Danse Macabre

by Gerald Elias

  “It’s a damn Eiffel Tower in here,” he said. For a moment he was uncertain they were in the right place but then realized that the steel maze was the extensive infrastructure that had been constructed to support the new elevator above.

  “I know not this edifice of which you speak, but verily ’tis a pain in the ass.”

  When Jacobus was a little kid, he went to a birthday party where they had a game in which each kid, blindfolded, had to guess the object put in his hands. It could be anything from a green pepper to one of those foot-long stuffed alligators they used to sell. Since his blindness, he had played this guessing game over and over. It was part of his life, and now he was playing it once again. Nearest the door through which they had entered he fumbled his way past the extinct incinerator, then the old furnace, then the abandoned elevator entrance, the obsolete massive washing machines and dryers, the utility room—where he literally kicked the bucket—and the dressing room, where he again tripped over a wooden crate and, reaching out to right himself, tore the skin off his fingertip on the end of a wire screen mesh around head height—all the while ducking under and climbing over the gargantuan metal lattice.

  Ah! Finally! The apartment! Jacobus turned the knob. Locked.

  “Put your shoulder to it, man!” Jacobus said to Drumstick Man, and began leaning into the door.

  “No need, kind sir,” said Drumstick Man. “Never has mere lock met my match.”

  Within moments, the door clicked open.

  Entering the apartment, Jacobus felt for the desk, opened drawers, searched for photos with pinholes. Photos of smuggled violins. Suddenly there was a clank and a bang from inside the apartment. He straightened up.

  “Just a bit of foraging, fair prince,” said Drumstick Man. “ ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’ Sometimes he must also have canned goods.”

  “That’s not Shakespeare,” said Jacobus. “That’s Deuteronomy.”

  “Well,” mused Drumstick Man. “Almost as good.”

  “You smell something? Other than your own hide?” asked Jacobus. There was the remnant of something in the air, neither the general fetid underground must, nor the moldy odor of an abandoned apartment, nor the smell of dust-encrusted oil on the obsolete incinerator and furnace.

  “We reside not in Denmark, but perchance ’tis rotten?”

  “Forget it,” said Jacobus, and returned to his search. He uncovered no photos, though he did find a small locked metal box. He shook it. It could be photos. Maybe not, but it was the best he could do. Together they left, the blind man and the crazy man, each bearing his treasure.

  Jacobus paced all over Nathaniel’s apartment, waiting for his return. If the box contained the violin photos it would convince him there was something fishy going on. He could take them to Dedubian, who could trace the owners, and then he’d be able to ID more of the middlemen who were part of Allard and Hennie’s grand scheme. No doubt, if there were others like Gottfried and Rose Grimes—and at this point it was clear to him that Rose was involved; violins don’t just show up on your doorstep, especially the kind that Gottfried was fencing—a compelling motive for murder would emerge. His attempts to open the metal box had proved futile. He had tried prying it open, picking the lock, throwing it against the wall several times, all ineffectual.

  Jacobus heard the key in the door. Before he could open his mouth, Nathaniel said, “Jake, have I got news for you!”

  “Yeah?” he said hurriedly. Jacobus was not anticipating that anything from Nathaniel would be of equal import to the contents of his box. “What’ve you got?”

  “Well, first of all I got all those hand and arm measurements you wanted from Malachi. He also did measurements on Allard’s right arm as well as his left, chest, and everything else. I think you finally got to him.” Nathaniel had written it all down and he slapped his pad onto the table for Jacobus to hear. Then, to reward himself, he went to the fridge, got out last night’s chow mein, and put it in a pan on the stove. He said over his shoulder to Jacobus, “Malachi said it sounded like you were thinking of ordering a new shirt.”

  “I’d like to take a little of the starch out of Malachi’s, and before you go ahead and stuff yourself, measure me,” said Jacobus.

  Nathaniel nosed around in the drawer next to his sink for the measuring tape he knew he had put there once upon a time, and actually found it. Jacobus got down on his knees, approximating Allard’s death position as he had done in his room at the Waltz Rite Inn in Salt Lake City, and Nathaniel extended Jacobus’s left arm the distance Malachi had reported, then did the same for the distances between the fingers, altering the angle of his arm as determined according to the specifications, gradually working his way all the way down to Jacobus’s feet. Jacobus still wasn’t sure what to make of the bewilderingly complex arrangement of his limbs and joints, except to note that they were aching. The only thing that felt familiar was the orientation of his left hand.

  “First position?” Jacobus muttered as he rose stiffly to his feet, dusting off his pants. “Why don’t you sweep your floor sometime?” he said to Nathaniel. “Any other good tidings you want to share?”

  Nathaniel had patched together bits of information from the VA hospital and the hospital where BTower had been born that by themselves were seemingly innocuous data, but put together were potentially explosive.

  “It wasn’t that difficult, really,” he said. “It seems that Shelby Freeman Junior—aka BTower—was born in March of ’66, five months after Shelby Senior returned from Vietnam. Junior’s was a normal, no-complications full-term delivery. Shelby Senior was listed on the birth certificate as the father. Problem is, not only was the five months not long enough for Rose to become pregnant and have a child by Senior, according to medical records at the VA, Senior, as a result of his war injuries, was totally incapable of inseminating anyone by any means whatsoever, even with Rose’s alleged assistance.

  “What this means,” said Nathaniel, “is that Shelby Freeman Senior no way can be the father of Shelby Freeman Junior.”

  “What this means,” bellowed Jacobus, “is she lied again!” He was not so much surprised as he was simply frustrated and discouraged. Who BTower’s father was at this point was anyone’s guess. And he had no idea whether it had anything to do with anything.

  Nathaniel asked Jacobus what information he had gathered.

  “Shit, I don’t even know,” he said.

  In a nutshell he related to Nathaniel his underground excursion with Drumstick Man. Then he showed him the metal box. Nathaniel got out a hammer and a screwdriver. The small lock was no match for his bulky strength. With one whack it was off.

  “So what do we got?” asked Jacobus. “Baseball cards, love letters, or violin photos with pinholes?”

  “Oh, dear,” Nathaniel said. “Oh, my Lord!”

  “Well, are we going to share?” asked Jacobus. “Are they photos or what?”

  “Yeah, Jake, they’re photos,” Nathaniel said. “And with thumbtack holes. But not of violins. They’re photos of Rose. Old ones.”

  “Rose?”

  “In these here she’s taking her clothes off. And in these . . . Jake, in these she’s being assaulted. By René Allard. There’s no doubt.”

  Jacobus was stunned. Allard! Ziggy! What could Ziggy have been doing with these photos? And tacked up on his wall! Assuming it was Ziggy who shot them with his trusty Leica, was he in cahoots with Allard to photograph his victim? Were they that perverted? And maybe there had been more than one victim! How long had this gone on? A thought jolted Jacobus. The date! Could Allard be the father of BTower?

  Jacobus asked Nathaniel. He checked the dates on the backs of the photos, just as Malachi had done with the unpinned ones. Ziggy had been true to form. These were from 1964, too early, they determined, for the attack to have caused the pregnancy that led to BTower’s birth. There could have been later attacks, certainly, but there were no later photos.

  “That doesn’t mean there weren’t any,” Na
thaniel cautioned. “Just that they weren’t in the box.”

  Jacobus asked Nathaniel what was in the background of the pictures. Maybe they could figure out where they had been taken.

  “Well, it’s a weird angle. There’s only the upper parts of their bodies, almost a bird’s-eye view, but not quite. And there’s blurriness.”

  “Out of focus?”

  “Yes and no. There’s a pattern. Kind of like they were taken through something gridlike. Maybe a window with little panes.”

  Jacobus felt the bile rise in his gut. He knew he would have to ask, though it made him sick to do so.

  “Nathaniel, you’ve got to describe the pictures. I need to know.”

  Nathaniel took a deep breath and, in sequence, described the photos, slapping them angrily on the table, one at a time, like cards of a losing hand.

  In the earliest dated pictures Rose was alone.

  “She’s taking off or putting on her street clothes or work outfits in these,” Nathaniel said. “The work outfits are all the same, plain white industrial-style dresses, but the street clothes seem to vary depending on the season.”

  “Which suggests they were taken over an extended period of time,” Jacobus speculated.

  “Yeah, I suppose. Some she’s got a coat and hat hanging up. Others just a sweater, but whoever took the photos was more interested in what she wasn’t wearing than what she was.”

  “Is there any chance she’s posing?”

  “Nah,” said Nathaniel. “She’s oblivious.

  “Here are the nasty ones with Allard. It looks like they were shot all in one sequence. First, here’s Allard grabbing the top of Rose’s dress and pulling it apart. Second, Rose is struggling. There’s anger. And fear. Third, Allard’s ripped Rose’s clothes off. He’s squeezing her breasts. He’s pushing her against a wall. He’s pressing himself against her. He’s taller than Rose. His head is angled down, forcing his lips against hers. Rose is trying to turn her head away. Allard is pushing his body against hers. She’s pinned against the wall. She’s trying to push him off. Her eyes are closed.

  “That’s it,” said Nathaniel. “It’s too much.”

  Jacobus was staggered. Who was this person, René Allard, whom the world had revered? Whom he thought he knew? Could he be this monster? What did this all mean? Did Rose murder Allard out of revenge? Could she have been capable? Could Ziggy’s complicity in this outrage have been the reason for his suicide?

  Jacobus and Nathaniel sat in silence, trying to fathom the meaning of it all. Finally, Nathaniel called Malachi and told him what they had. Malachi listened quietly, simply making some grunts of recognition from time to time.

  “I’ll call Brown,” he said when Nathaniel finished. “One thing I want to make clear: I’m not on your side yet regarding BTower. You might even have just put the last nail in his coffin.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Being the son of Grimes. If a crime of this magnitude was committed and the victim was even tenuously connected to the deaths of its perpetrator and his accomplice . . . Well, you can finish the sentence. But let’s just say I’m willing to keep the conversation going.”

  “Damn,” said Nathaniel as Malachi hung up. He ran to the stove, where the chow mein had burned in the pan, and in a rare display of anger hurled it into the sink. “Not that I could eat it anyway at this point,” he said. He put the photos back in the box, then he and Jacobus took yet another drive to Harlem.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Traffic was heavy and the cars were honking. The Yankees must have beaten the Red Sox again. But with Nathaniel inching through the gridlock, Jacobus had time to try to piece things together. There had been so many lies. So many secrets. The number of questions was escalating with dizzying frequency, the number of answers was still hovering around zero, and the number of days left in BTower’s life was down to one. Did Rose and BTower conspire to murder Allard, who, as far as Jacobus was concerned, deserved no less? Or did Rose do it herself? Or did BTower, to avenge his mother? Who was BTower’s father? Was Shelby Freeman Sr. truly incommunicado with the outside world, or was he faking? Was the man in the wheelchair in fact Shelby Freeman Sr.? And where oh where did Sigmund Gottfried fit into all this? Ziggy the humble courier, he with the Leica. And what did any of this have to do with Hennie and smuggled and stolen violins?

  Yet again they stumbled up the dark stairs. Nathaniel knocked on Rose Grimes’s door. “Mrs. Grimes,” said Nathaniel, “we need to talk to you.”

  There was no answer. Maybe she was asleep. It was late. Even so, it was a hot night outside and Jacobus heard the fan on in the apartment. Nathaniel knocked again. “Please open the door.”

  Still silence. Nathaniel said to Jacobus, “Wild-goose chase. Let’s go.”

  Jacobus put his face to the door and said quietly so as not to rouse any hostile neighbors, “Rose, I know you’re in there. I smell the food. I smell the chicken soup. It may be the one thing we have in common, but I would recommend dill instead of parsley. Open up.”

  “Go away,” she said. “I’ll call the police.”

  “You do that,” Jacobus said. “And you can explain how you stole a violin from René Allard. You stole it because you were going to sell it to help pay for your invalid husband’s care, didn’t you? Hey, I can understand that. But it didn’t end up working out that way, did it? Rose, we know what Allard did to you, and it wasn’t just getting you fired from your job. We know the real reason you killed him.”

  Jacobus heard Rose start to cry softly.

  “ ‘Fear ye not the reproach of men,’ ” he heard her say, “ ‘neither be ye afraid of their revilings.’ ”

  “The second irony, Rose, is that after Shelby Junior began playing the violin, you just couldn’t bear to sell it. Isn’t that right, Rose? You had to choose between your husband’s life and your son’s future. But then there was the argument with your son and you destroyed the violin, but you never filed an insurance claim on it because you had stolen it, and collecting the money would expose what you had done. And the third and last terrible irony is that when you killed Allard, BTower took the blame for the murder. He took the blame to protect you, even though with your zealous religious fervor you still couldn’t forgive him for having renounced God. You refused to go to your son’s aid. Isn’t that the way it happened, Rose? Isn’t that the truth you’ve been hiding from us?”

  “You know nothing,” she said in a voice hardly above a whisper. “Nothing. Now please leave.”

  Jacobus heard Rose’s staggering, shuffling retreat from the other side of the door and had a hasty, whispered conference with Nathaniel.

  “Knock down the door,” Jacobus whispered to Nathaniel. “And haul her down to Malachi.”

  “Jake, if we did that, even if she was guilty, breaking into the apartment of an old lady with an invalid husband would give her the sympathy vote and could just as soon land us in jail.”

  “But there’s no time to wait anymore, dammit. The execution is tomorrow morning, and with Grimes in custody there might be a chance it’d be temporarily stayed.”

  “You’re forgetting, a confession from Rose won’t necessarily help BTower. If anything, like Malachi said, it could incriminate him even further.”

  “Ah, fuck it. You’re right.”

  Nathaniel spoke to Grimes through the door. “We’ll go now, but we’ll have to come back. I’m sorry, but we will be back with the police. Soon.”

  Nathaniel opted that they go back to his apartment, but Jacobus was afraid Grimes would flee, even if it meant leaving her invalid husband behind. He proposed standing vigil outside her building. Nathaniel told him he was crazy—the chances of him being mugged that late at night far exceeded the chances of her taking off. They compromised. There was an all-night diner on the corner from which Nathaniel would be able to keep an eye on the building. From there, they would call Malachi on Nathaniel’s cell phone.

  They crossed the darkened street, the traffic light turning from g
reen to red and back again. The only traffic was the occasional cab searching for fares, like fireflies flittering through the night. Flanked on one side by Cinnamon Buns, a boarded-up nightclub sporting a graffitied poster advertising an all-black, all-girl revue, and on the other side by the humble yellow brick First Church of African Liberation, the outline of the ’50s vintage diner was obscured in darkness. Only the dim light from within and the faulty red neon sign that said DI ER allowed it to emerge from hiding.

  “Menu, gentlemen?” asked the slow-speaking waiter, after they seated themselves in a corner booth from which Nathaniel had a direct line of sight to the apartment building. They were the only customers.

  “We got a special. Beans and franks. Four ninety-nine.”

  “Any other specials?” asked Jacobus.

  “Yeah. Beans or franks.”

  “I’ll have the beans and franks,” said Jacobus.

  “Make that two,” said Nathaniel.

  “Good choice, gentlemen. Drink?”

  “Coffee.”

  “Comin’ right up.”

  Jacobus borrowed Nathaniel’s phone and dialed Malachi’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  “You always at your desk, Malachi?” asked Jacobus.

  “Occasionally I do take a bathroom break. Is that why you called?”

  Jacobus filled him in on what had transpired. Malachi was furious that the two of them were taking the law into their own hands, and warned that if they continued to interfere, any chances they might have to save BTower would go down the toilet. Jacobus argued that if it hadn’t been for them, nothing would have been done in the first place.

  “You think so, Jacobus?” said Malachi. “Well, it happens that I’ve just had an enlightening conversation with the Davis County, Utah, police.”

  Malachi then regurgitated a seminar on the geological history of the Great Salt Lake that he’d just heard from Detective Baylor Minnion of the DCPD.