Killer on the Keys

by Michael Avallone

  "There won't be any if you behave and do what I tell you."

  "Anything you say—within reason. Only hurry."

  "Good. Now get up from the desk and let me sit there. Go stand in the center of the room and look this way. You can watch me while I talk to Gregory. And I can watch you without turning my head."

  The switch went smoothly, rapidly.

  I sat in Dr. Deming's leather upholstered chair, directly across from Gregory so that we were eyeball-to-eyeball, even if he was still looking right through me, without a glimmer of recognition. Dr. Deming was shorter than I would have suspected. As he took up a nervous position about a yard beyond Gregory's chair, I saw that he was barely five and a half feet tall, if that. The bald head was glistening with perspiration, the rimless spectacles almost smoked with dampness. I didn't waste any more time. I reached into my pockets for what had brought me. I unearthed the miniature, cheap metronome which I'd had Melissa buy in a music store on Broadway and, placing it between Gregory and myself, clicked it on. It was a triangular piece, no more than five inches high, of brown wood with a black indicator. It began to tick. Tick-tick-ticking, while the tiny pointer swept back and forth, left and right, with monotonous regularity. The ticking, mechanical sounds filled the room. Gregory stared harder but only stared. Nothing happened in his eyes or on his deeply mask-like face. Dr. Deming seemed to be holding his breath, but he was a doctor to the end. He was shaking his head, as if mourning my little games. I ignored him, left the metronome clicking with its rhythmic, musical tempo and brought out the other item which meant so much to me. Which might mean so much to Tadeusz Anton Gregory. And should have.

  I propped it up to the left of the metronome. It was a 10x12 blow-up of a portrait which I had made from the A card of Nicholas Walston Gregory. The Army and Washington had provided me with it literally overnight—the tiny photo which all soldiers must have taken to be stamped and affixed to the ID Card which allows them to go on leave and furlough or go to town for the day. I'd had one myself once, a lifetime ago, so I'd known one would have to be in existence. We'd had the photo enlarged, set it in a cheap cardboard easel that could stand and this was what Gregory was staring at now, along with the ticking metronome to its right. A portrait and a souvenir from the Past.

  It was a good picture of Gunnery Sergeant Nicholas Walston Gregory. Head and shoulders, dressed in his Marine A uniform and helmet, the left breast pocket hidden by row upon row of fruit salad. All the medals and campaign ribbons a fighting marine, a good soldier, could have earned. I was banking plenty on that picture. So I kept my mouth shut, my attention riveted on the walking dead man before me. Even Dr, Deming had stopped wagging his bald skull, still holding his breath again. You could have heard the grass outside growing, in that office.

  Time crawled. The seconds, the minutes. The photo did not move a fraction. The metronome ticked endlessly. On and on. Like a dirge.

  The silence lengthened, taking on a size and shape of its own. I could feel the moistness of my own palms, the ache of my own held breathing. Something had to give. The strain had become ponderous, heavy and almost unbearable. Gregory's smoked-out eyes held nothing. Not a glimmer, a gleam or a flicker of anything. I kept from biting my lip.

  The photo of a beloved dead brother and a musical memento had bombed out. Badly. The catatonia was an immovable, steel wall.

  "Satisfied, Mr. Noon?" Dr. Deming's rattled voice broke over Gregory's shoulders and the desk, like the sudden thunder of a pistol shot. "Give all this foolishness up and leave my patient to me. You've accomplished exactly nothing and—"

  "Shut up, Doctor. This is still my show." I studied Gregory. Not even the world's greatest actor could have done what he was doing. Complete and utter withdrawal. Like a man made of stone. I had very little ammunition left. "Gergory," I said, raising my voice a full level. "This is Edward, old friend. Edward Noon. Have Gun, Will Be Your Friend. Do you hear me, Gregory? Can you understand me?"

  The mask face remained motionless. The eyes unseeing.

  "The violin," I kept on, not hammering, but maintaining a steady tempo, matching the tick-tick of the tiny metronome whose clicking sound still filled the desk area. "Algernon. Valentin. And Walter Hendricks. Walpurgis Night. Lady Dunley. Dunley. D-U-N-L-E-Y. Sibelius, Bach, Brahms. The world's greatest violinist. None do doubt it, my friend. Gregory, this is Noon. Ed Noon. Answer me, my friend. Maestro—hear the metronome. Tick-tick, tick-tick. Think of Nicholas. Your brother Nicholas—Gunnery Sergeant Nicholas Walston Gregory—remember the War—and Hitler—and that slave labor camp—what was it called?—Oberrickelsheim—"

  "Mr. Noon," Dr. Deming exploded, suddenly all expert, all doctor, no longer a man frightened of guns. "Stop this. Immediately, do you hear! You're only harming him—this can do no good, believe me. I know what I'm saying—"

  I didn't listen to him. I kept on at Gregory, talking, now hammering in spite of myself, doing my damnedest to light a spark. Any spark that would stir and bank the embers of his memory. There had to be something left. There always it, for my money. Even in the most awful and hopeless of cases. I couldn't believe otherwise.

  "Gregory," I leaned across the desk, staring full-tilt into his unresponding eyes. "Tell me. Your brother Nicholas. You loved him so much. More than life. But if you did, why didn't you leave all your money, all your worldly goods to such a man? Why did you leave it all to a woman? How can any woman be worth more to you than a brother who gave you music—who sent you metronomes from all over the world, no matter how far away or how busy he was . . .?"

  Gregory did not move. Not the thousandth of an inch.

  No so much as a flick of an eyelash.

  Dr. Deming was beginning to curse and mutter all kinds of imprecations and oaths, mostly to himself, still afraid of sending me into any physical, ungracious action. I drew as close as I could to Gregory, breathing down into his dead mask of a face.

  "Stephanie Orodney. Gregory. Who is she? What is she? Tell me. Stephanie Orodney. Stephanie Orodney. Orodney, Orodney, Orodney, Orodney . . . Orodney . . . Orodney. . . ."

  The metronome ticked away. The framed face of Gunnery Sergeant Nicholas Walston Gregory smiled back at his brother. A blonde, smiling giant, the complete opposite of the dark man before him.

  "Tell me what Madame Alarma, that gypsy woman saw in your palm that night at Lady Dunley's. Did she see that you were secretly guilty? That you were ashamed, had always been ashamed that Nicholas, your brother, was a fighting man who fought back at Injustice and Intolerance—that you were weak and cowardly—and that in reality, you hated Nicholas, you always hated Nicholas, in spite of all his kindness to you—in spite of how he took care of you in that slave labor camp—that you hated him for being the man you never were? Or did you simply learn that night that Music was not enough? That all the violin genius in the world could not make up for your shortcomings as a man—and that it was a terrible thing to do to leave your fortune to a woman called Stephanie Orodney—knowing full well that Gunnery Sergeant Nicholas Walston Gregory had died a hero in the services of his country. . . ."

  Dr. Deming came galloping back from where he stood in the center of the office. His face had literally gone from ultra-pale to crimson anger. His fear of the .45 had vanished just as fast.

  "No," he bawled. "No more! You've over-stepped yourself. Why, for God's sake, Mr. Noon, you may completely destroy him for all time—I must ask you to put an end—"

  "Shut up," I barked sharply, cutting him dead. "You stop and take a look at your patient's face. And bless all amateurs everywhere, Doc. Sometimes they get results where the experts fall on their faces. See for yourself."

  He stopped pulling his rank on me and gaped down at Gregory. He saw what I had seen and for a long crucial moment, the balance tipped, with the clicking metronome, and the smiling portrait, over to the side of the angels. The Devil and Darkness took a back seat in that room. Both Deming and I were now at a loss for words. The magic, the awakening, the coming-to-life
of Tadeusz Anton Gregory, as slight as it was, evoked the powers of sunlight. And maybe that God that Deming had continually yapped about, asking help from. I don't really know. No old sinner does, for sure.

  Gregory's mask of a face had lifted. Raised from the grave.

  The cracks showed, the first, barest indications of life and movement. Something animated, something alive. Something not dead.

  It was his eyes.

  His damned lustreless, dull eyes.

  Something glistened in the corner of one of them.

  Left or right, it didn't matter. Only what it was, mattered.

  A tear.

  A shining, almost radiant pearl of grief.

  I watched that tear.

  Dr. Deming did, too.

  It slipped out of Gregory's eye, raced down his cheek and arced off his chin. And then a ripple passed over the contracted muscles of his face. The flesh quivered, moved and then recoiled again before slowly relaxing and sagging with nearly weary defeat. The unnaturally greying head fell forward, dangling down to chest level. A gigantic tremor convulsed the forlorn figure trapped in the chair. Suddenly, Tadeusz Anton Gregory was crying. Very low, pitiful, soft sobs, the sound of something wrenched up from the very depths of whatever soul he had. It might have been a violin crying.

  And still the metronome ticked, its curious rhythm sounding oddly tinny and false within the walls of the office.

  Highmark Meadows' head doctor gawked at me, wonderingly.

  "That's the first time—the only time—he's so much as blinked since we've had him under our supervision."

  "Never mind that. You take over now. Keep him that way. We have to talk to him or we're no better off than before."

  "By God, Mr. Noon—"

  "Leave him out of this. You do some of the work now, Dr. Deming. We have to know more about this Stephanie Orodney—"

  The rapid and startling emergence of Gregory from his mental cocoon accomplished a couple of other things, too. All of them bad.

  It took my eye off the door leading into Dr. Deming's office.

  It certainly took Dr. Deming's attention away from everything else. He was far too busy, holding Gregory's hands, talking to him, reaching for some hypodermic doodad to reinforce Gregory's return from the living dead. Something like a shot of high stuff to keep the fog and clouds away. I can't say for sure. It didn't seem to be important just then. I was buoyed, happy, feeling like seven hundred shining silver dollars because Tadeusz Anton Gregory had stepped out of his trance. Taken the blinders off, even if only a little bit. Come back to Life. It was good to have him back, too. It gave me a nice warm feeling.

  Whoever crept into the office behind all our backs, while we were congratulating ourselves, dissipated that nice warm feeling in less time than it took the metronome on the desk to tick off another rhythm. The Whoever had a gun, too. A big, big one.

  It jarred into my spinal column, trying to force two vertebrae apart and reflexively, my arms went upward and I stepped forward to relieve the sudden heavy agony of the weapon's nudge.

  Like the lightning thrust of a revelation, or a tremendous jolt of another kind, a voice just behind me, grated out the age-old threat. The warning that is really so unnecessary at a time like that. But this one was a little different, at that. Considering the location, the circumstances and the time of day.

  "Don't make me kill you just yet, Mr. Noon. And don't turn around. Put down that hypodermic needle, Doctor Deming, and stop the act. There's no more need for the doctor routine. Not anymore."

  Before me, and without turning around, I saw Dr. Deming, the hypodermic poised, one arm holding Gregory's inert shoulder. The bald facade with the spectacles, the open-mouthed wonder, the amazement, was a picture I would never be able to paint. Maybe nobody could.

  "You—!" Dr. Deming's face broke in mingled gratitude and fear. "Please—there must be no shooting—my patients—"

  He ran down, no longer talking when he must have seen the expression on the face of the gun-holder just behind me. He collapsed into silence, the hypodermic dangling uselessly from his hand. Gregory's head was still tilted downward. Like a rag doll's.

  All I could do, for the time being, was glare at the wall behind the desk. Turning around was very unimportant at that moment, too. I knew who had the gun and who belonged to the voice. There was no mistaking that vocal equipment. The throatiness, the sultriness, the steel-tipped mellifluous tones. The compleat tigress, with brains to match.

  "Madame Alarma," I said, mockingly. "Well, kiss my ass."

  SILLY SYMPHONY AND LOONEY TUNE

  When she at last allowed me to look at her, it was only because she walked around me, skirting the desk and the pale once more Dr. Deming and the mute Gregory. Of course, she hadn't obliged my rather caustic request, but the flaming triumph in her wide-spaced eyes and the enormous Luger automatic in her suede-gloved right hand were toppers enough. I wasn't going anyplace, I wasn't going to do or say anything without her permission. I was only surprised that she had come alone. That there was no Cosmo Pappas, in or out of old man's makeup, to assist her.

  She was a sight for sore eyes, especially for 20-20 ones like I still own. The brilliant dark hair trailing past her shoulders, the perfect cameo face and all the incredible curves and womanliness of her, tightly fitted into another second skin outfit, a tailored white trenchcoat, made her eye-stopping, indeed.

  Like I said, if she wasn't the Most Beautiful Woman In The World, she came close enough to scrape the gong.

  "Hold it, Madame," I said, slowly and quietly, as she circled the desk with feline grace, keeping the nose of the Luger well up and trained at the place where I knot my tie. The gun looked like a Parabellum P-08 and the modern design indeed made the big difference. She could have shot me out of my shoes before I could flex a finger. "You can't pull this one off. Gregory is coming out of it. He'll tell anybody about Stephanie Orodney. I don't know what kind of a loop you have around the Doc's neck but the party's over. My secretary is out by the gate in the Buick and I left her there because she's going to show the police where to go when they finally get here. I told them to come on the run when an hour was up. How long have I been here, Dr. Deming? I'd dare say a little over an hour, wouldn't you? Time's almost up, lady. So put the popgun away and let's talk. You can still walk out of this mess with clean hands. You didn't kill Valentin and you weren't responsible for Gerard, either. I think I know that. What do you say?"

  If I had wondered why she had let me talk, running off at the mouth, I should have known there was a reason. She didn't seem to be listening to me. She had pushed Dr. Deming to one side with a forceful thrust of her free, suede-gloved hand and stared intently down at Gregory's face. The eyes especially. His miraculous recovery had now slowed down. The crying had subsided and the familiar deathly stillness had returned to his muscles. He was slumped, statue-like, in the chair. Deming was back by the bay window, trembling, shooting glances at all of us. As if he didn't know whether to salute, run or lie down. Maybe all three. It is always hard to tell with a man like him. Part rabbit, part intellect, nearly all phony.

  Madame Alarma's exquisite beauty swept back to me. She tossed her long-haired head and the Luger bobbed alarmingly, too.

  "You waste your time with bluffs, Edward. The black lady is now in Cosmo's hands. In our private room at the rear of this establishment. Did you wonder where I might have fled? Here, you quaint example of the two-fisted male. I don't believe you've called the Law into this. You couldn't have. You said it yourself—there were no homicides. Only my fine gypsy hand, several fortuitous developments and the whole-hearted, unknowing co-operation and participation of this genius here." She poked a slender finger down at the slumped Gregory in the chair. "So don't talk to me anymore. Your black mistress is unharmed. For the time being, at any rate. You've brought misery down on her head. And your own. Simply because you did not stay out of this."

  "Stay out of what?" I echoed, trying not to think about how dear bruta
l Cosmo might have man-handled Melissa. "Your insane scheme to make your Uncle Tadeusz Anton Gregory sweat for the way he broke your father's heart? Sorry, sister. You need more help than Gregory does, as bad off as he is. He never would have done to you what you've tried to do to him."

  There are times when you toss a tiny pebble into a clear, crystal lake, never expecting the tidal ripples, the upheaval you may trigger. The Madame suddenly hissed, her lovely eyes knitted, flashing venom and complete disbelief of some kind and then, she subsided almost as quickly as she had reacted. When she spoke, her words were for me. But she might have been a woman talking in some trance-like state of her own. The Memory Lane of her mind was literally mined with bitterness and flaming anger. And all of those childish, ungovernable things that are stored away for some unfathomable, future, terrible use.

  When you come of a lovelier, cleverer age.

  When the hate, the anger, the memories can be employed with mammoth satisfaction. Incredible retribution. And malice.

  "You know, Edward," Madame Alarma said flatly and clearly, "but you cannot know anything at all. What it can be like to share someone's grief, someone's misery. Yes, you have guessed somehow. I am indeed the daughter of Nicholas Walston Gregory—a bastard, if you wish. A product of that War of Wars when my father left me and my mother to come to America. Hilda Orodney was my mother. A poor peasant female. Her man left her and me to come to this country when I was but an infant. No, I did not know him. Even when I came to America to seek him out, to call him names for what he did to me and my mother, I learned he was with the military. Far away. And then I read of my famous uncle and his music. Oh, I began to think then what it would be like to make them both suffer. For you see, I am of another world, Edward. It is in my blood. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. I don't want my uncle's money, Edward. I never wanted it that much. I earn enough to live well off the gullibility of the foolish rich in this world. But I can hate, Edward, and I can plan and the opportunity for revenge came when I read of my father's death in Vietnam, before I could tell him to his face what I thought of him. And then, most naturally, all of my hate, my mother's ancient grief, the wanting to square accounts, centered on my Uncle Tadeusz. You see? I am really a very simple woman, Edward. All I ever wanted to do was to make my uncle suffer, as my mother had suffered. Can you understand such an emotion, Edward?"