Killer on the Keys

by Michael Avallone

  He answered the door himself. It was good to see him smiling like a Chesire cat, handsome and formidable in a maroon smoking jacket and dark trousers, a ruffle of silk scarf wound about his throat. He seemed like the old Gregory again. Beaming, confident, completely in control of everything in his world. His arms were crushing about me, his handclasp as firm as any Mc Glaglen's. The fine face, hawk-nosed, full-lipped, dark-haired, was a brilliant mask of masculine good looks. The matrons adored him for that too. Music is not everything with lady customers.

  "Edward—what a pleasure!"

  "Well, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Maestro. You're looking fit as a bull fiddle and ready for about three virginal violins."

  "But come in, come in, and you shall see why."

  His full laughter ripped around the dim hallway. I said I could guess why and his merriment broke off and his eyes flickered suspicously. "You can? But how is that?"

  "Too easy. You've found another piano player."

  The ingenuous eyes widened. "You are an extraordinary fellow, Edward. No one else even suspects. And yet—oh, come in. I have no secrets from you, old friend. I see that."

  "All I can see is that you're back on the stick. I'm glad about that. After all, you're still Numero Uno on the Strad. And that's more important, after all is said and done."

  He was urging me inward, almost pulling me by the arm. We entered a Grand Opera sort of apartment living room. Complete with parquet floor, oil canvases in golden frames, stuffed animals, no less, propped in random fashion around furnishings that included a chaise lounge out of a French Restoration comedy, a rocking chair from Grandma Moses and far too many baroque ornaments and doodads of every bad-taste description. I hadn't come as a junk dealer making an appraisal so I ignored all of it. When a man is the world's greatest violinist, who says he has to decorate his interior like a fashion expert? Certainly not me who has known everything from fleabag furnished rooms to ratty East Side apartments.

  "You have hit it on the nose," Gregory was practically purring as he steered me into the heart of his home-made monster. "And this is he—my new piano player, as you put it. Algernon, this is one of my very dear friends, Mr. Noon. Edward, meet Algernon."

  A medium-sized, stoop-shouldered kid came forward, up from the depths of a colossal wing chair, to shake hands. I saw large eyes behind thick, tortoise-rimmed glasses, a bony nose and a small hole of a mouth. Another Valentin model. It was a dull face but I said nothing. The kid's handshake was surprisingly strong.

  Gregory, his smile wider than the French doors showing some afternoon sunlight, waved his "find" to the piano squatting in one corner of the room. It was a baby grand, as black as tar.

  "Algernon is a wonderful musician, Edward. He has a rare gift for the keyboard. Show him, protege. Play a little something. Chopin, if you will. A little lightness is good before sundown, eh?" The boy, he looked about twenty two, was also an eager beaver. He practically ran to the piano stool, the ordeal of meeting a stranger ended. He tightened the floppy folds of a Turkish dressing gown about his pear-shaped body. The garment, all sunflowers rampant on a blue field, was too long for him and must have been from the wardrobe of his mentor. But when Algernon sat down and began to play, all ungainliness and wallflower status fell from him like old theatre programs dropping in the gutters of the City. Deftly, he whisked through a feather-fingered, faultless rendition of the Polonaise. Even as I watched from the nearest matching wing chair, I kept an eye on Gregory. He was obviously as happy as a lark with its belly full. Algernon was another tribute to Gregory's ear. The Maestro couldn't miss with the rest of his concert season. He could tour the world with an accompanist like this new man.

  Gregory waved a ring-studded right hand when the kid was done. Algernon had rotated on the stool, looking hopeful and just a little bit anxious. When the Great Gregory voiced his approval and I added some meaningless compliments of my own, Algernon stood up and held his two hands together in an attitude of thankfulness.

  "You're very kind. Both of you—" His voice was thin, almost underdeveloped and he might have said more except that he began to cough. A hacking, dangerous-sounding series of noises and Gregory sighed, his face oddly contrite.

  "Algernon, are you all right—?"

  The boy straightened, managing a smile, the cough stilled.

  "Sorry, Sir. Yes—it's stopped now. Awful nuisance—"

  "Your medicine, child," Gregory intoned paternally. "Go take some. Increase the dosage if you must. And never fear. Edward will remain until you return. I want him to entertain you with some tales of his exploits as the private detective. Eh, Edward?"

  I smiled bleakly as Algernon literally marched from the room, to do as the Great Man bade him. He started to cough again on his way out, sounding worse than any Little Theatre Camille of memory.

  A door closed and I couldn't hear him anymore.

  Gregory, oddly serene in the depths of his chair, pyramided his supple fingers and made a rest for his smooth, shaven chin.

  "Poor boy. He has the chronic sore throat. I hope he can control it during a performance. He must! But—that is in the future, eh? For now, the world is good once again for Gregory."

  "Glad to hear that."

  "Drink, Edward?" He bounded up from the chair suddenly, and reached around behind the thing where a mahogany sideboard seemed to house his liquor supply. He drew a bottle of Drambuie out of the blue, before I could yeah or nay the idea. The sideboard was practically hidden by an enormous stuffed Panda who was planted on the parquet floor, staring at us both from symmetrical glass eyes. A gift from one of his many admirers, I guessed, or perhaps one of his own hobby fetishes. Like I said, I didn't know that much about him. I watched his steadiness as he rapidly uncorked the bottle and poured us both two neat belts of that which is one of the finest liquers in the entire spectrum of Drinking. Hail to the Isle of Skye.

  "All over your scare, Maestro?" I got that one in, softly.

  He was all set for that pitch. He beamed with mock scorn.

  "Completely, I think. It was a shock, you understand. That gypsy woman and then my Valentin dies so soon after! But, happily, all is well with Gregory." We saluted each other over the rims of our drinks. I knew he was feeling better. When he spoke of himself in the Third Person, he was operating on all six cylinders again. The Star Complex, the Virtuoso Syndrome, where all is One Name and Only One Name, where No One else is quite like You. "To Algernon, Edward. And the future."

  "To Algernon." We clinked glasses and sipped very slowly, both enjoying the moment. "Is that his real name, for God's sakes?"

  "It is, indeed. Algernon Gerard. Rather a good name, for a performer. The G's are most felicitous, I think. Gregory and Gerard. G. and G. If he plays well—" Gregory shrugged, as if the sky was the limit. "Who can say?"

  "Any trouble with your bookings? You have been goofing off since the trouble, I take it?"

  "Never!" His eyes glowed with pride. "These fingers are always practicing, rehearsing. But—my reputation helped. None of them cancelled me. All lamented the accident but only postponed the schedule. Carnegie I can make up when we swing back from Cleveland next month. As dear Hendricks has told me in his hardhearted way, it was good for the box office. A sensation. And now—in two weeks—this boy will be ready. Believe it—he will!"

  I nursed the Drambuie, somehow wishing he had a stronger taste in hootch. I could have used a Scotch at that time of day.

  "Where did you pick this genius up?"

  "We held open auditions. I did not want to avail myself of any of the known accompanists at liberty. I go my own way, you know. Algernon stood out from all the rest. It is always so with genuine talent. Such hands—he instinctively senses what the composer meant in the orchestrations for piano." A long sigh suddenly got away from Gregory, his eyes clouding. "Unfortunately, he has poor vision. This could seriously hamper him, of course, but he seems to have acquired some special sort of lenses which—"

  A tiny, almost inaud
ible crash of sound interrupted him. It seemed to come from the room which Algernon had entered only moments ago. Then glass tinkled, as if in breaking, and there was no mistaking that familiar noise. Before we could galvanize or even move, exchanging surprised glances, there was a thudding, muffled slam. Like something falling. Or someone. I slapped my glass down and got up from the wing chair fast. Gregory cried out. A mewing sort of yelp. The expression I'd seen in his eyes on the night of Valentin's swan song was back again. Startled, all color gone—afraid.

  "Was that the bathroom—?' His voice was like a ragged file and he seemed trapped in the chair he sat in.

  Then, with an electrifying burst of motion, he rocketed up from his seat, flying across the floor, shoving open the door which Algernon had closed. I raced after him, aware of the odd clanging bells of something in my own brain. The bells that always tell me when something isn't quite Kosher, when bad things are about to happen or have just happened. Gregory's hurtling form led the way. Through a maze of rooms, more parquet floors and dimmer alcoves than the hall foyer. I caught sight of his maroon smoking jacket disappearing into a tiled bathroom whose opened door and illuminated interior revealed that same old universe of spanking clean enamel and bathtub, sink and commode bowl. The room we all need, rich or poor.

  When I caught up with him, it was to share the threshold, for his tall figure was blocking the way. He was rooted in the doorway, struck dumb in frozen terror, gaping foolishly down at the tiles before him. He was voiceless, making only small strangling sounds. Whatever it was that numbed him, he was completely useless to me, and to the poor kid folded over the rim of the bathtub, hanging on to his middle as if he thought he was coming apart, splitting down the center like a banana that is sliced in half.

  Algernon Gerard was an accordion of agony.

  Broken shards of glass, which reconstructed would have made a tall fancy goblet of some kind, lay scattered around his feet On the porcelain sink, a small bottle of some prescription, was lying by one of the shining chrome faucets, trailing a muddy, red path of liquid down into the basin. The mirrored door of the medicine cabinet hung open, displaying a collector's row of jars, cylinders, phials, all sorts of pharmaceuticals and cosmetic products. I didn't have to test the brown splotches staining the white porcelain of the sink. You don't have to be a druggist to recognize iodine when you see it spilled. Also, it has the quality of just looking bad. Looking like the trouble it is when used incorrectly.

  Algernon's homely face was a puffed, straining lump of dough. He coughed, a bubble of froth dancing in his poor hole of a mouth. He retched violently, splattering his throat muscles, but only the horrible sound came up. Not the poisonous bile. Nothing else. He was down on his knees, digging his fingers into his stomach as if he could pull out the agony by force. As if he could keep himself together, in one whole piece. It was a terrible moment, altogether.

  I got him out of the bathroom, carrying him, pushing Gregory out of the way, finding the nearest bedroom with a telephone. The Great Gregory, drained of all animation and strength, finally managed a minor miracle and snapped out of his trance. He was able to use the phone while I worked over Algernon. The awful truth burbled out of Algernon even as I tried to remember all the life-saving tricks I ever knew about poisoning of any type.

  ". . . wanted . . . my cough medicine . . . mistake . . . iodine . . . oh, get me something . . . stomach's on fire. . . ."

  After that, I found the kitchen and the refrigerator. I broke some eggs, mixed mustard and water, forced them all down Algernon's throat, hoping for a reaction. I even tried stuffing my fingers down his gullet, all the emetic devices in the world to get him to throw up. To regurgitate that killing dosage of iodine: warm water, salt—the works. None of it seemed to help. I don't know why. Gregory was altogether useless at that point. He could only stand by, and gawk incredulously, trembling like an adagio dancer.

  When the doctor showed up, at last, a round little guy who lived in Gregory's building area and had been summoned by the telephone operator in addition to her standard call for an ambulance, the damage had been done. Algernon Gerard, it seemed, had swallowed too much iodine; he already had a lousy stomach system to begin with, and his come-back quotient was non-existent. I've seen a lot of stiffs, in a lot of ways, but I've never seen one that died from accidental iodine poisoning. It made no sense at all.

  As the game doctor, who tried everything he knew to save Algernon, drew a sheet over the poor, sappy dead face, now trouble-free and without spectacles with special lenses, Gregory went reeling back into a chair like he'd never get up again. I can't forget, and never will, the solid stupefaction and terror that had set up dark housekeeping in each of his round little eyes.

  Two accompanists.

  Two tragic deaths.

  Both young men in their twenties.

  Both playing piano for the same celebrated musician.

  The papers had a field day.

  The Times made it a page one story which wasn't their usual brand of journalism. The Post splashed it across the weekend edition of their sheet, doing a series of articles on the musical calamities of the past and present The Daily News, in typical yellow rag fashion, ran a half-page cartoon dealing with Gregory's unique fix. A cruel caricature of the Great One sawing away at his violin while two skeletal apparitions sat at the piano in the background of the sketch. One wraith mockingly asking the other ghostly partner: "Who's he going to get this time?" Dry bones, indeed.

  It was a seven-day sensation, talked about by everyone in town, second-guessed by every expert on radio and television, savored by all New Yorkers from every walk of Life and generally treated as a three-ring circus by all the folks who make their bread and butter by printing their opinions. Never have so many discussed the Fate of so few—Georges Valentin and Algernon Gerard. Nobody stopped to smell the flowers, everyone milked the tragedies for all the traffic could bear. And the ultimate victim, after the hullaballoo died down, as all hullaballoos eventually do, was Tadeusz Anton Gregory.

  The magic of his name dimmed.

  No accompanist came knocking at his door.

  The music world is just as superstitious as the rest of the performing arts. Gregory's trouble was the talk of Broadway and the concert halls. But right after that—nothing. A blackout.

  His name and his genuis seemed to pass from the language. His tours and bookings were all cancelled. Variety declared, in bold type, "B.O. FOLDS FOR GREGORY," and every other tabloid agreed that a musician who loses two accompanists to Death was poison at receipt-adding-up time. And Gregory seemed to go into hiding. He literally disappeared. Nobody knew where he had gone. Not even foxy Walter Hendricks who insisted that his most famous client had just upped and gone. Taken off to God alone knew where. Running for cover.

  I didn't know, either. Gregory left me no messages, made no farewells or even hinted to me what he was about to do. The day after Algernon Gerard died, he ran away from it all. Dropped out.

  An old fortune teller's nonsense and a weird pair of accidents had driven him from the highest mountain to the very bottom of the valley. It was downhill all the way, after that. A greased slide.

  The public forgot about him. There are just too many other goldfish in the big swimming pool of stars. Too many celebrities.

  There was a void, after that. A vacancy.

  The concert season faltered along, without a Gregory to make a Stradivarius do magic tricks. He had brought showmanship, too, to a field that needed all the color it could get. When it came to Strads, all the other Stradmen were just names on showbills.

  All I could do was wonder how much truth there was in coincidental tragedies which kick a God from the heights of Mount Olympus. Never having bought the whole business of Predicting-The-Future for a second, I did keep remembering Valentin's face, Algernon and the iodine scene and—Gregory. Above all, the Maestro. The poor bastard had let his impressionable brain ruin a career where another man would have capitalized on the two fluke deaths
and made a bonanza of misfortune, turning it into sensational publicity.

  Something that not even Walter Hendricks had thought of.

  And nobody else did, either.

  The Maestro could have gone it alone, besides, without an accompanist, but obviously that hadn't occurred to him. Or if it had, he'd been too upset to consider this alternative.

  In any case, whatever the trouble was, he was gone.

  And somebody had to find him.

  I decided, without too much self-persuasion, that I was the man for that job. Retainers and fees don't mean that much to me.

  Only Tadeusz Anton Gregory mattered.

  That violin of his belonged to the world.

  From such noble intentions and resolves, do the horrors come.

  And the agonies and the ecstasies.

  Wait and see.

  There was only one thing to consider and take care of before I went on the manhunt. A little matter that the whole country happened to be involved with. Very necessarily so.

  Election Day. In the Year of That War, 1972.

  The Man was running again, after four of the toughest years any Mr. President had had to contend with. The opposition was a large Somebody who was trying to break the stranglehold that the Chief's Party had on the United States of America, a death grip.

  A real hawk trying to fight off the radical flapping of a well-intentioned, keenly liberal dove. The battle of titans.

  So I took time out to vote before taking off after Gregory.

  It would have handed anyone who knew me a large laugh to know how I voted that chilly November morning.

  I had gotten older. I had changed, somehow.

  Whatever had happened to me, I voted and cast the die.

  I didn't vote for The Man.

  SERENADE TO INSANITY

  The Gregory trail led me to Pittsburgh. It took me only two days to pin down his location. For some obscure reason, neither Walter Hendricks nor anyone else had asked for police help to find their missing violin virtuoso. I suppose the Maestro had the right to hide and lick his wounds if he wanted to, but there was something fishy about the whole affair. So I played my own game, played detective, and came up with a lucky seven. Melissa Mercer was still in Los Angeles, Captain Monks was back on the job in Centre Street, the red-white-and-blue phone didn't ring and there was nothing to tie me to my West Forty-Sixth Street desk. So I jetted to Pittsburgh from Newark on an afternoon flight, at special rates, and zeroed in on Tadeusz Anton Gregory. It had been ridiculously simple to pick up his trail from the Kips Bay Plaza apartment.