sweet smell. I could sense I might get a charge, a shock, if I but touched his arm. He was throbbing with vitality as we exchanged brief goodbyes at the corner of Broadway. He could duck the crowd which hovered under the marquee by taking a side door, an artists' entrance where the autograph hunters would collect like vultures after the performance. Nobody would dare ask him for his signature before the show, somehow. In music circles that was somehow considered not cricket and plain bad manners.

  "Knock them dead, Gregory. Regards to that accompanist of yours."

  Gregory's eyes twinkled in their dark pools.

  "Assuredly. Valentin thinks very highly of you, Edward. Your kindness with the Karate lessons. Poor fellow. So sensitive, so easy to hurt. But a master at the keyboard, for all his youth, eh?"

  I did a fast pantomime of playing the piano.

  "Yeah, he tunes a Steinway pretty good."

  "Tunes? Ah, but you make more jokes, Edward! Valentin is a marvel. His fingering is truly ideal—"

  "That's your department, old friend." I smiled as we shook hands. "See you after the twentieth curtain call."

  "I would settle for five as of now."

  "No sweat."

  He beamed, saluting me with a tilt of his Malacca walking stick and then jauntily strode off, a tall figure somehow distinguishing a neighborhood that had begun to run down a decade ago and kept on running down. He seemed to have completely dismissed his bad time with the mysterious Madame Alarma as well as his own sub-conscious. Satisfied and a million miles from dark forecasts and second thoughts of my own, I turned toward the marquee of Carnegie Hall. I felt in the mood for the classics myself, as rendered by the finest virtuoso in captivity. Tadeusz Anton Gregory—the Great Gregory, First Violin.

  Yet, the Unbelievable was lurking in the wings that night.

  Something Gregory had not been told about by his Madame Alarma.

  Something he couldn't possibly have dreamed about, either.

  Nor I, for that unlaughing matter.

  The nightwalkers were all over Carnegie Hall that evening, on a witch's jag. Nightwalkers, screaming eagles, waltzing monkeys with brass hats, broomstick riders and dancing skeletons, all changing pa
rtners for a Danse Macabre right out of a swirling, sulphur-filled ballroom, filled with the stench of brimstone and decay.

  It was to be a night to remember.

  A Walpurgis Night of another kind.

  Not out of Richard Wagner at all.

  But surely, the Devil.

  Another Titanic was about to go down.

  DUET ON NERVESTRINGS

  I gave my purple-tinted ticket to a uniformed doorman whose smile was a study in brown servitude and drifted into the pleasant world of Carnegie Hall. I checked my topcoat ahead of the mob scene which was developing and wandered in the general direction of my seat. The music-lover genre was already gathering excitedly, kicking up a fur coat and high hat storm. I saw a ton of white silk scarfs dangling from expensive throats, folded opera hats and dazzling furs, wearing ladies, young and old, lovely and homely. The atmosphere was monied, posh and strictly First Nighter Privileged. I tried to keep my teeth together without snarling. It's my P.S. 34 background and School of Hard Knocks diploma which always seemed to surface in phony waters. Who had really come to hear and enjoy Gregory's violin? For that motive, only? So much of this showy love of classical music was studied, a fad, a fashionable convention of the Greenback People. Just a chance to display the latest diamond necklace, chinchilla or romantic conquest. 'Twas ever thus. Long before the Jackie Kennedy Onassises came, and it will be with us long after she leaves. But I don't have to like it So I don't. I pushed through the perfumed pack, elbowing smart people to either side, gained the theatre proper, and found my way to the seat the purple ticket stub called for. I hardly noticed the pretty usherette who pointed the way because Carnegie Hall was filling up rapidly. Curtain Time was barely fifteen minutes away. I wasn't thinking about dames.

  In a box seat to the left of the barren stage, the Mayor of New York City threw me a smiling nod and I waved my program back at him. All around me, people spotted him too and a general noisy acknowledgment ensued. The Mayor seemed to be alone and when a man is as handsome as any movie star on a clear day, it's bound to cause some talk. But the local gossipers didn't have a prayer. I knew the Mayor's wife, too, and there couldn't be two people under the Manhattan sky crazier about each other. They are the original John and Mary of all romance fiction. Ask anybody who they really call Friend. Don't ask Society Climbers and Gossips.

  I looked at the program, with its slick white vellum paper, neat black print and tasteful advertising. A brochure to dignified selling.

  Gregory was intending to bite off quite a musical chaw, if you could trust the program, which was always subject to change.

  Sibelius, Brahms and Beethoven. With Valentin on the Steinway. Georges Valentin, the brilliant French newcomer, who at a mere twenty-five, was already sniffing the dazzling atmosphere of the Gregory charisma. With the Great Gregory setting the violin pace, they were both going to delineate Sibelius' Concerto In D Minor For Violin and Orchestra, Opus 47, Brahm's Sonatas For Violin And Piano and the mighty Ludwig Van B.'s No. 8, C Minor, Opus 13—the legendary Pathetique Symphony.

  I put the program away, looking up and sensing progress.

  Carnegie Hall noises fell off, the house beginning to hush in anticipation, as the pit musicians started shuffling in, silently and regimentally, from Stage Center. So many penguins in dress suits, all curiously alike and militarily uniform. They took their places behind music racks and assorted instruments, just below the apron of the stage. Bald heads and long-haired heads, bent to a mutual task. Rodor Fife, the white-plumaged batonist, made his own spectacular entrance, rising up to the podium centered in the heart of the orchestra. His flowing, silvery, leonine mane was as recognizable a trademark as Brynner's shining skull. Nobody else in the world looked like Rodor Fife, the most renowned conductor since the days of Toscanini. A thunderous burst of applause greeted the pit on the appearance of his famous head and shoulders and short, powerful figure. He was immaculate and dynamic in tuxedo and white tie. The audience's enthusiasm was very understandable. They were getting Rodor Fife and the Great Gregory for the price of one ticket. It was Bargain Day in Carnegie Hall.

  In fleeting, hurrying moments, the house lights had dimmed.

  The crowd fell silent, as if attending a St. Patrick's Mass.

  Rodor Fife waved his baton, tapped his music stand and a bull fiddle boomed like a mammoth frog gloating in deep, lily-filled water. The string section flared in a whispering-breeze union of violins and cellos. And the tall, unforgettable form of Gregory strode from the wings. A baby spotlight followed him to the center of the stage. The Hall exploded with acclaim. A bombardment of exultant ovation. Gregory bowed, flawlessly, once to the left of the house, then center, then to the right and back to center again. It was a perfectly executed pantomime and the cult that all virtuosi own, went nuts—literally.

  Applause, admiration, even love, rang back from the packed seats. But the impatience for the entertainment to come soon put the quietus on that. The hand-clapping faded to pattering echoes.

  The cone of light winked out, replaced by a suffused glow of amber, the crowd fell respectfully silent and the stage itself was the only place in the universe. The stage and Gregory, standing in statue-like poise with God's violin in position on one shoulder.

  A handsome grand piano, a concert piano, was now visible in the shadowy depths behind the tall figure of Tadeusz Anton Gregory. In customary pose before its unseen keyboard was Valentin. I could see his thin hands, the rimless spectacles too big for his nose, all of the nervous, fidgety, slack-lipped look of him. He had needed the Karate lessons, all right. He was the sort of young guy who every other young guy would dismiss as a fairy. Or at the very least, deem the old-fashioned "sissy" and torment him every step of the way from short pants to adolescence and then who knows? The savage price of a prodigy childhood spent in learning and mastering eighty-eight keys. To be able to sit and play for an artist like the Great Gregory.

  That's Show Biz and definitely not the world I made.

  Or Valentin either, for that matter.

  In the mammoth, awesome stillness, Valentin's piano tinkled softly with an opening bridge and Gregory's head tilted, dropping toward the Stradivarius perched to his chin. As the young accompanist crossed over the bridge, whipping with sudden frenzy through a tough scherzo, the violin spoke. In words of more than one syllable and meaning.

  There is no other way to describe the playing of Gregory.

  His stringing was as swift and sure as a well coordinated spaceship launching. And nearly as explosive in effect. Gregory was a magician on the Strad. A whiz of a whiz. A wizard of Ahs. In his fantastic fingers, the violin was an extension of the human mind. Or perhaps, the soul itself. Those things and all the senses rolled into one. An amalgam of sheer sorcery.

  It was as if the story of Music itself was unfolding with each and every pluck and movement of his arms and fingers. His face was now unlined and composed. The mask was perfect. He was no longer the man who had invaded my apartment that night with worries about a fortune teller. He was a Michelangelo, a Beethoven, a Njinsky, a name-your-own poison non pareil in the very depths of his creations. As such, he held that stage and that audience as few men or women ever have. Even a low-brow like me was sitting spell-bound.

  Complementing him ideally was Valentin's firm, sure touch on the ivories and blacks. The keys re-inforced, shaded and counter-pointed everything the violin had to say. Gregory flashed away, intense, as precise and magnificent as he had ever been. Elbow sawing, skilled fingers plucking, pressing, drawing forth sounds that had to have been made in some musical heaven, somewhere. The notes, the soaring, rich, passionate tone of the Strad washed over the Hall like the blessings of some kind of God bestowed on the world at large. I was wrapped up in all of it, in the moment, in the magic, just as everyone else was. Vietnam was gone, Civil Rights was nowhere, Pollution was not to be condoned nor were any of those morning ills and headaches of daily living even to be remotely considered. The universe was centered, focussed and tar
geted-in on one magician in evening dress playing a violin.

  Sibelius' Concerto In D Minor For Violin And Orchestra can't possibly have ever been performed any better. Rodor Fife and his ensemble were cranking up, stirring, waiting for that split second where piano and violin sideswipe like two birds in flight. I could see Fife's silvery thatch raise, along with his elegant arm, the baton arching like the needle on a Geiger Counter. Ready to jump in, to provide the blanket of brass and strings and woodwinds which would transform the entire performance into something for the memory books.

  Of course, birds never collide. They know the pecking order, and they know where they fit in the scheme of Flight. They don't even come close to bumping together but that was the feeling all the same, the one generated by Gregory's Strad and Valentin's Steinway. Every music aficionado in the Hall held their collective breaths in anticipation.

  I leaned forward, all unconsciously in my seat, heedless of the beautiful brunette in Balenciaga dress on my right and the rather obvious V.I.P. on my left. I was sitting with the Money People, the Beautiful People and for once, even in my kind of lifetime, I hadn't been paying any attention to my surroundings. Gregory had hypnotized me.