Danse Macabre

by Gerald Elias

  BTower’s next effort seemed to be to determine how fast to move his bow once he got it on the string. Haskell lost count of how many times BTower repeated this, but one thing was for sure: Yesterday’s furious abandon had been replaced with conscious focus. At first he thought it was just pure repetition, as if BTower was simply trying to memorize a movement. It was getting boring until Haskell realized that BTower was actually doing something minutely different with each and every repetition in a systematic way. It became apparent that BTower had music in his head and was trying to get precisely the right sound. Haskell leaned forward in his seat.

  He observed that BTower was not only altering the speed of his arm, he was also altering its level, both at the beginning and the end of the motion The process was so systematic that after a while Haskell, confident that he could predict what BTower was going to do next, put down his almost finished sandwich, stood up in front of the monitor, and started to imitate in advance what BTower was doing. At first his arm felt stiff as a board, but the more he watched and imitated, the more comfortable he felt.

  “Loose as a goose,” Haskell said out loud.

  But he couldn’t figure out exactly how BTower was making those adjustments. It all seemed so fluid. Somehow his arm motion was almost circular. At the beginning of a stroke it seemed to go down, but at the end it seemed to go up again, even though his hand itself was moving in a straight line. The camera did not have a zoom lens—Haskell had argued with the warden for an upgrade but was told it wasn’t in the budget—so he put on his reading glasses and put his face right up to the monitor, his sandwich forgotten, and stared.

  Haskell heard a knock at BTower’s door. It was Gundacker, delivering lunch. BTower cursed under his breath and so did Haskell, whose first violin lesson was being interrupted. The tray appeared under the door. They knew that BTower would leave the tray untouched, but those were the regulations.

  BTower, his concentration broken, suddenly called out in a challenging voice, as if Gundacker had thrown down the gauntlet and not the Salisbury steak, “It’s more than sound, Jacobus! See, I changed it all! I got the public! The public has ears AND EYES! Allard couldn’t touch me! Those assholes! Purists! You don’t know a damn thing! You hear me?”

  But if Gundacker heard, his only response was the sound of his receding footsteps.

  Murderers, thought Haskell. They’re all different, but they’re all the same. What made them different from the rest of us, he wasn’t sure.

  FOURTEEN

  When Jacobus regained consciousness, he had no idea where he was. He knew only that he felt as if he had been wrung through the heavy-duty cycle of a commercial dryer by someone with a year’s supply of quarters. Gradually, though, he became aware of the sounds surrounding him, recognizing hospital sounds reminiscent of his bedridden stint after having his skull crunched by a former student, Rachel Lewison, a few years before. Jacobus had unearthed the truth that Rachel had murdered his rival, the renowned if infuriating violin teacher Victoria Jablonski, and if not for Yumi and Nathaniel’s last-second intervention, Rachel would have killed him too. As it was, the knock on his noggin had rendered him semicomatose in the ICU for weeks. That he had testified on Rachel’s behalf and that she ultimately was declared not guilty by reason of insanity brought Jacobus little succor.

  Now, as then, his ears were functioning acutely, and he could hear the intravenous drips, the soft hum of medical technology, and the intermittent murmuring of hospital staff outside his door, but his body ached and his throat was dry as a bone. His parched first words were choked and burned his throat.

  “No wonder they don’t serve doubles in Utah,” he croaked.

  “Mr. Jacobus! We were so worried about you. You’re alive!”

  “Ziggy, that you?”

  “When I heard you were in the hospital—your dear friend Nathaniel called me—I came over right away. You’re at LDS Hospital. It was the closest one, but it’s also the best. I was praying you would recover.”

  “Where are the others?” Jacobus whispered.

  “They will be right back. They’re talking to Dr. Allred. I was just relieving them. They have been here with you. In fact, I’ll go get them. They’ll be so overjoyed to see you’re still among the living.”

  Jacobus heard Gottfried’s footsteps running along the linoleum floor. A few minutes later he returned with Nathaniel, Yumi, Lavender, and the doctor.

  “You’re a heck of a lucky man, Mr. Jacobus,” said Dr. Allred.

  “If this is lucky,” said Jacobus, “I feel sorry for the sick ones.”

  “What he means, Jake,” said Nathaniel, “is that you were poisoned.”

  “Like hell I was!”

  “Yes, Mr. Jacobus. It’s true. To put it in lay terms, someone slipped you the proverbial Mickey. But instead of just trying to knock you out, someone definitely wanted to put you six feet under, if you catch my drift. Your friends described your sudden convulsive symptoms so we immediately forced some amyl nitrite into your lungs, followed by an IV of sodium nitrite, and then sodium thiosulfate.”

  “For what? I had chicken pox when I was a kid.”

  “For cyanide poisoning, Mr. Jacobus. You could have been dead from cardiac arrest within minutes.”

  “Cyanide! So why am I still with the living, pray tell?” Jacobus said, though with his whole insides still burning, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be.

  “You really would’ve been a goner,” said Dr. Allred, “except for your vomitus that was apparently triggered by food that disagreed with you, and enough of the poison evacuated along with it to bollix up the whole ball of wax. Mr. Williams here also managed to save you from having your head run over by a Land Rover, and once we pumped your stomach, well, I’d say now you’re over the hump.”

  “Saved by a patty melt,” said Williams.

  “What a hideous notion,” said Jacobus. He thought for a moment. “Doc, if my head had been run over, how long would I have lived?”

  “It depends on the speed and weight of the car, the point of the cranium it contacted, for example.”

  “Well, let’s say it squished me real good.”

  “Death would have been pretty much instantaneous under that scenario. As I say, you’re a lucky man. You’ve dodged two bullets.”

  “But what about chickens? Don’t chickens run around even after their heads’re cut off? It takes them a few minutes before they plotz.”

  “Well, it all depends on how you define life, I guess,” said Dr. Allred. “It’s a difficult ethical question for us these days. Motor functions working but no longer thinking. Just survival instinct ingrained into their muscles. Those chickens are not really alive, in my opinion, though if you asked the chickens’ families . . .”

  “Thank you, that’s very comforting. When can I get the hell out of here?”

  “We’ve all given our statements to the police,” said Williams. “You’ll have to do that too, but Doc here says as soon as you feel ready to go there are people with much more urgent concerns ready to take this bed from you.”

  “You must be kidding. I feel like shit.” His throat felt like a porcupine had just crawled through it, not to mention his head and stomach.

  “If you wish to stay longer,” said Dr. Allred, “I’d like to read you this pamphlet on the adverse effects of smoking and drinking alcohol, two of your vices, I’m told. Following a few simple guidelines could add five to ten years to your life.”

  “Nathaniel, where are my clothes?” said Jacobus.

  At the Salt Lake airport, Jacobus and Nathaniel said their farewells to Yumi and Lavender, Gottfried and Seglinde, assuring them all—especially Yumi—that Jacobus would be fine, and boarded a Continental flight back to Albany, changing in Cincinnati. Jacobus had had his interview with Detective Lamar Christiansen of the SLPD about the incident the night before. Yumi, Lavender, and Nathaniel had provided a visual description of that last waiter who served them the free cognacs, one of which, Christiansen pos
tulated, had contained cyanide. Other than the outfit the waiter wore, which was the same as all the others, their descriptions of his physical features were all different. This did not surprise Christiansen, especially as the light in the bistro was dim, there was a lot of late-night activity going on, and they all had been drinking. Jacobus gave a description of the way the waiter had talked.

  “He said ‘spay-shle’ instead of ‘special,’ ” said Jacobus. “And instead of ‘appreciate,’ it sounded like ‘a-prishy-it.’ It was unique.”

  “That’s great,” said Christiansen. “You’ve really narrowed it down.”

  Jacobus felt proud of his discerning aural acumen. “So who is it?” he asked.

  “Well,” said Christiansen, “you’ve eliminated forty-nine states and most foreign countries that I know of. That leaves only the two million people who live in Utah. If you consider that only about half of them are male, that gets rid of a million, plus or minus, right off the bat. But I’ll get started right away.”

  Jacobus and Nathaniel took their seats on the plane, looking forward to a tranquil, recuperative eight hours during which they could reflect upon their progress, or lack thereof, in determining the true murderer of René Allard and now the attempted murder of Daniel Jacobus. No sooner had they clicked on their seat belts when the surrounding rows were mobbed by a swarm of blond children ages three to sixteen carrying violin cases.

  “Are you all part of an orchestra?” Nathaniel asked, addressing the general horde.

  A smiling, attractive middle-aged woman responded. “No, we’re a family. These are my children. We’re going to Institute for the week.”

  “Institute?” asked Jacobus.

  “Why, the American Suzuki Institute in Purchase, New York. Haven’t you ever heard of it?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it,” said Williams. “That sounds wonderful.”

  Jacobus said, “Hold on. It’s probably costing you five thousand dollars for plane tickets and another five thousand for room and board. You can learn more about violin playing from a CD of Pinky Zukerman and it would only cost you twenty bucks.”

  “Pinky who? Does he teach Book Six?”

  “Book Six of what?” Jacobus asked. He whispered to Nathaniel, “Are we talking Utahese again?”

  “Book Six of Suzuki, of course,” the proud mom said. “Do you take?”

  “Do I take?” asked Jacobus. “Take what? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You don’t need to get upset, sir!” said the mother. “Do you take lessons?”

  “Take lessons?” he said. “No, I don’t take lessons. I give.”

  The flight attendant asked everyone to take their seats.

  “I don’t know,” said the mother. “How can you give lessons if you don’t know Book Six?”

  Jacobus felt Nathaniel’s calming hand on his arm, so he chose to accept the question as rhetorical and did not respond. After that, the flight was otherwise uneventful. Jacobus and Nathaniel discussed every angle of the poisoning attempt they could think of until they were blue in the face. They were baffled by the whole incident. What had Jacobus said or done to anyone to warrant potentially lethal retaliation? Who could have been responsible? Was it all a big mistake? The café had been so crowded. Could they have given the drink to the wrong sucker?

  When they arrived in Cincinnati, Jacobus and Nathaniel headed to the airport Caffeinds Coffee Corner. While they waited for their coffee, Jacobus hobbled around to loosen his stiff joints and Nathaniel got out his cell phone. None of the insurance companies he called had yet found an instrument coverage policy for Rose Grimes.

  “Could you keep looking, please?” he asked Vermont Mutual, as he had asked all the others. “We’re in a bind, timewise. It’s urgent, you see.” They all assured him they would get back to him if they came up with anything.

  Second, he called the VA information hotline in Washington, D.C., to find out what he could about Mr. Grimes.

  “No, I’m sorry I don’t have a first name,” he told the records administrator, Yavonne Reid, “but I do have an address.” Yavonne said they would get back.

  He then called Detective Al Malachi in New York City, cajoling him until he grudgingly relented, to a degree, to their request for additional materials.

  “So you’ll send us both sets of photos, of Allard’s body and Gottfried’s family?”

  Malachi said, “Not quite, I’m not going to send them to you. I’ll send them to Miller.”

  Roy Miller comprised the entire police force of Jacobus’s town in the Berkshires. Only a part-time cop but full-time plumber, Miller had managed to keep the peace in the small village for almost twenty years on a pittance of a salary, so the locals were not complaining.

  “You and Jacobus can inspect the photos in Miller’s presence. Then they’ll be returned to New York by courier. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  “I really appreciate that,” Nathaniel said. “And Jake does too.”

  “I’ll bet,” Malachi said. He hung up.

  Before Nathaniel made his call to Boris Dedubian, Jacobus expressed a thought that had entered his head as they were waiting for their plane but had become temporarily dislodged when they were confronted by the Suzuki horde.

  “You suppose Lavender might’ve held something against Allard?”

  “Like what?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Well, here’s a guy who pretty much forfeited fame as a soloist to be in someone else’s shadow. When Allard played that last concert at Carnegie, Lavender’s career essentially ended with it. He’s been pigeonholed as an accompanist, and it’s not easy to rebuild a reputation as a soloist, especially someone getting along in years.”

  “What about this tour with the Magini Quartet?” Nathaniel countered. “Looks like he’s doing okay.”

  “Maybe okay. The quartet’s good and no doubt’ll get better, but they’re still a new group with a couple young players like Yumi. When Lavender was with Allard, he was playing with the big boys—the Juilliard Quartet and Emerson. Now he’s got to start all over again. Maybe there was some resentment. What the hell, I don’t know.”

  They agreed to put that hypothesis in their back pocket and move on in more substantive directions.

  Nathaniel called Dedubian.

  “Boris,” he asked, “do you recall if your insurance evaluation of the Garimberti mentioned whether there were papers?”

  An insurance evaluation is a simple document containing basic information about the instrument, including its value, as determined by the expert writing the evaluation, intended to aid insurance companies determining payouts in the event the instrument is stolen or damaged. An evaluation can usually be obtained from a dealer for a set fee of tens of dollars.

  On the other hand, a certificate—what in the business is called the “papers”—is a more official document that verifies the authenticity of the instrument to the greatest extent possible. It lists in detail every one of the dozen or so pertinent measurements of the instrument, plus a very specific description of the varnish and all other distinguishing characteristics. It states what is written on the label glued to the inside of the instrument and often comes with a set of professional photographs of the front, back, and scroll. Most important, the expert who writes the papers states in his opinion who made the violin. The final step is to stamp the document with his personal seal to prevent any possible finagling with it. No value for the instrument is stated in the papers, as the document is theoretically intended to accompany the instrument throughout eternity, and values can change greatly from one year to the next, usually up. Sometimes the papers state the name of the owner of the instrument, sometimes not. There are very few experts in any generation whose opinions are universally respected, so to have an impeccable certificate can make a million-dollar difference in the value of the instrument, regardless of how beautiful it looks or sounds. So important is certification that the document alone might cost up to ten percent of the value of the v
iolin itself.

  “Let me have Mrs. King check on that,” Dedubian said.

  “You think you could get back to us by tomorrow?” Nathaniel asked.

  “For you and Jake,” he said, “I would do anything.”

  Nathaniel thanked him and hung up, fully aware that Dedubian said that to all his customers.

  The second leg of their flight droned on and on, but by the end of the trip Jacobus and Nathaniel were no closer to understanding the murder attempt in Salt Lake than they were at the beginning. Arriving at Jacobus’s home after the one-hour drive from the Albany airport, they were both exhausted and unwilling to give the issue any additional consideration.

  FIFTEEN

  DAY 5: MONDAY

  The phone woke them early the next morning. There was only one extension in the house and that was downstairs. “You get it,” Jacobus shouted hoarsely to Nathaniel, who slept in the guest room, which was the size of a large closet and as well appointed. “I’m still an invalid.”

  The call was from Miles Bardon at Intercontinental Insurance Associates, the same company that had insured the infamous Piccolino Stradivarius.

  “I’ve got some news for you,” said Bardon. “A Rose Grimes indeed obtained coverage for the Garimberti soon after she secured the evaluation from Boris in New York.”

  “Hold on one second, Miles,” Nathaniel said. He shouted the news up to Jacobus.

  He returned to the phone. “Did she ever make a claim?”

  “No.”

  “No? Are you sure?”

  Bardon chuckled. “Listen, Mr. Williams, when we pay out more than a dime, we don’t forget.”

  By the time Nathaniel finished his call, Jacobus was in the kitchen smoking a Camel as he brewed a pot of instant Folgers in his ancient aluminum percolator, wondering where the paucity of their accumulated information left them. The knowledge that Grimes had never collected insurance money on the broken violin stopped them in their tracks. And maybe that’s where they should be, he reasoned. The weight of the evidence, if not all the suspicions, still pointed to BTower. As he was about to drink his coffee, the phone rang again. Jacobus answered it himself this time. It was Dedubian.