“That’s right.”
“She suggested I see Mr. Peterman,” I yammered on. “But I told her I had to speak to the head dachshund, the numero uno.” This guy brought out the absolute worst in me; I just couldn’t help myself.
The elevator doors opened. Aaron walked into the elevator without giving me a glance.
“Afternoon, Mr. Aaron,” said the elevator jockey, a light-skinned Negro in a blue uniform. I got in with Aaron. It was just the three of us in the cab.
“It’s kind of a special matter,” I continued.
“Beautiful day outside, Mr. Aaron,” the jockey said.
“Certainly is, Sam.”
“A very special matter, I’d say.”
Aaron stared at me with a carefully calibrated blend of indifference and contempt.
“Listen, friend—” Friend.
“Jack LeVine.”
“Listen, Jack LeVine, if you wish to see me, speak with Miss Hamilton and make an appointment. I don’t have meetings in hallways and I don’t have meetings in elevators.”
“It concerns the orchestra.”
“Tickets have to be ordered by mail.”
“That a fact,” I said, lighting up a Lucky. “Maybe I’ll order up a few. Make nice Chanukah presents. Thing is, actually, I need to speak with you concerning a problem you’ve got in that orchestra, and it’s something you better address pronto.”
Now Aaron turned all the way around. It was the first time his body had actually faced my body.
“What are you talking about?” His voice had dropped a full octave.
I took out my wallet, flashed my license.
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Lobby,” said the jockey. “Enjoy your lunch, Mr. Aaron.”
The doors opened. Aaron and I walked out into the lunchtime melee.
“Gorgeous girls in this lobby,” I brayed.
“If you don’t get away from me right now,” Aaron muttered, “I’m going to call security.”
“That’s your right, Mr. Aaron, and in fact I don’t blame you. I’ll admit I’ve been more than a little pushy—”
“Good afternoon.”
Aaron started walking away from me. I took my hat off and inspected the sweat band. Not surprisingly, it was stained with sweat. “The thing is,” I called out, “some people in the orchestra are convinced that Toscanini is missing.”
Aaron stopped walking. He turned around and wiped his mouth, as if he had just ingested a large meal. Then he took one large step forward.
“What did you say?” His voice had dropped to a hush.
“Toscanini. Some of the musicians think that he’s a missing person.”
Aaron looked around the lobby.
“I think the security cops are by the desk.”
Now the NBC honcho walked back to me.
“Who told you this?”
“A member of the orchestra.”
“Who?” Aaron stepped closer. I could smell his breath, warm and sour, with a distant hint of colon problems.
“Sorry. That’s a professional confidence.”
Aaron stared at me.
“Be in my office at six-thirty sharp.”
Aaron turned and walked away. He moved quickly, favoring his left leg, as if he had suddenly willed himself a limp.
“This is a hell of a view.”
Sidney Aaron’s office faced east; standing at the window, you could take a large bite out of New York, all the way from St. Patrick’s, where rich and poor alike knelt and prayed for the end of communism, across the dark and briny East River, to the matchbox vistas of my beloved Queens.
“Not bad for a poor kid from Brooklyn.” Aaron walked toward me holding two tumblers of scotch. “Flatbush, to be precise.” He smiled. The guy was a real democrat; he had sent Miss Hamilton home prior to our meeting and was playing the host.
“Flatbush,” I said. “Dodger fan, huh?”
“You bet, Jack. Tried and true. I think we’ll go all the way this year.”
“I’m not so sure. The pitching’s only been so-so.”
Aaron laughed heartily. If this guy was a baseball fan, I was a Hottentot. Nobody laughs when you say the pitching’s so-so.
“Here we are.” Aaron handed me my drink in a cut-crystal tumbler. “Cheers.”
We clinked our glasses. Aaron sat down in a leather chair and gestured for me to sit in a facing leather couch. I sat down and kept on going; the couch was deep enough to hold a rhino. Aaron’s desk was parked at the other end of the room, on a raised platform; behind the desk was a wall covered from top to bottom with various awards of a civic and humanitarian nature—B’nai B’rith, Catholic Charities—as well as photographs of Aaron, frequently in black tie, posed with everyone from Cardinal Spellman to Vladimir Horowitz. His capital-c Credentials, just in case you might forget you were in the presence of a Great Man.
Aaron had closed his eyes and was resting his ice-filled glass against his forehead. “I’ve been working too goddamn hard, Jack. You have to excuse me if I was a little curt with you this afternoon.”
I spread my hands in an ecumenical gesture.
“Not to worry. I’m sure I could have been a little more diplomatic in my approach.”
“This job, special programming—every culture vulture in town gloms on to you.”
“Sure.…”
Aaron sat up and loosened his tie. I observed a mole on the back of his right hand. “Every hustler and phony-baloney, every bozo with a one-act play in his closet or under his bed. Sometimes real crazies, Jack—dispossessed, embittered, rejected artists of all stripes who might just lunge at you or cut your throat.”
“You’re not just speaking metaphorically?” I asked.
Aaron blinked. He clearly hadn’t expected me to utter any word that contained more than two syllables. “Metaphorically” was a word I liked to roll out of the garage every couple of weeks, like an old lady’s Ford Coupe.
“You’d be surprised,” Aaron said. “Bruce Howard, an associate of mine, got his nose broken by a Negro actor who claimed that Canada Lee was systematically stealing all his parts.”
“Why didn’t he break Canada Lee’s nose?”
“That’s my point, Jack. The irrationality …”
“Mr. Aaron—”
“Call me Sidney. Everybody does.” Fat chance.
“Sidney—”
Aaron abruptly got up and walked toward his desk. “Now, who on earth told you that Maestro is missing?”
“I really can’t tell you that.”
“I believe you said it was a member of the orchestra?” He shuffled through some papers on his desk. What a busy guy.
“That’s right.”
“One member?”
“One member, who told me he represented about a dozen musicians, all kinds—strings, horns, kazoos—who felt that by the end of the cross-country tour last spring—”
Aaron whirled around. “The most extraordinary public relations triumph in the history of classical music, Jack.” Aaron walked forward swiftly, his right hand extended, spilling some scotch on the carpet. “People heard this orchestra in the boondocks, people who had never heard good music in their lives—rednecks, apple-knockers, yahoos, and hayseeds of all descriptions. Suddenly Beethoven and Brahms and Wagner entered their miserable lives. Wagner in Atlanta, Jack. Can you imagine?”
“The mind boggles.”
“The mind boggles. No shit.” He sat down. “And now some demented musician tells you that Maestro is missing.”
“Apparently some of the guys feel the real Toscanini vanished before the end of the tour.”
Aaron leaned as far forward as he could without landing on the floor. “So who conducted this orchestra, Jack? Mortimer Snerd? Kay Kyser?”
“A stand-in. A double. That’s what they think.”
“‘They.’ How many?”
“A dozen.”
“You met with a dozen?”
“No. I met with one.�
�
“So how do you know he represents a dozen musicians?”
“I don’t. But I’ve been in this business long enough to recognize a bullshit artist. I don’t think this guy is a bullshit artist.”
“Who is he?”
I shook my head. “Can’t.”
Aaron got up again. This was not a relaxed man.
“We’ve had labor problems recently. I’ll bet this is the start of some negotiating move. Jesus.”
“I doubt that.”
“You doubt that?” He stopped in his tracks. “What the hell do you know about it, a private dick? This is labor trouble; I can smell it.” He tapped his well-developed nose.
“So you don’t think—”
“That Toscanini is missing? What are you, joking? I spoke to Maestro this morning. He’s up in Riverdale, like always, preparing for the new season. How can you even think he’s missing?”
“I don’t think anything. I was hired to look into this.”
“Well, you looked into it. Tell this meshugenah musician that Tos-canini’s up at Villa Pauline and he’s fine. He should find something else to get hysterical about, and maybe he should seek out some professional help.”
“So as far as you’re concerned, there’s no merit in his claim.”
Aaron stared at me as if I had just peed on his oriental carpet.
“No.”
“Then let me ask you something.”
He started to pick his nose, but thought better of it. “What?”
“If you’re so positive this claim is bullshit, why did you want to see me?”
Aaron swirled the ice cubes around in his scotch, soothing himself with that tinkling boozy sound.
“Curiosity. And that curiosity has now been satisfied. I have nothing else to say, except that if there really are a dozen musicians who think Maestro has disappeared, I suggest they come up here and discuss it with me. I’d be more than happy to meet with them and answer any questions they might have, or deal with any doubts circulating among them. There’s no reason for them to have any uncertainty on this score.”
“My impression is they felt there might be reprisals.”
Aaron’s brown eyes got very hard.
“Reprisals? In 1946 I was the B’nai B’rith Man of the Year. It’s a humanitarian award. They don’t give it to dictators. That’s my answer to that. Good evening, Mr. LeVine.”
I was all alone on the elevator going down, just me and a Cuban elevator jockey. He was lost in his tropical thoughts, as I was lost in my detective thoughts.
I didn’t have a doubt in the world that Arturo Toscanini had disappeared.
THREE
The sun was streaming through my bedroom window the next morning and, although it was September, at seven o’clock the street had the hazy, slow-motion look of a summer day. Two garbagemen were playing catch with the metal cans outside my building, making sure that the last sleeping citizens in Sunnyside would capitulate and tumble cursing from their beds. I brewed up some strong coffee and fried a couple of eggs and when the clock hit eight-thirty, I got on the phone and dialed Fritz Stern. He picked up on the first ring and sounded less than enthusiastic when I told him I wanted to take a drive over to Toscanini’s house.
“Maestro’s house,” he said. “Maestro’s house.”
“It’s in Riverdale, right?”
“Yes. Independence Avenue. They call it Villa Pauline.”
“You know how to get there?”
“Maestro’s house,” he said.
“Am I getting an echo here?”
“It’s Riverdale, yes.” Stern sounded panicky, as if he had just heard the bootsteps of the Gestapo clacking down his corridor. “But Mr. LeVine, I don’t think, really …” I could hear him breathing.
“You don’t think what?” I was still in my boxer shorts, holding a mug full of Chase and Sanborn. I didn’t look anything like a private detective.
“Maestro’s house.”
“Am I speaking to you or your parrot, Mr. Stern? I think it’s an obvious move, going over there. All I want are the directions, although it’d be extremely helpful if you came with me.”
“To Maestro’s house.”
“Well, you’ve added a ‘to.’ We’re making genuine progress.”
“You wish to go to Maestro’s house with me.”
“Now, that’s a complete sentence. Yes I do.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“Gott in Himmel.”
“I live in Sunnyside, in darkest Queens. I can pick you up in about forty minutes. Just take the Harlem River Drive, right?”
“Maestro’s house.”
“Mr. Stern, with all due respect, we’re not going to see Heinrich Himmler, for crissakes. The guy’s a conductor.”
There was a long beat. I heard more breathing.
“Hello?”
“I’m at 540 Fort Washington Avenue. The apartment is 1-C. Ground floor.”
“Great. If you’re hyperventilating, Mr. Stern, I recommend holding a paper bag over your mouth. Works for me sometimes.”
Fritz Stern’s suntan seemed to have faded overnight. He stood in the foyer of his apartment, already wearing a khaki windbreaker and a cap; my guess was he had put them on right after hanging up the phone. Germans like to get ready early. Standing behind him was an agitated woman in a housedress who studied me as if I were for sale.
“My wife Hilde,” he said in barely audible tones, as though speaking louder would set her off like a guard dog. Hilde Stern had thin lips and worried blue eyes; her features were delicate but ravaged by anxiety. Her hair was black, but her face was gray.
“So this is the private detective.” Her voice was huskier than I had expected. Not quite Marlene Dietrich, but throaty all the same.
“That’s right.” I looked around the apartment, if only to escape her unwavering and semi-hostile gaze. “Terrific place,” I told her. It wasn’t. The Sterns had five rooms and furniture enough for ten. Sofas, chairs, hassocks, and breakfronts were jammed together like the treasures in Charles Foster Kane’s warehouse. There were numerous places to be seated, but no place to sit down. The blinds were drawn behind closed draperies, so there wasn’t a ray of natural light in the joint. To make things even more oppressive, the upholstery on the couches and chairs ranged from St. Louis brown to mustard-gas yellow.
Mrs. Stern watched me check the place out. “The furniture is all from Germany.”
“It’s very impressive. Solid.”
“In this country I don’t think they are made this well.”
“You may be right,” I told her. “But there are a few things we do better over here, cheeseburgers and free speech for openers.”
Stern was having trouble standing still. I could hardly blame him. His bride was not a relaxing presence.
“We should go,” he said.
Frau Stern kept eyeballing me, then turned and swept a pair of framed photographs from a side table.
“My daughters,” she said, as if challenging me to an arm-wrestling match. She handed me the tinted “poses.”
“Beautiful girls,” said Ambassador LeVine. The younger daughter was frail and bespectacled and already looked, at age thirteen, like she was going to marry a guy with a heart condition; the older daughter (“twenty-two next month”) was dark and complicated and a one-round knockout. I stared at her picture for about five seconds too long.
“We should go,” Stern repeated.
Hilde Stern turned to her husband.
“And you’ll be back when?”
“Soon.”
“Soon is when?” She was really murder.
“When we’re done, Hilde. I really can’t say this for sure.” Stern turned and walked out the door.
I turned to Mrs. Stern. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“I don’t understand this at all,” she said, looking past me to the door.
“Well …”
“He is paid to play the violin, not
to hire detectives.”
“I understand your feelings—”
Stern reappeared in the doorway. “Enough,” he shouted. “Enough with your doubting! Mr. LeVine!”
“We won’t be long, ma’am,” I said to Mrs. Stern, then sped out the door before the happy couple started hurling weisswurst at each other.
Stern said next to nothing during the fifteen-minute drive to Tosca-nini’s residence. He offered laconic directions—“left here,” “at the light, right”—but otherwise listened mutely as I described my meeting with Sidney Aaron.
“He has a lot of power,” Stern said, gazing out the window of my ’48 Buick Roadmaster. Although the day had begun on a promising note, with blue skies and an engaging mugginess, it was turning gray and the breeze out of the north hinted at the shorter and colder days to come.
“It certainly appeared that way to me,” I told Stern, one hand on the Roadmaster’s faux-ivory steering wheel. “Swanky office, English secretary. All the comforts of home.”
“Oh yes. And he enjoys the power. Too much.”
“No such thing as too much, Mr. Stern. Power to those guys is like oxygen to a fire.”
Stern sighed. He seemed genuinely troubled. “It’s funny … maybe not so funny, actually, but I thought that Mr. Aaron, Mr. Sarnoff, the chairman, that they were landsmen, you know, Jews, and therefore they’d be what in German we call simpatisch, which is like both sympathetic and empathetic, but …” Stern shook his head.
“Forget it. Over a certain price range, they’re all killers.”
“You said it. Here you bear right.” Stern leaned forward, rubbing his hands as nervously as a squirrel.
“You ought to relax.”
“Maestro’s house.”
“Not again.”
“No,” Stern said. “This is it.”
The Villa Pauline was not quite the Mediterranean-style palazzo I had anticipated, but rather a large Tudor-style house, badly in need of a paint job and surrounded by five lush acres of lawn and very well established plantings. It wasn’t hard to figure out why a European émigré would feel very much at home here. In the distance one could see the cliffs of the Jersey Palisades and a suggestion—just by the valley of light—of the venerable and mighty Hudson River.
I stopped the car. We were on the corner of Independence Avenue and 254th Street.
Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 3
