Twisted: The Collected Stories

by Jeffery Deaver

  “No,” the man cried, “don’t take it. You can’t!”

  Drawing his service Glock, dropping into a crouch, Tony spoke into his mike, “Portable three eight eight four, robbery in progress at Seven Seven and Riverside. Need immediate backup. Suspect is armed.”

  The perp and the victim both heard and turned toward Tony.

  The mugger’s eyes went wide with fear as the policeman dropped further into a two-handed firing stance. “Hands in the air!” he screamed. “Now! Do it now!”

  But the boy was panicked. He froze for a moment then swung the musician in front of him, a shield. The tall man continued to clutch the violin case desperately.

  “Please! Don’t take it!”

  Hands shaking, Tony tried to sight on the mugger’s head. But what little skin was visible was as black as the mask and he blended with the shadows along the street. There was no clear target.

  “Don’t move,” the boy said, voice cracking. “I’ll kill him.”

  Tony stood upright, lifted his left hand, palm outward. “Okay, okay. Look, nobody’s hurt,” he said. “We can work this out.”

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “Gimme it!” the boy snapped to the musician.

  “No!” The tall man turned and swung his fist at the boy’s head.

  “Don’t!” Tony cried. Certain he’d hear the pop of a pistol shot and see the man fall. Then Tony’d have to draw a target and pull the trigger of his own gun, making his first kill in the line of duty.

  But the boy didn’t shoot. Just then the stage door swung open and a half dozen other musicians stepped out. They saw what was happening and scattered in panic—some in between Tony and the mugger. The boy pulled the violin from the musician’s grip and turned and fled.

  Tony lifted his gun, shouting, “Hold it!”

  But the kid kept going. Tony sighted on his back and started to apply pressure to the trigger. Then he stopped and lowered the gun. He sighed and sprinted after the boy but the mugger had vanished. A moment later Tony heard a car engine start and an old gray car—he couldn’t see the plate or make—skidded away from the curb and disappeared uptown. He called the getaway in and ran to the musician who’d been robbed, helped him to his feet. “You all right, sir?”

  “No, I’m not all right,” the man spat out, holding his chest. He was bent in agony. His face was bright red and sweat ran from his forehead.

  “Are you shot?” Tony asked, thinking he might not have heard the gun if it was just a twenty-two or twenty-five.

  But the musician didn’t mean that.

  Eyes narrow with fury, he straightened up. “That violin,” he said evenly, “was a Stradivarius. It was worth over a half million dollars.” He turned his piercing eyes on Tony. “Why the hell didn’t you shoot him, Officer? Why?”

  Sergeant Vic Weber, Tony’s supervisor, was first on the scene, followed by two detectives from the precinct. Then, because word got out that Edouard Pitkin, conductor, composer and first violinist with the New American Symphony, had been robbed of his priceless instrument, four detectives from headquarters showed up. And the media too, of course. Tons of media.

  Pitkin, still immaculate except for a slight tear in his monkey-suit slacks, stood with his arms crossed, anger etched into his face. He seemed to be having trouble breathing but he’d waved off the medics as if spooking irritating flies. He said to Weber, “This is unacceptable. Completely.”

  Weber, gray-haired and resembling a military rather than police sergeant, was trying to explain. “Mr. Pitkin, I’m sorry for your loss—”

  “Loss? You make it sound like my MasterCard was stolen.”

  “—but there wasn’t anything more Officer Vincenzo could do.”

  “That kid was going to kill me, and he”—Pitkin nodded toward Tony—“let him get away. With my violin. There is no other instrument like that in the world.”

  Not exactly true, thought Tony, a man raised by a father who loved to dish out musical trivia at the dinner table while his mother dished out tortellini. He remembered the man solemnly telling his wife and children there were about six hundred Antonio Stradivari violins in existence—about half the number the Italian craftsman had made. Tony decided not to share this tidbit with the violinist at the moment.

  “Everything went by the book,” Weber continued, not much interested in the uniqueness of the stolen merch.

  “Well, the book ought to be changed,” Pitkin snapped.

  “I didn’t have a clear target,” Tony said, angry that he felt he had to defend himself to a civilian. “You can’t go shooting suspects in the back.”

  “He was a criminal,” Pitkin said. “And, my God, it wasn’t as if . . . I mean, he was black.”

  Weber’s face grew still. He glanced at the lead detective, a round man in his forties, who rolled his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Pitkin said quickly. “It’s just that it’s terrifying, having someone push a gun in your ribs.”

  “Hey,” a reporter shouted from the crowd. “How ’bout a statement?”

  Tony was about to say something but the detective said, “No statements at this time. The chief’s going to give a press conference in a half hour.”

  Another detective walked up to Pitkin. “What can you tell us about the assailant?”

  Pitkin thought for a moment. “I guess he was about six feet—”

  “Six-two,” Tony corrected. “He was taller than you.” At five-seven, Tony Vincenzo was a good observer of height.

  Pitkin continued, “He was heavyset.” A glance at Weber. “He was African American. He wore a black ski mask and black sweat clothes.”

  “And red-and-black Nike Air pumps,” Tony said.

  “And an expensive watch. A Rolex. Wonder who he killed to get that?” Now Tony got a glance. “Wonder who he’s going to kill next? Now that he got away.”

  “Anything else?” the detective asked matter-of-factly.

  “Wait. I do remember something. He had powder on his hands. White powder.”

  The detectives looked at each other. One said, “Drugs. Coke. Heroin maybe. Probably needed a fix and you happened to be at the wrong time and the wrong place. Okay, sir, that’s helpful. It’ll give us something to start with. We’ll get on it.”

  They hurried off to their black Ford and sped away.

  A young woman in a red dress walked up to Weber, Tony and the violinist. “Mr. Pitkin, I’m from the mayor’s office,” she announced. “His Honor’s asked me to convey his deepest apologies on behalf of the people of New York. We’re not going to stop until we get that violin back and put your attacker behind bars.”

  But Pitkin hadn’t calmed one bit. He spat out, “This is what I get for coming to places like this. . . .” He nodded toward the concert hall, though he might have meant the whole city. “From now on I’m only doing studio work. What good is it to perform anyway? The audience sits there like logs, they cough and sneeze, they don’t dress up anymore. Do you know what it’s like playing Brahms for people wearing blue jeans and T-shirts? . . . And then to have this happen!”

  “We’ll do everything we can, sir,” she said. “I promise you.”

  The violinist hadn’t heard her. “That violin. It cost more than my town house.”

  “Well—” she began.

  “It was made in 1722. Paganini played it. Vivaldi owned it for five years. It was in the pit at the first performance of La Bohème. It accompanied Caruso and Maria Callas, and when Domingo asked me to play with him at the Albert Hall, that was the instrument I played. . . .” His eyes swung to Weber and he asked with genuine curiosity, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Not really, sir,” the sergeant said cheerfully. Then he turned to Tony. “Come over here, I wanna talk to you.”

  “You know music. Who the hell is this guy?” Weber asked him, as they stood together under the fire escape. There was still no rain though the mist had coalesced into dense, cold fog.

  “Pitkin? He’s a
conductor and composer. You know. Like Bernstein.”

  “Who?”

  “Leonard Bernstein. West Side Story.”

  “Oh. You mean he’s famous.”

  “Think of him as the Mick Jagger of the classical circuit.”

  “Fuck. Eyes of the world on us, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Tell me true. No way you could’ve capped the perp?”

  “Nope,” Tony said. “When he was facing me I didn’t have a clear target and the backdrop wasn’t clean. Slug could’ve gone anywhere. After that all I had was his back.”

  Weber sighed and his face grew even more disgruntled than it usually was. “Well, we’ll just have to take the heat.” He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. “Your tour’s over. Write up the report and get home.”

  Tony held up a hand. “I gotta favor.”

  “What?”

  “My eleven-eighteen.”

  The application form for Detective Division. Presently sitting with about three thousand other applications. Or, more likely, under three thousand other applications.

  The wily old sergeant caught on. He grinned. One thing that could get your app shuffled to the top of the deck was collaring a showcase perp—a serial killer or a shooter who’d killed a cop or a nun, say.

  Or the guy who’d stolen a half million bucks’ worth of fiddle and embarrassed the mayor.

  “You want a piece of the case,” Weber said.

  “No,” Tony answered, not smiling, “I want the whole thing.”

  “You can’t have the whole thing. What you can have is four hours. Half tour. But no overtime. And you work with the detectives.” The sergeant looked into the young cop’s eyes. “You’re not going to work with the detectives, are you?”

  “No.”

  Weber debated. “Okay. But listen—for this to work, Vincenzo, we need the perp. Not just the damn violin.” He nodded toward the woman from the mayor’s office. “They need somebody to crucify.”

  “Understood.”

  “Get going. The clock’s running.”

  Tony started east, toward the precinct house. But he stopped and returned to Pitkin and the mayor’s aide. He looked up at the musician. “Gotta question. You mentioned Paganini?”

  A blink. “I did, yes. What about it?”

  “Well, I got a Paganini story. See, one time his friends decided to rag him a little. . . . And what they did was they wrote a piece of violin music that was so complicated it couldn’t be played. Like, human hands just wouldn’t work that way. They left it on a music stand and invited him over. Paganini walks into the room and glances at the music then goes into the corner and picks up this violin and tunes it. Then, get this, he looks at his friends and he smiles. And he plays the whole thing perfectly. From memory. Blew them away. Is that a great story, or what?”

  Pitkin stared at Tony coldly for a moment. “You should’ve shot that man, Officer.” He turned away and climbed into his limousine. “The Sherry-Netherland,” he said. The door slammed shut.

  Tony called Jean Marie from the precinct and told her not to wait up. He was on special assignment.

  “It’s not dangerous, is it, honey?”

  “Naw, they just want me to help out on a case with this music bigwig.”

  “Really? That’s great.”

  “Get some sleep. Love you.”

  “Love you too, Tony.”

  Then he changed into street clothes and drove uptown in his own car. The jeans and sneakers were only for comfort; there was no way he could work undercover where he was going—the Johnny B pool hall on 125th Street—since Tony’s was the only white face in the place. And nobody had cop written on him as clearly as Tony Vincenzo. But that didn’t matter. He wasn’t here to fool anybody. He’d worked the street long enough to know there was only one way to get information out of people who weren’t otherwise inclined to give it to you: buying and selling. Of course, he didn’t have any snitch money, being just a patrol officer, but he thought he had some negotiable tender to shop with.

  “Hey, Sam,” he called, walking up to the bar.

  “Yo, Tony. Whatchu doing here?” the white-haired old bartender asked in a raspy voice. “Looking for a game?”

  “No, I’m looking for an asshole.”

  “Heh. Got plenty of them round here.”

  “Naw, my boy’s gone to ground. ’Jacked something tonight and got away from me.”

  “Personal, huh?”

  Tony didn’t answer. “So how’s your brother?”

  “Billy? Whatta you think? How’d you like it you spent four years in a ten-by-ten cell and was looking at four more?”

  “I wouldn’t like it one bit. But I also wouldn’t like being the teller he threatened to shoot.”

  “Yeah, well. He didn’t shoot her, did he?”

  “Tell me, how’d Billy boy like to be looking at maybe three to go ’stead of four?”

  Sam poured a beer for Tony. He drank down half of it.

  “I dunno,” Sam said. “Bet he’d like to be looking at one year ’stead of four.”

  Tony thought for a minute. “How’s eighteen months sound?”

  “You a beat cop. You can do that?”

  Tony decided that he’d have the mayor’s support on this one. Cultural New York was at stake. “Yeah, I can do it.”

  “But listen up. I ain’t getting my ass capped for snitching on bad boys.”

  “I saw him in action. Don’t worry. No backup. No gang colors. He also picked on the wrong guy and’s going away for a long, long time. He’ll be old and gray ’fore he get out of Ossining.”

  “Okay. You got a name?”

  “No name.”

  “What’s he look like?” Sam asked.

  Tony asked, “I look like I can see through ski masks?”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s six-two, give or take. Heavy. Was wearing black sweats and black-and-red Nike Air pumps. Oh, and a fake Rolex.”

  Because no crook was dumb enough to wear a three-thousand-dollar watch on a job—too easy to get messed up or lost.

  “And he’s a pool player.”

  “You know that?”

  “I know that.”

  Because whatever the detectives from downtown thought, Tony knew it’d been cue chalk dust that Pitkin had seen on his hands. No drug dealer or junkie’d be so careless with coke or smack that he’d get visible residue on his hands. And if he did, he’d lick them clean in a second. That’s why Tony was here—he knew the perp had to be a serious pool player if he’d got chalk on his hands before a job like this. And while there were a lot of pool parlors in New York City, there weren’t many that catered to serious players and there were fewer still that catered to serious black players.

  But, after thinking for a long moment, the bartender shook his head, sad. “Man, I wish I could say I seen him. But you know Uptown Billiards?”

  “On Lex?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “They had a tournament tonight. Five hunnerd bucks. Know a lotta players was there. Check it out. Talk to Izz. Little dude hangs in the back. Tell him you know me and it’s cool.”

  “Okay, it pans out, I’ll talk to D of C. Get your brother knocked down.”

  “Thanks, man. Hey, you want another beer?”

  “You still got Smokey Robinson on the box?” He nodded to the jukebox.

  Sam frowned indignantly. “Course I do.”

  “Good. I’ll take a rain check.”

  At Uptown Billiards Tony’s reception was a lot cooler but he found Izz, who was little and was in the back though not just hanging out; he was relieving a cocky young shark of a good wad of bills by sweeping the table at eight ball without even paying much attention. After he pocketed the money and watched the loser slink out of the parlor, Izz turned to Tony and lifted a plucked eyebrow.

  Tony introduced himself and mentioned Sam’s name.

  Izz looked at him like he was a bare wall. Tony continued. “I’m looking for somebody.” He desc
ribed the perp.

  Without a word Izz stepped away and made a phone call. Tony heard enough of the conversation to know he’d called Sam and verified the story.

  He returned to the table and racked the balls.

  “Yeah,” Izz said, “guy like that was in here earlier. I remember the Rolex. Took it off and left it on the bar when he played so I knowed it was fake. He was good but he washed out the second round. He was trying too hard, you know what I’m saying? You can’t never win, you play that way. Soon as you start trying, you already lost.”

  “He hangs here?”

  “Some. I’ve seen him around the ’hood. Mostly he keeps to himself.”

  “What’s his name?” Tony said good-bye to five twenties.

  Izz walked to the bar and flipped through a soggy, dog-eared stack of papers. Contestants in the tournament, Tony guessed. “Devon Williams. Yeah, gotta be him. I know everybody else in here.”

  Another $100 changed hands. “Got his address?”

  “Here you go.”

  It was on 131st Street, just four blocks away.

  “Thanks, man. Later.”

  Izz didn’t answer. He sank two balls on the break, one striped, one solid. He walked around the table, muttering, “Decisions, fucking decisions.”

  Outside, Tony stood on Lexington Avenue, debating. If he called for backup they’d know what was going down and the detectives would swoop in like hawks. They’d snatch the case away from him in a minute. Somebody else’d take the collar and his chance for the boost with his detective application would disappear.

  Okay, he decided. I’ll handle it solo.

  And so, armed with his Glock and his backup revolver strapped to his ankle, Tony Vincenzo plunged into residential Harlem. The fog and air were heavy here, absorbing the sounds of the city. It was as if he were in a different time or a different place—maybe a forest or the mountains. Quiet, very quiet, and eerie. A word came to him. A term his father had used once, talking about music: nocturne. Tony wasn’t sure what it meant but he knew it had to do with night. And he thought it had to do with something peaceful.

  Which was pretty damn funny, he decided. Here he was on his way to collar an armed and dangerous perp by himself. And he was thinking about peaceful music.