Hot Ticket

by Janice Weber

  “Relax, you’ve got the gig.”

  We went to his music room. Scores were piled on top of the piano, as if Fausto had been sifting through every piece in his library. He had been fortifying himself with a mound of steak tartare. My stomach curled: I had seen enough ground meat lately. Fausto watched me unpack my violin, perhaps wondering where I had gotten the scratches on my face. “I’ve been practicing day and night,” he said. “People think I’ve gone mad. Would you like something to eat? Drink?”

  “No thanks.” This room was too damn cold. Too clean. Utterly artificial. Get in gear, Smith. I tuned to his A. “What have you got for me?”

  “One of my favorite pieces.” Fausto handed over a worn score.

  Triptyche by Camille Saint-Saëns? Off to a sick start. Someone had marked bowings on every inch of the music. We played the first piece through. Fausto was with me all the way, like a perfect dance partner. Against my will, I could feel myself leaning into him. “You’ve only been practicing since Sunday?” I asked.

  “Dear, I know this piece like the back of my hand.” He wiped his brow. “And playing the piano is like sex. You never really forget how.”

  Next, Vision Congolaise, Saint-Saëns’ evocation of Africa. Absolute merde. The third piece in the triptych was one of those perpetual motion affairs where I played fifty notes to one on the piano. “Odd,” I said afterward.

  “French! Saint-Saëns was a genius.”

  I checked my watch. “That took thirteen minutes.”

  Fausto rooted around his pile of music. “Next I thought we might do this.” More decadence, this time by Jenö Hubay, a Wagner wannabe. Piano and violin oozed enough chromaticism to generate a second fin de siècle. Fausto relished his part as he would a Sacher torte. He was one hell of a pianist: deep inside, beneath the rubble, part of me trembled. “Well?” he asked afterward.

  “It’s harder than it sounds.”

  “Sorry, darling. Maybe you’ll like this better.”

  Now he hit me with Wieniawski’s fantasy on motifs from Gounod’s Faust, the musical equivalent of peanut brittle. “Your signature piece?” I asked a little testily, pulling several broken hairs from my bow. “This is supposed to be after-dinner entertainment, not the Tchaikovsky Competition.”

  “Oh come on! We may as well have a little fun!”

  I’d be inside all week practicing this dreck. Maybe that’s what Fausto intended. I looked at my watch. “Eighteen more minutes.”

  “The grand finale,” he announced, spinning a handwritten score across the piano. “You are going to love this.”

  I could hardly decipher the title. “Sonata by … Bendix Kaar? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Trust me, darling. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Is Bendix going to be at this dinner?”

  “Who cares?”

  “He might, for one. You don’t want to humiliate the man.”

  “What? We’re paying him the ultimate compliment! At least try it before passing judgment.”

  “I can hardly read the notes.”

  “Just muddle through. Believe me, this time my part’s harder than yours.”

  Inside the score was an old program of Fausto’s. Pushed that aside, frowning in anticipation of the next hour. The piece opened with a siege of tone clusters. Then came an itchy scherzo. Bendix’s penchant for disharmony reached an excruciating climax in the slow movement, which he had subtitled Elegy. After a ten-ton fugue, the sonata petered out on the G string. I now knew more about Bendix than I ever wanted to know. “You want the program to end with this?” I asked my accompanist.

  “Absolutely. We need a serious piece.”

  Saint-Saëns, Hubay, Wieniawski, Kaar: the molasses and roughage here would give the most ardent music lover indigestion. “When did Bendix write this?”

  “Ages ago. I commissioned it for my mother’s birthday.”

  “Birthday? It sounds like something you’d commission for a funeral.”

  Fausto’s face went fiery red. He calmed himself with a hill of raw meat. “You promised I could choose the program.”

  “All right, all right, we’ll play it. It’s got some good spots.” Like the spaces between movements. We drank lemonade in utter silence. Fausto was very far away. “You sound great,” I said finally, patting his hand.

  “Are you surprised?”

  “No.” I squinted at the name on a score. “Who’s Ethel Kiss?”

  “My mother. She was gifted. Not like you, of course. You sight-read these pieces better than she played them after practicing for years.”

  “This program must bring back a lot of memories.”

  “You’re worth it.” Fausto returned to the piano. “Care to review anything?”

  “No thanks.” Fausto had chosen a recital impossible to screw up: he could skip a page, I could drop my violin, and not seriously undermine the artistic impact. No one would be listening anyway. Well, maybe one person. “You’d better warn Bendix.”

  “Why? I paid him plenty of money to compose this piece. He accepted it.”

  “I don’t think he’s the type who likes surprises. He told me he tore up all his operas.”

  “Come now! That would be like burning his child at the stake!” Fausto poured himself a few inches of champagne. “Why are you so concerned about Bendix’s feelings? It’s me he’ll be angry with.”

  “What the hell, he’s your friend.”

  I could hear the thoughts galloping through Fausto’s head as he walked me to the Corvette. Suddenly he put a hand on my arm. “I’ve got two tickets to a fund-raiser tomorrow. Can you come?”

  “Whose funds are you raising?”

  “Bobby Marvel’s.”

  Forget it, I almost said. Look after Fausto. “We won’t stay long,” I sighed.

  “Only as long as you’re amused.”

  I hit the ignition. “I have a high amusement threshold.”

  “Wear your flimsiest dress,” Fausto called as I drove away.

  What had he been doing in the jungle?

  I cut through the woods near the zoo with laughable ease. A smattering of bush, a few stones: no jungle this. Middling heat, tepid smells and it never got dark. City lights had denatured night into a weak, stalled dawn. I missed the cicadas; without them, nature here lacked a pulse. Didn’t lack noise,, though: cars, far-off radios … mechanical beasts, harmless. Still, I had to be careful. Armed guards knew the zoo better than I and midnight was not a legit visiting hour. A cougar roared as I crept by its cage. Two nights ago that sound would have traumatized me. Now I just kept walking: in Washington, only humans threatened my survival.

  Paused outside Maxine’s hollow in the rock. Where was Ek tonight? Louis? Who had dared welcome me back with orchids? Only half-sure I was alone, I pressed a tiny button in the stone face. Door clicked ever so slowly open. I sent Maxine a report about Louis’s camp and Barnard’s cave, about waterfalls and Ek. I told her about dead Tatal, visiting Fausto, about Koko’s café and Jojo’s conference … and Simon.

  When the phone rang, my pulse constricted. “You killed a man?” Maxine asked incredulously. “And let your witness go?”

  “The witness saved my life. If Ek hadn’t distracted him, I would have gotten my head chopped off.”

  “Since when do you practice charity? You should have taken care of him.”

  What did Maxine know? The closest she had ever gotten to a jungle was the Tiergarten. “Ek won’t say a word until he sees Louis.”

  “Don’t count on it.” I heard keys tapping: Maxine raking over my report. “So the camp left you clueless. The boy was probably hiding something. He says Fausto visited for Louis’s birthday? That’s unbelievable. Did you rehearse with him tonight?”

  “Yes. He invited me to a fund-raiser for Marvel tomorrow.”

  The Queen stuck to her original theme. “Why would Barnard leave behind the pictures she took at that environmental conference?”

  “Maybe the conference was just an alibi to
get to Belize City. To a real phone. Obviously the mobile unit didn’t work in the jungle.”

  “She didn’t call me from Belize City.” Maxine swallowed something, maybe spit. In Berlin it was too late for booze, too early for coffee. “Do you think Ek ratted to Louis about Barnard’s phone call?”

  “He told me he didn’t. Said Louis was jittery enough already.”

  “Take everything that kid says with a grain of salt, okay? I wonder why someone would want to kill Yvette Tatal. She was like a saint in Belize. And why that particular day?”

  “Everyone knew she went digging on Mondays.”

  Maxine clicked to the top of my report. “Let’s go over this again. Louis seems to have been looking for some sort of magillah plant. For whom or what, we don’t know. Fausto visits for a birthday lunch. A week later, the environmental conference goes down. Every Washington heavy but Bobby Marvel makes an appearance. Week or so later, Louis hits Koko’s café while the boy goes with Barnard to Tatal’s. Louis disappears. Barnard goes after him and winds up dead. You try to see Tatal, she’s dead. You chase Tatal’s killer, he gets away.” Maxine’s travelogue halted in disgust.

  “He was on a bike. I didn’t have a chance.”

  “You go to Koko’s, where you are recognized by the killer, a mercenary named Simon. Ek turns up with a bottle of liniment. Do you realize how preposterous that is?”

  “Keep going, Maxine. Don’t lose the thread of the story.” She was leaving so much out: darkness, heat, terror … the real stuff.

  “The merc knows you’ve trailed him through the jungle. He tries to clean up after himself by going after you with a few arrows. You counter with lethal injection. After Ek distracts him, of course. So the poison worked this time?”

  “Like a champ,” I sighed.

  “Did you happen to notice if Simon was shooting any arrows at Ek? Sorry, you were too busy ducking. So Ek claims Simon once tried to follow them back to camp. Good thing they lost him. I suspect Louis would have ended up like Tatal. Any idea who may have hired Simon?”

  None whatever. Maxine’s clicking finally ceased: a deceptive silence, like that of the eye of a hurricane. “After Simon floats away, you retrieve Barnard’s camera and call it a night. Quite a trip!” That was Maxine’s way of saying Thanks for risking your neck. “Did anyone miss you back in Washington?”

  Someone fond of orchids. “Duncan. Justine and Bendix. Maybe Fausto.”

  “How’s Marvel?”

  “Out of sight, out of mind.”

  She sighed. “We don’t know shit here.”

  “Maybe we’ve got video,” I said after a silence. Barnard’s camera was a fine replica of a cheap aim-and-shoot. She had programmed the computer inside to recognize Louis’s face. If he walked into Koko’s, film would roll until he left. No audio unless she had managed to replace one strategic button on each of Louis’s shirts, but I doubted that had been a problem: Barnard was hell on men’s clothing, particularly buttons and zippers. I nestled the camera into a notch in the wall. Tiny whirs. Soon a digital clock appeared in a corner of the screen in front of me.

  July 20, 1310 hours. Barnard must have just hooked up with Louis. The two of them waded through a clutter of chairs and backpacks to a table at the far wall. Barnard had dressed in baggy shirt and shorts. Unfortunately she couldn’t tone down her height, face, or legs, so her arrival was noted by everyone in the café. Louis Bailey looked as desiccated on film as he had appeared in my computer file. Barnard’s height, without her curves. He walked as if shards of glass lodged inches from his vital organs. Neither hands nor eyes made contact with the beautiful derriere ahead of him. Had Barnard finally met a man impervious to her charms? Maybe that’s what had derailed her.

  The button microphone worked perfectly. “Tortillas are excellent here,” Louis said. Thin tenor voice. They ordered. As soon as the waitress left, Louis plunged into a molecular analysis of malaria, not divagating from the topic even as he and Barnard left twenty minutes later. He referred to Dr. Tatal once, praising her work during the last epidemic in Belize. On the way out, Barnard rolled her eyes at the camera.

  Next transmission August 10, again around lunch. This time the picture was acceptable but audio dicey: those button mikes had been corroding in the jungle for several weeks. Although Louis looked even more disheveled, he still monopolized conversation: fallout from a Mach 5 brain. Today’s subject was biological immortality and the advances scientists had made in keeping animals alive far beyond their natural terms. Barnard wasn’t even trying to keep up with Louis anymore. As he spoke, her eyes roamed the room, picking off men: she probably hadn’t had one in a month. Her eyes kept returning to a corner of the café, lingering, toying. Finally even Louis caught on.

  “You’re not listening to me,” he said.

  “Yes I am. Ichneumonid wasps.”

  Mollified, Louis resumed where he had left off. Barnard wasn’t through with her corner, however. Eventually Ek came to the table. “I have our provisions,” he announced. “We can go now.”

  “Pit stop.” Barnard exited. The camera picked her up at the back exit, a man at her heels.

  Ek took her empty seat. Louis called the waitress. After a few shots of tequila, he looked impatiently toward the doorway through which Barnard had disappeared. When she finally returned, her hair looked mussed. As Ek relinquished her seat, he studied the far wall. I hit PAUSE as Barnard’s man returned to the dining room, face to the lens.

  Simon.

  Ek’s face betrayed nothing. Barnard suddenly became quite lively. Pulled Louis’s ear a couple of times, poured herself a slug of tequila. She didn’t look again in Simon’s direction. Maybe he was gone. After a few minutes, she left with Louis and Ek.

  “Nice little quickie,” Maxine commented.

  “That’s Simon. Think she just picked him up?”

  “She obviously wasn’t getting any action from Louis.”

  “But hitting a stranger in a tortilla joint?”

  “She’s done it before.”

  “Maybe she wanted him on film.” His passport number was in my report so Maxine looked him up. Simon Kingsley was born in Liverpool. Joined the Merchant Marine and brawled his way from sea to shining sea. Navy wouldn’t take him after he KO’d a captain so he joined the Foreign Legion, abetting fifteen years of tribal warfare in Africa. When that became redundant, he moved to Central America. Close body work his specialty.

  “Nice guy to screw in a back alley,” Maxine commented. “The boy noticed. He didn’t appear very surprised.”

  “You don’t think so?” I rewound tape. “Look. He’s in shock. Barely moving.” Polly was not really a botanist, was she. I forwarded to the next transmission. September 1, lunchtime. Louis sat alone at Koko’s. No audio: those buttons had been in the jungle too long. He looked cadaverous, drained by the heat. Barking at a waitress, he flopped into a chair with an International Herald-Tribune. Turned the page and nearly dropped his tequila. Brought the paper inches from his eyes and read slowly, aghast. His mouth was still open when Krikor Tunalian, patron saint of aspiring Nobelists, tapped him on the shoulder.

  Louis coughed violently, pounded his chest. The microphones twitched on. “Hello, Louis,” the arms dealer said, seating himself across the table. Delicate man with thick, drooping brows and a dangling earring, maybe a crucifix. The Indian motifs on his shirt could not conceal crescents of sweat at the armpits. “I’m so glad you remembered our meeting.”

  “What have you done to my brother?” Louis croaked.

  Tuna looked amused. “You have a brother?” he asked with exaggerated dismay.

  “Don’t joke with me! I know how you people operate!”

  “You’ve been working too hard. I’m glad to see that.” Tuna laid a thick envelope on the table. “Here’s some spending money. I understand you have a beautiful assistant. Spoil her a little.”

  Oh Christ! Did everyone on the planet know Barnard was down here?

  Louis was stunned. “What
makes you think I have an assistant?”

  “My friends eat at Koko’s, too. By the way, I’m delighted that you worked on my poison rather than visit that environmental conference. You will finish on time for me, won’t you?”

  “I’m going as fast as I can.” Louis shakily poured himself a long tequila. “My brother’s got hemorrhagic dengue. I just read it in the paper. I don’t believe it. Something’s wrong.”

  “He looked fine at the conference. A little drunk, but it could have been the heat.”

  Louis stood up. “I’ve got to see Tatal. She’ll tell me what’s going on here.”

  “Don’t get sidetracked,” Tuna warned. “You’re working for me now.”

  “Go to hell! I work for myself!”

  Not after accepting five million bucks in a Swiss account, he didn’t. “Good-bye, Louis,” Tuna smiled benignly. “You’ll see me again soon. With results, I hope.”

  After Tuna left, Louis emptied the bottle of tequila as he reread the article in the Trib. The camera followed him to the phone in the rear of the café. He made one quick call before hurrying out the back door, never to be seen again.

  “Zoom to his mouth,” Maxine said. “See if we get anything.”

  Rewind, focus, patch to video decryption program. One syllable at a time, an electronic voice blurted through the speakers. “FAU-STO WE’VE GOT TROU-BLE I’M COM-ING UP.”

  The screen went black. “September first was a Monday,” Maxine said after a grand pause. “Tatal must have been out digging. Could Louis have hitchhiked to the site?”

  “Easily.”

  “She probably helped him out of the country. Of course, the boy would have known Tatal wouldn’t be in her office. He took Barnard there on purpose so Louis could meet Tuna alone. Smart little sucker.” That’s what I loved about Maxine: she always looked for the best in people. “Too bad everyone’s dead,” she continued. “Now we’re left with Fausto and your Tarzan. And Louis, if we can find him.”

  “Don’t forget Tuna.”